Juan van der Hamen
1596–1631 · Spain · Baroque, Still life
The story
His father came from Brussels to Madrid before 1586 to serve in the Archers' Guard, the Flemish company that guarded the person of the Spanish king, and Juan van der Hamen served in it as well. That is the world he painted in, a court where the same man could be on the guard roster and a painter by trade.
He was baptised in Madrid in 1596, and by September 1619 the crown was paying him for a still life at the Pardo palace. Through the 1620s he gave Madrid its taste for the bodegón, boxes of sweets, glass beakers, sugared fruit and plain pottery set out on stone ledges in raking light, each object placed at a measured distance from the next. One of them is dated 1622.
In his own lifetime he was better known as a portrait painter, and he painted writers, among them Lope de Vega. He died in March 1631, aged 34.
