Cornelis de Man

The chess player. Budapest

The whale-oil factory of the Amsterdam chamber of the Noordsche Compagnie at Smeerenburg. 1639. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Cornelis de Man (Delft, 1 July 1621 – Delft, 1 September 1706) was a Dutch Golden Age painter.

Biography

Kornelis was not satisfied with life in Delft. He wanted to travel beyond the port of Dordrecht and that is what he did, spending a year in Paris as soon as he came of age and had enough talent to pay his way with his painting skills. He was well-received, but set off in the Spring for Lyon in order to cross Lombardia and the mountains before another winter set in. He settled for two years in Florence, where he had a rich patron, but stayed the longest in Rome. On the way back home he stopped in Venice, and in the end was gone for a total of nine years^[1].

Career in Delft

He became a successful painter in Delft, and painted a prestigious group portrait for the Anatomy guild there, as well as a renowned painting for the Amsterdam Noorsche Compagnie, a northern branch of the Amsterdam Dutch East India Company. This unusual painting was a studio reconstruction of the factory in Spitsbergen, based on a Danish original. He added all sorts of arctic details to this painting, though he never traveled further north than Denmark.^[2]

References

1. ^ Kornelis de Man biography in De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (1718) by Arnold Houbraken, courtesy of the Digital library for Dutch literature
2. ^ Whale-oil factory (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam), retrieved 30-aug-09

Persondata
Name	Man, Cornelis de
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1 July 1621
Place of birth
Date of death	1 September 1706
Place of death