Historiestukken door de Utrechtse schilder Johan de Veer

Two seventeenth-century painters bore the name Johan de Veer, a circumstance responsible for a certain amount of confusion. Virtually nothing is known of the Amsterdam De Veer (born in 1647 or 1648, date of death unknown). We have more information about his namesake from Utrecht, who lived from about 1610 to 1662. In 1635 he was abroad, undoubtedly in Italy, the destination of many young artists. After his rcturn he married in 1640 and set up as a painter in Utrecht. His ocuvre, comprising a number of portraits and history pieces, is very small; perhaps he was not particularly successful, or worked as an amateur. He painted in the manner of the Caravaggisti and with great expression. The history pieces arc a lost Andromeda, a David Giving the Letter to Uriah (fig. i), in the possession of the Sint Eloyengasthuis in Utrecht since 1656, two versions of the Adoration of the Shepherds (figs. 3 and 4) and two versions of Cleopatra (figs. 5 and 7). It is noteworthy that De Veer modelled one of the Cleopatra figures on Susanna and the Elders by the Lombardian painter Giovanni Stefano Doneda (1612-1690) (fig. 6).