Christoffel Jacobsz van der Laemen

Christoffel Jacobsz van der Laemen or Christoffel van der Laemen (1607 – c. 1651) was a Flemish painter who specialized in merry company scenes with elegant figures. His favorite themes were card and backgammon players, brothel scenes, the prodigal son, dancing, music making and scenes of food and drink set in elegant rooms, inns and gardens.

Christoffel Jacobsz van der Laemen was the son of Jacob van der Laemen and Anna Dirkx (or possibly Anna Lemmens). Art historians do not agree on his place of birth, some placing it in Brussels and others in Antwerp.

Brussels has been proposed as a possible birthplace because his father who was a painter and art dealer from Antwerp worked in Brussels between1613 and 1620. It is, on the other hand, possible that he was born in Antwerp but that the record of his baptism is lost since the records of the Saint Andrew Church of Antwerp for the period in which he was likely born (some time between 21 August 1606 and 29 march 1607) no longer exist. His birth date is broadly placed between 1606 and 1620. He trained with his father.

He was registered as a wine-master (i.e. son of a master) at the Anwerp Guild of St. Luke in the guild year In 1636/37. The next year he already received Hieronymus Janssens as his pupil.

When he married Maria Michielsen in 1642, the painters Paul Rijckaert and Adriaen Michielsen were witnesses. The van der Laemen couple had six children. The artist must have died between 22 September 1651 and 17 September 1652 as he was recorded present at his daughter's baptism on the first date and his death duties to the Guild were paid before the latter date.

Christoffel van der Laemen is known for his merry company scenes depicting elegant figures. The compositions reprise many of the themes common in Northern genre painting of the 17th century such as card and backgammon players, brothel scenes, the prodigal son, dancing, music making and scenes of food and drink set in elegant rooms, inns and gardens.

The themes of elegant people enjoying themselves had developed first in the 16th century. Dancing scenes appear particularly frequently in van der Laemen's work. In the iconographic traditions of that time, dance scenes are linked to representations of the sin of lust. In his dancing scenes, van der Laemen included pictures with religious scenes on the background walls so that the sinful act of dancing depicted in the painting could be neturalised by the religious message in the background pictures. An example is the Dancing Party in an Interior (National Gallery of Denmark) where a dancing party in a large room is overlooked by a large painting hanging over the fireplace in the back representing the New Testament of the miraculous catch of fish. His pupil Hieronymus Janssens became even more closely linked to the subject of dancing scenes, which earned him the nickname 'the dancer'.

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