Gerard de Lairesse
Gerard or Gérard (de) Lairesse (French pronunciation: [ʒeʁaʁ də lɛʁɛs]; 11 September 1641 – June 1711) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and art theorist.
De Lairesse was influenced by the Perugian Cesare Ripa[1][2] and French classicist painters such as Charles le Brun, Simon Vouet and authors such as Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine.
[3] His treatises on painting and drawing, Grondlegginge Ter Teekenkonst (1701),[4][5][6] based on geometry and Groot Schilderboek (1707), were highly influential on 18th-century painters.
Some time later De Lairesse moved to Spinhuissteeg where he became a member of the literary society Nil volentibus arduum, which seems to have gathered in his house from 1676 until 1681.
In 1688–1689, he decorated the civil council chamber of the Hof van Holland at the Binnenhof, presently known as the Lairesse room, with seven paintings with subjects from the history of the Roman Republic, all displaying a remarkable legal iconography.
De Lairesse was therefore frequently hired to adorn the interiors of government buildings and homes (canal houses) of wealthy Amsterdam businessmen with lavish grisailles, trompe-l'œil ceilings and wall paintings.
[17] The saddle nose which the disease gave him is clearly visible on the portrait which Rembrandt painted of him around 1665 and the engraving in the "Teutsche Academie" by Joachim von Sandrart (1683).
After several years two books on art were published: In Het groot schilderboeck, De Lairesse expressed his disapproval of realism style used by Dutch Golden Age painters like Rembrandt, Adriaen Brouwer, Adriaen van Ostade and Frans Hals because they often portrayed everyday scenes and ordinary people such as soldiers, farmers, maids, and even beggars.
The artist, he said, must learn grace by mingling with the social and intellectual élite, must allow his subject matter to teach the highest moral principles, and must strive for ideal beauty.
[20] His treatises on painting and drawing, Grondlegginge ter teekenkonst (1701)[4][5][6] and Het groot schilderboeck (1707), were highly influential on later painters like Jacob de Wit.
He also worked with many established artists of his day, as Barend Graat, Johannes Glauber and Frederick de Moucheron, on larger commissions for house decorations.
Two hundred years after his death in 1711 the Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th Edition (1911) gave no listing at all for De Lairesse, while devoting four pages of solid text to Rembrandt.
[23] Well-known paintings by de Lairesse include his Allegory of the Five Senses (1668), Diana and Endymion (c. 1680) and Cleopatra Landing at Tarsus.
