In the Grip of Mystery | Serlachius

Tomi Moisio, the curator of the exhibitionWho was the mysterious artist who, in the 17th century, signed their paintings with the initials I.S., but whose identity art historians have not been able to determine since? Serlachius’ research and exhibition project set out to try to solve the riddle.

In 1937, Gösta Serlachius acquired the painting Old Man with a Fur Hat at an auction in London. The author was Jan Lievens (1607–1674), a contemporary of Rembrandt (1606–1669). The work remained attributed to Lievens for decades, although already in the 1980s the German art historian Werner Sumowski had suggested that its real author was an enigmatic artist known only by his initials: the Master I.S.

The artist, who was pigeonholed into the Rembrandt school on stylistic grounds, was introduced to art historiography in the early 1900s, but had remained a marginal figure. Thus, the experts at the auction house had also considered the work acquired by Serlachius to have been painted by the more famous Jan Lievens.

Prelude to the Ghost Hunt

The exhibition and research project Master I.S. – Rembrandt’s Enigmatic Contemporary began in April 2022, when the attribution of the work became a topic of discussion in connection with the first Serlachius seminar. Master I.S.’s oeuvre had never been exhibited, and the project supported nicely the Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation’s efforts to raise awareness of its collection of old European art.

The Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden, the Netherlands, became a partner for the project. In addition to the museum’s curator of old art, Janneke van Asperen, the international research team included professors Volker Manuth and Marieke de Winkel from Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and David de Witt, curator of the Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam.

Organising an exhibition of centuries-old art is challenging, even when the identity of the artist is known.

Completely new challenges are faced when nothing is known about the artist other than initials and a handful of more or less credibly attributed paintings. When the exhibition of Master I.S. was started, the first thing they did was to contact international experts to find out the extent of the well-known oeuvre and where these works are located.

The exhibition Master I.S. – Rembrandt’s Enigmatic Contemporary was able to loan works from nine art museums and three private collections. The works arrived in Mänttä from Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Canada and the United States. Fourteen of the eighteen works in the exhibition are attributed to the Master I.S. Four paintings are by other artists: two by Jan Lievens, and one by Gerrit Dou (1613–1675) and David Bailly (1584–1657). The works of Lievens, Dou and Bailly, who worked in Leiden, help to place the paintings of the Master I.S. in the right context.

Traces lead to Leiden

Although almost nothing is known about the background of Master I.S., quite a lot can be deduced from the works. The artist most likely stayed in Leiden at the turn of the 1620s and 1630s, considering how much the works draw on art by Rembrandt and Jan Lievens in particular, but also by other artists who worked in Leiden, such as Gerrit Dou. In the first decades of the 17th century, art in Leiden developed in leaps and bounds, as these open-minded artists made use of new themes and made unprecedented technical experiments.

Rembrandt, Lievens and Dou, who reformed artistic expression, were interested in expressing not only people’s physical characteristics, but also the manifestation of emotions on the face. They further developed a type of painting known as a tronie. It was originally a small-scale study of individual facial features, which artists usually painted as studies for larger historical paintings, for example.

The details reveal a lot

Rembrandt and Lievens developed this type of work in the 1620s and 1630s, using themselves, each other, and their loved ones as models. These character studies began to become independent and respected artworks, even though they were not actual portraits. These young artists were particularly fascinated by the facial features of older people. The facial studies of the elderly were related not only to the technical challenges of rendering wrinkled skin, but also to the themes of the passage of time and the transience of human life.

The most recognisable feature of Master I.S.’s work is precisely these detailed personal studies of the elderly, carried out with great devotion and technical skill. In addition, the figures often depicted by the Master I.S. are dressed in accessories that are not typical of the Netherlands. The use of exotic accessories as part of character studies also originated from Rembrandt and other Leiden artists. Another type of work that became common in Leiden portrayed artists or scholars in their studios. Paintings depicting scholars with vanitas symbols, such as books and skulls, also appear in the works of Master I.S.

Will the riddle remain unsolved?

Researchers have wondered whether Master I.S. was a professional artist after all, or rather a talented amateur who developed into a true master over the years. It is also quite possible that Master I.S. was not from the Netherlands, but came to Leiden, for example, to study.

The theory in favour of education could be supported by numerous studies on both young and older scholars. The details of the clothing and interiors of the people in the paintings, on the other hand, seem to refer to somewhere other than the Netherlands. The clothes and headgear in the works seem more Eastern and Northern European, but they are probably a mixture of traditional clothing from different regions.

Was Master I.S. from somewhere in the Baltic Sea region, or did he travel in these areas, for example, for work? The Master I.S. is known to have painted portraits of representatives of a Dutch merchant family. The wide trade networks in the Netherlands also extended to the far reaches of the Baltic Sea, so connections to the merchant family are one possible explanation for the original accessories and interiors of the works.

Tools for future researchers

On the other hand, we cannot even be sure of the gender of the artist. However, some of the works are most likely self-portraits, which would make the artist presumed to be a man. The same long-haired figure with a narrow moustache appears in several of the monogrammist’s paintings, often in the context of self-portraiture familiar from the works of Leiden’s artists, which would support the interpretation of the works as self-portraits.

It is simultaneously rewarding and frustrating that we know almost nothing about the artist. When the interpretation is not guided by biographical material, the works can be viewed more freely and given more room for the imagination. However, without tangible evidence, we can only make educated guesses about the artist and his works, albeit justifiably and based on paintings.

It may well be that we will never know the true identity of Master I.S. However, with this groundbreaking exhibition and research project, awareness of the artist and their work increases. Thus, the likelihood that future generations of researchers will be able to solve the riddle of Master I.S. also increases.