Jan Baptist Weenix

Jan Baptist Weenix went to Italy as a young Dutchman and came back half-transformed. Born around 1621, he travelled to Rome in 1643 and stayed about four years, working for a cardinal of the Pamphili family who, in 1644, was elected Pope Innocent X. Weenix took to the warm southern light so completely that even his signature changed. Back home he signed himself in the Italian form, Gio Batista.

He was known for painting fast and for painting almost anything: sun-drenched Mediterranean harbours he had seen, imaginary seaports, portraits, and above all still lifes of dead game, a hare or birds hung against stone.

He died young, sometime around 1660, but he had already founded a small dynasty. His son Jan Weenix carried the game piece to new heights of polish, his relative Melchior d'Hondecoeter became the great Dutch painter of live birds, and Nicolaes Berchem, who trained in his circle, spread the golden Italian light across a generation of Dutch landscape.