Baroque Age
Salomon Koninck (1609–1656)
Dutch Golden Age painter.
Salomon Koninck (1609 – buried 8 August 1656) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver, born in Amsterdam as the son of a goldsmith whose family had come from Antwerp, and a kinsman of the landscape painter Philips Koninck (usually described as his cousin). He trained under a succession of Amsterdam history painters — Pieter Lastman (who had also taught the young Rembrandt), David Colijns, François Venants, and Claes Corneliszoon Moeyaert — and entered the Guild of Saint Luke in 1630. From this grounding in the narrative, brightly costumed manner of the so-called Pre-Rembrandtists he moved toward the darker, more dramatic idiom that would define his career.
Koninck worked in the orbit of Rembrandt and the academy of the dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh, and he made many copies of Rembrandt's compositions. He was not, however, Rembrandt's pupil — Rembrandt was only three years his senior — and most scholarship describes him as a follower or imitator rather than a member of the studio. His pictures have a warm colour palette and are filled with hermits, old men, and philosophers or scholars absorbed in their studies, together with Old Testament and history subjects, all staged with rich exotic costume, emphatic gesture, and strong Rembrandtesque contrasts of light and shadow. His single-figure 'philosophers' were so close to the master that one, the Philosopher with an Open Book in the Louvre, was long attributed to Rembrandt and hung as a companion to Rembrandt's own Philosopher in Meditation.
Rather than merely copy, Koninck sought a niche of his own, and by the late 1630s and early 1640s he had forged an individual style that married Rembrandt's history painting to the smoother, more refined finish of the Leiden fijnschilders. He married a daughter of the painter Adriaen van Nieulandt and later a sister of Antonie van Stralen, and died in Amsterdam in 1656. His work is comparatively rare and is held today in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, and the Prado in Madrid, among others; one of his scholar pictures, A Scholar Sharpening His Quill (1639), was looted by the Nazis and restituted to the Schloss family in 2019.
The words the record keeps using: contemplative, warm, dramatic, scholarly, brooding, devout, meticulous.
At a glance
- Lived 1609–1656
- Origin Dutch
- Worked in Amsterdam
- Era Baroque Age
- Movements Dutch Golden Age
- Mediums Oil on panel, Oil on canvas
- Techniques Oil glazing, Chiaroscuro
Works in the archive
- The Hermit, 1643 (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden)
A signature Koninck subject: a bearded old hermit-scholar seated in a dim interior, absorbed in a great book. Works like this belong to the family of philosophers and hermits in their studies through which Koninck most… - The Idolatry of King Solomon, 1644 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
An Old Testament history piece illustrating 1 Kings 11:1–13, in which Solomon's foreign wives lead the aged king to worship pagan gods. Koninck fills the temple with the machinery of idolatry — a priest swinging a… - Sophonisba Receives the Cup of Poison, 1645 (USC Fisher Museum of Art, Los Angeles)
Painted in the 1640s (c. 1645), this history painting shows the Carthaginian noblewoman Sophonisba at the tragic climax of her story: rather than see his wife paraded in a Roman triumph after Scipio's victory, her… - The Gold Weigher, 1654 (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam)
Signed 'S Koninck' and dated 1654, this single-figure genre piece shows an old man weighing gold at his table, coins and purse before him. Painted only two years before Koninck's death, it wears Rembrandt's manner…
What was said
He was a follower of Rembrandt, imitating him in pictures of hermits, old men, and philosophers in their studies, as well as in religious scenes, and exaggerating the master's early predilection for rich exotic costumes, emphatic gestures, and dramatic contrasts of light and shadow.
Though deeply familiar with Rembrandt's history paintings of the late 1620s and 1630s and often copying his compositions, Koninck was never Rembrandt's pupil and was far from a slavish follower; by the late 1630s and early 1640s he had forged an individual style that combined facets of Rembrandt's history painting with the more refined manner of the Leiden fijnschilders.
In Koninck's Gold Weigher of 1654 Rembrandt's painting style is clearly recognisable, and the incidental sunlight encapsulates the dark room in a soft glow; because gold-weighing scenes were long associated with the vice of miserliness (avaritia), it can be assumed that Koninck intended his old gold scales to symbolise Miserliness.
What would Salomon make of your idea?
The Artiquity Studio makes a new picture in this hand's manner from a few words or a photograph — grounded in the technique, palette and subjects recorded above, and always credited "after Salomon Koninck", never passed off as a found work. Open the Studio with Salomon · Keep a life moment the way Salomon would · Pictures made after Salomon