Johannes van der Beeck
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Johannes (Jan) Symonsz van der Beeck (1589, Amsterdam - buried 17 February 1644, Amsterdam) was a Dutch painter also known by his alias Johannes Torrentius. ("Torrentius" is a Latin equivalent of the Beeck surname, literally meaning "brook" or "torrent".)
Despite his reputation as a still life master, few of Torrentius' paintings survive, as his works were ordered to be burned after he was accused of being a Rosicrucian adherent of atheistic and Satanic beliefs. The tortured painter was thrown into prison as a convicted blasphemer until being permitted to leave the country as a political gesture for England's Charles I, a Beeck admirer.
Biography
Johannes van der Beeck was born in Amsterdam in 1589, where he married in 1612. Relations between himself and wife Neeltgen van Camp eventually soured and ended in a divorce. Beeck was briefly thrown into jail for failing to pay his former wife her alimony in 1621.
His libertine ways and purported membership in the Rosicrucian order led to his 1627 arrest and torture as a religious non-conformist and an alleged blasphemer, heretic, atheist, and Satanist. The January 25, 1628 judgment from five noted advocates of The Hague pronounced him guilty of "blasphemy against God and avowed atheism, at the same time as leading a frightful and pernicious lifestyle." It was widely believed that the condemned Torrentius' influence had affected Jeronimus Cornelisz, a trader of the Dutch East India Company who led a bloody mutiny aboard the Batavia in 1629.
Although he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, Charles I of England — an admirer of the painter's works — intervened, and was able to secure his release after two years, hiring Torrentius as Court Painter. He stayed in England for 12 years, returning to Amsterdam in 1642.
