PIETER DE GREBBER (HAARLEM C. 1600-1652/53)

Pieter de Grebber, together with Salomon de Bray, was a pioneer of Dutch Classicism in Haarlem. Both painters were pupils of Hendrik Goltzius, who is considered the founding father of this school. Although De Grebber never went to Italy, Goltzius made a trip there in 1590, where he must have encountered the latest innovations Annibale Carracci had introduced in Rome towards the end of the century. The artist’s father, Frans Pietersz. de Grebber, was a painter and art dealer, who acted as Rubens's agent in negotiations with Sir Dudley Carleton, English Ambassador to The Hague. De Grebber accompanied his father to Antwerp in 1618, where he may have met Rubens and whose classical art was certainly a factor in the formation of his style. De Grebber was praised as an important painter especially of histories, in the description of Haarlem by Samuel Ampzing (1628) and Petrus Scriverius (1648) and in Philips Angel's 1642 treatise on painting. In 1649, De Grebber published his own Eleven Rules of Art on a single broadside.

The majority of De Grebber's oeuvre, approximately 70 works in all, is religious in nature. Having grown up in the Catholic faith, De Grebber maintained close ties with prominent members of the Church in Haarlem, for whom he painted altarpieces for the so-called hidden churches, or ‘huiskerken’, as well as for Catholic churches in Flanders. The present, seemingly unfinished, work may well represent Caritas. It has also been suggested, when with Wengraf, that it originally may have been intended as a Holy Family with Saint John blessing. Strong resemblances with figures by Salomon de Bray as well as Jan van Bijlert have been mentioned and Benedict Nicholson (loc. cit.) indicated the reminiscence of this ‘beautiful De Grebber’ in the oeuvre of Paulus Bor and Caesar van Everdingen. Because of its ‘deeply personal and intimate quality’, it was even suggested the artist may have depicted his own wife and children when the painting was with Colnaghi (loc. cit).