Karel van Mander

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Mander, Karel van (b Meulebeke, nr. Courtrai, 1548; d Amsterdam, 11 Sept. 1606). Netherlandish painter and writer on art, active mainly in Haarlem. He is sometimes known as the ‘Dutch Vasari’, for his fame rests primarily on his work as a biographer of artists, published in Het schilder-boeck (The Book of Painters) in 1604. The most important part of the book is made up of about 175 biographies of Netherlandish and German artists from the van Eycks to van Mander's own younger contemporaries. This is the first systematic account of the lives of northern European artists, and our only source of information about some of them. The book also contains the lives of Italian artists from Cimabue up to his own time. Most of this material is a condensed translation into Dutch of Vasari, but it also has valuable information collected by van Mander himself when he was in Italy in 1573–7 or from friends and correspondents; he was sufficiently up to date to mention Caravaggio, ‘who is doing extraordinary things in Rome’. Another part of the book is a long poem that gives practical advice to artists and sums up much of the theory and practice of 16th-century Netherlandish art. About 30 of van Mander's own pictures survive; they are mainly of religious and allegorical subjects, characterized by elongated Mannerist forms. With Cornelis van Haarlem and Hendrick Goltzius, he is said to have founded an academy in Haarlem. Frans Hals was probably his pupil.

Mander, Karel van (1548–1606). Netherlandish painter and writer on art, active mainly in Haarlem. He is sometimes known as the ‘Dutch Vasari’, for his fame rests primarily on his work as a biographer of artists, published in Het schilder-boeck (The Book of Painters) in 1604. The most important part of the book is made up of about 175 biographies of Netherlandish and German artists from the van Eycks to van Mander's own younger contemporaries. This is the first systematic account of the lives of northern European artists, and our only source of information about some of them. The book also contains the lives of Italian artists from Cimabue up to his own time. Most of this material is a condensed translation into Dutch of Vasari, but it also has valuable information collected by van Mander himself when he was in Italy in 1573–7 or from friends and correspondents; he was sufficiently up to date to mention Caravaggio, ‘who is doing extraordinary things in Rome’. Another part of the book is a long poem that gives practical advice to artists and sums up much of the theory and practice of 16th-century Netherlandish art. About 30 of van Mander's own pictures survive; they are mainly of religious and allegorical subjects, characterized by elongated Mannerist forms. With Cornelis van Haarlem and Hendrick Goltzius, he is said to have founded an academy in Haarlem. Frans Hals was probably his pupil.

Karel van Mander , 1548–1606, Flemish painter and humanist. He wrote plays on biblical themes and translated from the classics. He is known primarily for his biography of painters, Het Schilder-Boeck (1604; tr. Dutch and Flemish Painters, 1936), which, despite its inaccuracies, is generally an adequate early source on Northern painters.