Abstract
The poet and painter Lucas d’Heere (1534-1584) is best portrayed by his pupil Karel van Mander. Through his Schilder-Boeck (1604; 'The Book of Painters') we are informed that D’Heere was a portrait painter with a good memory, a designer of patterns for tapestries and collector of antiques. After the iconoclasm
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(1566) he left for England in 1567 because of his Calvinist ideas, where he was admitted as an elder into the Dutch religious community. There he made contacts with Dutch people, most of whom were also Protestants who had left their country, such as the historian Emanuel van Meteren, the poet Jan van der Noot, the merchant-poet Johannes Rademacher (Rotarius), the cartographer Ortelius and William of Orange’s friend, the statesman and writer Marnix van St. Aldegonde. The manuscript Theatre by Lucas D’Heere is a sixteenth-century handwritten document that after some wandering was found again in the university library of Ghent.There are 98 watercolours, starting with Aaron, who represents the Old Testament. Aaron is the only figure whose clothing is described in great detail in the Bible. The last watercolour is a representation of a nearly naked man with a piece of cloth and a pair of scissors preceded by a poem on human vanity and followed by two poems in which the reader is told to lead a virtuous and humble life.Lucas d’Heere drew pictures of clothing from Antiquity as well as from the Middle Ages. Whereas the interest in Antiquity was common in his time, the interest in the Middle Ages was less usual. For many figures, illustrations in other books served as an inspiration, although the resemblance varies. Their analysis also sheds some light on the chronology of these watercolours. For most of the figures D’Heere used models. D’Heere is not very accurate in terms of dates and titles, especially not concerning the illustrations from the past. A number of folios have been left blank. It must haven been D’Heere’s intention to provide these places with illustrations of figures later on.A stylistic analysis of the 195 figures in the 98 watercolours attempts to find a relationship between the way of painting and the type of source used as a model. We know that D’Heere was an excellent copier and a gifted painter as well. By making changes in a great many places he created his own costume watercolours. His figures are narrower in comparison with their models. It is quite possible that he used proportion figures. Through Van Mander we know that he had a sample book by Dürer in his possession.Neither the manuscript by Heldt (1560-1580) nor the book by Vecellio (1590, 1598), which so far has been regarded as the first costume book, meet the criteria of the definition of a costume book as defined in this work. If the manuscript of Theatre by Lucas d’Heere had appeared in print in the 1580’s, it would have been considered the very first costume book.
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