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Lot Essay
The Greek philosopher Democritus is said to have chosen to live a modest life in solitude, surviving only for his studies. Known as the laughing philosopher, he never ceased being amused by the follies and vanity of mankind and believed that cheerfulness should be among the most desirable goals in life. His enemies took his good humor to be a sign of insanity, and his friend and pupil Hippocrates, a famous Greek medical philosopher, was sent to discover the nature of his disorder. Upon his arrival, Hippocrates realized that it was not Democritus who was insane but his enemies.
Though frequently depicted alongside Heraclitus, who came to be known as the crying philosopher because he wept at human frailty, Berchem’s treatment of this subject is seldom encountered in Dutch painting. Indeed, Wolfgang Stechow succeeded in identifying only one further example, painted by Nicolaes Moeyaert in 1636 (Mauritshuis, The Hague; loc. cit.). Since then, three further paintings – by Pieter Lastman (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille), Jacob Adriaensz. Backer (private collection) and Jan Pynas (formerly Cevat collection, St. Martins, Guernsey) – have come to light. That each of these artists had longstanding ties to Amsterdam suggests the subject may have found greater currency in the worldly metropolis than elsewhere in the Netherlands. Strikingly close to the compositions of both Lastman and, in particular, Moeyaert (fig. 1), with whom Berchem studied around 1640, Berchem all but assuredly executed this painting while resident in Amsterdam in the final decades of his life.
Though frequently depicted alongside Heraclitus, who came to be known as the crying philosopher because he wept at human frailty, Berchem’s treatment of this subject is seldom encountered in Dutch painting. Indeed, Wolfgang Stechow succeeded in identifying only one further example, painted by Nicolaes Moeyaert in 1636 (Mauritshuis, The Hague; loc. cit.). Since then, three further paintings – by Pieter Lastman (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille), Jacob Adriaensz. Backer (private collection) and Jan Pynas (formerly Cevat collection, St. Martins, Guernsey) – have come to light. That each of these artists had longstanding ties to Amsterdam suggests the subject may have found greater currency in the worldly metropolis than elsewhere in the Netherlands. Strikingly close to the compositions of both Lastman and, in particular, Moeyaert (fig. 1), with whom Berchem studied around 1640, Berchem all but assuredly executed this painting while resident in Amsterdam in the final decades of his life.