The Bruegel Success Story: Papers Presented at Symposium Xxi for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting, Brussels, 12-14 September 2018 ... and Technology in Painting, Symposia) 9789042943322, 9789042943339, 9042943327

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THE BRUEGEL SUCCESS STORY Papers Presented at Symposium XXI for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting

PEETERS

THE BRUEGEL SUCCESS STORY

UNDERDRAWING AND TECHNOLOGY IN PAINTING SYMPOSIUM XXI

Symposium XXI for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting was organized by

The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, Brussels and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium In cooperation with KU Leuven – University of Leuven Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art Université catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve – Laboratoire d’étude des œuvres d’art par les méthodes scientifiques Musea Brugge – Flemish Research Centre for the Arts in the Burgundian Netherlands University of Liège – Transitions

With the support of the Belgian Science Policy Office (Belspo), the Moriiso Co., Ltd, visit.brussels and The Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS

Scientific Committee Prof. Dominique Allart (University of Liège), Till-Holger Borchert (Bruges, Musea Brugge), Dr Véronique Bücken (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium), Dr Hilde De Clercq (Brussels, KIK-IRPA), Jacqueline Couvert (Louvain-la-Neuve, UCL), Dr Christina Currie (Brussels, KIK-IRPA), Dr Anne Dubois (Louvain-la-Neuve, UCL), Dr Bart Fransen (Brussels, KIK-IRPA), Dr Valentine Henderiks (Brussels, ULB & Fondation Périer-D’Ieteren), Prof. Manfred Sellink, Dr Tine Meganck (Brussels, VUB), Elke Oberthaler (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), Dr Sabine Pénot (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), Prof. Ron Spronk (Nijmegen, Radboud University & Kingston, Queen’s University), Dr Cyriel Stroo (Brussels, KIK-IRPA), Prof. Jan Van der Stock (KU Leuven), Dr Joris Van Grieken (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium), Dr Dominique Vanwijnsberghe (Brussels, KIK-IRPA), Annelies Vogels (KU Leuven), Prof. em. Jørgen Wadum (Denmark, Vanløse, Wadum Art Technological Studies), Prof. Lieve Watteeuw (KU Leuven).

THE BRUEGEL SUCCESS STORY Papers Presented at Symposium XXI for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting, Brussels, 12–14 September 2018

Edited by Christina Currie, in collaboration with Dominique Allart, Bart Fransen, Cyriel Stroo and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2021

With the support of

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. © Peeters Leuven, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form or by any means, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche or any other means without written permission from the Publisher. ISBN 978-90-429-4332-2 eISBN 978-90-429-4333-9 D/2021/0602/2

Editing: Lise Connellan Coordination: Marianne Thys

Cover: Detail, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Dulle Griet, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh (inv. MMB. 0045)

Contents Editors’ Preface

IX

PART 1 DULLE GRIET 1 2

3

The Surprises of Dulle Griet Leen Huet

3

Lifting the Veil: The Dulle Griet Rediscovered through Conservation, Scientific Imagery and Analysis Christina Currie, Steven Saverwyns, Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, Pascale Fraiture, Jean-Albert Glatigny and Alexia Coudray

19

The Coloured Drawing of the Dulle Griet in the Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf: New Findings on its Status and Dating Christina Currie, Dominique Allart, Sonja Brink and Steven Saverwyns

45

PART 2 PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER: MAKING, MEANING AND COPYING 4

5

6

7

8 9

The Adoration of the Magi in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium: Overview and New Perspectives Véronique Bücken

63

The Final Piece of the Puzzle: Bruegel’s Use of Cartoons in the Battle between Carnival and Lent and Reflections on his Preparatory Work for Painting Christina Currie

81

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Triumph of Death and Versions by his Sons: The Creative Process and the Art of Copying Christina Currie and Dominique Allart

105

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Copenhagen Oil Sketch of the Strife between Carnival and Lent, 1562 Anne Haack Christensen, Eva de la Fuente Pedersen, Aoife Daly, David Buti, Gianluca Pastorelli and Jørgen Wadum

129

Is Bruegel’s Sleeping Peasant an Image of Caricature? Yoko Mori

147

The Afterlife of the Detroit Wedding Dance: Visual Reception, Alterations and Reinterpretations Yao-Fen You, Ellen Hanspach-Bernal, Christina Bisulca and Aaron Steele

169

VI 10

CONTENTS

The Antwerp Wedding Dance: A Little Studied Copy after Bruegel the Elder Marie Postec and Pascale Fraiture

191

PART 3 JAN BRUEGHEL IN CONTEXT 11 12

13

14

15

Copia, Copying and Painterly Eloquence Elizabeth Alice Honig

207

The Master of the Dresden Landscape with the Continence of Scipio: A Journeyman in the Studio of Jan Brueghel the Elder? Uta Neidhardt

227

Examination of the Brueghel Holdings in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich Mirjam Neumeister, Eva Ortner and Jan Schmidt

243

Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Oil Sketches of Animals and Birds: Form, Function and Additions to the Oeuvre Amy Orrock

261

Sibling Rivalry: Jan Brueghel’s Rediscovered Early Crucifixion Larry Silver

279

PART 4 THE BRUEGEL NETWORK AND LEGACY 16 17

18 19

20

21 22

Peasant Passions: Pieter Bruegel and his Aftermath Ethan Matt Kavaler

289

Behind the Scenes in Pieter Bruegel’s ‘Success Story’: Pieter Coecke’s Networks and Legacy Annick Born

319

Bruegel and Beuckelaer: Contacts and Contrasts Lorne Campbell

343

Max J. Friedländer’s Perception of Bruegel: Rereading the Art Historian from a Historical Perspective Hilde Cuvelier

359

Erasmus’s De Copia and Bruegel the Elder’s ‘inverted’ Carrying of the Cross (1564): An ‘abundant style’ in Rhetoric, Literature and Art? Jamie L. Edwards

369

Pieter Bruegel the Elder and France Patrick Le Chanu

385

In Search of the Bruegel Family’s Homes and Studios in Antwerp Petra Maclot

397

CONTENTS

23 24 25

26 27

VII

Bruegel’s Patrons: How ‘Close Viewing’ May Reveal Original Ownership Tine Luk Meganck

413

Pieter Bruegel’s The Heath: Collectors and Connoisseurs Jan Muylle

425

Bruegel across Modes and Materials: Notes on a Painted Palace in Sixteenth-Century Segovia Daan van Heesch

435

An Enigmatic Panel-Maker from Antwerp and his Supply to the Bruegels Ingrid Moortgat and Jørgen Wadum

453

View of the Strait of Messina, by Circle of Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawing Techniques and Materials Examined Lieve Watteeuw, Marina Van Bos, Joris Van Grieken, Maarten Bassens, Bruno Vandermeulen and Hendrik Hameeuw

465

ADDENDUM The Dulle Griet: A Thematic and Synthetic Analysis Gaston Vandendriessche († 2002), with a foreword by Dominique Vanwijnsberghe

477

Bibliography

511

Contributors

543

Photographic Credits

549

Editors’ Preface The Bruegel Success Story. This small phrase evokes the brand invented by the great Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which was capitalized on by his two sons and many followers. It was the natural theme for a symposium that brought together art historians, scientists and connoisseurs to celebrate the art of Pieter Bruegel and his indelible influence on the generations that followed. It was to be the first major happening in a series of landmark exhibitions and conferences to mark the 450th anniversary of Bruegel’s death in 1569. The idea for The Bruegel Success Story Colloquium took root at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels, where Bruegel’s most enigmatic painting, the Dulle Griet, was being restored in preparation for the ‘once in a lifetime’ Bruegel exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 2018–19. The conservation treatment, carried out in close consultation with the Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp where the painting belongs, was accompanied by a wealth of new interdisciplinary research in the true spirit of the KIK-IRPA. The ideal conduit for disseminating this research was the biennial Symposium for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting, organized by the KIK-IRPA in Brussels in September 2018, six years after it hosted the landmark Van Eyck Studies symposium in the same series. For the special ‘Bruegel’ edition, the KIK-IRPA soon found its ideal partner in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, home to some of the most celebrated paintings by Bruegel in the world. Participants at the colloquium were able to attend lectures and then wander through the galleries to reconnect with Bruegel’s original works, as well as with paintings by the next generations of Brueghels and other early followers. The papers presented at the symposium that now appear as beautifully illustrated essays in this book are the fruit of research by both renowned experts and relative newcomers, all of whom have been profoundly touched by the art of Bruegel and his progeny. Several contributions shed new light on Bruegel the Elder’s best-known and enigmatic works, including the Battle between Carnival and Lent, the Triumph of Death, the Census at Bethlehem, the Carrying of the Cross, the Harvesters, the above-mentioned Dulle Griet, the Vienna Peasant Dance, and the late Detroit Wedding Dance, while others reopen debates on paintings with contested attributions, such as the Brussels Adoration of the Magi and the Copenhagen Strife between Carnival and Lent. One paper draws attention to The Heath, a lost work by Bruegel attested in the sources that has not come down to us. Paintings by Pieter’s prodigiously talented younger son Jan Brueghel, copies by his elder son Pieter and pertinent works by known and anonymous followers are brought into the spotlight, all of which betray Bruegel’s lasting influence in some way or another. Bruegel’s impact is traced as far as France, the Northern Netherlands and Spain. Many essays uncover the secrets of Bruegel and his followers’ working methods, their models, materials and suppliers, but some papers also treat Bruegel’s characteristic iconography. Bruegel’s paintings and drawings of peasants, for example, are set against the work of his contemporaries and later followers to give new insights into his true meaning in his depictions of the rural working class. Two papers discuss the influence on Pieter Bruegel and Jan Brueghel of the rhetorical notion of copia, promulgated by Erasmus and still strongly felt in Bruegel’s day and in the years following his death. Other essays take a fresh look at the likely original owners of Bruegel’s paintings, the Bruegel family network and the houses in Antwerp in which some of the family members may have lived and worked.

We would like to thank our colleagues and partners, the speakers, and also the enthusiastic attendees of the three-day colloquium in Brussels in 2018. This rich and stimulating new collection of essays is the result of many years of dedicated research, and we would like to extend our thanks to all the authors for their valuable contributions. In the production of this book, we also give warm thanks to Bernard Petit and Hervé Pigeolet, who processed the images, and to Peeters Publishers for this magnificent publication. Finally, we would like to thank the Belgian Science Policy Office (Belspo), the Moriiso Co., Ltd., visit.brussels and the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS for the financial support of the symposium. We are also most grateful to the KIK-IRPA and the Moriiso Co., Ltd. for supporting this publication.

The Editorial Team Christina Currie, Dominique Allart, Bart Fransen, Cyriel Stroo and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe

PART 1 DULLE GRIET

Fig. 1.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, c. 1556, paper, brown and grey ink, brush in brown and grey, 216 × 326 mm, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum (inv. WA 1863. 162)

1

The Surprises of Dulle Griet Leen Huet

A BSTRACT : Leen Huet proposes a new interpretation of the Dulle Griet, seen in the context of giant lore in the Netherlands. Furthermore, she advances a hypothesis concerning the thematic and formal connection between the panels Dulle Griet, Fall of the Rebel Angels (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium) and Triumph of Death (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado).

—o— Writing a Biography of Bruegel A few years ago I had the pleasure of writing a biography of Pieter Bruegel. I call it a pleasure, because it offered me the opportunity to spend a lot of time with the prints and paintings of Pieter Bruegel. His works are certainly the most reliable documents he has left us. A biographer of Bruegel can study only the work of Bruegel and his network. The rest, you might say, is silence. There is no such thing as a diary of Pieter Bruegel; nor are there any letters. Bruegel’s name is mentioned a few times in the writings of those of his contemporaries who had an interest in art of the Netherlands. Five years after Bruegel’s death in Brussels, his friend Abraham Ortelius wrote a short poem about him. Thirty-five years after his death, the painter Karel van Mander succeeded in gleaning a few anecdotes from people who had been acquainted with him. He was a quiet man, they said. He liked practical jokes. This scarcity of information saved me, I think, from a danger encountered by many biographers, which was succinctly described by Samuel Johnson in 1759: ‘He that recounts the life of another commonly dwells most upon conspicuous events, lessens the familiar-

ity of his tale to increase its dignity, shows his favourite at a distance decorated and magnified like the ancient actors in their tragic dress, and endeavours to hide the man that he may produce a hero.’1 I had no material with which to turn Bruegel into a hero, but I did have the material to learn about his way of thinking in images. And that, to my mind, is the most important thing in the life of a draughtsman and a painter. I do not understand the endless stream of biographies of Hitler, Stalin and Mao: why would the public wish to read again and again about horrific despotism, cruelty and crimes? Perhaps they wish it for the same reason that art lovers in the sixteenth century liked Bruegel’s scenes from Hell. It is pleasant, perhaps, to shudder and to be horrified through the imagination, when one is actually safe. I found that Bruegel’s works contained a few surprises, especially when you catch him reading unusual, old-fashioned books such as the Legenda aurea (Golden Legend) by Jacobus de Voragine, in order to find inspiration where other artists did not seek it. To give but one example, there are remarkable similarities between Bruegel’s depiction of the floating giant’s head in his drawing The Temptation of Saint Anthony (fig. 1.1), and the text of the Vita of Saint Anthony given by De Voragine, written in the second half of the thirteenth century. For centuries, the Legenda aurea was the most widely diffused text in Western Europe after the Bible. It fell out of favour in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and has lately been rehabilitated by Jacques Le Goff. The Vita of

4

LEEN HUET

Saint Anthony in Legenda aurea was based on the first biography of the saint, written in the fourth century by Athanasius of Alexandria. It describes the saint’s vision of a terrible figure ‘who turned his long and dreadful face towards the clouds’, a roaring giant who with outstretched arms tries to prevent flying creatures (souls) to ascend to heaven.2 He succeeds in catching some, but not all. Bruegel shows only the long and terrible face, but the branches above it resemble outstretched arms and they are surrounded by small flying creatures. Bruegel’s giant balances a fish on his forehead, in which two men are seen fighting with a third, whom they are trying to oust. In the Vita, Anthony is quoted as saying: ‘Just as fish die when they remain too long out of the water, so do monks out of their cells and too close to worldly people deny their vow of solitude. He who remains in solitude and retreat eludes three forms of aggression: from hearing, speaking and seeing, and he has to deal only with one assault, of his own heart.’3 A fish out of water, peopled with three figures of aggression, as a demonic figure in the temptations of Saint Anthony: surely Bruegel must have read this text, of which many old translations in Dutch were available. My study of Bruegel’s network allowed me to, among other things, counter the trite image of the jolly peasant Bruegel – the simpleton Bruegel even – which is still going strong in Flanders. When one researches Bruegel’s stay in Italy, it becomes obvious very quickly that he possessed excellent letters

of introduction. And how could it be otherwise, with a master like the court painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst, designer of tapestries for Emperor Charles V and for Queen Mary of Hungary? Some of the finest doors in Italy opened immediately to receive Bruegel. The best known are those of Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, where the famous miniaturist Giulio Clovio (1498–1578), ‘Michelangelo in miniature’, lived under the protection of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, one of the great art collectors of the age. As we know from Clovio’s will, and the inventory he himself drew up of his art collection, Clovio collaborated with Bruegel on a miniature painting, he owned paintings and drawings by Bruegel and a lot of the prints Bruegel designed after his return to the Netherlands.4 This connection with Clovio alone places Bruegel firmly in the heart of Rome’s artistic milieu. This Strong, Intense Woman Growing up in Belgium, in Flanders or, to be precise, in the former Duchy of Brabant (as it was known in Bruegel’s time), I got to know Bruegel in the same way as all the children of my age – through the comic books of Willy Vandersteen: The Adventures of Bob and Bobette (or Spike and Suzy). Vandersteen (1913–1990) dedicated two albums to Bruegel, one of them called Dulle Griet, originally published in 1966 (fig.  1.2). It is a fantastic tale in which Dulle Griet steps out of the painting in Antwerp’s Museum Mayer van den Bergh and into

Fig. 1.2 Willy Vandersteen, Dulle Griet in the comic book Dulle Griet, Antwerp, 1966

THE SURPRISES OF DULLE GRIET

the twentieth century. She then immediately proves herself to be an aggressive warmonger who sows discord wherever she goes. It is also a very funny tale. Thanks to Vandersteen’s comic book, the memory of Dulle Griet is firmly fixed in the minds of many Belgians. It is a rather charming way for a work of art to live on. And Griet doesn’t stop inspiring other creative people. The British actor Jim Broadbent has recently published a graphic novel called Dull Margaret, in collaboration with the artist Dix. Although the story swerves away from any current interpretation of the painting, Broadbent formulated his affection for Dulle Griet strikingly in an interview: ‘I love the image of this strong, intense woman striding determinedly across the landscape.’5 Perhaps it is no wonder that the first chapter of my biography is dedicated to Dulle Griet. She offered the opportunity to explain to readers that the paintings of Bruegel had been almost forgotten in the Low Countries for a few centuries. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Emperor Rudolf bought every work by Bruegel he could find, as Bruegel’s younger son Jan informed his patron Cardinal Federico Borromeo in a letter dated 6 March 1609.6 This meant that most of Bruegel’s paintings left our region, to end up in the lucky city of Vienna. In fact, the Dulle Griet was the first important painting of Bruegel to return to the Netherlands at the end of the nineteenth century. This was the achievement of a smart young art collector from Antwerp, Fritz Mayer van den Bergh (1858–1901; fig. 1.3). On 5 October 1894, Mayer van den Bergh bought the panel we now know as the Dulle Griet (fig. 1.4) in an auction house in Cologne, through an agent. None other than Max Friedländer had notified Mayer about the upcoming sale. Friedländer had wished to acquire the painting with its inexplicable subject matter for the Wallraf-RichartzMuseum, where he was working at the time, but he could not convince the director of the museum to buy it. In the auction catalogue, the work was simply listed as a ‘Phantastische Darstellung’, a ‘land-

5

Fig. 1.3 Jozef Janssens, Portrait of Fritz Mayer van den Bergh, 1901, oil on canvas, 87.2 × 64 cm, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh (inv. MMB. 1871.2)

scape with many monstrous figures’. It was ascribed to Pieter Brueghel the Younger, ‘Hellish Brueghel’.7 Mayer described his newly acquired treasure in an important letter of 16 October 1894 to the Belgian art historian Henri Hymans: ‘Although I have studied the painting intensely, I still ask myself what it represents. Maybe the painter himself did not know exactly. Could it be about the horrors of war? This woman who dominates the scene, might she be the Dulle Griet of whom Van Mander writes?’8 In 1604 the painter and art theoretician Karel van Mander had included a short biography of Bruegel in his Schilder-boeck. In it he singled out among Bruegel’s paintings ‘a dulle Griet, who plunders in front of Hell, who looks stupefied and is crazily dressed’.9 Mayer’s identification of the subject matter has never been challenged since. Interpretations of Dulle Griet abound and many of them are valid. Dulle Griet is often described as the depiction of a topsy-turvy world where nothing

6

LEEN HUET

Fig. 1.4 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Dulle Griet, 1563, oil on oak panel, 116.4 × 162.1 cm, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh (inv. 788)

Fig. 1.5 Detail from the Dulle Griet (fig. 1.4)

THE SURPRISES OF DULLE GRIET

functions well and especially women do what is not fitting for them. The expression ‘plunder in front of Hell’, used by Van Mander, certainly denotes great boldness, rashness, even anger. A woman who would dare to rob the devils themselves must be a very aggressive woman indeed. In the Low Countries everyone knew the proverb ‘It was the best Griet one could find, the one who did the devil bind.’10 This was a reference to Saint Margaret, the only good Meg there had ever been. All other enterprising women should know that their true place was in the home, as meek wives and sweet mothers. In addition, Bruegel became famous in the 1550s and 1560s as a ‘the new Hieronymus Bosch’ with a dash of humour added.11 Bosch’s work enjoyed quite a revival in those years and Bosch’s view on human sinfulness and folly certainly appealed to Bruegel and his clients. Bosch’s ability to depict hellfire and hellish scenes was particularly appreciated and in Dulle Griet Bruegel probably surpasses him. In his letter to Hymans, Mayer also paid attention to the difference in size between Dulle Griet and the troop of women who follow in her wake. Griet, he writes, is about 47  cm tall. There is an individual of about the same size seated on the roof of the house. The rest of the painting is filled with figures of 10  cm tall.12 In other words, Griet is almost five times as tall as the other women in the painting. The woman right behind Griet on the bridge reaches to Griet’s knee. Does this difference in size matter? Is it just a trick of perspective? Yet the perspective of the townscape seems straightforward enough. Griet has just crossed the bridge over the brook, or sewer, and she stands as tall as the house on the other side. The monsters on the bank are the same size as the monsters in the water (note the fishlike creature close to Griet’s left foot and the fish in the water by the bridge), which implies that there is no great distance between them (fig. 1.5). Is Griet indeed a gigantic woman, a giant? I think Mayer stumbled upon an important aspect of the significance of this painting to Bruegel’s contemporaries, simply by measuring the relative

7

heights of the figures. To understand what that might mean, we have to take a look at the status of giants in the sixteenth century. The Delights of Gigantology To us, giants are figures from fairy tales and children’s books. To Bruegel and his contemporaries, giants represented rather more, and they were quite present in everyday city life. Since the Middle Ages, the giant Saint Christopher had figured in the Antwerp Ommegang, the yearly religious procession. He was later replaced by Goliath, from the biblical story of David and Goliath. And then there was the famous legend of the giant Druon Antigoon who had lived on the bank of the river Scheldt sometime around the beginning of the Christian era. He was the evil local giant who had to be defeated by the young hero Silvius Brabo in order that the city of Antwerp might be founded. When Antwerp became the centre of trade in the Netherlands in the first half of the sixteenth century, the medieval legend of Druon received its final redaction in a book written by the influential historiographer of Margaret of Austria (and later of the Queen of France, Anne of Brittany), Jean Lemaire de Belges (1473–1515/24), Les Illustrations de Gaule et singularitéz de Troye (published between 1511 and 1513). In those days there ruled a monstrous giant, his name was Druon, he was fifteen cubits high [author’s emphasis] and of a most tyrannical nature. He lived on the bank of the river Scheldt, in a fortified castle, in a marsh. And this giant forced all the boatsmen on the river to give him half of all their goods and merchandise. If one of them refused to pay, he took everything and chopped off the boatsman’s hand […] A knight of Julius Caesar fought this criminal giant and beat him. The people of Antwerp still keep a few bones of this giant in their city hall, they are monstrously big and thick, as I have seen.13

8

LEEN HUET

The bones were also described by Albrecht Dürer in September 1520, in the journal of his trip through the Netherlands.14 In 1549 the Spanish nobleman Juan Cristóbal Calvete de Estrella noted in his travel diary that the Antwerp giant had been fifteen cubits high.15 Incidentally, the giants’ bones are still on display, in the new Museum aan de Stroom (although, in reality, they are whale bones). Bruegel, who spent the greater part of his working life in Antwerp, must have been well acquainted with this local giant. Coecke, his master, designed a life-size version of Druon for the Ommegang in 1534, which was subsequently paraded through the city centre every year. This Druon’s head is, like the giant’s bones, on display in the Museum aan de Stroom MAS (fig.  1.6). Coecke also designed

another, famous, Druon for the Joyous Entry of Prince Philip, only son and heir to Emperor Charles  V, which took place in Antwerp on 10  September 1549. Coecke’s friend Cornelius Grapheus published a booklet giving a description in Latin of this Joyous Entry, for which Coecke designed the illustrations, and which he himself translated into Dutch and French. So we have a clear view of what this Druon looked like (fig. 1.7). He was 24 feet tall (nearly 7  metres) and almost true to size, ‘fifteen cubits high’.16 Moreover, in 1561 the new city hall of Antwerp was built (the one we still see today) and its facade adorned with a statue of Druon’s vanquisher, Silvius Brabo, to whom the Duchy of Brabant supposedly owed its name.

Fig. 1.6 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Head of Druon Antigoon, 1534, papier mâché, metal, cord, hair, 197 × 87 × 191 cm, Antwerp, MAS | Museum aan de Stroom (inv.VM. 2004.1021.002)

Fig. 1.7 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, ‘Druon Antigoon’, illustration from Cornelius Grapheus and Pieter Coecke van Aelst, De seer wonderlijcke, schoone, triumphelijcke incompst van den hooghmogenden Prince Philips, Prince van Spaignen, Caroli des vijfden, keyserssone, inde stadt van Antwerpen, anno MCCCCCXLIX, Antwerp, 1550, Antwerp, Erfgoedbibliotheek Hendrik Conscience (inv. K76193)

THE SURPRISES OF DULLE GRIET

This Antwerp story about Druon Antigoon was more than a fanciful local invention or piece of folklore. It fitted into a theory about the presence of giants in history, or gigantology. This ‘knowledge about giants’ has been brilliantly analysed by the literary historian Walter Stephens in his groundbreaking book, Giants in Those Days: Folklore, Ancient History, and Nationalism (1989). The erudite European theory about giants inevitably had its roots in scripture, in the Book of Genesis. Genesis was a crucial text for the development of the concept of a universal history of mankind. In Chapter 6, Verse 4, we read: ‘There were giants in the earth in those days’. Further on, the Flood is described: ‘Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered’ (Genesis 7:20). All humans except Noah and his family perished. Was it possible that some giants had survived, as they kept cropping up in other books of the Bible (notably Nimrod, builder of the Tower of Babel, and Goliath), in the Talmud, in antique myths and local legends? They might have, if they had reached the highest mountain tops and were at least fifteen cubits high, that is to say five times the average height of a human (a biblical cubit is equivalent to about 52 centimetres). Saint Augustine pondered these problems in his City of God. Many other theologians of the Middle Ages followed in his footsteps.17 Not just the Bible, but classical literature teemed with giants too: in the writings of Homer, the wily Odysseus defeats the cruel and stupid Cyclops Polyphemus in Sicily. The playwright Euripides followed suit and dedicated a whole play to Polyphemus, called The Cyclops. It is quite a pleasant read and it aptly summarizes notions about the nature of giants that remained current for two thousand years. Then there were ancient legends about giants, such as the tales about English giants like Gogmagog, opponent of Corineus, and Ritho, opponent of Arthur, written down in the twelfth century by Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Historia Regum Brittaniae.18 In all of these stories, giants represented brutality and evil. Proud of their strength, they mocked

9

and disdained God. They embodied the deadly sins of Superbia (pride) and Ira (wrath). They were incurably violent and stupid. They had to be destroyed, in order that humans might live and a civilized human society might be founded. The giant Saint Christopher is the exception that confirms the rule: only by the extraordinary grace of God could he have become a decent person and a saint. In the early fourteenth century, Dante described his meetings with a few giants in Inferno: he and Virgil cross the river Styx in the boat of the giant Phlegyas. Deeper down in Hell they meet the giants Capaneus, Nimrod, Antaeus, Briareus and Ephialtes. Dante described the structure of Hell so clearly in his poem that the mathematician Galileo Galilei published a complete account of its measurements in 1587.19 In Northern Europe, descriptions and depictions of Hell are often more chaotic. A famous example is The Visions of the Knight Tondal, written by an Irish monk in Regensburg in the twelfth century.20 Tondal is a worldly knight who falls into a coma and visits Hell, a labyrinth of torture chambers and places of punishment for sins. Margaret of York, wife of Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy, commanded a beautiful manuscript of Les Visions du chevalier Tondal, probably illustrated by Simon Marmion. In one of the illustrations, we see the giants Firgicius and Corvallus in the fiery mouth of the monster Acheron (fig.  1.8). Everywhere in Europe, Hell was seen as the place where most giants would necessarily end up. The Century of the Giant In the sixteenth century, the tide started to turn. Bruegel’s time may truly be called the century of the giant in vernacular literature. Suddenly giants popped up everywhere. And authors vigorously explored the funny side of their gigantic stature. A Muslim giant is the protagonist of Luigi Pulci’s epic poem Morgante, published at the end of the fifteenth century and reprinted many times in the next decades. Morgante converts to Christianity and becomes the squire of the knight Orlando. His

10

LEEN HUET

Fig. 1.8 Attributed to Simon Marmion, ‘The giants Firgicius and Corvallus in the mouth of Acheron’, Les Visions du chevalier Tondal, c. 1475, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 30 (inv. 87.MN.141)

THE SURPRISES OF DULLE GRIET

11

Fig. 1.9 Hieronymus Bosch, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1500–05, oil on oak panel, 131.5 × 225 cm, Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (inv. 1498 PINT). Detail of the left panel

friend Margutte is a half-giant, only seven cubits high (as opposed to the customary fifteen), as he describes himself: ‘Il mio nome è Margutte; / ed ebbi voglia anco io d’esser gigante, / poi mi penti’ quando al mezzo fu’ giunto: / vedi che sette braccia sono appunto.’21 The monk Teofilo Folengo published his narrative poem Baldo in 1517. In this very odd macaronic verse, the hero Baldo is accompanied everywhere by the giant Fracasso. In the famous Orlando Furioso of Ludovico Ariosto, published in 1532, the knight Astolfo defeats the giant Caligorante. But the most remarkable books about giants were written by the French monk François Rabelais. From 1535 onwards, he published his chronicles of Gargantua and Pantagruel in the city of Lyon. Gargantua is the son of the giants Grandgousier and Gargamelle. He is educated according to the pedagogical principles of Erasmus, as a humanist, which to contemporaries was quite

funny as it contrasted so strongly with their notions of the brutal and stupid giant. In Les grandes et inestimables chroniques, Gargantua helps King Arthur defeat an army of barbaric giants.22 Then Gargantua marries Badebec and begets a son, Pantagruel. These books immediately became popular in the Netherlands and were often read during carnival. Eduard de Dene (1505–1576/9), an important poet and rhetorician from Bruges, was a fervent admirer and wrote a poem inspired by Rabelais, published in Antwerp in around 1560.23 The philosopher Michel de Montaigne thought the chronicles masterpieces of wit, on a par with The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio and the Basia of Janus Secundus.24 As we have seen in several examples cited above, the common giant was generally believed to be fifteen cubits of height, roughly five times the average height of a human being. Druon Antigoon

12

LEEN HUET

THE SURPRISES OF DULLE GRIET

13

Fig. 1.11 Detail from the Dulle Griet (fig. 1.4)

was described as being fifteen cubits tall by the gigantologist Lemaire and by Calvete de Estrella, a tourist relying on easily obtainable information. Now, our Dulle Griet is about 47 cm tall, the other women in the picture 10  cm tall, making Griet about five times taller than normal women. In the sixteenth century, this difference in stature slotted perfectly into general knowledge about giants. To a contemporary of Bruegel it could only signify one thing: Griet is a female giant. As such, she is at home in a representation of Hell, where people would expect to see giants depicted. Did not Hieronymus Bosch, Bruegel’s idol, people his visions and hells with giants too? On the left panel of the Temptation of Saint Anthony triptych, he painted a giant embedded in the landscape, whose legs form

the entrance to a brothel (fig.  1.9). On the right panel of his famous Garden of Earthly Delights, then kept in the Nassau palace in Brussels, we see a pale giant in Hell, whose backside ends in the shape of an egg, not unlike the giant on the roof in Bruegel’s Dulle Griet (figs 1.10 and 1.11). (What is one to make of him, by the way? He balances a boat on his shoulder, as if he would like to transport the people in it to the river in the background. A giant messing about with boats: to an art lover in Antwerp, this image immediately recalled the dreadful extorter Druon Antigoon. But Bruegel’s meek giant on the roof, obligingly lifting a boat while ladling out money to all and sundry, seems a perfect antiAntigoon. And so the traditional gender roles are wittily overturned among giants too. Thus, looking

OPPOSITE

Fig. 1.10 Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1505–10?, oil on oak panel, 205.5 × 384.9 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado (inv. 2823). Detail from the right panel: the pale giant

14

LEEN HUET

Fig. 1.12 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Descent of Christ into Hell, 1561, paper and brown ink, contours incised, 223 × 294 mm, Vienna, Graphische Sammlung Albertina (inv. 7873)

at Griet’s loot, one might wonder whether she stole an ordinary demon’s treasure chest or this giant’s trinket box.) Rabelais was a witty writer because his giants were not brutal and evil – they were intellectual humanists. Bruegel was a witty painter because his giant was a female. The only female giant, as far as we know, to become a protagonist in a work of art, not just a background figure or, like Gargamelle and Badebec, the mother of some really interesting male giant. Of course, Griet’s giant stature really drove the message home that she is evil, dangerous, greedy and stupid. Bruegel recreated and refreshed the image of the giant in his most hellish picture, the Dulle Griet.

The inventiveness of Bosch, and also contemporary literature and popular culture, inspired him. The minutiae of everyday life in Antwerp may also have contributed a little to his creativity. In a sixteenth-century chronicle of Antwerp, which deals mostly with the religious upheavals of the times, we read about a woman ‘commonly known as Long Margret’, a bonnet seller, who in the year 1564 got into a fight with the followers of the Calvinist preacher Christopher Fabricius.25 If she was commonly known as Long Margret about town in 1564, she was probably known as Long Margret about town in 1563, and she may have made Bruegel stop, think and smile when he encountered her in the street.

THE SURPRISES OF DULLE GRIET

15

Fig. 1.13 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562, oil on oak panel, 117 × 162 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 584)

Fig. 1.14 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, c. 1562-3, oil on oak panel, 116.1 × 162 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado (inv. P001393)

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LEEN HUET

A Trilogy of Evil Several art historians have suggested over the years that the Dulle Griet is part of a trilogy.26 Three paintings with the same dimensions, each depicting very dark subject matter: the Dulle Griet, the beautiful Fall of the Rebel Angels in Brussels, and the Triumph of Death in the Prado. Now, what might connect these three paintings to one another, apart from the dimensions and the bleakness of their subjects? Many subtle answers can be given, and they may all enrich our understanding of these strange pictures. However, as I was reading the plays performed during the Landjuweel literary festival that took place in Antwerp in 1561, I came across a little inconspicuous phrase that must have sounded very familiar to contemporaries of Bruegel and to Bruegel himself. The phrase occurred in the prologue of the outdoor play performed by De Corenbloem, the Brussels chamber of rhetoric, on 24 August 1561. De Corenbloem presented itself to the Antwerp spectators with the words ‘Praise be to Christ for He has reconciled us with God and given us eternal peace, through the mild grace of God eternally triumphant. For He has destroyed Hell, Sin and Death [author’s emphasis].’27 This was a brief summary of the theology of reconciliation, which explained to the faithful why Christ had lived and died and risen again. He had

done so to show humankind a way out of sin, death and Hell. The theology of reconciliation was and is the central tenet of Christianity.28 For a sixteenthcentury European public the words of this prologue may have been as self-evident as references to human rights are to us today. In that same year, 1561, Bruegel designed a print, the Descent of Christ into Hell. We see Christ descending into Hell, or the underworld, in the hours before his resurrection (fig. 1.12).29 He goes there to liberate the souls that were held captive. He comes to bless. Many of the details that appear in this image return in the three paintings Bruegel made in the following years: the Dulle Griet, the Fall of the Rebel Angels (fig.  1.13) and the Triumph of Death (fig.  1.14).30 For example, the ringing of the bell, the spheres, and the tournament helmet. Dulle Griet represents Hell, the Fall of the Rebel Angels shows us the origin of sin, and the Triumph of Death shows the inevitability of death on this earth. Hell, sin and death: three subjects that may have been immediately recognizable to Bruegel’s clients, linked to ideas fundamental to their society and its history. After this instant recognition, his clients would study the paintings and laugh, surprised by Bruegel’s prodigious invention and his laconic dark humour. No wonder, then, that his career became such a unique success story.

N OT ES 1 Johnson in The Idler, 24 November 1759. Quoted in Johnson 1977, p. 269. 2 De Voragine 2004, p. 131 (translated here by the author). 3 Ibid., p. 130. For a more detailed analysis, see Huet 2019, pp. 158–60. 4 Clovio’s will and inventory of 1577 were published by Bertolotti 1882. See also Huet 2019, pp. 131–40. 5 Quoted in Flood 2016. Dull Margaret was published in 2018. 6 ‘Sin a hora ha cercate un quader del mio pader, per mandare a VS Ill.mo, ma non trove niente a proposite. L’imperator ha fatto gran spese per auer tutti sua opera.’ (Jan’s Italian was atrocious). Crivelli 1868, p. 119.

8 ‘Quoique j’ai [sic] longuement regardé ce tableau, j’en suis encore à me demander ce qu’il représente. Peut-être l’auteur ne l’a-t il pas bien su lui-même. Seraient-ce les maux de la guerre? Cette femme qui domine la scène serait-elle la Dulle Griet dont parle Van Mander?’ Mayer to Hymans 1894 (photographs of this letter are in the Museum Mayer van den Bergh). See Huet 2019, p. 21.

10 ‘’t was de beste Griet die men vond, die de duivel op ’t kussen bond.’ Saint Margaret of Antioch had, according to her Vita in Legenda aurea, defeated the devil twice: once when he took the shape of a dragon, and once when he took the shape of a young man (De Voragine 2004, p. 502). According to popular belief, Margaret had succeeded in beating this young man to the ground and in tying him to a cushion. For an analysis of Griet-related proverbs in Dutch, see Grauls 1957, p. 25. In the painting, one of the women behind Dulle Griet is indeed busy tying a devil onto a cushion.

9 ‘oock een dulle Griet, die een roof voor de Helle doet, die seer verbijstert siet, en vreemt op zijn schots toeghemaeckt is’. Van Mander 1604, fol. 233v.

11 Lodovico Guicciardini mentions Bruegel’s nickname, ‘the second Bosch’, in passing in his Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi (Antwerp, 1567). In Dominicus Lampsonius,

7 ‘Phantastische Darstellung. Landschaft mit einer grossen Menge Spuckgestalten. Interessantes, gut ausgearbeitetes Bild von bester Erhaltung.’ Museum 1894, p. 6, no. 48. See Huet 2019, p. 21.

17

THE SURPRISES OF DULLE GRIET

Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae Inferioris effigies (Antwerp, 1572) – the first real publication on Netherlandish art history – the poem under Bruegel’s portrait (no. 19 in the series) opens with the words: ‘Quid novus hic Hieronymus Orbi Boschius …’ (Who is here on Earth the new Hieronymus Bosch?). It continues with praise of Bruegel’s wit and jokes ‘Namque tuo, veterisque magistri / Ridiculo, salibusque referto’ (Thanks to your art spiced with the wit and jokes of you and your old master). In his biography of Bruegel, Karel van Mander noted (Van Mander 1604, fol. 233r) that even the most serious person could not help smiling or chuckling when looking at the majority of Bruegel’s paintings: ‘Oock sietmen weynigh stucken van hem, die een aentschouwer wijslijck sonder lacchen can aensien.’ 12 ‘Au milieu du tableau une vielle femme d’environ 47 cent. de hauteur coiffée d’une calotte d’armes […] À gauche de la femme un individu assis sur un toit et tenant une barque appuyée sur son épaule. […] Le reste du tableau est rempli de figures d’environ dix centimètres de hauteur.’ Mayer to Hymans 1894. 13 ‘Et en ce mesmes temps regnoit un merueilleux Geant nommé Druoon, de la hauteur de quinze coudees, plein d’horrible & cruelle tyrannie. Lequel se tenoit sur le riuvage de Lescaut, en un fort chasteau, situé en un maretz. Et contraignoit ledit Geant tous les passans, sur ladite riuiere, de laisser la iuste moytié de tous leur biens & marchandises quilz menoient par ladite riuiere. Et si il y auoit aucune faute, le tout estoit confisqué, et auoit le marchant ou voiturier, une main coupee. Et pource sappeloit ce lieu Hantuuerp, cestadire laisse main, maintenant le nommons Anvers. Ce Geant criminel, fut combattu et rué ius par un des chevaliers de César […] ceux d Anvers montrent encore iusques auiourdhuy en la maison de leur ville, aucuns os dudit Geant, qui sont de merveilleuse grsseur & grãdeur, comme iay veu.’ Lemaire 1549, fol. 314. Lemaire used the

recent forgeries of ‘Chaldean’ texts by the Tuscan monk Annius of Viterbo (1432?– 1502) to develop the patriotic theory that ‘Gaul’ (mostly present-day France and Belgium) had been colonized and civilized by gigantic descendants of the biblical Noah, supposedly a giant himself. The aim of this theory was to prove France’s political and intellectual superiority over Italy and the Roman Empire. Lemaire’s ideas were taken up by many French historiographers in the first thirty years of the sixteenth century, and ultimately parodied by François Rabelais. See the chapters ‘Annius of Viterbo, The Flood and a New Universal History’ and ‘Jean Lemaire de Belges and Gallic Patriotism’ in Stephens 1989, pp. 98–138, 139–84. 14 Cited in Huet 2019, p. 38. 15 Ibid. Juan Cristóbal Calvete de Estrella accompanied Prince Philip on his journey to and Joyous Entries in the major cities of the Netherlands, and he kept a most interesting journal of their peregrinations. 16 Grapheus and Coecke van Aelst 1550a, unpaginated. See Huet 2019, pp. 38–9. 17 For an in-depth analysis of the development of erudite (theological) gigantology in Europe, I refer to Chapter 2, ‘In diebus illis: Giants, History, and Theology’, of Walter Stephens’s book: Stephens 1989, pp. 58–97. See also Huet 2019, pp. 36–44. 18 During his Joyous Entry into the Netherlands, Prince Philip saw a play featuring the giant Ritho and King Arthur in Leuven. A few years later, during his Joyous Entry into London on 18 August 1554, as bridegroom of Queen Mary I, he was greeted by effigies of the giant Gogmagog Albionus and his vanquisher, Corineus Brittannus. Samson 2013. See also Huet 2019, pp. 40–41, notes on p. 370. 19 Galilei 2008. 20 The Visions of the Knight Tondal has been studied extensively in relation to the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, as this text was

printed in ’s-Hertogenbosch. See Bax 1949, pp. 275–82. 21

Pulci 1984, octavo 114.

22 This is the army of Gogs and Magogs: Les grandes et inestimables chroniques in Rabelais 1994, p. 163. 23 De Dene’s Pantagruelsche prophetie was published by the printer Jan van Ghelen II. On De Dene and Rabelais, see Pleij 2007, pp. 385, 391, 615. See also Huet 2019, p. 42. 24 Montaigne quoted in Rabelais 1994, p. XIII. 25 ‘een seeker Vrouw persoon diemen in de wandeling noemde de lange Margriet’. Chronycke 1727, unpaginated, see under year 1564. 26

Knipping 1949, p. 6; Pawlak 2011.

27 ‘Lof Prys sy Christus de Heere almachtich / Die ons by Gode heeft ghereconcilieert / En den eewighen peys ghegeven crachtich / Deur Godts gracie milt die eewich triumpheert / Want Sonde, Helle en Doot heeft hy gheraseert.’ Ryckaert 2011, vol. 2, p. 1403. 28

Adnès 1988.

29 For a more detailed analysis of this print, based on a reading of De Voragine’s chapter on reconciliation and the Gospel of Nicodemus, see Huet 2019, pp. 218–22. 30 Fritz Mayer van den Bergh owned a copy of the Descent of Christ into Hell print and noticed the similarities with his newly acquired Dulle Griet: ‘[le sujet] est phantastique dans le genre de Jérôme Bosch et on voit clairement qu’il est de la main de celui qui a dessiné la gravure portant la légende: Toblite o porte capita vestra attolimini fores sempiterne et ingredietur rex ille gloriosus.’ Mayer to Hymans 1894. See also note 8 above.

a

b Fig. 2.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Dulle Griet, signed and dated 1563, oil on oak panel, 116.4 × 162.1 cm, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh (inv. 788). After treatment, front (a) and reverse (b)

All the images show the painting after treatment, unless mentioned otherwise.

2

Lifting the Veil: The Dulle Griet Rediscovered through Conservation, Scientific Imagery and Analysis Christina Currie, Steven Saverwyns, Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, Pascale Fraiture, Jean-Albert Glatigny and Alexia Coudray

A BSTRACT : The conservation of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Dulle Griet (Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh) at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels was accompanied by scientific research of its original techniques and materials. Dendrochronology gives 1548 as the earliest possible date for the felling of the trees used in the panel’s manufacture. Infrared imagery reveals a sparse, functional underdrawing, suggesting that Bruegel had carefully planned out the composition prior to painting. Indeed, few changes were made during execution and any such adjustments are minor. Cleaning brought to light Bruegel’s exquisite brushwork. However, the paint layer is more translucent than at the outset and analysis shows that several colours have faded or darkened, including smalt and azurite- based blues and copper resinate greens. Infrared photography also helped reveal the signature and remains of the date, but it was only during cleaning that the full date was exposed: 1563.

—o— Introduction In January 2017, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Dulle Griet (fig. 2.1) left the Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp for the first time in more than seventy years for restoration at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels. The momentous decision to carry out a comprehensive conservation treatment was stimulated by the request from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in

Vienna to include it in the great Bruegel exhibition of 2018–19. The conservation campaign, supported by the Baillet Latour Foundation and the Topstukkenraad (Masterpieces advisory board) of the Flemish Community, took one and a half years.1 The restoration went hand in hand with scientific research on the painting’s techniques and materials, and was closely followed by an international advisory board of conservators, curators and art historians.2 The initial aim of the technical research was to support the restoration. But as well as helping with treatment decisions, the scientific investigation reassessed the work’s techniques and materials and considered how the painting might have looked when it first left Bruegel’s studio. Technical analysis and cleaning also settled a long-standing debate on the painting’s date, which had lain hidden behind dark retouching. This contribution explores the most significant findings of the conservation treatment and technical investigation, building on previous research by Maximiliaan Martens.3 The Panel Support The Dulle Griet is painted on an oak panel made up of four wide planks, butt-joined with the aid of wooden dowels. The planks are all high-quality

20

CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

a

et al.

b

Fig. 2.2 Unpainted lateral edges with barbes (a and b), and diagram showing channel edge supports (c)

radial cuts, which probably explains the panel’s stable condition. The support no longer retains its original thickness as it was planed down prior to cradling, which exposes the original wooden dowels in places on the reverse. Four dowels bridge the central and lower joins and three the upper join. The dowels are neatly sliced in half, which means that the panel is about half its original thickness of around 1 cm. At the front side, there are vertical traces of planing from the smoothing down of the panel surface prior to application of the ground. The lateral edges of the panel are unpainted and show a barbe of ground (fig. 2.2). On the reverse there are traces of corresponding rebates. The unpainted edges, barbes and rebates are witness to the former presence of channel edge supports, which would have been attached to the sides of the

c

panel at right angles to the wood grain prior to application of the ground layer, and removed shortly before framing. These wooden battens facilitated handling and would have prevented warping during painting. Such supports were used on Bruegel’s panels from both his Antwerp and Brussels periods, so signs of their use cannot help

21

LIFTING THE VEIL

decide whether a painting was produced in Antwerp or in Brussels.4 Furthermore, there are no sources that tell us if Bruegel bought his panels from a professional panel-maker, box-maker or joiner. Through dendrochronology, we know that the panel-maker for the Dulle Griet used planks from three different trees, with the top and bottom boards sourced from the same tree.5 All of the planks were imported from the Eastern Baltic regions, which is to be expected for such long straight quarter-cut boards.6 The panel includes seven sapwood rings on the second plank from the top, which helps narrow down the period of manufacture.7 The most recent sapwood ring is dated 1548, which represents the earliest possible felling date for the trees. There are therefore 15 years to account for between 1548 and 1563, the date painted in the lower left (see fig. 2.12). These years include possible further years of tree growth (sapwood), transport of the timbers, seasoning, storage of the planks and storage of the final panel before use by Bruegel.8 The comparisons of the dendro-data from this panel with other paintings by Bruegel the Elder led to an interesting new finding: one of the boards, the second from the bottom, derives from the same tree as one plank of the Gloomy Day from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (fig. 2.3).9 This painting is dated 1565 by its inscription. This means that these two planks, which originated from a single log, were used in two supports with a two-year interval. While this discovery has no direct impact on the dendrochronological dating of the Dulle Griet, it changes the conclusions for the 1254

1300

1350

Gloomy Day published in 2019.10 Indeed, this plank was undated at the time. Its correlation with the Dulle Griet plank now allows us to place its last ring in 1541, giving a terminus post quem of 1547 for the felling of the tree and the manufacture of the Gloomy Day panel.11 There is therefore 18 years between the dendro-result and the date of the painting, 1565. Preparation Layer The Dulle Griet has a classic white chalk ground, followed by a much thinner slightly off-white imprimatura (see analysis, below), a layer structure typical of Bruegel’s paintings.12 This light-coloured priming can be made out through translucent areas of paint. Fine striations in the upper right sky may have been caused by the use of a fine-toothed comb or scraper, perhaps from scraping down the ground layer in this particular area. However, these markings may also have been made into the paint layer while it was still soft, to render it even and to provide a certain texture.13 ‘Dul’: Inscription? Maximiliaan Martens previously spotted the word ‘dul’ in infrared in the lower left of the composition and interpreted it as an original pen and ink inscription alluding to the subject matter of the painting, written on the ground before painting (fig. 2.4).14 This marking, together with several others like it near the lower edge, was inspected in normal light, ultraviolet fluorescence (UV), infrared (IR) and infrared reflectography (IRR) at the start of the 1400

1450

1500

1541

Dulle Griet

Fig. 2.3 Visual comparison of the ring series recorded on one plank of the Dulle Griet panel (in blue; second plank from the bottom) and one plank of the Gloomy Day (in grey; bottom plank). Their sequences in relative position match perfectly, leading to the conclusion that both planks come from the same tree

Gloomy Day

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CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

a

c

et al.

b

Cu

d

Ca

Fig. 2.4 ‘dul’, scratched into paint layer, probably years after the painting was completed IR, before cleaning (a); raking light after cleaning (b); MA-XRF scan for copper (c); MA-XRF scan for calcium (d)

present cleaning campaign. The goal was to establish whether or not it was an original inscription or a later damage. All the markings seem to have been made in the same sweeping style. All were retouched, which was particularly clear in IR. Close examination and raking light photography reveal that the lines are in fact scratches, not inscriptions. This was confirmed by macro X-ray fluorescence mapping (MA-XRF, fig. 2.4). A high-resolution MA-XRF scan for the element copper,15 which characterizes several green and blue pigments, reveals an absence of copper in the ‘dul’ scratch. The corresponding MA-XRF map for calcium, however, identifies calcium in the scratch. Since the ground is made of

calcium carbonate, this means that the paint layer is missing from the scratch and that the ground layer is exposed, proving that ‘dul’ was scratched into the paint and not into the ground. It seems likely that this supposed ‘word’ was simply the result of accidental damage, like the other random markings. Underdrawing Both IRR and IR reveal lively underdrawing for the buildings in the top right and for the fish-like representation of the entrance to Hell on the left (fig. 2.5).16 The burning buildings are loosely drawn and represent the only place where there are visible hatching strokes for tone. The drawing lines in this

LIFTING THE VEIL

zone are thicker, softer and looser than those used for drawing the figures. Their visual appearance suggests charcoal or black chalk. In the figural composition, only traces of underdrawing can be made out and where visible they appear sparing, precise, lacking in liveliness and strictly functional. For reasons unknown, the underdrawing in the figures is easier to detect in IR than in IRR: for example the handle of Dulle Griet’s dagger, whose more rounded end in the underdrawing is only visible in IR (fig. 2.6). Underdrawing can also be made out in IR for the drapery folds in the pink dress of the woman binding a creature to a cushion (fig. 2.7). The fact that the underdrawing seems to remain in the dips of the texture of the ground layer in this dress may suggest the use of a liquid medium, but this is somewhat ambiguous. A small sample from the underdrawing of the woman’s sleeve was analysed by Raman spectroscopy and it proved to be a non-graphite carbon-containing material. Maximiliaan Martens postulated in 2012 that the underdrawing was carried out in two phases, first in a dry medium and then in a liquid medium.17 He states that both phases are carbon-based, but that the second stage is often difficult to distinguish from reinforcements of forms during painting. Indeed, in the infrared images, we find it hard to distinguish any distinct stages. Martens observes that Hell’s mouth and eyes seem to show traces of a liquid phase, but we find these markings somewhat ambiguous and think that they could perhaps have been carried out in a dry medium.18 The reason for the spare and functional quality of the underdrawing in the Dulle Griet is probably because Bruegel had carefully worked out his design prior to painting. This is supported by the fact that there are almost no modifications during underdrawing and painting. Prior to underdrawing, the artist would have worked out his ideas through sketches as well as making a detailed preparatory model drawing of the whole composition. He may even have used a pricked cartoon or set of cartoons for the transfer of all or parts of the figural composi-

23

tion to panel, as he did with some of his other large-format compositions.19 The loosely drawn buildings in the upper right and Hell, on the other hand, would have been sketched in following a model drawing. Application of the Paint Layer Having transferred his design to panel, Bruegel proceeded in the time-honoured manner, beginning with the background sky and leaving spaces for motifs still to be painted. He would have known that by painting in reserve directly on the light priming, his paint layer would retain its brilliance over the centuries. Reserves were retained for the vast majority of motifs, with the exception of small figures in the background such as Adam and Eve and the group sitting down to a meal in the green egg. Bruegel’s system of reserves is easily demonstrated through IR and X-ray imagery and can be spotted with the naked eye in areas of paint that has become translucent over the years. The pink flag with a cooking pot motif to the centre right, for example, was reserved in the background paint, which spills over slightly into the space allocated for the flag. Again, the hand of the giant figure on the roof, painted in reserve in the dark grey paint of his boat, is overlapped slightly by the boat’s brushwork (fig. 2.8). Evolution of the Design during Painting Bruegel’s composition did not evolve much during painting, probably because he planned his design carefully from the start. Minor adjustments clarify the appearance of forms or add a little more meaning: for example, the fish creature with a ring round its middle in the foreground. The X-radiograph shows that Bruegel planned the fish, the ring and the front legs, but not the back legs, which he added later. Radiography also reveals that he extended the toes of the giant on the roof beyond their reserve, using thicker paint than for the rest of the foot. The bowl of the Bosch-like bodiless monster with a spoon in its anus was originally set

24

CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

a

b Fig. 2.5 Detail, upper right, showing underdrawing Normal light (a); IR (b)

et al.

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a

b

c Fig. 2.6 Detail, Dulle Griet’s dagger Normal light (a); IRR (b); IR, showing a wider, more rounded handle in the underdrawing (c)

25

26

CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

et al.

a Fig. 2.7 Detail, woman binding a creature IR, showing underdrawn outlines for folds (a); detail of sleeve showing underdrawing through the faded pink paint (b)

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b

straight, but Bruegel later decided during painting to put it at an angle, giving a sense of instability (see fig. 3.5 in Currie, Allart, Brink and Saverwyns, Chapter 3 in the present volume). We can also see that Bruegel planned to put something in the bowl, but changed his mind. Just one monster seems to have been added as an afterthought during painting. This is the small bodiless creature with a long cap below Hell’s ear (fig. 2.9). The infrared image shows that the creature is not underdrawn or reserved. The increased transparency of the paint layer on ageing has meant that the background paint now shows through, to the extent that it is now difficult to decipher the motif.20 Furthermore, since the black background paint was slow to dry, the monster itself has suffered premature micro-drying cracks, exacerbating the problem of darkening.

27

Revelations during Cleaning: Colour and Brushwork During cleaning,21 many of Bruegel’s original colours were brought to light, although some have altered over time (see ‘Analysis of the Pigments’, below).22 Prior to its restoration, hints of colour peeked through the general gloom, but it was impossible to make out the full variety of hues. The painting now has passages of colour that were previously completely masked: for example, the patch of blue in the centre part of the sky, which was covered with red overpaint. Dulle Griet’s dress is now clearly blue rather than a nebulous grey, if not as intense a hue as originally intended. Overall, the whole scene has become brighter and the sense of perspective has increased, highlighting Griet’s dominant position on a small hillock at the front of the composition. Nuances of Bruegel’s brushwork were also revealed through cleaning, including the helmets of soldiers in the lower right, where Bruegel’s fluid and buttery handling of the paint can now be better appreciated. In the metal gauntlet of the fish warrior, we can see how Bruegel brushed on the line of the knuckles wet-in-wet and drew the separations between the fingers in fluid black paint (fig. 2.10a). Deft wet-in-wet white in black brushwork is also used to give the impression of shine in Hell’s eye (fig. 2.10b). Bruegel’s convincing portrayal of glass, textiles and metal is more impactful after cleaning and we can work out the sequence of his brushstrokes. To evoke the fragile and ephemeral quality of the glass sphere in the boat held aloft by the giant, for example, he first applied a soft grey outline, merged it imperceptibly into a black shadow to the right, and completed the illusion with a single highlight of pure white. He painted Dulle Griet’s red velvet sleeve in loose strokes of just black and red and animated her metal breast plate with criss-crossing white and grey brushstrokes. He applied decorative details on her treasure chest with tiny, precise dabs of yellow.

28

CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

a

et al.

b

Fig. 2.8 Detail, hand of giant, reserved in dark paint of boat Raking light (a); IR (b)

Bruegel’s handling of animals and birds is rapid, yet accurate, combining loose strokes with precise highlights. The movement of the lizard with a little red tongue near Hell is captured with just a few deft strokes, and the Boschian helmet monster to its right is loosely but convincingly painted. A tiny white dot indicating the highlight of the eye of the large bird in the lower left corner is testament to Bruegel’s precision and keenness for detail. In the red paint of the sky, Bruegel seems to have first applied the paint and then dabbed it with a brush to impart a sense of movement. In the lower right, he painted the absurdly comic head of a drowning figure with a few sparing brushstrokes and precise white highlights (fig. 2.11). Bruegel’s pictorial handwriting has become altogether more legible after cleaning: his wiry, precise outlines, the play of contrasting textures and materials, the juxtapositions of transparent and impastoed paint, and the final deft white touches that give a sense of precision and three-dimension-

ality to objects and figures. At the same time, it is now apparent that Bruegel’s paint layer has become more translucent over time, causing certain motifs to almost disappear from view – for example, Dulle Griet’s white veil.23 The Signature and the Date: 1563 We can now make out Bruegel’s original signature and date in the lower left corner of the painting (fig. 2.12). Prior to cleaning, only the date was partially visible. The inscription was, however, previously discernible in infrared, although the X-ray alerted us to its poor condition. Most of the first ‘E’ of Bruegel is indeed missing and the last digits of the date are damaged. There have been various proposals as to the reading of the date, ranging from 1561 to 1564.24 Two previous technical studies read it as 1561 using infrared reflectography.25 Prior to cleaning, we could make out the date .. in IR and IRR26 as ‘• M • D • LXII ’, the ‘I’s being dotted as in other signatures by Bruegel the Elder.27

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a

b

c Fig. 2.9 Detail, bodiless monster with cap below Hell’s ear, applied as an afterthought Normal light (a); IR (b); close-up detail, during treatment, showing drying cracks to the right due to the lack of a reserve (c)

29

30

a

b Fig. 2.10 Wet-in-wet brushwork Fish warrior (a); Hell’s eye (b)

CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

et al.

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31

Fig. 2.11 Detail, drowning figure, showing Bruegel’s precise, sparing brushwork

There was also a possible third ‘I’ with a painted dot above it, but this was ambiguous due to paint loss and dark overpaint. The dots were examined closely with the microscope and analysed with MA-XRF scanning prior to carrying out any cleaning. The finishing dot and dots separating name and date were difficult to establish in their entirety; however, certain of them did indeed appear to be present. During cleaning, the signature and date were gradually uncovered, plus the dots on the ‘I’s and a finishing dot: ‘BRV[E]GEL • M • D • LXİİİ •’. There does not appear to be a starting dot, although a paint loss to the left of the ‘B’ may explain this. The style of the letters and digits is typical of Bruegel’s inscriptions. In the painted date of the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist (1566), for example, he uses the same type of serifs on the top and bottom of the

‘I’ digit and uses similar separation and finishing dots.28 The fact that the inscription is not entirely straight in the Dulle Griet is also typical of Bruegel. There is a tonal difference between the lettering for ‘BRVEGEL’ and the digits of the date. Both are black, but the name is painted with a less loaded brush than the date and appears paler in tone. The name and the date may therefore have been applied at different moments. Neither has been painted wet-in-wet into the underlying paint. Analysis of the Pigments The aim of the laboratory analyses was two-fold: on the one hand, to give support to the restoration by revealing the true condition of the original paint layer prior to treatment; on the other hand, to understand which pigments were used, and whether they have changed colour. This was to help envis-

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CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

et al.

a

b

c

Pb

d

e Fig. 2.12 Inscription Before cleaning (a); IR, before cleaning (b); MA-XRF scan for lead (c); after cleaning before retouching (d); after retouching (e)

age how the painting might have looked when it was freshly painted. In the first phase, non-invasive analyses were carried out using MA-XRF. With this technique an X-ray beam is focused on the surface. Inorganic pigments produce characteristic secondary X-rays, which means identifications or assumptions can be

made on the pigments present. In comparison to classic X-ray fluorescence, MA-XRF scans the painting surface, which in the case of the Dulle Griet required several days and the collection of just over 10 million data points.29 Results are presented as so-called elemental distribution maps. The whiter the area in the map, the higher the

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signal intensity of the element under consideration. The scans were carried out at the beginning of the conservation campaign, when most of the varnish and all the overpaint were still present. In a second phase, samples were taken at well-defined places to refine or confirm some of the MA-XRF results. Samples were converted into cross-sections, digitally photographed30 and analysed by scanning electron microscopy coupled to energy dispersive X-ray detection31 and micro-Raman spectroscopy,32 and in a few cases also with Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy.33 The map of lead indicates the use of lead-based pigments (fig. 2.13a). Places where no lead is present show up as black patches. Damage around the joins can clearly be seen, as well as local losses. MA-XRF, being an elemental technique, does not

33

distinguish between different lead-containing pigments. Much of the lead signal must come from lead white, a basic lead carbonate, the only white pigment available in the sixteenth century. It was used pure as white, but also mixed with other pigments to influence the final tonality of the colour and to help in the drying of the oil paint. Lead can, however, also originate from red lead or lead-tin yellow. The tin map indicates that tin and hence lead-tin yellow is indeed present, not only in yellow parts of the painting, such as at the top of the sky to the right, but in some green parts as well, as in the giant egg and the cloak of the giant on the roof (fig. 2.13b). Raman measurements on the cross-sections did not confirm the presence of red lead; hence it is likely not present.

a

Pb

b

Sn

c

Co

d

Cu

Fig. 2.13 MA-XRF scans for lead (a), tin (b), cobalt (c) and copper (d)

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CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

The main red pigment used is vermilion, the only mercury-based pigment, as shown by the mercury map. It is found in all bright red zones, sometimes mixed with other pigments. The back of the toad on the tree also shows up in the mercury map, indicating that it was originally reddish, which could hardly be seen prior to restoration. The darker red colours are rich in iron, indicating the use of red ochre. Based on the distribution of iron, other ochre pigments must also be present, varying in colour from pale yellow to dark red. The element cobalt corresponds with areas of pale blue paint, such as the robe of Dulle Griet, but also with greyish colours such as in the left part of Hell’s cap (fig. 2.16). Cobalt, together with potassium and traces of nickel and arsenic, can be considered as a marker for smalt, a potassium-rich cobalt glass. The presence of smalt was also suggested in previous studies of the painting.34 It is notorious for fading, changing from blue to a greyish transparent hue. Different qualities of smalt exist, with different colour hues, but the pigment can be an intense bright blue. Pigment grain size also influences its colour in the paint matrix, so the original appearance of the blue dress of Dulle Griet is difficult to determine. It is notable that where the blue is best conserved, such as in a highlight on the right knee of Dulle Griet, it is also the richest in lead white. It has been reported that lead

a

et al.

white can stabilize or slow down the discolouration of smalt.35 The MA-XRF scan of the left side of Hell’s cap confirms the presence of smalt, but here it is completely discoloured (fig. 2.16c). Originally the cap must have had a bluish hue. There are many more examples of zones where smalt has partially or completely faded. In the large flag in the upper right corner and in the dress of a woman fighter cobalt is detected, but only a light blue tinge remains. In the dress the zones richer in lead white – the highlights – are bluer than the rest. The dress of another woman has a more purple hue. The smalt here must have been mixed with a red pigment, likely a red lake as no inorganic red pigments are detected in that area, which has to a large extent faded as well. The wagon wheels near the bottom right corner must also have been blue based on the cobalt map, but as the lead concentration is fairly low, the blue colour has completely faded. The discoloration of smalt can be visualized in a sample from a partially faded blue dress of the woman fighter (fig. 2.14). Large particles are still blue while smaller ones have turned grey and become transparent (layer 3). Bruegel’s chalk ground (layer 1) and thin imprimatura (layer 2) are also clearly visible in the cross-section. The fading of smalt has been observed in other paintings by Bruegel the Elder, as in the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, where smalt-rich clothing

3

3

2

2

1

1

50 μm

Fig. 2.14 Cross-section, woman fighter, discoloured blue dress Reflected light (a); UV illumination (b)

b

50 μm

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3

3

2

2

1

1 50 μm

a

50 μm

b

Fig. 2.15 Cross-section from flying insect-like creature Reflected light with back light illumination (a); UV illumination (b)

motifs have completely faded.36 In the copies by Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder, the same areas are intensely blue, which suggests that the sons saw their father’s painting before discoloration of the smalt took place. Not all blue or supposedly blue pigments are cobalt based. In the blue parts of the sky, copper, rather than cobalt, was detected, as can be seen in the copper map. The sky may therefore contain azurite, a copper-based blue. A flying insect-like creature, very dark blue but appearing almost black, was also very rich in copper. To confirm the presence of azurite and to better understand why the blue of the insect is so dark, a tiny sample was taken from the edge of the insect and converted into a cross-section (fig. 2.15). The ground is missing, but the imprimatura can clearly be seen (layer 1), followed by a red transparent layer (layer 2) representing the burning sky. This layer is composed of a mixture of different pigments, including lead white,

a

red ochre, vermilion, a red lake, lead-tin yellow and azurite. The dark blue top layer (layer 3) is composed of densely packed azurite, as confirmed by micro-Raman analyses. No signs of blackening of azurite, the formation of copper oxide (tenorite), can be seen, and no degradation compounds are detected by scanning electron microscopy (SEMEDX) or Raman spectroscopy measurements.37 The dark appearance seems to be due to the application of the azurite on a dark background in combination with the increased transparency of the top paint layer, likely due to the formation of lead soaps (although with ATR-FTIR on the small crosssection only weak indicative signals were obtained). The combination of discoloured smalt and darkened azurite has resulted in drastic colour changes in the cap of Hell (fig. 2.16). MA-XRF results clearly show that the lighter left side of the cap was painted with smalt, while azurite was used for the darker shadow to the right. The smalt must have

Pb

Co

Cu

b

c

d

Fig. 2.16 Cap of Hell Normal light (a); MA-XRF scans for lead (b), cobalt (c) and copper (d)

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CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

had a paler blue tone than the azurite, but the blue appearance of the cap is now completely lost. In the copper distribution map, there are other zones rich in copper but coloured green, such as the egg (fig. 2.13d). A cross-section reveals that the green hue is made of azurite mixed with lead-tin yellow; we found no true copper green such as verdigris or malachite. There is only a single paint layer on the imprimatura. The leaves of the tree are also rich in copper but appear dark brown. A sample converted into a cross-section (fig. 2.17) reveals the use of azurite in the top paint layer (layer 3), explaining the high copper signal in the XRF copper distribution map. However, for the leaves to have been green originally, the paint would have had to be mixed with a yellow pigment, but based on the MA-XRF measurements no yellow ochre nor lead-tin yellow is present. This may be explained by the SEM-EDX map of the crosssection, which shows, besides copper, a high concentration of calcium, identified as chalk by Raman spectroscopy. Chalk is sometimes used as substrate for a yellow lake, which could explain the presence of chalk in this layer. Any yellow lake, if originally present, has now completely faded. This hypothesis

a

et al.

is strengthened by the fact that underneath the frame, protected from light, some leaves are still green. The confirmation of the presence of a yellow lake unfortunately requires too large a sample for analysis. The current dull brown appearance of the tree leaves is thus due to the direct application (without underlayer) of the paint onto the dark background, in combination with an increased transparency of the paint layer, the fading of a yellow lake and the use of azurite, as observed in the flying insect-like creature. Finally, there are also zones in the copper map that are less intense, corresponding with dull green or brown semi-transparent zones. The MA-XRF maps of the creature with brown mantle on the bottom right side reveal some copper, but no ironbased ochre pigments, suggesting a discoloured copper resinate (fig. 2.18). The cross-section reveals the thin imprimatura layer (layer 1), followed by a white underlayer (layer 2) and several translucent glaze layers (layers 3–5), perhaps not all original (layers 4 and 5 are thought to be later additions as a thin calcium-rich layer is seen above layer 3, the latter also displaying vertical cracks filled with calcium-rich material). In the lower original paint

b

3

2

1

50 μm

Ba P Pb Cu Fe Ca Si

Fig. 2.17 Cross-section from leaf of large tree to left Reflected light with back illumination light (a); SEM-EDX map with false colours to show elemental distribution (b)

50 μm

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a

Pb

c

b

Cu

d

Fe

5 4

3 2 1 e Fig. 2.18 Creature with brown mantle (a) MA-XRF scans for copper (b), lead (c) and iron (d); cross-section (e)

50 μm

38

CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

layer, some green parts can still be seen, while the upper side has turned brown. The green grains still visible, and the brownish top part of layer 3 points in the direction of the application of a green translucent copper resinate glaze, that has now largely changed colour from green to brown. In another zone, a transparent green basket with brown spots, the presence of a copper resinate could be proven by FTIR analysis. The brushwork in the creature with brown mantle resembles closely that seen in a coat in the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist. In both, the brownish paint seems to be blotted by a cloth, and spills over the edges of the motif.38 Tellingly, this brownish coat is vivid green in some of the copies by Brueghel the Younger, strengthening the hypothesis of Bruegel the Elder using green copper resinate that has now turned brown. Finally, red lake pigments are also used in the painting, as the analysis of a cross-section earlier discussed shows (the red burning sky underneath the dark-blue insect-like creature; fig. 2.16). These organic lakes, however, are not identifiable with MA-XRF analysis, nor is the aluminium-based carrier on which they are often precipitated. But the lack of MA-XRF results on the giant’s pinkish coat or the pinkish shield near the bottom right corner suggests the presence of organic lakes. Since only destructive analysis can provide more information on their exact composition, no further research on these pigments could be conducted. Digital Reconstruction of the Original Colour Scheme A digital reconstruction of the original colour scheme of the painting (fig. 2.19), based on the scientific analyses and to some extent on an early coloured drawing of the Dulle Griet (Düsseldorf, Kunstpalast; see fig. 3.1b in Currie, Allart, Brink and Saverwyns, Chapter 3 in the present volume), gives a glimpse of Bruegel’s original intentions, although cannot recreate the lost opacity of the original pigments and the work’s original relative tonal values.39

et al.

Conclusion The technical study of the Dulle Griet reveals the artistic procedures, techniques and materials that Bruegel adopted in the making of this great masterpiece. The oak panel, with its dowels and channel edge supports, is entirely characteristic of his production, as is the light-toned priming consisting of a chalk ground and thin imprimatura. The sparseness of the underdrawing and the absence of significant changes during drawing and painting betray Bruegel’s careful planning in the preparation of the composition and presuppose the making of detailed preparatory sketches and a model drawing. Indeed, it is even possible that he used cartoons to transfer the figural design to panel. The build-up of the paint layer, using the long-established system of reserves, is further evidence of his preliminary planning. In the one motif where he broke the rules – the bodiless monster below Hell’s ear – the motif is no longer fully legible. The removal of discoloured varnish and overpaint enables us to appreciate once more Bruegel’s exquisite brushwork. The painting also has a greater sense of perspective, establishing Dulle Griet more firmly as a dominant figure in the foreground. The sky has more dynamism and is again multihued. Nonetheless, pigment analysis shows that many colours are irreversibly altered and that certain of them have faded or darkened. This particularly affects smalt and azurite-based blues, red and yellow lakes, thinly painted whites and copper resinate greens. The impact of Dulle Griet herself is considerably reduced today owing to the fading of her blue skirt and the increased transparency of her white veil. Finally, the conservation treatment brings to light the signature and true date – BRV[E]GEL ... • M • D • LXI I I • – obscured for years under discoloured varnish and retouching.

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Fig. 2.19 Hypothetical reconstruction of the original colour scheme

39

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CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

ANNEX 1: CONSERVATION TREATMENT40 Panel Support The pine cradle on the reverse of the panel was most likely applied in Stockholm, prior to the painting’s sale at a Cologne auction to Fritz Mayer van den Bergh in 1894. Its removal was deemed unnecessary for the future stability of the panel and a minimum intervention treatment plan was adopted, following consultation with the advisory board.41 A thick layer of wax was removed and the blocked sliding vertical members of the cradle were taken out, planed and put back again.42 Wooden battens attached during the early 1950s were completely removed and the cracks they had concealed were glued with fish skin glue and reinforced by small, square oak blocks. Paint Layer Following the removal of surface dirt, the varnish layers were progressively cleaned off with solvents. Ultraviolet fluorescence examination during cleaning revealed that there were four vanish layers present, each markedly different and with their own appearance in UV, and sometimes interlaid with layers of dirt. Chemical analysis with pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS)43 successively identified four types of varnish. From the most recent to the oldest, these layers comprised mainly isobutyl methacrylate (Paraloid™ B-67), colophony resin, and shellac (likely two layers). Dammar resin and drying oil were detected in all layers. The origin of the dammar is less clear. It could have been added to the older varnishes to modify their characteristics, but this seems less likely for the modern varnish. The application of dammar varnish during a more recent conservation treatment might also account for its presence. It could have penetrated through old cracks, and therefore be found in the different varnish layers. The removal of later overpaint and localized scumbles perceptibly improved the appearance of the composition. In several places, original paint reappeared, the most spectacular example being

et al.

the patch of green-blue sky in the upper centre. This had been foreseen in the MA-XRF scan for copper, which suggested that blue, azurite-based paint could be hidden beneath the chromecontaining overpaint (fig. 2.13d). A corresponding blue zone also features in the Düsseldorf drawing of the Dulle Griet, which is dated to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century (see fig. 3.1b).The sky area now has a more nuanced colour scheme ranging from black, brown, orange-red, intense yellow to green-blue. Rediscovered smaller details include the armoured elbow of the fish warrior in the lower left (fig. 2.10a) and the colours of the toad in the lower left, now green with a patch of red rather than dark brown. Removal of dark, granular overpaint from the architecture to the right brought to light the fluid, translucent character of the original paint layer. The cleaning was mainly carried out using solvents in liquid form. Occasionally, for certain types of overpaint, solvent gels were applied in order to soften the paint prior to its removal with a scalpel under the binocular microscope. Extremely resistant oil-based retouching was thinned using a scalpel, avoiding solvents, given the thinness and fragility of the original paint layer. Some of the overpaint along the old crack in the lowermost plank was left in place as there was no original paint underneath: for example, the chicks in the foreground. For the signature and date in the lower left, the removal of the old retouching was mostly carried out dry using a scalpel and working under the microscope. After taking off the overpaint, synthetic fillings applied during the 1950s intervention were removed. These included fillings that extended onto the original paint at the extreme right of the lowermost join and along the crack in the lowermost plank. There were at least four different types of filling present, resulting from four separate interventions. Much original paint was recovered at the edges of the panel, where fillings concealed irregularities in the panel support. Overlapping fillings were also removed in the zone around the

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signature and the date. Losses were then filled locally with chalk bound in animal glue. Retouching was carried out progressively. The Düsseldorf drawing proved extremely useful during this stage, as sometimes motifs that are no longer clear in the painting are more legible in the drawing. Losses and abrasion damage were first retouched in watercolour to match as closely as possible the tonality of the painting. A very thin layer of dammar varnish was then rubbed on with a cloth.

This was followed by the second phase of retouching using dry pigments bound in a synthetic resin (Paraloid™B-72). This stage included the integration of old, darkened retouching that could not be removed during cleaning, principally along the crack in the bottom plank. The painting was then brush-varnished with dammar varnish. The reintegration of the losses was completed with Gamblin Conservation Colors. To finish, a thin layer of dammar varnish was applied with a spray gun.

N OT ES The conservation and technical research of Bruegel’s Dulle Griet could not have been carried out without the full support of Dr Claire Baisier, former director of the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, and her dynamic staff: Rita Van Dooren, Tonia Dhaese, Harlinde Pellens, Margit Didelez, Nicole Van Triel and Karen Werkhoven. We also thank the advisory board for their participation in the decisionmaking process during the conservation treatment (see note 2). We are also indebted to our colleagues in the Imagery section at the KIK-IRPA, who provided high-resolution photographs, infrared reflectography and radiography: Stephane Bazzo, Sophie De Potter, Jean-Luc Elias, Catherine Fondaire and Katrien Van Acker. Finally, we thank Dr Frederik Temmermans of Universum Digitalis, who carried out the stitching of the high-resolution images after treatment. 1 The conservation treatment was carried out by Livia Depuydt-Elbaum (paint layer) and Jean-Albert Glatigny (panel support). See Annex 1 for summary. 2 We warmly thank Dr Claire Baisier, former director of the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, for convening and taking part in the advisory board meetings, which met on three occasions, the first time just after the start of cleaning (23 March 2017), the second time prior to the treatment of the wooden support (22 June 2017) and the third time during the removal of the overpaint (19 September 2017). We also thank the board for their advice: Professor Dominique Allart (University of Liège), Dr Véronique Bücken (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium [KMSKB], Brussels), Dr Lorne Campbell (emeritus, National Gallery, London), Aline

Genbrugge (KIK-IRPA), Nicole Goetghebeur (emeritus, KIK-IRPA), María Antonia López de Asiaín (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid), Professor Maximiliaan Martens (Ghent University), Ray Marchant (panel conservator, London), Dr Hélène Mund (advisor, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp), Elke Oberthaler (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), Françoise Rosier (KIK-IRPA), Dr Manfred Sellink (Ghent University), Professor Anne van Grevenstein (Topstukkenraad), Régine GuislainWittermann (emeritus, KIK-IRPA). 3 Martens 2012a. See also Van de Voorde et al. 2014. 4 For Bruegel’s use of channel edge supports as well as their use in the work of Brueghel the Younger and his contemporaries in Antwerp, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 246–8, and vol. 3, pp. 732–3, and Oberthaler 2018, pp. 371–3. In addition to the paintings mentioned in these publications, Bruegel’s undated Triumph of Death and the Detroit Wedding Dance (1566) also show signs of their use (see Currie and Allart, Chapter 6, and You, Hanspach-Bernal and Bisulca, Chapter 9, in the present volume). Rembrandt also uses some sort of channel edge support on a painting in a self-portrait from around 1628 (Artist in his Studio, 24.8 × 31.7 cm, oil on panel, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts). 5

See Fraiture 2017.

6 For example, Fraiture 2012, Fraiture 2017 and Fraiture and Haneca 2017. 7 This is one more ring than the minimum found for oaks from the Baltic countries (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) and southern Finland, according to Sohar, Vitas and Läänelaid 2012.

8 See Fraiture and Haneca 2017 and Fraiture 2019, for more details on this topic. 9 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Gloomy Day, signed and dated 1565, oil on panel, 117.6 × 162.2 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. 1837. 10

Fraiture 2019, pp. 214 and 218.

11 Minimum sapwood estimate (6 rings), according to Sohar, Vitas and Läänelaid 2012. 12 For Bruegel the Elder’s ground and imprimatura layers and their context in Flemish painting, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 251–8. See also Oberthaler 2018, pp. 375–6. 13 Similar, comb-like markings made into soft paint are also observed in the work of Pieter Brueghel the Younger. See Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, p. 769, fig. 539. 14

Martens 2012a, p. 27, ill. 1.

15 High-resolution setting for MA-XRF scan: spot size 150 μm, pixel size 150 μm, dwell time 20 ms. 16 Infrared photography: Hasselblad H4D200MS (before treatment) and a Hasselblad H6D-100c (after cleaning and after treatment) with a BW 093 infrared filter. Infrared reflectography: Lion systems near infrared digital camera, fitted with an InGaAs sensor, 512 × 640 pixel FPA; 50 mm Nikkor lens, and narrow bandwidth filter (1.5– 1.73μ). IRR images stitched using Adobe Photoshop. 17

Martens 2012a, pp. 30–31.

18 See also the Triumph of Death in Currie and Allart, Chapter 6 in the present volume, which has both dry and liquid underdrawing.

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CHRISTINA CURRIE , STEVEN SAVERWYNS

19 On Bruegel the Elder’s use of cartoons in certain paintings, see Currie, Chapter 5 in the present volume, and Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, pp. 882–4. 20 This motif is clearer in the Düsseldorf drawing of the Dulle Griet (see Currie, Allart, Brink and Saverwyns, Chapter 3 in the present volume). 21

On the cleaning process, see Annex 1.

22 On the original colours in the painting, see also discussion of an early coloured drawing of the Dulle Griet in Currie, Allart, Brink and Saverwyns, Chapter 3 in the present volume. 23 On increased transparency in other paintings by Bruegel, see Oberthaler 2018, pp. 398–400. 24 For example, Marijnissen 1988: 1562 or 1563; Van Bastelaer and Hulin de Loo 1907: 1564.

with a Peltier-cooled (203 K), near-infrared enhanced, deep-depletion CCD detector (576 × 384 pixels) using a high power 785 nm diode laser (Innovative Photonic Solutions, New Jersey, USA) in combination with a 1200 l/mm grating. Samples were analysed at 500× magnification in a directcoupled Leica DMLM microscope with enclosure. 33 FTIR spectra were acquired with a Bruker Hyperion 3000, coupled to a microscope and equipped with an ATR crystal of Germanium with a diameter of 150 μm. 34 Martens 2012a, Van de Voorde et al. 2014. 35

Spring, Higgitt and Saunders 2005.

36 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 160– 65, and Currie and Allart 2017, pp. 217, 223–4 and fig. 20. 37

Mattei et al. 2008.

25 Van Schoute, Verougstraete and Garrido 1995 (infrared vidicon); Martens 2012a, p. 33, ill. 14, and note 4 (Osiris camera).

38 For the brown coat in Bruegel the Elder’s Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, fig. 68.

26

39 On the Düsseldorf drawing and its relevance to the conservation and study of Bruegel’s Dulle Griet, see Currie, Allart, Brink and Saverwyns, Chapter 3 in the present volume.

For infrared equipment used, see note 16.

27 For samples of Bruegel’s signatures, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 76–7, fig. 10a–m. 28

Ibid., vol. 1, p. 145, fig. 54.

29 MA-XRF, Bruker M6 Jetstream, Rhtube, 50kV acceleration voltage, spot size 500 μm, pixel size 450 μm, dwell time 10 ms. 30 Cross-sections were photographed with an Axio Imager M1 microscope from Zeiss equipped with an InfinityX high resolution CCD camera from Deltapix. They were recorded under visible and ultraviolet light with magnifications up to 500×. 31 Zeiss EVO 15LS instrument equipped with a backscattered electron four quadrantBSE detector and EDX-detector (X-MAXN80 silicon drift detector, Oxford Instruments); measurements under vacuum of 15Pa and voltage of 15kV. 32 Raman spectra were acquired with a Renishaw inVia Micro-Raman spectrometer

40 Summary of treatment reports by JeanAlbert Glatigny and Livia Depuydt-Elbaum (KIK-IRPA file: 2016.13203). 41 The advisory board meeting of 22 June 2017 dealt specifically with the question of the treatment of the wooden support. During this meeting, Jean-Albert Glatigny laid out his findings on the examination of the support and possible options for treatment. The board also considered alternative treatments developed by Ray Marchant (†), a former private practice conservator affiliated with the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge, and José de la Fuente Martínez, panel conservator at the Museo Nacional del Prado. 42 A letter from the Regents of the Museum Mayer van den Bergh to the City of Antwerp, dated 9 September 1953, requests

et al.

permission for the Dulle Griet to be moved out of the museum for cleaning and restoration from 15 September to 15 October 1953. A short report by the restorer C. Bender, dated 13 May 1954, states that he added two slats at the reverse to consolidate open joins. He also removed darkened retouching from these joins, applied new retouching, removed old blanched varnish and applied a new layer of varnish. He adds in his report that on the return of the painting from an exhibition of Flemish painting in England [London, Royal Academy of Arts, Flemish Art, 1300–1700: Winter Exhibition, 1953–4], the new varnish layer had to be removed and a fresh one applied due to problems with humidity. The thick layer of wax on the reverse was also most likely applied during Bender’s conservation treatment, as such a layer is present on many paintings treated by the Bender family in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA). We are grateful to Rita Van Dooren for supplying these details from the files in the Museum Mayer van den Bergh. 43 Pyrolysis was performed in a He-atmosphere at 480 °C (Frontier Lab pyrolysis unit model 3030) in the presence of 2.5% tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) in methanol as a derivatization mixture. A Supelco SLB-5ms column (length 20 m, internal diameter 0.18 mm, film thickness 0.18 μm) was used for chromatographic separation. Compounds separated were detected with a mass spectrometer (PolarisQ mass spectrometer, scanned between 35 and 650 amu). The chromatographic column was connected directly to the pyrolysis unit, without using the classical injector.

a

b Fig. 3.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Dulle Griet, 1563, oil on panel, 116.4 × 162.1 cm, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh (inv. 788) (a) After Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Dulle Griet, undated, pen and ink and gouache on paper, 394 × 535 mm, Düsseldorf, Kunstpalast, collection of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (NRW) (inv. KA (FP) 4838) (b)

3

The Coloured Drawing of the Dulle Griet in the Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf: New Findings on its Status and Dating Christina Currie, Dominique Allart, Sonja Brink and Steven Saverwyns

A BSTRACT : The Düsseldorf coloured drawing of the Dulle Griet was examined at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels in collaboration with the Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, using infrared reflectography, infrared photography, transmitted light photography, macro-XRF and micro-Raman spectroscopy. The study of the paper revealed the watermark of Niklaus Heusler, a Basel paper manufacturer, giving 1578 as the earliest possible execution date for the drawing, and thus confirming its status as a copy. Examination and analysis of the colours suggest that they are most likely original. Various hypotheses are proposed as to the drawing’s original function, attribution and context, taking into account the early history of Bruegel’s Dulle Griet. Thanks to its early dating, the drawing is a key witness to the appearance of the Dulle Griet painting at an early stage in its history, and as such it provided fundamental help during the conservation campaign. Certain colours and motifs that have altered over time in the painting remain more legible in the drawing.

—o— Introduction The Dulle Griet drawing1 is on permanent loan to the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf from the collection of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (fig. 3.1b).2 Its earliest provenance is unknown, but it is likely to have been part of the collection of Prince Johann Wilhelm von Pfalz, Elector Palatine, who started collecting art, especially Flemish and Dutch painting, around 1684. Most of the prince’s collection

was transferred to Munich, but some pieces remained in Düsseldorf and became part of the collections of the Kunstakademie. The Dulle Griet drawing could have been one of the works of art that stayed in Düsseldorf. Another possible provenance is the collection of painter and art collector Wilhelm Lambert Krahe (1712–1790). His collection was acquired in 1778 by the Duchy of Berg for use at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, of which Krahe was the first director. The drawing is listed in an 1883 inventory of the Kunstakademie, where it is given to Pieter Brueghel the Younger.2 Since 1932 the Krahe collection, which forms the nucleus of the collections of the Kunstakademie, has been on permanent loan to the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. The Düsseldorf sheet has suffered years of neglect by art historians. Georges Marlier mentioned it in his book on Pieter Brueghel the Younger as a ‘dessin intéressant, mais d’attribution difficile’ (interesting drawing, but difficult attribution).3 The only authors to have discussed it in any detail are Lutz Malke in 1975, Alexander Wied in 1997 and Margaret Sullivan in 2004. Malke saw it as a copy after Bruegel’s (Museum Mayer van den Bergh) painting of the Dulle Griet, while Wied considered the drawing of excellent quality but did not see any characteristic features of the Brueghel

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CHRISTINA CURRIE , DOMINIQUE ALLART

sons. Indeed, he felt that, on stylistic grounds, the sheet might be older than the sons’ copies after their father. He considered that an artist in Emperor Rudolf II’s circle capable of imitating Bruegel’s drawings might be responsible, such as Roelandt Savery.4 Sullivan instead favoured an attribution to Pieter Bruegel the Elder himself. She identified small differences in motif between the drawing and the painting and interpreted them as creative changes by Bruegel the Elder, concluding that the drawing must be a preparatory study for the painting (fig. 3.1a).5 In 2002, Nils Büttner suggested that the drawing was a coloured model for future copies of the Dulle Griet.6 Most recently, in 2012, Christina Currie and Dominique Allart reassessed Sullivan’s arguments and concluded that the drawing was unlikely to be by Bruegel’s hand.7 Nonetheless, the present authors always intended to examine the drawing in the flesh at some point, as it had never been subject to an in-depth stylistic-technical analysis. The 2017–18 conservation treatment of the Dulle Griet painting at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) was the spur to this research, and it turned out to be more useful for the restoration than could possibly have been imagined. The questions we had at the outset were sequential. We wanted to find out whether the drawing could be a coloured model for the Dulle Griet by Bruegel himself, or whether it was a copy after the painting. If it was not a preparatory drawing, we wanted to investigate the possibility of it being a record copy by Bruegel himself, and if not by him, then consider other possible candidates. The dating and place of production of the paper and the identification of the pigments were thus key to the investigation. We were uncertain as to whether the colours were original or added later, which was crucial as this would determine the nature of the relationship of the drawing to the original colour scheme of the Dulle Griet painting. To answer these questions, the KIK-IRPA initiated a study of the drawing in October 2017 with the full collaboration of the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf.

et al.

Paper Support The large coloured drawing of the Dulle Griet (39.4 × 53.5 cm), which is about a ninth of the size of Bruegel’s panel painting (116.4 × 162.1 cm), is made on a single sheet of laid paper, with horizontal laid lines and vertical chain lines. There are some horizontal losses, perhaps due to rolling. Raking light also reveals considerable cockling and signs that it was attached to something at the reverse along all four edges. This probably corresponds with the fact that the drawing was glued to a wooden support at some point before 1930.8 This support was removed by 1934, according to an inventory of the Kunstakademie’s collections.9 In transmitted light, a large laid watermark can be made out in the centre left, measuring 14 cm from top to bottom, which had never been noticed before. It was difficult to read in its entirety due to the presence of the painted image. The mystery was resolved by taking an infrared photograph of the reverse side, which revealed the mark without interference (fig. 3.2b). The watermark shows a crowned eagle with the Basel crozier in its breast. The ‘NH’ initials and mark at the bottom clearly point to the papermaker Niklaus I Heusler. He used this mark from the time he took over the Zunziger papermill (St Albantal no. 39) at Basel in 1578, which gives a terminus post quem for the production of the paper.10 The most frequent recorded occurrences of this watermark are in the 1580s, as in an example from a 1585 Missivenbuch (fig. 3.2c),11 but it is likely that the mark was used up until the death of Niklaus Heusler’s son, also named Niklaus, in 1626. This terminus post quem for the paper already answered two of our questions. The drawing is not a preparatory drawing by Bruegel the Elder for the painting, dated 1563, nor could it have been a record drawing by his hand, as he died in 1569. Transfer, Drawing and Painting Techniques In infrared, and faintly visible with the naked eye, there are traces of squaring-up behind the paint layer. Since these lines are quite widely spaced it

THE COLOURED DRAWING OF THE DULLE GRIET

a

2 cm

2 cm

b

47

c

Fig. 3.2 Diagram of watermark on transmitted light image (a); infrared detail of reverse, inverted (b); page from online Gravell Watermark Archive , showing diagram of Niklaus I Heusler’s watermark on a 1585 Missivenbuch (c)

seems likely that they were made in relation to a corresponding grid placed over Bruegel’s original painting. They are not to be confused with the vertical chain lines of the paper, which fall in different places. The material seems to be some sort of dry black medium, probably charcoal or black chalk, and the grid was no doubt deliberately erased after drawing and prior to colouring. The drawing of the design is in pen and brown ink. In places the line appears to be split into two, suggesting a pen rather than a brush. The lines are slightly stippled in places. Parts of the drawing line appear darker than others, suggesting two stages of application. Both stages could be pen and ink, but it is possible that the darker lines could be remnants of a black chalk underdrawing. These would have been partially effaced after the ink drawing stage along with the squaring grid. A high-resolution macro-X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) scan of the green mantle of the giant on the roof indicates the presence of iron in the ink of the drawing lines, suggesting the use of an iron gall ink as drawing medium (fig. 3.3b).12 In places there are longer and somewhat wider-spaced brown hatching strokes, probably also iron gall ink. These

a

b Fig. 3.3 Detail. Giant on roof, showing iron gall ink outlines (a); MA-XRF mapping of iron (b)

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CHRISTINA CURRIE , DOMINIQUE ALLART

strokes are completely invisible in infrared photography and reflectography, suggesting that they are part of the second drawing stage, during which the artist added indications of tone. The colouring stage consists of a straightforward application of flat planes of colour in a water-based medium, with occasional hatching strokes in grey paint, as seen in Dulle Griet’s helmet (fig. 3.4a). Delicate touches of pink and orange mark flesh tones. Further outlining and final details are applied in dilute brown paint applied with a brush. The black border was examined with the binocular microscope. In many areas it appears to be reinforced. Indeed, it is much blacker and lacking the wear and tear of black areas in the body of the drawing. In the lower left and at the bottom left, there seems to be grey paint instead of black paint. The border may therefore be a later addition. Closeness to the Model The drawing precisely follows the motifs in Bruegel the Elder’s Dulle Griet painting. Close comparison of certain motifs demonstrates that the drawing is a copy of the painting rather than being copied after a lost preparatory drawing by Bruegel. Where Bruegel modified his painting slightly during execution, the drawing follows the final appearance of the form: for example, the feeding bowl of the Bosch-like bodiless creature in front of the entrance to Hell, which in Bruegel’s underdrawing is wider, less tilted and with something inside it (fig. 3.5). Another example is the flag in the upper right of the scene, where the Düsseldorf drawing imitates Bruegel’s painted solution rather than the flag’s underdrawing. Clearly, the aim was to make as faithful a reproduction as possible, but on a smaller scale. Pigment Analysis We carried out scientific analysis of the pigments to verify where the colours could have been applied at the same time as the pen and ink drawing lines. Sampling of the drawing was not possible, so only non-invasive analyses were carried out. The

et al.

complete drawing was scanned with macro X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF),13 providing elemental information on the pigments’ composition. In the limited time available only a few spots were further characterized with micro-Raman spectroscopy (MRS), delivering molecular information and confirming or refining MA-XRF results.14 A selection of the main MA-XRF results are summarized as element distribution maps in fig. 3.6. The higher the signal intensity of the element under consideration, the whiter the colour in the map. Lead can be detected in many places throughout the drawing. It is present as lead white (2PbCO3·Pb(OH)2) in some bright white highlights: for example, in the nightcap of the creature sitting on the wall next to Hell and in the border of the cauldron of creatures and soldiers near the tavern on the right. However, the off-white colour is generally obtained by leaving the paper unpainted. In most cases, lead is found mixed with other colours, to influence their final tonality. Lead might also originate from other sources. Red lead (Pb3O4) might have been used in parts of the glowing sky or in fires, where the lead concentration is high, although a mixture of a red pigment with lead white is also possible. As MA-XRF is an elemental technique, a distinction between lead white and red lead cannot be made. MRS measurements were not performed in the orange-red areas. A final source of the lead signal is lead-tin yellow (Pb2SnO4). Although weak, signals for tin could be detected and MRS analysis further refined the results and identified the pigment as lead-tin yellow type I rather than type  II (Pb(Sn,Si)O3). The yellow colour is very pale and hardly distinguishable from the yellowish background of the paper. It is used in the metal decoration on the small box underneath the left arm of Dulle Griet, the drapery on the trumpet held by a flying insect monster, parts of the eyes of Hell, the round window of the tavern, the sky near the upper right corner, the laundry in a basket, the sleeve of a woman to the right of the laundry basket, the

THE COLOURED DRAWING OF THE DULLE GRIET

a

b Fig. 3.4 Detail. Dulle Griet in Düsseldorf drawing, under normal light (a) and UV illumination (b). The pale pink flesh tones produce a strong fluorescence under ultraviolet light

49

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CHRISTINA CURRIE , DOMINIQUE ALLART

et al.

Fig. 3.5 Bosch-like creature in Bruegel’s Dulle Griet, with IRR insert showing original position of bowl and dropped motif inside it (a); and in Düsseldorf drawing, imitating original’s paint layer (b)

THE COLOURED DRAWING OF THE DULLE GRIET

51

a

Pb

b

Hg

c

Cu

d

Sn

e

Fe

f

Fig. 3.6 XRF maps for lead (b), mercury (c), copper (d), tin (e) and iron (f)

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CHRISTINA CURRIE , DOMINIQUE ALLART

content of two pots left and right above the laundry basket, a small part of the sky to the right of Hell’s cap, the outlines of the toad on the tree and some small patches next to the left eye of Hell. In the original Dulle Griet painting (fig. 3.1a) these zones are indeed all yellow, with the exception of the toad, where it is hard to see possible yellow outlines. The use of lead-tin yellow is not only limited to light yellow zones. It is also found in green colours, mixed with a pigment rich in copper. This might be azurite blue (Cu3(CO3)2(OH)2) mixed with leadtin yellow to produce a green tone, or a true coppergreen pigment, mixed with lead-tin yellow to influence its tonality. Unfortunately, the drawing could not be studied by digital microscopy, which could have allowed the visualization of pigment grains in the green colour, determining whether azurite is present or not. Green paint with lead-tin yellow has been found around the egg and the construction with the three circular levels above, in the green mantle of the giant, in the green border of the left eye of Hell, in the green frog in the red river and in the vegetation painted on the red river next to the right foot of Dulle Griet. Interestingly the green around the egg and the construction with the three circular levels above is coloured using the same pigment mixture, giving a very similar colour for both parts, while in Bruegel’s original Dulle Griet painting the colour of the green around the egg and the circular levels above is clearly different. This implies that colour changes in the oil painting took place after the artist of the drawing saw the painting. Different green hues can be observed in the drawing. The green around the egg is rather dull, while some parts of the mantle of the giant are vivid green. A higher level of copper in the vivid green parts seems to be the reason for this difference. The green of the basket with laundry and the sleeves of the women left and right of the basket contain copper with no lead-tin yellow, suggesting a true green copper-based pigment. However, as MA-XRF is an elemental technique,

et al.

no further information on its exact composition can be obtained. Under the set conditions, MRS gave no further clues on this green pigment either. In some brown-greenish parts of the drawing, copper is detected in lower intensity, again without lead-tin yellow, such as in the vegetation around the roots of the tree on the left, the dress of the woman next to the left foot of Dulle Griet and the creature with a helmet hanging on the bridge. Could this be the same green as in the laundry basket, but more thinly applied or degraded? Close observation of these zones shows predominantly green-brownish areas, with some greener patches, which could point to the degradation of an originally green pigment. Blue parts are rich in copper, indicating the use of azurite, the presence of which was confirmed by MRS analyses. No smalt is detected in the drawing. Azurite is also noted in the sky, in the right part of Hell’s cap, in the blue dress of Dulle Griet and in the dresses of some women in the background. The use of vermilion (HgS) was proven through the detection of mercury in most red parts of the drawing. In the vivid red colours it is present as pure whereas in some darker tones (such as the darker parts of the red river) it is mixed with an iron-rich pigment, a red ochre. In some red parts of the painting, such as for the ‘barrel man’, the dress of the woman with the axe on the bridge, and the red small tower next to the tavern, the red paint only contains red ochre, with no vermilion. By adding red ochre to vermilion, or by using these pigments in their pure form, the artist created different shades of red. The highest concentration of iron is detected in brown colours, such as in the basket on Dulle Griet’s arm, the left eye of Hell, the beehive, the bowl in the hand of the creature with the spoon in his anus and the man next to the beehive. In these cases, a brown ochre was used. Calcium is detected throughout the drawing, no doubt mostly coming from the paper itself. In some spots the concentration of calcium is notably higher, such as in the bell, in the laundry in the

THE COLOURED DRAWING OF THE DULLE GRIET

green basket, and in the raised arm of a woman to the right of the basket. This calcium likely originates from chalk (although the use of gypsum cannot be excluded). The chalk does not seem to be used as white pigment, as the colour of the paper itself is used for white colours, and sporadically some lead white. The chalk could therefore be present as substrate for a yellow lake.15 In Bruegel’s original Dulle Griet painting, the laundry and the raised arm (and perhaps also parts of the bell) are indeed yellow. These parts in the drawing contain lead-tin yellow as well. During the period, yellow lakes were often used in mixtures to produce greens or to give life to a duller yellow pigment. They have also been reported in combination with lead-tin yellow.16 In the clothing of the woman on the bridge to the far right, grabbing a pack, in the drawing no lead-tin yellow is detected, but higher calcium levels can be noted; in the Dulle Griet painting the clothes of this woman are yellowish in colour. It is possible that the sleeve in the drawing was originally yellow, but that the dye faded over time. The presence of a yellow lake, however, can only be confirmed by destructive analysis of a sample, and sampling was not feasible in the case of the drawing. Degradation of other pigments is likely as well. The leaves of the tree before Hell are brownish in the painting (and believed to be originally green), whereas in the drawing the trees seem to be bare. Only under close observation do some traces of leaves become visible. No copper was detected in these leaves, leading to the assumption that an unstable green organic colourant was used. Finally, under ultraviolet illumination, there are signs of the presence of a red lake. We noted an orange fluorescence in different reddish colours in the drawing. This is especially pronounced in the flesh tones of Dulle Griet, corresponding with a pale pink colour in normal light (fig. 3.4). Madder lake, a red lake pigment that derives its colour from the roots of the madder plant (Rubia Tinctorum L.), is known to produce an orange hue under ultraviolet light.17 Orange fluorescence indicates where madder was used, although in some cases it seems

53

to have faded as well, such as in the reflection in the sphere in the boat. Here, only a white colour is observed in visible light, while a faint orange fluorescence is noted under ultraviolet illumination. There is also orange fluorescence in the glow caused by fires, suggesting the use of madder lake and implying that the original tinge was initially redder. Unfortunately, only a destructive analysis of a sample can prove the presence of madder lake. The key pigment present in the drawing that proves an early date for the application of the colours is lead-tin yellow, a pigment popular in western painting since at least the fourteenth century. It was hardly ever used after the beginning of the eighteenth century and disappeared from the artist’s palette around 1750, only to be rediscovered in 1941.18 Also relevant, however, is the fact that we detected none of the synthetic inorganic pigments introduced since the early eighteenth century. The painting palette therefore corresponds with the manufacturing period of the paper support. Origin and Function Attribution is difficult due to the wear and tear of the sheet and because the copyist aimed at reproducing his model as faithfully as possible rather than affirming his own personal style. Nonetheless, the drawing is of high quality and shows considerable vivacity and expressivity, despite the constraints of working within a grid. The draughtsman seems to have a certain familiarity with Bruegel’s graphic style and mimics some of its features. Similarities with Bruegel’s drawings include short stippled lines and dots, especially in the far distance, and in the rendering of materials such as furs (fig. 3.7). The portrayal of eyes is also comparable. However, the Düsseldorf drawing does not have the same level of subtlety, finish and rich graphic effects as Bruegel’s drawings, most of which are preparatory sheets for prints, intended to give precise guidance to engravers. It was planned from the outset as a tinted drawing, in which colour was an integral part.

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a

b

c

d

et al.

Fig. 3.7 Detail from Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Luxuria, pen and grey-brown ink on paper, 1557, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR (inv. S.II 132 816) (a) Detail from Düsseldorf drawing (b) Detail from Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Justicia, pen and grey-brown ink on paper, 1559, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR (inv. S.II 133 707) (c) Detail from Düsseldorf drawing (d)

THE COLOURED DRAWING OF THE DULLE GRIET

As we have seen, its dating rests largely on the watermark of Niklaus Heusler, also used by his son, which gives a possible period of execution between 1578 and 1626, although the paper could have been stored and used a little later. This does not provide us with any information on the place where the drawing was made, since Basel papermakers exported their goods all over Europe. The answer should therefore be sought via the provenance of the original painting and thus where it could have been copied. The earliest mention of the painting is in a letter to Rudolf II from Count Simon VI of Lippe, which states that in 1600 the Dulle Griet passed into the hands of merchants from Emden, Lower Saxony. These merchants made a gift of the painting to the emperor shortly afterwards.19 The Dulle Griet was most likely the painting described by Karel van Mander in Rudolf II’s collection in Prague as ‘een Dulle Griet, die een roof voor de Helle doet, die seer verbijsteert siet, en vreet op zijn schots toeghemaeckt is: ick acht dees en ander stucken oock in s’Keysers Hof zijn’ (a Dolle Griet carrying away plunder in the face of Hell, who looks quite crazy and is weirdly kitted-out in a higgledy-piggledy way. I believe this, as well as some other pieces, to be in the emperor’s palace too).20 It is thought that the painting was looted from the imperial palace in Prague in 1648 by the troops of Queen Christina of Sweden and taken to Sweden. It was purchased by Fritz Mayer van den Bergh at the Lempertz auction house in Cologne in 1894, having been previously in the collection of Christian Hammer, a Swedish jeweller based in Stockholm.21 Unfortunately, prior to 1600, it is not known where the painting was or who commissioned it. The painting could have remained in the Bruegel family after the death of Pieter the Elder in 1569, or it could have been in a collection accessible to the family. In both these possible situations, the drawing could have been made by Mayken Verhulst, widow of Pieter Coecke van Aelst and an artist herself, notably in watercolour. She

55

would have played an important role in transferring what remained of Bruegel’s studio materials to his sons. Pieter the Younger and Jan Brueghel are evidently also potential candidates, after coming of age. But the drawing is unlikely to be by either of them, as there is no known copy by their hands, nor echoes of motifs from the Dulle Griet in their works. Pieter Brueghel the Younger in particular would have seized any opportunity to work directly after an original painting by his father and produce copies. Therefore, it is unlikely that between 1563, the date of the Dulle Griet painting, and 1600, the year of its entry into the imperial collection, the painting was accessible to the Bruegel family. It could have passed from collector to collector, in which case the drawing could have been carried out in the context of a commercial transaction. It might have been produced as a reproduction to entice a potential buyer of the painting, or as a substitute for the costly painting itself. The large format of the drawing, as well as the possibility that it was originally attached to a wooden support, may suggest that it was intended to be viewed as a finished work of art in its own right. If this is the case, the northern provinces merit particular attention. In Amsterdam, for example, a possible artist is Jacob Savery, a talented draughtsman working in the Bruegel tradition. Savery produced drawings in the style and spirit of Bruegel, such as Village Kermis, recently acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum (fig. 3.8). It is also a pen and ink coloured drawing on paper and its large format is very close to that of the Düsseldorf copy.22 Savery understood perfectly Bruegel the Elder’s graphic technique. He is well known for having imitated Bruegel’s style to perfection, using the great master’s characteristic small dots. A series of drawings previously considered to be works by Bruegel the Elder himself, with ‘Bruegel’ signatures and dates corresponding to his lifetime, are probably forgeries by Savery.23 As suggested by Alexander Wied, the other likely context for the making of the Düsseldorf copy is the

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et al.

Fig. 3.8 Jacob Savery, Village Kermis, 1598 (signed and dated in gold ink), pen and grey ink, with watercolour and some gold on paper, 371 × 535 mm, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. DYCE.513

imperial court at Prague, where the original painting ended up around 1600 and probably remained until 1648.24 Copying after old masters was a common activity at that court. Rudolf II loved Bruegel’s paintings, and surrounded himself with artists working in the Bruegelian tradition – such as Pieter Stevens II, Joris Hoefnagel and Roelandt Savery, brother of Jacob and author of the notorious ‘naer het leven’ drawings and perhaps also of the famous Alpine Views.25 The Düsseldorf drawing could have been carried out there by one of the emperor’s artists or by a visitor to the imperial collection. The Düsseldorf Drawing: Clues to the Original Appearance of the Painting Quite apart from the question of the attribution and function of the drawing, its early dating makes it a key witness to the original appearance of the

painting prior to the latter’s colour alterations, increased translucency and localized damages. Although the drawing itself has suffered wear and tear and some fading, certain colours are in fact much better preserved than in the painting, which is due to the different pigments used and the waterbased medium. This is the case for the blues in Dulle Griet’s skirt and shoulders, which have a much bluer hue in the drawing, and also for her white veil, which has become completely transparent in the oil painting. Hell’s hat is clearly blue in the drawing, whereas it is pale with a dark shadow in the original painting. Certain dresses in the female army are also blue in the drawing and faded in the painting. The drawing therefore represents a glimpse of how the Dulle Griet’s colours would have looked at the outset and during its time in Rudolf II’s court.

THE COLOURED DRAWING OF THE DULLE GRIET

a

c

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b

d

Fig. 3.9 ‘Barrel man’ in Düsseldorf drawing (a); in painting before cleaning, IRR (b); in painting before cleaning (c); in painting after treatment (d)

Some of the original colours in the painting were hidden behind later overpaint, but visible in the Düsseldorf drawing. The sky, for example, was uniformly red in the painting, but red punctuated by a central patch of cool blue in the drawing. Livia Depuydt-Elbaum, who restored the painting, was able to uncover the concealed original hues of the sky in the light of the appearance of the drawing and MA-XRF imagery of the painting. The same discovery applied to the toad in the lower left of the composition, which is predominantly red in the drawing. Before cleaning the painting, the corresponding toad was dark brown.

After removal of the overpaint, it recovered its original appearance, which is red for the most part, edged with green.26 In the drawing, the likely green parts have faded completely, probably due to the use of an unstable organic green pigment. Many motifs are also clearer to read in the drawing. Again, the juxtaposition of drawing and painting facilitated the restoration process where there were losses or ambiguity in the painting. The most interesting example of this is the ‘barrel man’ (fig. 3.9). In the painting, he had been given a sad face by a former restorer who was not able to understand the motif, due to paint damage along a crack

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in the panel. In the infrared image prior to treatment, something different is clearly visible in the mouth of the creature, but it is the drawing that tells us that this is a two-part spigot. A similar motif is seen in Bruegel’s earlier Flemish Proverbs (1559), where a pig is seen biting the spigot of a barrel in order to release the liquid inside. Other motifs in the drawing clarifying those in the painting include the Bosch-like creature with a head, legs and a long cap just below Hell’s ear. In the drawing, he has a distinct face and sits on a globe, both of which are impossible to make out in the painting due to the fact that the creature was added late on during execution, on top of the dark background paint and without a reserve. There is a creature at the edge of the river in front of Hell with a small cup (suction device?) on his helmet in the drawing that is an indistinguishable dark swirl in the painting. Two additional figures sit in the boat held aloft by the giant in the centre in the drawing; these are only faintly visible in the infrared image of the painting. Certain better-preserved details in the drawing enable us to better identify motifs in the painting. For example, the small black treasure or money chest carried by the woman following Dulle Griet is shown in the drawing with reinforcement slats, whereas in the painting it is now plain black. In the upper right, the anchor of the boat is clearly delineated against the background in the drawing, whereas in the painting the anchor merges imperceptibly into the dark wall behind.

a

b

et al.

In places, losses in the original painting could be retouched with the knowledge of what was originally there in the drawing: for example, the leg of a flying frog in the sky, which was mostly missing, and a woman’s sleeve in the lower right crowd, only traces of which remained. In the cauldron of creatures and soldiers, the dark-haired creature with a long snout to the far right appeared in the painting to be looking forward towards the viewer, whereas in the drawing he faces right in three-quarters view. Depuydt-Elbaum discovered during cleaning that his incongruous eye was in fact a later retouching and that the original profile corresponds to that in the drawing. Finally, the original appearance of the small flag at the top of a mast of a ship in the upper right is revealed through the Düsseldorf drawing. In the drawing, the flag shows a coat of arms with a fer-demoline (millrind) and a white-spotted red border, whereas in the painting the motif has been repainted during a former restoration to show five black shields on a white background with a red border and no spots (fig. 3.10). Our efforts to identify the original coat of arms proved fruitless and it is likely that the design is fictive and simply decorative, as with the other flags in the painting that depict a cooking pot and a horn.27 Another intriguing motif is Dulle Griet’s tongue (see fig. 3.4). Maximiliaan Martens pointed out that Bruegel originally planned to paint her tongue hanging out but changed his mind during painting.28 Indeed, there is a form that appears to be a

c

d

Fig. 3.10 Flag in Düsseldorf drawing (a); in painting (b); in painting, X-radiograph (c); in painting, IRR (d)

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THE COLOURED DRAWING OF THE DULLE GRIET

tongue in the infrared and X-ray images. In the drawing, there is a pink stroke corresponding to a barely visible stroke in the painting, which indicates the far side of her mouth, but not the tongue. Therefore, the tongue may indeed be part of a preliminary stage in the painting, dropped by Bruegel during painting, and therefore not present in the Düsseldorf copy. Conclusion The Düsseldorf drawing cannot be by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, since he was already dead by the time the paper was made. The presence of the watermark of Niklaus Heusler, a Basel paper manufacturer, gives 1578 as the earliest possible execution date. It is nonetheless a beautiful and high-quality drawing in its own right. Pigment analysis and close visual examination of the paint layer suggest that the colours are most likely original. Although clearly an accurate copy, made with the help of squaring up, the attribution and original

function of the drawing remain a mystery. The fact that it is coloured excludes it as a model for an engraving. It could have been a record drawing by a Bruegel family member, a reproduction to entice an early buyer of the painting, a copy commissioned by an early owner of the painting or a copy made by a Bruegel imitator for their own purposes. Possible authors include Jacob Savery, an artist working in the Bruegel tradition in Amsterdam, or one of Rudolf II’s numerous court artists or visitors to the imperial collection in Prague. The drawing represents a unique record of the appearance of Pieter Bruegel’s Dulle Griet at some point during its early history. Many of its colours and motifs remain fresher and more legible than they are today in the painting. The drawing is therefore a key witness for interpreting the painting and understanding its original colour scheme and motifs and as such was of fundamental help during the 2017–18 conservation campaign.

N OT ES We would like to thank the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf for allowing the KIK-IRPA to examine and analyse the drawing. The week of intense research carried out on the drawing at the KIK-IRPA with Dr Sonja Brink was a truly collaborative venture. For help investigating the Heusler family of papermakers, we would like to thank Dr Erwin Frauenknecht of the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, and Martin Kluge of the Swiss Museum for Paper, Writing and Printing, Basel. For discussions on Bruegel’s Dulle Griet painting and its alterations in relation to the Düsseldorf drawing, we thank Livia DepuydtElbaum, Head of Painting Conservation at the KIK-IRPA, who was in charge of the conservation treatment of the painting. We would also like to thank Jean-Luc Elias and Sophie De Potter (KIK-IRPA) for the highquality technical imagery. 1 After Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Dulle Griet, undated, pen and ink and gouache on paper, 394 × 535 mm, Düsseldorf, Kunstpalast, collection of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (NRW), inv. KA (FP) 4838.

2 Levin 1883, p. 41. 3 Marlier/Folie 1969, p. 449. 4 Malke 1975, cat. no. 88; Wied 1997. 5 Sullivan 2004, p. 62–65, and Sullivan 2009, pp. 109 and 112–13. Alexander Wied also cites B. Claessens and J. Rousseau as supporting an attribution to Bruegel himself (B. Claessens and J. Rousseau, Unser Bruegel, Antwerp, 1969, cat. no. 24, cited in Wied 1997, p. 18). 6 Büttner 2002. 7 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, p. 316, note 79. 8 Budde 1930, cat. no. 808. 9 The collections of the Kunstakademie have been integrated into specific museum departments. The Dulle Griet became part of the Department of Prints and Drawings, where it appears in the handwritten inventory of 1934. 10

Tschudin 1958, pp. 23 and 41.

11 Gravell Watermark Archive (online), ARMS. 1251.1 . (Watermark from St Albantal papermill no. 41, Rychmühle [der Rychen Muelin]. Papermaker: Niklaus Heusler. Staatsarchiv Kanton Basel-Stadt, AA II 2.) 12 High-resolution MA-XRF scan conditions: spot size 150 μm, pixel size 125 μm, dwell time 25ms. 13 MA-XRF, Bruker M6 Jetstream, Rh-tube, 50kV acceleration voltage, spot size 400 μm, pixel size 400 μm, dwell time 15 ms. 14 We used a Renishaw inVia instrument, coupled to an optical probe, and the analysis was carried out directly on the drawing. Conditions for Raman spectroscopy: 785 nm laser excitation, reduced laser power to avoid any damage to the drawing, measuring time variable in order to obtain an adequate signal-to-noise ratio. 15

Spring and Keith 2009.

16 David Peggie, ‘Fading of Yellow and Red Lake Pigments’, National Gallery, London, 2013 . 17 See De la Rie 1982 and Costentino 2014. 18

Kühn 1993.

19 We thank Lorne Campbell and Alice Hoppe-Harnoncourt for drawing our attention to this first mention of the painting (see Fusenig 2002, p. 119; Fusenig 2012, p. 98; and Kaschek 2007). 20 From ‘The Life of Pieter Bruegel’ in Karel van Mander’s Schilder-boeck, 1604 (transcription and translation from Miedema 1994–9, vol. 1, pp. 192–3). 21 Antwerp 2012, p. 7. The Lempertz auction house in Cologne was known as J. M. Heberle prior to 1845. On the provenance of the Dulle Griet, see also De Coo 1960.

22 Jacob Savery, Village Kermis, signed ‘JAQUE/SAVERY’ and dated 1598, pen and grey ink, with watercolour and some gold on paper, 371 × 535 mm, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. DYCE.513. 23 On Jacob Savery’s fake Bruegel drawings, see Mielke 1996, A21-44, pp. 210–21, and Rotterdam/New York 2001, pp. 276–7. 24 Wied 1997, p. 18. 25 On Roelandt Savery’s possible authorship of the Alpine Views, see Mielke 1996, A1-20, pp. 200–09, and Rotterdam/New York 2001, pp. 266–7. 26 In the painting, this green pigment is copper resinate, whose green hue has partially survived. 27 We thank Guy van Wassenhove, of the Baillet Latour Foundation, for pointing out the difference between the flag in the

et al.

drawing and the flag in the painting, and suggesting this avenue of research in the hope of identifying the original patron. We also thank Dr Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, of the KIK-IRPA, for his identification of the fer-de-moline motif; Dr Christiane Van den Bergen-Pantens, of the Centre International de Codicologie, for researching the possible coat of arms; and Guus van Breugel, of the CBG Centruum voor familiegeschiedenis, for his opinion that the banner is meant to be decorative. 28

Martens 2012a, p. 43 and ill. 21.

PART 2 PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER: MAKING, MEANING AND COPYING

Fig. 4.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder(?), The Adoration of the Magi, distemper on linen canvas, 124 × 169 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 3929)

4

The Adoration of the Magi in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium: Overview and New Perspectives Véronique Bücken

A BSTRACT : In 1909 the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium acquired the Adoration of the Magi, a painting in distemper on linen canvas (Tüchlein), as a gift made by the Society of Friends of the Museum. Debate on its attribution to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, its condition and the quality of the composition followed soon after. The painting was restored in the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in 1969. During its treatment, essential information about its painting technique emerged. In the last decades, studies on Tüchlein paintings, and particularly those produced by Bruegel himself, have made considerable advances. The conditions for the production and execution of these works are better known. The discovery in Madrid of the original Tüchlein by Bruegel, the Wine of Saint Martin, and the observations made during its restoration, have thrown new light on the production of painted canvas by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The present contribution will present a status quaestionis on the Royal Museums’s Adoration of the Magi as well as new reflections in view of recent research.

—o— For many years, the Adoration of the Magi in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, painted in distemper (glue size) on linen canvas, has generated heated controversy on several counts (fig. 4.1).1 Indeed, the painting raises fundamental questions on its authorship and the original invention of the composition, as well as further issues about its place in the production of Bruegel and/or

the Brueg(h)els. The aim of this short contribution is not to resolve these issues – which will disappoint those waiting for definitive answers – but rather to present an overview of past and current research and suggest further avenues for thought. The Provenance The Adoration of the Magi was given to the museum in 1909 by the Société des Amis des Musées royaux de l’État, who had acquired it for 9,000 Belgian francs at the sale of the Édouard Fétis collection at Galerie Le Roy Frères, Brussels. It was bought at the same time as an Apollo and Diana by Cranach and a Temptation of Saint Antony then attributed to Lucas van Leyden, both also donated to the museum.2 Édouard Fétis was a man of letters, an art critic and art historian, director of the Royal Library of Belgium, and also a collector. On his death, his collection was dispersed. Henri Hymans, who had succeeded him as director of the Royal Library and was also executor of his will, wrote the sale catalogue, where he gives the Adoration of the Magi to Pieter Bruegel the Elder.3 There is little known on its provenance prior to the Fétis sale. A laconic mention by Arthur Laes informs us that the work was acquired in a public sale in Brussels for around 50 francs.4 This acquisition must have taken place before 1884, as Hymans already

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mentions the painting as belonging to Fétis in his translation of Karel van Mander’s Schilder-boeck: ‘La peinture est ruinée, toutefois elle conserve les traces d’une rare adresse d’exécution’ (The painting is ruined, but still retains traces of an unusually fine execution).5 The painting therefore ‘reappeared’ on the Belgian art market towards the end of the nineteenth century. During its conservation treatment in the studios of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIKIRPA) in 1968–9, the technical characteristics of this Tüchlein were studied.6 These were published by Albert Philippot, Nicole Goetghebeur and Régine Guislain-Wittermann in the 1969 KIKIRPA Bulletin.7 Given that this data is essential for evaluating the status of the work, it will be briefly summarized here. The Support According to the observations of the conservators, the support is made of a linen canvas with a ‘Z’ spin measuring 121.5 cm in height and 168 cm in width. The thread count is on average 18 threads per centimetre for the warps (horizontal) and 22 threads per centimetre for the wefts (vertical), which makes it slightly less fine than Bruegel’s Wine of Saint Martin, the Tüchlein acquired by the Prado in 2010. The restoration of the Madrid painting provided more information about Bruegel’s Tüchlein technique.8 The Madrid canvas has 26 warps (horizontal) and 22 wefts (vertical).9 The Brussels canvas is made up of two pieces joined edge to edge by a hand-sewn vertical seam. The right piece, which retains two selvedges, measures 94 cm in width, while the left piece, which only has one selvedge, measures 74 cm in width. Along the vertical edges to the right and left, there is cusping (garlanding) which shows that the painting has been nailed or laced to a provisional strainer before being painted.10 The black painted border is original. Auxiliary Support Before restoration, the canvas of the Adoration of the Magi was mounted on an auxiliary oak support.

This was made up of six horizontal planks, whose joins were reinforced by wooden dowels (fig. 4.2). The support also had four vertical battens fixed with dowels on the reverse in another type of wood. The second batten from the left was shorter than the others. This auxiliary wooden support was bevelled on the four sides. The planks measured around 20 cm in width, except those at the top and bottom, which were slightly narrower (15 and 17 cm), perhaps cut. When the Adoration of the Magi came to the KIK-IRPA for restoration, the canvas was folded back on the reverse of the oak auxiliary support in such a way that the black painted border was no longer visible from the front. The auxiliary support was therefore smaller than the canvas, which led to the conclusion at the time that it was not original.11 For conservation reasons, the panel was replaced by a support made up of several sheets of Japanese paper. This novel treatment resulted in a flexible lining better suited for the conservation of the very fragile canvas.12 This operation meant that the canvas could be re-stretched, the edges unfolded, and the tears and losses supported. However, according to later research by Hélène Verougstraete on auxiliary supports for Tüchlein, it is likely that the auxiliary support was in fact original.13 It had no doubt been cut on the four sides at an unknown period to facilitate the folding back of the worn and torn edges of the canvas onto the reverse. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the bevels of the wooden support, observed by the restorers at the time of the dismounting, were very narrow. This anomaly is easily explained if it is assumed that the support was cut slightly on the four sides. The auxiliary support in oak was not kept, which is unfortunate as dendrochronology, a technique developed after the conservation treatment, might have helped date it. Preparation and Execution Conforming to the Tüchlein technique, the paint was applied directly onto the canvas. It can be assumed that the linen canvas was sized. The pre-

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

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Fig. 4.2 Adoration of the Magi (fig. 4.1), oak auxiliary support before restoration, now lost

liminary sizing of a canvas support facilitated a higher level of precision during the application of the paint strokes. For the Brussels canvas, the composition is hardly visible on the reverse, and the painting has therefore not penetrated much into the canvas at the moment of execution.14 An identical situation is seen in the Wine of Saint Martin.15 This is unlike the situation in the Parable of the Blind, where the canvas seems to have been only partially sized. Here, the colour passes through to the reverse of the canvas in the landscape zones but not in the figures, as if the precision of the stroke was more important for the figures than for the landscape (figs 4.3a–b).16 According to Albert Philippot, no underdrawing could be detected with certainty in the Brussels Adoration of the Magi. However, there is indeed a drawing, executed in distemper, the same medium

as that of the paint layer. There is a gradual transition from one to the other. This way of working can also be seen in the Wine of Saint Martin17 and was part of the Tüchlein technique. As can be seen in the infrared photographs of the Adoration of the Magi, it appears that the zones of hatching are as much part of the drawing as they are of the painting (fig. 4.4). The paint layer of the Adoration of the Magi is very thin, flat, opaque and friable. In general, the paint was applied in a single layer, and more rarely in two layers. Pigments that could be identified comprise vermilion (red), madder lake (dark red), malachite (dark green), azurite (dark blue) and smalt mixed with chalk (light blue), which are common pigments and identical to those identified by the Prado laboratory during the restoration of the Wine of Saint Martin.18

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Fig. 4.3a Adoration of the Magi (fig. 4.1). Photo of the reverse in UV fluorescence

Fig. 4.3b Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Parable of the Blind (Tüchlein), Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte (inv. 84.490). Photo of the reverse

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

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b

Fig. 4.4 Adoration of the Magi (fig. 4.1). Detail of the braying donkey, in normal light (a), IR (b)

Significant Abrasion to the Paint Layer The paint layer appears very worn and thinner than it was originally. Its severely abraded state prevents assessment as to the initial role played by the colour of the canvas in the composition. Albert Philippot thought that the canvas must have been left visible in many areas in the background and for beige tones in general, which only had to be covered with a very thin and almost transparent layer. In several areas, the painter must have used the natural tonality of the canvas.19 The modelling of the robe of the small figure at the edge of the water in the background is a good example of this (fig.  4.5). At present, the opaque tones are extremely fragmentary and have lost much of their density and their brightness due to abrasion. In

places, flakes of paint have fallen off, whereas in other areas the paint is worn on the high points of the threads, which renders the structure of the canvas highly visible. This generalized wear gives a sort of monochrome uniformity to the paint layer, although the colour contrasts must have been much more marked at the outset. In certain areas, however, it is possible to make out finely executed details, as in the stripes of the garment and chain mail sleeve of the man carrying a shield on his back in the left foreground (fig. 4.6). The radiographic image of the Brussels painting is very confused, due to the extremely degraded state of the paint layer. It differs radically from the radiography of the Wine of Saint Martin, carried out prior to restoration, in which the outlines of the compact forms are very

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Fig. 4.5 Adoration of the Magi (fig. 4.1). Detail of the background

apparent and give a glimpse of the quality of the paint under the darkened varnish layers.20 The radiography of the Brussels canvas, however, does reveal highly refined details in certain areas, today almost indistinguishable with the naked eye. These include the lower border of the red cloak of the king in the foreground where the X-radiograph reveals a refined flower decoration (fig.  4.7), the coats of arms on the blankets of the pack animals in the background of the composition, and the details of certain costumes such as that of the soldier in armour to the left, whose chain mail of the plastron is visible in the X-ray but not with the

naked eye (fig.  4.8). These observations confirm the degree to which the Brussels Adoration of the Magi is worn, leaving us a painting that is no more than a shadow of itself. Attribution The poor condition and the severe abrasion of the paint layer of the Brussels Tüchlein infinitely complicate the debate on attribution. Already attributed to Bruegel by Hymans in 1884,21 the painting is classed in the category of works by Bruegel ‘sans date, signées ou d’attribution incontestée’  (without date, signed or unchallenged

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

Fig. 4.6 Adoration of the Magi (fig. 4.1). Detail

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a

b Fig. 4.7 Adoration of the Magi (fig. 4.1). Detail of red cloak of the king, in normal light (a), X-radiograph (b)

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b

Fig. 4.8 Adoration of the Magi (fig. 4.1). Detail of the soldier in armour, in normal light (a), X-radiograph (b)

attribution) by René van Bastelaer and Georges Hulin de Loo in 1907.22 Since its acquisition, the painting has been considered as a work by Pieter Bruegel the Elder by Max J. Friedländer, Gustav Glück, Fritz Grossmann, Georges Marlier, Alexander Wied, Philippe and Françoise Roberts-Jones, and Klaus Ertz.23 From 1931, however, Édouard Michel expressed reservations, considering the condition too poor to decide on attribution, an opinion followed by Robert Genaille. Charles de Tolnay, on the other hand, rejected the attribution.24 In recent publications, prudence is the watchword. Roger Marijnissen talks of a follower of Bruegel who reveals a certain weakness in style and execution,25 whereas Manfred Sellink ranks the painting in the category of contested attributions, although he points out that ‘The unsigned and undated work is difficult to assess, the more so as it has suffered extensive damage and is generally in poor condition.’26 Finally, the painting is given to Bruegel himself by Sabine Pénot in Bruegel: The

Hand of the Master, the majestic catalogue of the exhibition that took place in Vienna in 2018–19.27 Although emphasizing the bad condition of the painting, Pénot bases her opinion on the conclusions of the 1969 restoration and draws attention to less worn parts that show, according to her, a high quality of execution. The author cites in particular the expressive faces of certain figures, the decoration of the rich garments and the treatment of animals. She gives as an example the head of the white horse (fig.  4.9a) and the braying donkey (fig. 4.4), captured in mid-movement. The comparison of the Brussels painting with the other Tüchlein by Bruegel, the Parable of the Blind and the Misanthrope of Naples, as well as the Wine of Saint Martin in Madrid, makes it clear that there is a considerable difference in condition but also in execution and in quality. In the Parable of the Blind, it is still possible to observe a richness in the brushwork on the painting’s surface and the construction of shadows through parallel hatching

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Fig. 4.9a Adoration of the Magi (fig. 4.1). Detail of the horse

lines.28 The Wine of Saint Martin, although in less good condition, reveals Bruegel’s vibrant and energetic touch in many places, as well as his fluid and spontaneous technique, as seen in the head of Saint Martin’s horse (fig. 4.9b) and in the sleeves of those avidly trying to get to the wine (fig.  4.10b).29 In contrast, in the Adoration of the Magi, the extreme wear of the paint layer does not leave a single trace of brushwork (fig.  4.10a). The painting appears ‘comme un dessin en camaïeu de beige, brun et noir, dominé par le ton de la toile’ (as a drawing in shades of beige, brown and black, dominated by the tone of the canvas).30 Édouard Michel and Robert Genaille were rightly cautious to emphasize the extent to which

the ruined state of the paint layer of the Brussels painting imposes a limit to the conclusions that can be drawn on its attribution. Given that the painterly handling is no longer visible, it seems futile to try to attribute the work to Bruegel or to any another painter. It is also not possible, on the basis of this criteria, to exclude the work from the repertoire of the artist. According to the present author, it is simply no longer possible to reply to the question ‘Who executed this work?’ or ‘Who held the brush?’. The art historian is thus faced with an eminently uncomfortable situation. From now on, the question of the invention of the composition must take precedence.

OPPOSITE

Fig. 4.9b Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Wine of Saint Martin, glue-size tempera on linen canvas, 148 × 270.5 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado (inv. P/8040). Detail of Saint Martin

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Fig. 4.10a Adoration of the Magi (fig. 4.1). Detail of the crowd on the right

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Fig. 4.10b Wine of Saint Martin (fig. 4.9b). Detail of the crowd

A Successful Image Taking account of the numerous examples of this composition, it is generally considered that the invention must go back to Pieter Bruegel himself. Recently, Larry Silver affirmed that ‘its ultimate originality as a Pieter Bruegel design is surely confirmed by a host of close copies after it by both Pieter the Younger and Jan Brueghel’.31 Indeed, Klaus Ertz lists no less than twenty-one versions of the composition.32 Only the Philadelphia version, signed ‘P. BRUEGHEL’ and carrying the contested date 1595, is given to Pieter Brueghel the Younger.33 To these twenty-one versions can be added three more: a copy on canvas in the Musée Max Claudet in Salins-les-Bains in the Jura,34 a partial copy in the Musée Benoît-De-Puydt in Bailleul in the

north of France,35 and finally a panel sold at Sotheby’s New York in 2009.36 It is not impossible that other versions will appear in sales or little studied private collections. Georges Marlier had already pointed out that the composition could have been known through a drawing dated 1595, previously in the Damiron collection in Lyon. Marlier published it with an attribution to Pieter Brueghel the Younger, which should be confirmed by a study using modern methods of investigation.37 Among the twenty-six copies still known today, six are painted in oil on panel and fifteen are painted on canvas. Of the fifteen canvases, it is known that eight are painted in oil, but there is no information in the literature on the others. The Prado example is distinguished from the others, if

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Fig. 4.11a Adoration of the Magi (fig. 4.1). Detail of the figure of Joseph

Fig. 4.11b Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Adoration of the Magi, 1564, oil on oak, 111 × 83.5 cm, London, National Gallery (inv. NG 3556). Detail of the figure of Joseph

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

Fig. 4.12a Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters, 1565, oil on oak, 119 × 162 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 19.164). Detail of the jug carrier

Matías Díaz Padrón is to be believed, by being painted in distemper on canvas, retouched in oils and varnished.38 However, additional research on the Prado version would be useful to confirm that the painting medium is indeed glue-size or whether it is in fact oil paint.39 It would seem that the Brussels painting is the only one whose glue-size medium is attested without ambiguity. The majority of copies have more or less the same format, give or take a few centimetres, and respect the composition quite faithfully. However, certain versions are somewhat different from the others as there are extra figures at right and left: these are the painting in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA),40 and the example in the former Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation in Houston.41 Unsurprisingly, several versions in this extended series are copies of copies, which can be distinguished by a simplification of forms and

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Fig. 4.12b Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Battle between Carnival and Lent, 1559, oil on oak, 118 × 164.5 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 1016). Detail of the jug carrier

the absence of certain details, among which the version sold in London in 200642 and the version in Graz. In the latter, the season is no longer winter as the trees have leaves and the frozen river is transformed into a field.43 The aim here is not to study the various copies of the Adoration of the Magi and there is no place to review them all. The important point is to understand that the large number of copies is witness to the success of the composition, all the more so when Jan Brueghel’s creative adaptations of the image are taken into account.44 Bruegel Inventor? From 1931, Édouard Michel, followed by Charles de Tolnay,45 considered that the composition of the Adoration of the Magi contained elements atypical of Bruegel and that therefore Bruegel could not be the inventor. Very recently, Lorne Campbell took up this hypothesis and suggested that the

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Brussels composition, which has nothing like the impact of that of the Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery, London, must have been invented by a clever imitator, a pasticheur of the artist, who combined with a certain pleasure different motifs borrowed from Bruegel.46 The eminent art historian rightly remarked that the figure of Joseph in the Brussels painting is a pale and static borrowing of the Joseph in the Adoration of the Magi in London (figs 4.11a–b); the figure seen from the back at the extreme right of the Brussels canvas is a paraphrase of Balthazar in the London work; the boy with the dog in the foreground in the Brussels Adoration of the Magi is almost identical to the one in the Conversion of Saul (Vienna), the dog turned in the other direction. This new approach is very useful and really interesting for guiding the debate, backed up by arguments, towards the territory of conception and invention rather than execution, which has become unexploitable due to the bad condition of the painting. In doing this, however, new questions arise. It is worth considering whether the reuse of motifs from one painting to another and their adaptation in new compositions was not simply part of Bruegel’s usual practice. Was this recycling simply a feature of his creative process, as in so many Flemish artists’ studios? The paintings securely attributed to Bruegel frequently bear witness to this practice: for example, the peasant sleeping with his legs apart is seen in the Land of Cockaigne (Munich) and the Harvesters (New York), and the two bagpipe players in the Wedding Dance (Detroit) are reused, this time in reverse, in the Peasant Wedding (Vienna). On a smaller scale, the jug carrier seen in frontal view in the Harvesters (New York; fig. 4.12a) is seen from the back in the Battle between Carnival and Lent (Vienna; fig. 4.12b). There are many more examples … From one work to another, in paintings, drawings and engravings, Bruegel depicts the same houses, the same churches and the same hollow trees, with several variants and from different angles. Recently, Tine Meganck pointed out the extent to which Bruegel habitually cited his own works.47 To systematically identify all

Bruegel’s auto-citations would need an in-depth study of this phenomenon in his secure works so as to distinguish them from the perhaps more systematic or awkward creative process of a pasticheur. This study remains to be done. The Place of the Work in Bruegel’s Production The Tüchlein technique was progressively abandoned over the course of the sixteenth century48 and Bruegel was one of the last painters to have practised it.49 His use of it in the Adoration of the Magi in Brussels raises the question of the early copies of works by Bruegel, carried out prior to the period of activity of his sons, by artists who must have had access to originals by the painter or studio material. If we reject the attribution to Bruegel himself, then we should consider the question of the studio of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, something that is rarely taken into account for the assessment of paintings whose authorship is under discussion. Today, the complexity of modes of production and extended forms of collaboration between artists within painting studios in the Southern Netherlands in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are largely recognized. The majority of masters can no longer be limited to their own autograph works. The awareness of collective production processes has broken the fetishist vision of the autograph work, directly inherited from the nineteenth century. Within this important movement, Bruegel remains an exception: his studio is still seen today as a sort of ‘no man’s land’ in Flemish painting of the sixteenth century.50 We still struggle to explain what happened between the death of the painter and the beginning of his sons’ careers.51 Perhaps more credence should be given to the anecdote related by Van Mander, according to which Bruegel enjoyed telling stories to scare the people in his entourage, above all his assistants (knechten). The study of Bruegel’s studio remains to be done and could help define the position of the Brussels Adoration of the Magi within the singular production of this astonishing master.

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N OT ES During the preparation of this essay, I benefited from the rich exchange of ideas and suggestions generously shared by Sabine van Sprang, Tine Meganck and Christina Currie. I thank them all warmly here. I am especially grateful to Christina Currie for her accurate translation into English.

15 Silva Maroto, Sellink and Mora 2011, p. 25.

36 New York, Sotheby’s, 4 June 2009, lot 39. Oil on panel, 111.8 × 159 cm.

16 Naples, Capodimonte, inv. 84.490. See Minet 2010, pp. 6–7, ill.

37 Marlier/Folie 1969, p. 321; Sutton 1990, p. 42, fig. 14-2. The location of the drawing is no longer known.

1 Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 3929. Distemper on linen canvas, 124 × 169 cm.

18 Philippot et al. 1969, p. 8; Silva Maroto, Sellink and Mora 2011, p. 25.

2 Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 3930 and inv. 3931.

20 Silva Maroto, Sellink and Mora 2011, pp. 26–7, ills 12–15.

3 Catalogue des tableaux anciens […] composant la collection de feu M. Edouard Fétis, Galerie Le Roy Frères, Brussels, 8–12 November 1909, p. 13, no. 10, ill.

21 See note 5.

4

Laes 1932, pp. 31–3.

5

Hymans 1884–5, vol. 1, p. 300, note 2.

6 ‘The word Tüchlein appears several times in Albrecht Dürer’s diary of his trip to the Netherlands and is generally used today to refer to finely woven, lightly sized linen that is thinly painted with glue colors’, Wolfthal 1989, p. XIII and note 8. 7 Philippot et al. 1969. All the technical observations summarized here are drawn from this essential article. 8 Madrid, Prado, inv. P/8040. Glue-size tempera on linen canvas, 148 × 270.5 cm. For a comprehensive study, see Silva Maroto, Sellink and Mora 2011. 9

Ibid., p. 25.

10 The restorers noticed a great number of nail holes, which prove that the canvas has been removed and reattached with nails several times. See Philippot et al. 1969, p. 6. 11 René Sneyers thought that it probably dates from the nineteenth century. See Sneyers 1969, p. 39. 12 For a detailed description of this innovative technique, see Philippot et al. 1969, pp. 19–27. More than a half century later, the extremely fragile Tüchlein still benefits from this supple lining, which has kept all its promises. See examination report (2018) by restorers Aline Genbrugge and Étienne Costa in the inventory file of the work at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. 13

Verougstraete 2015, pp. 73–81.

14

Philippot et al. 1969, p. 12, ill. 5.

17 Silva Maroto, Sellink and Mora 2011, p. 28.

19 Philippot et al. 1969, p. 10.

22 Van Bastelaer and Hulin de Loo 1907, pp. 297–8. 23 Friedländer 1937, p. 58, no. 2; Glück 1936a, p. 40; Grossmann 1955, p. 186, no. 4; Marlier/Folie 1969, pp. 315–25; Wied 1980, pp. 22–3; Roberts-Jones 1997, pp. 62–3; Ertz in Essen/Vienna/Antwerp 1997–8, p. 36. 24 Michel 1931, p. 37, no. 7; Genaille 1953, p. 94; Tolnay 1935, p. 94, no. 46. 25 Marijnissen 2009, p. 57. 26 Sellink 2007, p. 270. 27 Pénot in Vienna 2018, pp. 60–63. 28 Vienna 2018, p. 63, fig. 3. 29 Silva Maroto, Sellink and Mora 2011, pp. 23 and 24, ill.

38 Díaz Padrón 1980, pp. 293–7. The author attributes the version in the Prado to Bruegel the Elder. 39 I thank José Juan Pérez Preciado for sharing this information with me. 40 Antwerp, KMSKA, inv. 847. Oil on canvas, 140.2 × 171.5 cm. Marlier/Folie 1969, no. 1; Ertz 1998–2000, no. F 268. 41 London, Christie’s, 8 July 2008, lot 40. Oil on canvas, 130.2 × 176 cm. Vermet and Goldberg [2017], pp. 16–19; Marlier/Folie 1969, no. 16; Ertz 1998–2000, no. A 276. The painting, in a private collection, was investigated recently at KIK-IRPA. The results of the study will be published shortly by Christina Currie. 42 London, Sotheby’s, 6 June 2006, lot 124. Oil on canvas, 112.6 × 163.5 cm. Ertz 1998– 2000, no. A 277a. 43 Graz, Alte Galerie des Steiermärkischen Landesmuseum Joanneum. Oil on panel, 135 × 169 cm. Marlier/Folie 1969, no. 4, ill.; Ertz 1998–2000, no. A 274. 44

Silver 2011, pp. 424–5.

30 Notes by Albert Philippot in the restoration file at the KIK-IRPA.

45

See note 24.

46

Campbell 2014, vol. 1, pp. 179–80.

31 Silver 2011, p. 421.

47

Meganck 2018, p. 97, and ill. 16 and 17.

32 Ertz 1998–2000, pp. 317–20, cat. nos. 267–87.

48 The Tüchlein technique, which goes back to the thirteenth century, seems to have been abandoned in the Low Countries around 1570. See Verougstraete 2015, p. 73.

33 Ertz in Essen/Vienna/Antwerp 1997–8, p. 34, note 3. On this painting, see Sutton 1990, pp. 41–3. According to Christina Currie, the version in the Arbroath Public Library (Scotland) is of exceptionally high quality. I thank Christina Currie for sharing her opinion with me. 34 Salins-les-Bains, Musée Max Claudet. Oil on canvas, 122 × 168 cm, inv. D 1977.1.1 . 35 Bailleul, Musée Benoît-De-Puydt. Oil on panel, 65.5 × 168 cm, inv. 992.21.36 .

49 Pénot in Vienna 2018, p. 62, and Minet 2010, p. 3 and note 6. 50 The question of studio collaboration was suggested by Larry Silver in relation to The Attack (Stockholms Universitets Konstsamling, inv. 17): Silver 2011, p. 384. 51 See on this subject the monumental study, Currie and Allart 2012.

a

b Fig. 5.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Battle between Carnival and Lent, signed and dated ‘BRVEGEL 1559’, oil on panel, 118 × 164.2 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 1016) (a) Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Battle between Carnival and Lent, unsigned, oil on panel, 117 × 165 cm, sold at Sotheby’s, London, 4 July 2012, lot 11 (b)

5

The Final Piece of the Puzzle: Bruegel’s Use of Cartoons in the Battle between Carnival and Lent and Reflections on his Preparatory Work for Painting Christina Currie

A BSTRACT : New infrared imagery of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Battle between Carnival and Lent, compared with imagery from Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s copies, provides conclusive evidence that the great master himself transferred the composition to panel using pricked cartoons. These cartoons were later reused in his son’s workshop for the making of the copies, one of which – an atypical version sold by Sotheby’s, London, in 2012 – represents an earlier state of Bruegel the Elder’s design. The other sorts of likely preparatory material Bruegel made for the Battle between Carnival and Lent, now all lost, are also discussed. The second part of the article re-evaluates the main tendencies in Bruegel’s preparatory work for painting in the light of new research and imagery. Indeed, the variety of underdrawing media employed in his paintings is greater than previously thought and includes the possible use of oiled charcoal in the Detroit Wedding Dance.

—o— Introduction The Kunsthistorisches Museum’s great Bruegel exhibition in 2018–19 was a watershed moment for art historians. The museum not only carried out and published new technical research on their collection of Bruegels,1 but took the decision to make their scientific imagery accessible to all on the ‘Inside Bruegel’ website.2 In the case of the Battle between Carnival and Lent, this rich resource

provided the final piece of the puzzle for uncovering Bruegel’s working process in making this iconic masterpiece. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Battle between Carnival and Lent (fig. 5.1a),3 painted in 1559, depicts the ceremonies and customs associated with Mardi Gras or Shrove Tuesday. The jousting figures personifying Carnival and Lent in the foreground are surrounded by a variety of rituals and processions, contrasting feasting and merrymaking on the left with poverty, sickness and religious charity on the right. The painting can be read on various levels and was no doubt meant to stimulate conversation.4 Indeed, the iconography of the scene and its myriad topical objects continue to be debated by art and folklore historians to this day.5 This study will explore the new evidence for Bruegel the Elder’s use of cartoons and the evolution of his design during underdrawing and painting the Battle between Carnival and Lent. This can only be fully understood in the context of Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s copies, which illustrate Bruegel the Elder’s early ideas to a greater or lesser extent. The contribution will also take a fresh look at the wider context of Bruegel’s preparatory work for painting.

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The Original Version and Copies by Pieter Brueghel the Younger It is a strange fact that the study of Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s copies of his father’s paintings can sometimes provide more evidence for understanding Bruegel the Elder’s working practices than the examination of the originals themselves. Nowhere is this truer than with respect to the Battle between Carnival and Lent. Brueghel the Younger made at least five full-scale copies,6 of which one – the version in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels – turned out to be

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d

b

e

the cornerstone for understanding the son’s copying technique and business model, which in turn is the key to understanding Bruegel the Elder’s preparatory process.7 Infrared reflectography (IRR) of the Brussels copy reveals rows of dots alongside the underdrawing in several places, which are particularly clear in the figure of the guitar player (fig. 5.2e). This proves that a pricked cartoon was used for the transfer of the image to panel. The fact that any pouncing marks remain at all in this painting was probably a technical mistake on the part of the

c

Fig. 5.2 Guitar player Bruegel the Elder (a); Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Battle between Carnival and Lent, oil on panel, 121.4 × 171.9 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 12045) (b); Brueghel the Younger, Sotheby’s version, with sword indicated (c); Bruegel the Elder, IRR, with underdrawn outline of sword annotated in red (d); Brueghel the Younger, Brussels version, IRR, with pouncing dots annotated in red (e)

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artist. He may have carried out the pouncing when the oil-based priming was still tacky, sealing in the black pouncing pigment. No other painting by Brueghel the Younger has revealed such clear signs of pouncing, although pricked cartoons were certainly his preferred method of image transfer.8 He even shared his cartoons with his brother on occasion: Jan Brueghel’s full-scale version of the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist has unambiguous pouncing dots, visible in IRR.9 The five copies of the Battle between Carnival and Lent from Brueghel the Younger’s workshop comprise three extremely faithful versions and two atypical ones, the latter varying both in motif and colour. This division holds the key to their relationship with the original version. Three motifs elucidate the evidence most clearly: the guitar player, the child with a paper crown, and the woman pulling a cart. Guitar Player When the guitar player in the Brussels version is compared with the corresponding motif in the original version and one of the atypical copies, sold at Sotheby’s in 2012 (fig. 5.1b),10 there are several obvious differences but also some hidden links (fig. 5.2). The most significant clue is the musician’s sword, only visible in the Sotheby’s copy (fig. 5.2c).11 Nonetheless, in the Brussels version, tell-tale pouncing dots forming a sword shape can be made out in infrared while in the original version, an outline for the sword appears in the underdrawing. This suggests that the motif was present on a cartoon, but that Bruegel the Elder dropped it during painting and Brueghel the Younger dropped it during underdrawing in his Brussels version. The fact that Bruegel the Elder’s version reveals no pouncing dots for the sword is not surprising, given that such markings would normally have been wiped off before painting. In terms of colour, Brueghel the Younger’s Brussels version’s guitar player is close to the original version, but the Sotheby’s version diverges from it in places. Although the musician has a pink coat

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in the three paintings (albeit faded in the Brussels version), his cooking pot hat is brown in the original and Brussels versions but black in the Sotheby’s copy. Likewise, the jug hanging off his waistband is ceramic in the original and Brussels paintings, but metal in the Sotheby’s panel. Finally, his waistband is black in the Sotheby’s version and white in the other two. Child with a Paper Crown In the original version and the Brussels copy the child with a paper crown holds up a square shape with a charm on it, but in the Sotheby’s version he raises an empty hand (fig. 5.3).12 As with the guitar player, pouncing marks delineate the hand in the Brussels version and underdrawn outlines mark it in the original. Again, the evidence suggests that all three paintings were based on a common cartoon, which was more strictly followed in the Sotheby’s version. Woman Pulling a Cart The third telling motif is the woman pulling a cart (fig. 5.4). In the original and Brussels versions, her arm is bent, but in the Sotheby’s painting, it is outstretched. In the Brussels version pouncing dots denote an outstretched arm, but these are not joined up in the drawing and the final painted arm reflects Bruegel the Elder’s version. In the original version’s underdrawing, there is no indication of an outstretched arm, suggesting that in this case Bruegel the Elder changed his mind during drawing rather than during painting. These three motifs show that Brueghel the Younger, in the Brussels version, corrected his design at the underdrawing stage in line with his father’s painted prototype. The copy must therefore have been made in the presence of the original painting or an earlier faithful copy.13 The Sotheby’s version, on the other hand, would have been simply based on the cartoon. Superposing a tracing of the Brussels copy on the original version14 suggests that Bruegel must have made a set of cartoons rather than one large

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a

b

d

e

c

Fig. 5.3 Child with a paper crown Bruegel the Elder (a); Brueghel the Younger, Brussels version (b); Brueghel the Younger, Sotheby’s version (c); details from Bruegel the Elder, IRR (underdrawn hand annotated in red to the right) (d); details from Brueghel the Younger, Brussels version, IRR (pounced hand annotated in red to the right) (e)

sheet, as has been shown in previous case studies of other compositions. Matches were found for groups of figural motifs and buildings to left and right. A few motifs do not match, such as the figures playing dice in the lower left, so these must have featured on a model drawing rather than a cartoon. The set of cartoons and model drawing would have been created by Bruegel as part of his preparatory work for the original painting and passed down on his death to his elder son. When the tracing of the Brussels version was laid on the Sotheby’s copy, close matches were obtained, as with the other two extant copies, suggesting that they were all based on Bruegel the Elder’s cartoons or replicas of them.15 This evidence also gives us a glimpse into the workings of Brueghel the Younger’s studio. It seems likely that the Brussels version was painted by

Brueghel the Younger himself and the Sotheby’s version delegated to a trusted assistant or subcontractor.16 This painter would have based his design on a set of pricked cartoons and a model drawing, the latter either partially coloured or with colour notes, but without seeing Bruegel the Elder’s original version or a faithful copy. Stylistically, there does seem to be a difference between the Brussels version and the Sotheby’s copy. Although the latter is masterfully painted in the style of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and with a high level of finish,17 the modelling is less graphic than in the Brussels version. It was no doubt sold by Brueghel the Younger as part of his commercial production, given its high quality. None of the known copies is signed or dated, which may suggest that he did not intend for them to be differentiated.

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b

c

d

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Fig. 5.4 Woman pulling a cart Bruegel the Elder (a); Brueghel the Younger, Brussels version, normal light (b) and IRR, with pouncing dots of outstretched arm annotated in red (c); Brueghel the Younger, Sotheby’s version (d)

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The Sotheby’s Version: A Painted Reflection of an Earlier Stage of Development of Bruegel the Elder’s Composition Since the Sotheby’s version was based on preparatory cartoons (or copies thereof) inherited from Bruegel the Elder, the idea can be tested that this particular copy reproduces an earlier version of Bruegel the Elder’s design, using new evidence from the underdrawing of the original.18 It was also possible to consult IRR details of the Sotheby’s version.19 The IRR of Bruegel’s original version reveals that the design underwent considerable adjustment in the rooftops and centre background. In one building to the left, Bruegel has clearly struggled with the positioning of the rooftop and its stepped gables (fig. 5.5a-b). The roofline was originally drawn lower down and there were two dormer windows, dropped during painting. He seems to have proceeded through trial and error and the underdrawing is much sketchier here than in the figural scene. In the Sotheby’s copy, the dormer windows reappear, reflecting Bruegel’s earlier conception (fig. 5.5c). The Sotheby’s version also shows a decorative pinion atop a side roof in the house with the rag doll, again dropped by Bruegel the Elder during painting.20

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b

In the buildings in the centre background, the situation is more complicated. The merging of two houses into one at the back and the flattening of the roof in the Sotheby’s copy was not Bruegel’s original plan. In fact, the underdrawing in this copy has sketchy outlines recalling Bruegel the Elder’s stepped gables.21 It can therefore be deduced that for at least parts of the architecture the copyist did not have a precise, unambiguous model. He probably relied on a smaller model drawing of the whole composition, which lacked detail in the background. This would also explain the sketchy nature of the underdrawing in the rooftops in both original and copy, with respective changes of mind. Sabine Pénot and Elke Oberthaler have also pointed out that Bruegel raised the centre background roofs and horizon during the painting process – further evidence that he continued to modify and improve his design in this area.22 Small details abandoned by Bruegel the Elder during painting crop up in the Sotheby’s copy. For instance, on the wall of the inn to the upper left, there is an additional poster, a brace for the wooden post in the middle, and two decorative brick arches rather than one above the right-most windows (fig. 5.6). These all feature in Bruegel the Elder’s

c

Fig. 5.5 Background houses Bruegel the Elder (a); Bruegel the Elder, IRR, with underdrawn gabled windows annotated in red (b); Brueghel the Younger, Sotheby’s version (c)

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c Fig. 5.6 Tavern facade, left Bruegel the Elder (a); Bruegel the Elder, IRR, with underdrawn features dropped during painting annotated in red (b); Brueghel the Younger, Sotheby’s version (c)

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Fig. 5.7 Carnival Bruegel the Elder, with IRR insert showing underdrawing for broken egg, annotated in red (a); Brueghel the Younger, Sotheby’s version (b)

underdrawing, but not in his paint layer. Sticking out of the window of the inn to the lower left, there is a brazier mounted on a long rod. This brazier was shifted down during painting by Bruegel the Elder but appears in its initial higher position in the Sotheby’s copy.23 Finally, strewn on the ground in front of the figure of Carnival in the Sotheby’s copy is an additional broken egg, which is present in Bruegel the Elder’s underdrawing but not in his paint layer (fig. 5.7). The Sotheby’s copy also shows motifs that have been painted out in the original at a later date in a form of prudish censorship: the crippled man in the lower right, the dead woman in the cart, the children lying in a bed in front of the church, and the bloated corpse with its distended navel.24 These motifs are seen in most of Brueghel the Younger’s copies.

The Sotheby’s copy also betrays – by their very absence – motifs that Bruegel decided to add during execution but had not originally planned to include. The most significant of these are two kneeling figures praying against the church wall, leaving a peculiar void in the copy.25 Bruegel the Elder’s Familiarity with the Use of Cartoons Although no cartoons have come down to us from Brueghel the Elder’s studio, several preparatory cartoons for easel paintings by Italian masters do survive, including examples by Leonardo de Vinci and Raphael. Cartoons had been used in Italy since the fourteenth century for the transfer of designs for wall paintings, using the spolvero (pouncing) technique.26 Bruegel could have been aware of Italian painters’ use of cartoons through his trip to

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b

Fig. 5.8 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, cartoon for the Martydom of Saint Paul tapestry, c. 1535, 340 × 380 cm, Brussels City Museum. Whole image (a) and detail showing pricking (b)

Italy in the early 1550s. But it is more likely that he became familiar with the making of cartoons through Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502–1550), one of the foremost painters, designers and cartoon-makers of his day.27 Pieter Coecke, Bruegel the Elder’s father-in-law and putative teacher, ran a large workshop producing paintings as well as supplying designs for tapestries and stained-glass windows. He probably made pricked cartoons for reproducing his many nearidentical Last Supper, Virgin and Child and Adoration scenes.28 None of his cartoons for paintings has come down to us, but a rare, large-format cartoon for the tapestry of the Martyrdom of Saint Paul does survive (Brussels City Museum; fig. 5.8). This is made up of many small sheets of paper pasted together and dates from around 1535.29 It is pricked for transfer to another support, probably to generate a second cartoon. Coecke may also have helped Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen in the 1540s to make the cartoons (now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) for a tapestry series celebrating Charles V’s victory against the Ottomans. Bruegel may even have collaborated in their production.30 Through Coecke, Bruegel would have learned how to translate small-scale compositional designs, known as

‘petits patrons’, into full-scale cartoons. He must also have become acquainted with the way of replicating finished cartoons through pouncing. Bruegel the Elder’s familiarity in the use of cartoons through working with Pieter Coecke explains why he would have considered it normal practice to include them as part of his preparation for large-format paintings, particularly in the case of complex, interlocking figural scenes such as the Battle between Carnival and Lent. Bruegel’s Early Preparatory Work for the Battle between Carnival and Lent None of Bruegel’s preparatory material for largescale compositions has survived although it is possible that a drawing in the Fogg Art Museum is a copy, possibly by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, of a lost sketch by Bruegel the Elder for the Battle between Carnival and Lent (fig. 5.9a-b).31 On the verso of the sheet are some more roughly drawn carnival figures. This drawing shows remarkable similarities with motifs in Bruegel’s 1559 painting (fig. 5.9c), although they are not identical, which suggests that they are exploratory sketches. For example, in the drawing, the reveller with the cooking pot hat

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a

b

c Fig. 5.9 Manner of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Carnival Figures, pen and ink drawing, recto and verso, 129 × 175 mm, Cambridge, MA, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Bequest of Charles A. Loeser, 1932-370 (a and b); Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Battle between Carnival and Lent, detail (c)

has been transformed into the pink-robed guitar player in the painting, and his grill and knife are held by another figure to the right. In the drawing, the masked figure with a candle-tipped broom is unmasked in the painting and the broom is now carried by a small figure. Finally, the masked figure wearing a felt hat with a feather is given a wooden spoon in his hat in the painting and a heavy bag in place of a small jug.

Bruegel’s Possible Visual Influences for the Battle between Carnival and Lent Hieronymus Bosch’s early influence on Bruegel is well-established and it is possible that his designs were a source of inspiration for the Battle between Carnival and Lent. Bosch produced a model sheet of drawings of figures playing out individual carnivallike cameos known as Witches (Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques; fig. 5.10),

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Fig. 5.10 Hieronymus Bosch, model sheet with Witches, c. 1475–1525, pen and ink on paper, 204 × 264 mm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques (inv. 19721)

some of which are quite similar to motifs in Bruegel’s Battle between Carnival and Lent. It is not known whether Bruegel was aware of Bosch’s drawings, but it seems likely that he made similar sheets of preparatory studies, at least for his earlier paintings.32 Bruegel may also have known paintings by Bosch on the carnival theme, although none has come down to us. A narrow, horizontal composition depicting the Battle between Carnival and Lent, known in several versions in colour and in grisaille, has sometimes been cited as a lost Bosch invention, and could have been known to Bruegel.33 Bruegel was certainly aware of Hieronymus Cock’s etching after Frans Hogenberg’s Battle between Carnival and Lent, published in 1558 (fig. 5.11),

one year before his own version. Bruegel’s take on the theme, however, is more thought-provoking and does not show any actual fighting of the protagonists.34 None of the characters is copied directly after the print although Bruegel has adopted some of the same motifs, such as the personifications of Carnival and Lent on carts, and the Dance of the Cripples in the background. Cartoons and Model Drawings in Bruegel the Elder’s Wider Oeuvre The Brueg[H]el Phenomenon (published 2012) includes an assessment of Bruegel’s preparatory work for paintings based on detailed case studies of certain of his paintings and a survey of the available

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a

b

c

Fig. 5.11 Whole image and detail of the Dance of the Cripples in Hieronymus Cock after Frans Hogenberg, Battle between Carnival and Lent, 1558, etching, 333 × 520 mm, 1558, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1957 (a and b); detail showing the Dance of the Cripples in Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Battle between Carnival and Lent (c)

infrared and macro-photographic imagery of others.35 Since then, new infrared reflectography of many more of his paintings means this can be taken a step further. As concluded in The Brueg[H]el Phenomenon, there are two main tendencies that can be dis-

cerned in Bruegel’s underdrawings for his largeformat panel paintings, which point to distinct creative procedures. As all Bruegel’s preparatory drawings for his painted compositions are lost, the evidence for his preliminary studies has to be sought in the underdrawings and copies.36

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Paintings whose Compositions were Transferred to Panel via Cartoons For the early encyclopaedic works and some of the large 1560s scenes with multiple interlocking figures, Bruegel seems to have made cartoons. In the foreground and middle ground of the 1559 Battle between Carnival and Lent, Bruegel’s underdrawing style is devoid of artistic flourish and consists of wiry, freehand outlines in a dry drawing medium, probably black chalk, with little or no hatching, suggesting the use of cartoons. This arid style also characterizes the underdrawing in his Flemish Proverbs (Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie)37 of the same year. Rebecca Duckwitz was the first to prove that Bruegel made a preparatory cartoon or detailed preparatory drawing, with colour instructions, for this painting.38 She also demonstrated that Brueghel the Younger’s copies were based on an earlier design, and that he never saw his father’s original painting. Subsequent research on the copies showed that Brueghel the Younger most likely inherited a set of cartoons of specific motifs for this composition, which included figures and the adjacent architectural background.39 He would also have inherited a smaller model drawing showing the scene as a whole, which would have enabled him to position the cartoons correctly. The underdrawing for the Children’s Games (1560, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum),40 painted a year later, has a similar appearance and similarly functional approach to that in the Carnival and Lent and the Proverbs and the design was thus probably also transferred via pricked cartoons.41 But Bruegel did not only use cartoons to help him construct his design. Elke Oberthaler points out that the buildings in the background were drawn with the help of a vanishing point.42 A parsimonious underdrawing style in the Triumph of Death (c. 1562–3, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado)43 and the evidence from the sons’ copies show that Bruegel must have made a full-scale cartoon for this composition, spread over two sheets, and a model drawing.44 In this case, some

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of the underdrawing was executed in a medium with the appearance of black chalk but parts were carried out in thin reddish-brown paint. In the Census at Bethlehem (156[–], Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium),45 the IRR evidence from the original and comparisons with the copies suggests that Bruegel made a set of smaller cartoons of details and a model drawing, both inherited by the elder son.46 Similarly, for the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist (1566, Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum),47 it seems Bruegel used pricked preparatory cartoons for the main figure motifs.48 The underdrawing in Bruegel’s Massacre of the Innocents (c. 1565–7, Windsor Castle, Royal Collection Trust)49 is not visible in infrared reflectography. Nonetheless, the complexity of the composition, which is similar to the Census at Bethlehem, makes the use of cartoons likely.50 Two paintings for which no copies are known, the Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562)51 and the Dulle Griet (1563, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh), have underdrawings characterized by simple outlining of the main motifs, with no reworking or hesitation (fig. 5.12).52 Preparatory cartoons in these cases are therefore possible, but impossible to prove. Another painting that was not copied, Christ carrying the Cross (1564, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum),53 may have started out with the transfer of cartoons of figure groupings, given the unwavering manner in which many of the figures and the distant townscape are outlined in the underdrawing; however, there has been significant reworking of many of the figures and animals during the underdrawing itself, as well as during painting, as described by Oberthaler.54 Paintings whose Designs Continued to be Developed during Underdrawing Another tendency involves a sketchier and searching underdrawing style, with Bruegel working by trial and error on the panels themselves. Even in these paintings, made without cartoons, the evidence suggests that he first made a model drawing.

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Fig. 5.12 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562, oil on panel, 117 × 162 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 584); IRR detail

An early example of this more animated underdrawing style is the large Tower of Babel (1563, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum),55 discussed by Oberthaler, which shows broad, loose drawing lines and significant alterations during drawing.56 The London Adoration of the Magi (1564, London, National Gallery),57 as described by Lorne Campbell, is a similar case. Campbell concludes that Bruegel would have made a preparatory design on paper, but that he rapidly adjusted details during drawing and painting.58 The five paintings of the Seasons (1565),59 three of which have been analysed by Oberthaler and Pénot60 – Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum: Gloomy Day (early spring), Return of the Herd (autumn), Hunters in the Snow (winter) – and one by Sophie Scully61 – New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art: Harvesters (late summer) – are also drawn in a loose, free

manner, with modifications during drawing and painting, but are still probably largely based on a set of model drawings.62 In the case of the Metropolitan’s Harvesters, Bruegel shifted a labourer during the drawing stage, resulting in two underdrawn versions of the same figure. The Conversion of Saul (1567, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum)63 is another example of this looser way of drawing, with rapid, but minor, repositioning of motifs in the foreground and middle ground.64 The Wedding Dance (1566, Detroit Institute of Arts)65 is the most extreme example of Bruegel’s sketchier underdrawing style. Here, there are multiple adjustments during drawing and extensive hatching for tone. Bruegel seems to have used charcoal or a particularly soft piece of black chalk, given the appearance of the flowing, very black lines, which vary widely in thickness and intensity

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a Fig. 5.13 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Wedding Dance, 1566, oil on panel, 119 × 158 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts (inv. 30.374). Details: IRR (a), IRR (b) and visible light (c), pp. 96 and 97

(fig. 5.13). In fact, it is possible he used oiled charcoal, a medium that has not yet been mentioned in the context of underdrawing, but one that has been cited as the medium in drawings by Andrea del Verrocchio, Guercino, Guido Reni and Tintoretto.66 Charcoal sticks would have been dipped in olive or linseed oil overnight prior to use. This would explain why Bruegel’s rapidly applied, expressive drawing lines have not smudged in any way during painting.67 There are also traces of an earlier, more restrained preliminary drawing above the bagpipe player at the far right (figs 5.13b–c), which suggest that Bruegel first indicated the placement of his forms before going ahead with the bolder and more creative underdrawing phase. In this particular case, he may have worked up most of the composition on the panel itself, given that he had produced similar Wedding Dance designs

before and would have been familiar with the motifs. In his lost Wedding Dance in the Open Air, for example, known through copies by Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder, there are three dancing couples in the foreground identical to those in the Detroit painting.68 The ‘Peasant Wedding’ and the ‘Peasant Dance’ Bruegel’s large-format Peasant Wedding (c. 1567, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum)69 and Peasant Dance (c. 1568, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum),70 both exemplars of his late, more expansive compositional type, with large-scale figures dominating the foreground and middle ground, fall outside the two tendencies described so far. In these paintings, the underdrawings seem to have been applied freehand and by eye after a model drawing, but with no further working-out on the panels.

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Fig. 5.14a Peasant Wedding. Detail from Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peasant Wedding, c. 1567, oil on panel, 113.1 × 164.1 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 1027) (a); detail from Bruegel the Elder, IRR (b); detail from Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Peasant Wedding, oil on panel, 71.8 × 104.7 cm, Sotheby’s, London, 5 July 2017 (c)

Both are discussed by Pénot and Oberthaler in the Bruegel: The Hand of the Master exhibition catalogue.71 The underdrawing in the Peasant Wedding is fluid and bold, and the lines more varied in width and blackness than those in paintings based on cartoons. The underdrawing appears to have been applied with a brush, although the brush seems to have been nearly dry in places. Loose hatching strokes indicate tone in places. At the painting stage, there are just a few slight adjustments, such as the shortening of the laces on the red felt cap of one of the two men carrying the large door tray. Brueghel the Younger’s copies of the Peasant Wedding72 seem to have been based on his father’s lost model drawing rather than the final painting. Some of them show the long laces on the red felt cap (fig. 5.14a), and all of them lack a round tray held aloft in the upper left (fig. 5.14b). Just below this, the copies all show the back of a man’s head in place of a woman’s wimple (fig. 5.14b). The fact that some of the colours in the copies correspond with those in the original suggest that Bruegel’s model drawing must have been partially coloured or annotated, as suggested by Duckwitz for his Flemish Proverbs. Those that do not correspond include the amorous couple in the hayloft, which has been painted in brighter hues in the copies.73

The thematically and compositionally related Peasant Dance has a similarly confident yet functional underdrawing with no hatching strokes or changes of mind and only minor adjustments during painting.74 It too appears to have been carried out in a liquid medium. For these two compositions, which are intrinsically less complicated than the works previously discussed and carried out at the height of Bruegel’s career, transferring designs to panel freehand after a model drawing would have posed no difficulty. Smaller-Format Works Bruegel’s smaller-format paintings do not form a coherent group in terms of their underdrawings. Maximiliaan Martens points out that the underdrawing in the early Twelve Proverbs (1558, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh)75 is problematic, given that it plays a role in the final effect and is difficult to distinguish from the paint strokes.76 The Suicide of Saul (1562, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum),77 discussed by Pénot and Oberthaler, has a delicate underdrawing with sparse lines, but there is also a sketchy figure dropped during painting in the lower left.78 The painting was probably based on a preliminary sketch and the design would not seem to be cartoon-transferred.

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b

Fig. 5.14b Peasant Wedding. Bruegel the Elder (a); Brueghel the Younger, Sotheby’s 2017 version (b)

Babette Hartwieg and Bertram Lorenz interpret the fine underdrawing in Bruegel’s Two Monkeys (1562, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie),79 as graphite, based on its appearance under the microscope, which would represent an extremely early example of the use of this medium.80 The Winterthur Adoration of the Magi (1563, Winterthur, Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’)81 has a partial outline underdrawing that is difficult to visualize in infrared, but thin, wiry outlines can be made out in places with the naked eye.82 It must have been preceded by a very detailed model drawing, which later served Brueghel the Younger to make his copies.83 On the other hand, in the slightly later Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Bird Trap (1565, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium),84 there is a distinctly sketchy underdrawing and several changes of mind, ruling out the possibility of a cartoon and suggesting that it was drawn by eye, probably after a rough sketch. Bruegel’s three small grisaille paintings – Death of the Virgin (c. 1562–5, Banbury, National Trust, Upton House, The Bearsted Collection),85 Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery (1565, London, The Courtauld Gallery)86 and Three Soldiers (1568, New York, The Frick Collection)87 – discussed in

the catalogue for the Courtauld exhibition Bruegel in Black and White (2016),88 all reveal sparse, freehand black chalk underdrawings with slight adjustments during painting, suggesting that they were based on prior model drawings. Unusually, Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery also reveals traces of an earlier, looser red chalk underdrawing. The Birdnester (1568, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum),89 discussed by Pénot and Oberthaler, has a delicate, wiry outline underdrawing, without changes, and is also probably based on a model drawing.90 The same applies to the late Magpie on the Gallows (1568, Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt),91 whose underdrawing Heidrun Ludwig describes as a ‘very fine and detailed preparatory drawing giving all the details especially of the landscape’.92 Conclusion The new infrared documentation of the Battle between Carnival and Lent (1559) means that one of the last conundrums concerning Bruegel’s preparatory process for this great painting can be solved. Seemingly effortless, the figural part of the composition was in fact intricately worked out beforehand and transferred to panel via 1:1 pricked cartoons, a

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way of working probably learned from his putative teacher, Pieter Coecke van Aelst. Surviving pouncing in Brueghel the Younger’s Brussels copy no doubt resulted from the use of these very same cartoons or copies of them. Dropped motifs in the underdrawing of the original version reappearing in an atypical version of the composition from Brueghel the Younger’s workshop, the ‘Sotheby’s version’, give that painting the peculiar honour of representing Bruegel the Elder’s initial design to a large extent. The Sotheby’s version also provides evidence for the existence of a model drawing by Bruegel the Elder, which would have facilitated the placement of the cartoons. Although no preparatory sketches for the painting have come down to us, a sheet of sketches of carnival figures in the Fogg Art Museum may be a copy after a lost sheet by Bruegel the Elder, made in preparation for the composition, similar to extant sheets of figure sketches by Bosch. The brief survey of Bruegel’s underdrawings in his wider oeuvre reveals an artist who varied his

technique, drawing medium and degree of preparatory work according to the challenges of each particular composition. Although the early largeformat paintings and several others from the 1560s appear to have been made with the help of cartoons and a model drawing, many of his 1560s works seem to have relied on a model drawing only. In most cases, the compositions continued to be adapted and perfected during drawing and painting. The most extreme case is the Detroit Wedding Dance, which may have been entirely worked out on the panel itself, given the degree of sketchiness and the number of small changes. Bruegel’s drawing mediums vary from black chalk for cartoontransferred motifs in large, multi-figured compositions and smaller works, to oiled charcoal and liquid media for broader compositions with largerscaled figures. Bruegel’s lost model drawings must have varied in the level of detail and would sometimes have been partially coloured or with colour indications. Like Bosch, Bruegel is also likely to have made many sketches of individual motifs in the early stages, none of which has survived.

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N OT ES For supplying images of the versions of Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Battle between Carnival and Lent and Peasant Wedding Feast sold at Sotheby’s, I thank Grace Collier at Sotheby’s, London, and for sharing with me their infrared reflectography of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Fall of the Rebel Angels and the Wedding Dance, I am grateful to Véronique Bücken and Ellen Hanspach-Bernal respectively. 1

Vienna 2018.

2 ‘Inside Bruegel’ website, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna . The reader is referred to this website for the illustration of some of the points made in this study that could not be illustrated for reasons of space. 3 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Battle between Carnival and Lent, oil on panel, 118 × 164.2 cm, signed and dated on a stone in the lower left ‘BRVEGEL [V and E linked] 1559’, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1016. 4 On this, see Conversation Pieces: The World of Bruegel, produced to accompany the 2018 Bruegel exhibition (Benali et al. 2018). 5 For the iconography in Battle between Carnival and Lent, see ibid. See also Pénot and Oberthaler’s entry for cat. 48 in Vienna 2018, pp. 122–8. 6 These copies, none of which is signed or dated, are discussed and illustrated in Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, case study 1, pp. 344–79. Brueghel the Younger’s versions are: 1. Brussels version (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 12045, oil on panel, 121.4 × 171.9 cm); 2. Sotheby’s version (sold at Sotheby’s, London, 4 July 2012, lot 11, oil on panel, 117 × 165 cm; referred to in Currie and Allart 2012 as the ‘Christie’s New York version’); 3. Christie’s version (sold at Christie’s, London, 6 December 2011, lot 17, oil on canvas, 119.5 × 169 cm); 4. Portland version (sold at Christie’s, London, 7 December 2010, lot 15, oil on panel, 118.1 × 166.3 cm, from the former Portland collection); 5. Krakow version (formerly in the Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie, Krakow, oil on panel, 116 × 162 cm, destroyed in the Second World War). 7 The Brussels version, purchased by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium at auction in June 1999, was studied as part of Christina Currie’s doctoral thesis research (Currie 2003). On this painting, see Currie and Ghys 2006 and Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 344–79. 8 For an overview of Brueghel the Younger’s copying technique, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, pp. 746–52, and for a shorter summary, see Currie and Allart 2014.

9 On Jan Brueghel’s Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, see Currie and Allart 2017. On the Bruegel sons’ sharing of a cartoon for their respective versions of the Wedding Dance in the Open Air, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 602–9.

photographs published by Sotheby’s on their website reveal that the painting is of the highest quality, even if it is not by Brueghel the Younger’s own hand; see .

10 Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Battle between Carnival and Lent, unsigned, oil on panel, 117 × 165 cm, sold at Sotheby’s, London, 4 July 2012, lot 11 (Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 365–79, where it is referred to as the ‘Christie’s New York version’; Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, pp. 245–7 and fig. 183). For normal light and IRR details of this version, see .

18

11 Fig. 5.2 has been annotated for reasons of clarity. For the original, unannotated image of the original, see ; for the Brussels copy, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 350–51, fig. 181; and for the whole Brussels painting in IRR (zoomable), see ibid., web 132. 12 The child probably represents the ‘king’ of the Epiphany feast, who was crowned with a paper crown to mark his winning of the charm in his slice of the Epiphany cake. The charm, which shows a white figure with a red halo, may represent the Infant Jesus. 13 The early patron and provenance of the original version is unknown. Karel van Mander, in his Schilder-boeck (1604), mentions a work in which ‘Lent fights against Shrove Tuesday’, but without saying where he saw it (Miedema 1994–9, vol. 1, pp. 192–3). Alice Hoppe-Harnoncourt refers to a 1613 satirical poem by Abraham of Drohna in which he describes the Battle between Carnival and Lent as being in Prague (Hoppe-Harnoncourt 2018, p. 336 and notes 36 and 43). For discussion as to the possible early whereabouts of Bruegel’s original painting, see also Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 361–4. 14 The overlay was carried out digitally by Bernard Petit (IRPA). The unframed image of the original painting was taken from the ‘Inside Bruegel’ website and scaled up according to the dimensions of the panel. 15 For the overlays of the tracing of the Brussels version on the Portland version, see Currie and Allart 2012, web 134. 16 This opinion also applies to the other atypical version from the former Portland collection (see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 374–9). 17 When the Sotheby’s painting was considered for The Brueg[H]el Phenomenon (Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 365–79), the only source was an old photograph of the painting taken prior to restoration. The new

See .

19 Infrared reflectography details from the Sotheby’s version can be consulted on . 20 For these IRR images, see ibid. and . 21 . 22 See Pénot and Oberthaler’s entry for cat. 48 in Vienna 2018, pp. 122–8. 23

See .

24 These overpainted motifs are discussed and illustrated in Pénot and Oberthaler’s entry for cat. 48 in Vienna 2018, pp. 143–5. 25 See Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, p. 375, fig. 199. 26 On cartoons and the pouncing technique in Renaissance Italy, see Bambach 1999. For a brief survey, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, pp. 934–47. 27 On Coecke as a maker of cartoons and tapestry designer, see New York 2002 and New York 2014. 28 On Coecke’s use of cartoons for easel painting, see Ainsworth 2014; Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, pp. 887–8; and Jansen 2003. 29 On the Martyrdom of Saint Paul cartoon, see Paredes 2016 and Ainsworth 2014, p. 33. 30

Sellink 2018a, pp. 302–6.

31 In Currie and Allart 2012 it is suggested that this drawing might be a copy by Pieter Brueghel the Younger after his father based on stylistic similarities with another drawing attributed to Brueghel the Younger and the latter’s underdrawings (Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, pp. 799–801 and figs 557–9). On the Carnival Figures drawing, see Swarzenski 1951. 32 For a catalogue raisonné of Bosch’s drawings, and earlier references, see Ilsink et al. 2016. For high-resolution images of the ‘model sheet with Witches’, see . 33 According to J. Bogers, one of these versions, a grisaille painting in the Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch (oil on panel, 59 × 118.5 cm), was considered by

102 Max Friedländer to be possibly an original version by Bosch. Gert Unverfehrt and J. Bogers doubt that the composition was a Bosch creation and Bogers instead places its invention in Antwerp around 1560 (see Bogers 2010 for discussion and references). Larry Silver gives the Noordbrabants Museum version to a follower of Bosch, after a lost original, and dates it to 1540 (Silver 2011, p. 214, fig. 184). 34 For a comparison between Hogenberg’s and Bruegel’s treatment of the theme, see Koerner 2016, pp. 315–16. 35 See ‘Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Painting Technique: A Reassessment’, in Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 258–80, and ‘Understanding the Father through the Son: Lost Secrets of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Working Practice’, ibid., vol. 3, pp. 878–98. 36 On Bruegel’s lost drawings for paintings, see Royalton-Kisch 2001. 37 Flemish Proverbs, oil on panel, 117.2 × 163.8 cm, signed and dated 1559, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. 1720. 38

Duckwitz 2001.

39 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, pp. 816–19. 40 Children’s Games, oil on panel, 116.4 × 160.3 cm, signed and dated 1560, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1017. 41 See for this underdrawing. 42 Oberthaler 2018, p. 379. 43 The Triumph of Death, oil on oak panel, 116.1 × 162 cm, unsigned, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. P001393. 44 On the Triumph of Death, see Currie and Allart, Chapter 6 in the present volume. 45 Census at Bethlehem, oil on oak panel, 115.3 × 164.4 cm, signed and dated 156[–], Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 3637. 46 On the Census at Bethlehem, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 438–9, and vol. 3, pp. 882–3. 47 The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, oil on panel, 95.2 × 161.7 cm, signed and dated 1566, Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum, inv. 51.2829. 48 On the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 477–9, and vol. 3, pp. 882–3; and Currie and Allart 2017, figs 9–10, fig. 12 and figs 14–15. 49 Massacre of the Innocents, oil on panel, 109.2 × 158.1 cm, signature partially missing, date missing, Windsor Castle, Royal Collection Trust, inv. RCIN 405787. 50 On the original version in the Royal Collection Trust and the copy in the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania, see

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Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, pp. 820–21; Currie, Allart and Saverwyns 2012. In this case, the outlines of the original match those of the Sibiu copy in parts, but not as a whole, making a set of inherited cartoons of groups of motifs possible; this was also the case when the tracing of the Sibiu copy was overlaid on a scaled reproduction of Brueghel the Younger’s version in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 361). However, since the Sibiu copy precisely mimics Bruegel the Elder’s original version in colour and brushwork, it is clear that the son saw the original himself and could therefore also have traced it and generated his own set of cartoons. 51 Fall of the Rebel Angels, oil on panel, 117 × 162 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 584. I thank Véronique Bücken for providing a highquality infrared reflectography image of this painting. 52 See Currie, Saverwyns et al., Chapter 2 in the present volume.. 53 Christ carrying the Cross, oil on panel, 124.2 × 170.7, signed and dated 1564, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1017. 54

Oberthaler 2018, pp. 381–2.

55 Tower of Babel, oil on panel, 114.3 × 155.1, signed and dated 1563, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1026. 56

Oberthaler 2018, pp. 380–1.

57 Adoration of the Magi, oil on panel, 110 × 83.5 cm, signed and dated 1564, London, National Gallery, inv. NG 3556. 58 Campbell 2014, p. 182: ‘There are no major alterations, which make it seem that the composition must have been worked out in advance on paper and that the underdrawing, done very quickly and certainly by Bruegel himself, must follow that preliminary design’; Campbell 2002. 59 The Gloomy Day, oil on panel, 117.6 × 162.2, signed and dated 1565, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1837; The Return of the Herd, oil on panel, 117 × 159.7 cm, signed and dated 1564, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1018; Hunters in the Snow, oil on panel, 116.3 × 162.5 cm, signed and dated 1565, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1838; Harvesters, oil on panel, 119 × 162 cm, signed and dated 1565, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 19.164. 60 See Oberthaler 2018, pp. 388–91, and Oberthaler and Pénot’s entries for cats 72–5 in Vienna 2018, pp. 214–41. Although they consider most of the underdrawing to be drawn freely, Oberthaler and Pénot point out that certain foreground motifs in Gloomy Day may be based on a precisely prepared drawn model, given the controlled appearance of the underdrawing (pp. 230–31).

61 For Sophie Scully’s analysis and the infrared reflectogram, see . 62 For Haymaking (June–July), see IR details in Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 266 and 268, figs 139b and 139d. 63 Conversion of Saul, oil on panel, 108 × 156.3 cm, signed and dated 1567, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 3690. 64 Pénot and Oberthaler’s entry for cat. 77 in Vienna 2018, pp. 246–51; and Oberthaler 2018, pp. 391–2. See also Currie and Allart 2019a, pp. 126–7. 65 The Wedding Dance, oil on panel, 119 × 158 cm, signed and dated 1566, Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. 30.374. This painting is discussed by Yao-Fen You, Ellen HanspachBernal and Christina Bisulca in the present volume (Chapter 9). 66 Joseph Meder first suggested that oiled charcoal was used occasionally by Italian artists from about 1550 (Meder 1978, p. 83). He adds that black chalk does not produce the same effect, as it is too dense and contains oily matter so cannot absorb oil. He cites references to the use of oiled charcoal by Samuel van Hoogstraeten (Van Hoogstraeten 1678 [edn 1969], p. 32), and Giovanni Battista Volpato (1670 or later, in Merrifield 1849 [edn 1967], p. 753). In an article on dry drawing media, Jenny Bescoby, Judith Rayner and Satoko Tanimoto conclude, based on examination, that the darker lines in a Verrocchio drawing in the British Museum collection are most likely to be oiled charcoal, and that they compare well in appearance under magnification to a group of later drawings by Guercino and Guido Reni in the same collection catalogued as oiled charcoal (Bescoby et al. 2010, p. 45). In a test sample and in one of the Guercino drawings, infrared microscopy showed evidence for the presence of oil (ibid.). 67 Tests by the author using charcoal sticks dipped in olive oil overnight showed that this is indeed the case: this material, used on an oil sketching pad, produces intensely black, flowing lines that do not smudge when touched. For a demonstration of how to make oiled charcoal, see Winsor & Newton Masterclass video . 68 On the original version of the Wedding Dance in the Open Air as a lost work by Bruegel the Elder, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 603–9. 69 Peasant Wedding, oil on panel, 113.1 × 164.1 cm, unsigned, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1027. 70 Peasant Dance, oil on panel, 113.5 × 164 cm, signed, date missing, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1059. 71 Vienna 2018, cat. 80, pp. 258–65, and Oberthaler 2018, pp. 393.

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72 The copies exist in two formats, one corresponding to the original format, the other substantially smaller; and the backgrounds comprise either a barn, as in the original, or an outdoor setting. 73 Vienna 2018, cat. 80, pp. 261 and 263. Later retouching in the original has further reduced its visibility in the original. 74 Ibid., cat. 81, pp. 266–71; Oberthaler 2018, pp. 394–5. 75 Twelve Proverbs, twelve roundels, each with a diameter of around 21 cm, one signed and dated 1558, mounted in a panel measuring 74.5 × 98.4 cm, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, inv. 339. 76 Martens 2012a, pp. 48, 53–4, 57. 77 Suicide of Saul, oil on panel, 33.7 × 55.7 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1011. 78 Vienna 2018, cat. 57, pp. 148–54; Oberthaler 2018, pp. 379–80. 79 Two Monkeys, oil on panel, 19.8 × 23.3 cm, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. 2077. 80 This information was given on the explanatory panels in the didactic section of the Bruegel exhibition, and is now published in Hartwieg, Lorenz and Kemperdick 2019,

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p. 156. Graphite was used by Brueghel the Younger (Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, Appendix IV, pp. 980–1001).

dated 1565, London, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, inv. P1978. PG 48.

81 Adoration of the Magi, oil on panel, 35 × 55.2 cm, signed and dated 1563, Winterthur, Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, inv. 4.

87 Three Soldiers, oil on panel, 20.3 × 27.8 cm, signed and dated 1568, New York, The Frick Collection, inv. 65.1.163.

82 See Currie and Allart 2019b; Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, p. 231. 83 The copies by Brueghel the Younger show some differences in colour and motif and his versions are slightly larger in scale than the original. This suggests that he inherited a detailed model drawing with certain colour indications, but did not see the original painting and did not inherit a 1:1 cartoon (see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 224–42; vol. 2, pp. 536–41). 84 Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Bird Trap, oil on panel, 37 × 55.5 cm, signed and dated 1565, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 8724 (see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 184–223). 85 Death of the Virgin, oil on panel, 36.9 × 55.5 cm, signed, no date visible, Banbury, National Trust, Upon House, The Bearsted Collection, inv. 446749. 86 Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery, oil on panel, 24.1 × 34.4 cm, signed and

88 On the underdrawings in the grisaille paintings, see catalogue entries on the Death of the Virgin (Dominique Allart, Ruth Bubb and Christina Currie); Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery (Aviva Burnstock and Karen Serres) and the Three Soldiers (Karen Serres) in London 2016. 89 Birdnester, oil on panel, 59.5 × 68.3 cm, signed and dated 1568, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1020. 90 Vienna 2018, cat. 84, pp. 278–81; Oberthaler 2018, pp. 395–6. 91 Magpie on the Gallows, oil on panel, 46 × 51 cm, signed and dated 1568, Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, inv. GK 165. 92 I thank Heidrun Ludwig for this observation (personal communication, 9 August 2012). See also Ludwig 2012, pp. 56–7, and fig. 6, which is an IRR detail revealing sparse underdrawing for the horizon to the left.

Fig. 6.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, c. 1562–3, oil on oak panel, 116.1 × 162 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado (inv. P001393)

Fig. 6.2 Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The Triumph of Death, 1608, oil on panel, 123.3 × 166.5 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel (inv. G1995.29)

6

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Triumph of Death and Versions by his Sons: The Creative Process and the Art of Copying Christina Currie and Dominique Allart

A BSTRACT : The Triumph of Death is one of only two known cases of Bruegel’s sons copying the same largeformat composition after their father. In this case, examination reveals that the copyists were not able to study the original painting de visu. New high-resolution scientific imagery of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s original version in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s version in the Kunstmuseum Basel, and Jan Brueghel the Elder’s version in the Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz, elucidates not only the modus operandi of the copyists, but also the hidden working processes of the creator, Bruegel the Elder. The study also highlights the respective underdrawing and painting styles of father and sons, as well as Jan Brueghel’s ingenious updating of the composition.

—o— Introduction Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Triumph of Death (Museo Nacional del Prado, fig. 6.1)1 is one of only two large-format compositions that was tackled by both Pieter Brueghel the Younger and his younger brother Jan Brueghel the Elder. Brueghel the Younger’s version of the Triumph of Death in the Kunstmuseum Basel (fig. 6.2)2 and Jan Brueghel’s version in the Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz (fig. 6.3)3 were documented and studied by the KIK-IRPA in 2013. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s original version was documented with scientific imagery by the Prado in 2017–18 during its recent

conservation treatment. Seen together, this technical material reveals the nature of the relationship between the prototype and the sons’ copies, bringing to light both Bruegel the Elder’s creative process in the making of the original and the modus operandi in the making of the copies. The only other large-format composition treated by both Bruegel sons is the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, which was discussed in a recent article by the present authors.4 In that case, it was shown that the sons must have examined Bruegel’s original version with their own eyes and reproduced it directly. Jan Brueghel, even more than Pieter the Younger, went to great lengths to imitate every colour and nuance of brushwork of the original. Why they did not follow the same protocol for their respective copies of the Triumph of Death will be explored in this contribution. The Original Version and the Copies: Technical Aspects Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s prototype is not signed or dated, which is unusual in Bruegel’s work. According to José de la Fuente Martínez, who carried out the restoration of the panel support, the lowermost plank, where we would expect to find the signature, is the widest of the four and does not appear to have been cut down.5 The general consensus is that

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Fig. 6.3 Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, signed and dated 1597, oil on canvas transferred from panel, 119.3 × 164.5 cm, Graz, Landesmuseum Joanneum, Alte Galerie (inv. 58)

the painting dates from 1562–3, the years in which Bruegel executed the Fall of the Rebel Angels (signed and dated 1562) and the Dulle Griet (signed and dated 1563). The panel support is oak panel (116.1 × 162 cm), made up of four planks bridged by wooden dowels, four to a join.6 Peter Klein analysed the panel by dendrochronology,7 and his results were revised by Maite Jover de Celis.8 These were then compared with dendrochronological data on other paintings by Bruegel provided by Pascale Fraiture.9 The four planks are top-quality radial cuts, with the exception of the top board, which is semi-radial. All the planks are from different trees from the surroundings of the Eastern Baltic area. The most recent tree-ring is a heartwood ring of Baltic origin from 1540, which gives

a terminus post quem for felling of 1546. No affiliation was noted between the planks making up the Triumph of Death and those in other works by Bruegel or any other Flemish painting in the KIKIRPA database. The unpainted edges to left and right and remains of rebates on the reverse indicate that the painting was originally fitted with channel edge supports, which would have been removed just before framing.10 Infrared reflectography reveals an outline underdrawing of the main figures and landscape background, which will be discussed in detail below. The recent cleaning unveiled a wide range of vivid colours, sharply contrasting with the violence of the scene. The effect recalls the Massacre of the Innocents in the Royal Collection Trust,

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S TRIUMPH OF DEATH AND VERSIONS BY HIS SONS

where at first glance the brightly coloured and patterned costumes seduce the viewer and draw him in, only then to confront him with the true horror of the spectacle. Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Triumph of Death in the Kunstmuseum Basel is not signed but there is a date – 1608 – painted on several of the funerary banners, which is probably the date of execution (fig. 6.4).11 Despite the lack of a signature, the Basel painting is one of the most stylistically accomplished works of Brueghel the Younger examined by the authors, matching perfectly with the style of the authors’ core group of paintings given to the master’s own hand.12 The work is painted on oak panel (123.3 × 166.5 cm) and is made up of five planks. Like the original, it was also originally fitted with a channel edge support on the left side, as there are unpainted edges and corresponding right-angled rebates on the reverse. On the right, this is less clear, as the ground, underdrawing and paint layer run right up to the edge. On the corresponding reverse edge, there are narrow traces of rabbeting on the top and bottom planks, but not in the middle, suggesting either that the panel has lost a centimetre or so at the right or that there never was a channel edge support on this side. The painting has a comprehensive underdrawing, which will be compared to that in the original and the Graz version below. There is a second large-format version by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, formerly in the collection of the Mildred Andrews Fund, Cleveland, OH (oil on canvas, 116.8 × 167 cm).13 The signature and date – ‘P BREVGHEL 1626’ – were revealed in the lower left corner during conservation treatment by Robert Shepherd in 1991.14 Infrared reflectography, carried out by Molly Faries the previous year, detected an underdrawing typical of the artist’s production.15 There is also a smaller undated version of the composition (oil on panel, 51 × 87.5 cm), attributed by Klaus Ertz to Brueghel the Younger, which was in the Mallo collection in 1980.16 This painting is only known through a black and white image.

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Fig. 6.4 Funerary banners with date (1608) in Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Basel version

Jan Brueghel the Elder’s version of the Triumph of Death in the Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz (oil on canvas transferred from panel, 119.3 × 164.5 cm) is signed and dated ‘BRVEGEL F.’ 1597’ (fig. 6.5). Although this inscription appears to be authentic, there has been some strengthening in all the letters and digits. The bottom part of the ‘9’, for instance, would appear to be partially painted over a loss. The ‘F’ for ‘Fecit’ and the date are painted a neater script than the name, which raises the possibility that they were applied at two different stages. The last two letters of the name are retouched, rendering it possible that the inscription originally read ‘BRVEGHEL’; indeed, it is not Jan’s usual practice to omit the ‘H’. The 1597 dating, if genuine, would make it the earliest known copy of the composition.17 The work is now

a

b Fig. 6.5 Signature in Jan Brueghel’s Graz version; normal light (a) and IRR (b)

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on canvas, but it may originally have been painted on panel. There are a series of cracks in the paint surface that would appear to correspond to positions of former joins and cracks. The notable absence of cusping at the edges of the canvas supports this hypothesis. Unfortunately, the conservation history can only be traced back to 1947–8, and there is no mention during this period of a transfer from wood to canvas.18 The canvas is now lined onto a secondary canvas support. Infrared reflectography also detected a detailed underdrawing, which will be compared to the original and Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Basel version. The painting is darker in tonality than it would have been originally, due to abrasion damage that reveals the canvas fibres. There is an unsigned and undated version of Jan Brueghel’s Graz composition, closely repeating its motifs and colour scheme (oil on canvas, 119 × 162 cm), in the Sammlungen des Fürsten von Liechtenstein in Vienna. It is attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder by Georges Marlier, Jacqueline Folie and Françoise Van Hauwaert-Thomaes, but given to a follower, probably Jan Brueghel the Younger, by Klaus Ertz.19 Although following the same colour scheme, this painting has a much brighter overall appearance than the Graz version, probably reflecting the latter’s original tonal values. This version was not examined and therefore will not be included in the present discussion. The Prototype by Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Development of the Composition Bruegel the Elder’s original painting conceals a functional black outline underdrawing, revealed in infrared reflectography (see below, fig. 6.13). The drawing has been applied with a light, rapid touch but is minimal in its purpose, with no hatching strokes for indicating tone. It displays none of the exuberant flourish that is seen, for example, in Bruegel’s underdrawings in his Wedding Dance (Detroit Institute of Arts), Return of the Herd (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) and Tower of Babel (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).20 The

drawing lines in the Triumph of Death have the appearance of black chalk, sharpened to a point. Background motifs, where discernible, are depicted sparingly. There are no attempts to develop motifs during the underdrawing stage; the landscape and all its figures seem to have been carefully planned in advance and any adjustments are carried out during painting. The precise nature of this underdrawing suggests that the artist carefully transferred his design from a separate detailed preparatory drawing. The apparent absence of underdrawing in several of the foreground figures was explained by close inspection of the painting after cleaning. In figures such as the emperor, the cardinal and the man with blue breeches trapped under the cart, Bruegel used diluted red-brown paint for underdrawing, applied with a fine brush (fig. 6.6). This paint, no doubt based on earth pigments, is completely transparent in infrared. The reddish-brown outlines are as detailed as the black ones and would seem to have been applied as part of the same drawing stage. However, the red-brown underdrawing does not simply reinforce the black lines or vice versa. It seems they were applied in parallel stages. The figure of the cardinal is the only one to show both kinds of underdrawing, and even here the parts outlined in black do not overlap those outlined in red. The mitten-like outline of the cardinal’s hand, the robe and the drapery folds are underdrawn in red-brown paint, while his left arm is underdrawn in black. In one drapery fold, the paint layer lying directly above the red underdrawing has suffered drying cracks, perhaps due to Bruegel leaving insufficient drying time for the redbrown paint. The peculiar combination of dry black and liquid red underdrawing in a single painting has not been noted previously in Bruegel’s paintings, although he did on one occasion use red and black underdrawing in the same composition. The small-format Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery, signed and dated 1565 (London, Courtauld Gallery) shows an early-stage red underdrawing in a dry medium, with the main underdrawing

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S TRIUMPH OF DEATH AND VERSIONS BY HIS SONS

applied afterwards in a dry black material, as observed by Aviva Burnstock.21 Bruegel largely adhered to his preliminary design during painting, although he made minor improvements, dropping or adjusting certain motifs and adding others. Several skeletons have undergone modifications: for example, the skeleton wielding a scythe in the centre foreground, whose winding cloth was not initially foreseen in its entirety. The skeleton riding at the front of a cart in the lower left acquired a blue hat during painting, while the skeleton holding a net at the left gained a strange funnel on the top of his skull. Bruegel’s painterly reserves for these motifs do not take account of these features, suggesting that they were later additions. A more significant transformation during painting is seen in the skeleton collecting up gold coins near the emperor. He is dressed in chain mail and armour, but the infrared and X-radiograph images reveal that Bruegel first drew and started to paint him with bare bones (fig. 6.7). Further modifications to Bruegel’s original design during painting can be spotted in relation to the copies and will be discussed below. The Copies by Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder: Differences in Colour and Motif in Relation to the Original Version As observed by Jacqueline Folie and Françoise Van Hauwaert-Thomaes in 1995, the copies of the Triumph of Death display many differences in colour and motif in relation to the original version, prompting them to suggest that the sons did not actually see their father’s original painting.22 The overall atmosphere in the copies is strikingly different from that in Bruegel the Elder’s painting and varies even among themselves. The original version features receding swathes of pale brown, green and purple, with red flames lighting up the upper left sky. Pieter the Younger’s Basel (fig. 6.2) and Cleveland versions’ backgrounds tend towards browner hues, while Jan Brueghel’s Graz version (fig. 6.3) displays intense deep blue

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tonalities in the far background and sky, as in so many of his own compositions. The Graz version was most likely much brighter in appearance at the outset in the background, as in the Vienna replica (see above), which would have made it even more different from Bruegel the Elder’s prototype. In all the paintings, there is a wide range of bright clothing, but these vary in colour from artist to artist. For example, the figure fleeing the table in the lower right is green in Bruegel the Elder, pink in Brueghel the Younger and blue in Jan Brueghel; and in the slashed clothing of the lansquenet soldier, the father opts for white, the elder son for yellow-brown and the younger son for an intense turquoise (fig. 6.8). In the figure of the jester, the bold red and white harlequin pattern of the original version is ignored by Pieter the Younger and painted in gold and white by Jan. In terms of motif, many figures are subtly different in the copies and the original version. For example, a naked woman in Bruegel the Elder is transformed into a man in the copies (fig. 6.9). Heads seen from behind in the original are seen from the front in the copies and vice versa. The skeleton horseman sits on a dark saddle blanket in Bruegel the Elder but rides bareback in the copies, although the outlines of the blanket do appear in Jan’s underdrawing. Given the many differences between the original and the copies, Folie and Van HauwaertThomaes suggested that the sons must have based their versions on a missing link, such as a ‘complete drawing of the original work which remained with members of the family and which was developed at will by the two sons’.23 Hélène Verougstraete and Roger Van Schoute proposed that the model was a print.24 Our comparison of the original version’s underdrawing and early paint layers with those of the copies suggests a different but entirely logical source, which we will now investigate. Early Provenance of the Original Version Who might have ordered the Triumph of Death from Pieter Bruegel the Elder is unknown. The work was

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a

b

c

Fig. 6.6 Diagram showing zones in Bruegel the Elder’s original version (fig. 6.1) with liquid red-brown underdrawing (a) Detail, cardinal (b), with red-brown underdrawing for hand (c) Detail, man trapped under cart, with red-brown underdrawing for breeches, invisible in infrared; normal light (d) and IRR (e)

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S TRIUMPH OF DEATH AND VERSIONS BY HIS SONS

d

most likely part of the collection of Vespasiano Gonzaga (1531–1591) in the late sixteenth century, although there is no source attesting to its actual acquisition. Vespasiano, a nobleman close to the Habsburg family, had built up an important art collection in the small city of Sabbioneta in Lombardy.25 He seems to have been a Netherlandish painting lover. In 1589 he asked Alessandro Farnese, Governor of the Low Countries, to find him paintings by Bosch, or, if that were not possible, for good paintings by Bosch followers. Bruegel’s Triumph of Death was cited in the post-mortem inventory of his daughter Isabella, his only heir, which was drawn up in Naples in 1637. The painting can be traced from that year until its entry in the Spanish Collections.26 Jan Brueghel could perhaps have seen his father’s Triumph of Death during his long sojourn in Italy (1588/9–96) and retained some memories of it. But could these memories have led to the precise variants in colour and motif that we see in the sons’

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e

copies? The evidence of Bruegel the Elder’s underdrawing suggests otherwise. The Source for the Sons’ Copies As mentioned above, Bruegel the Elder dropped or modified certain motifs during painting. But what is most revealing for our investigation is that these very same underdrawn motifs often crop up in the copies. The most telling example is a pair of running figures in a background field. Bruegel foresaw these in his underdrawing, but later decided against including them (fig. 6.10).27 In Pieter the Younger’s and Jan’s versions, we see these running figures in both the underdrawing and painting stages. This evidence, together with the differences in colour and motif, favours the scenario of an inherited preparatory drawing by Bruegel the Elder as the source for the sons’ copies rather than the painting itself, a record drawing or an engraving after the painting.28

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a

b Fig. 6.7 Skeleton in Bruegel the Elder’s original version (fig. 6.1), originally intended to be bare-boned as in the copies; normal light (a) and XR (b) Brueghel the Younger (c) Jan Brueghel (d)

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c

d

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a

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b

Fig. 6.8 Details of lansquenet soldier Bruegel the Elder (a) Brueghel the Younger (b) Jan Brueghel (c)

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a

c

b

Fig. 6.9 Naked woman in Bruegel the Elder (a) Man in dark coat in Brueghel the Younger (b) Man in red coat in Jan Brueghel (c)

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a

b

c

d

e

Fig. 6.10 Detail of background in Bruegel the Elder’s original version (a) with IRR detail showing underdrawn figures, never painted, which reappear in the copies (b and c) Brueghel the Younger (d) Jan Brueghel (e)

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S TRIUMPH OF DEATH AND VERSIONS BY HIS SONS

The Copies as Witnesses to Bruegel the Elder’s Original Design Having established that the copies were based on a preparatory drawing of the Triumph of Death, it stands to reason that they might logically embody some of Pieter Bruegel’s initial ideas for the composition that he later dropped or improved upon. Indeed, in the grisly scene of torture in the upper right, Bruegel dropped one of the breaking wheels, simplifying the space somewhat; its faint outline is still seen in the underdrawing (fig. 6.11). This wheel, plus its unfortunate victim, reappears in the copies. To the right of the skeleton executioner, Bruegel leaves an empty space, giving more impact to the macabre scene, whereas in the copies, there is either a gallows, as in the Basel29 and Graz versions, or a cross, as in the Cleveland version. The sons would not have known of Bruegel’s improve-

a

c

ments during painting, and therefore reproduced his more cluttered initial design (fig. 6.12). Bruegel’s changes to the skeletons during painting are not reflected in the copies: for example, the addition of a piece of winding cloth to a foreground skeleton, which is not present in the sons’ copies. Likewise, the copies do not reproduce the hat and funnel on two skeletons’ heads, added by Bruegel during painting. The skeleton with chain mail and armour collecting gold coins appears bare-boned in Bruegel’s initial design, as in the copies (see above, fig. 6.7). This skeleton nonetheless sports a crown and chains in the sons’ copies,30 features that are absent in Bruegel’s version, suggesting that they were present in his preparatory drawing but were dropped before underdrawing. On the wall to the right of the clock, Bruegel’s underdrawing shows that the skeleton to the left of

b

d

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e

Fig. 6.11 Detail of execution scene in Bruegel the Elder’s version (a) with IRR detail showing underdrawn breaking wheel, never painted, which reappears in the copies (c and d) Reconstruction of Bruegel the Elder’s original plan (b) Same zone in Jan Brueghel (e), matching Bruegel the Elder’s initial design

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Fig. 6.12 Tracing of composition of Brueghel the Younger’s Basel version laid onto a scaled-up image of Bruegel the Elder’s original version

the cross originally reached down to touch the back of a man in a blue coat trying to escape. During painting, he brought the skeleton’s hands together, yet it is the initial position of his left arm that is reflected in the sons’ copies. Finally, in Bruegel’s underdrawing of the backgammon board in the lower right, the corner is not overlapped by the metal flask, unlike in the paint layer. Jan Brueghel’s version imitates the earlier position. The fact that Jan correctly copies such a small detail is testament to the high level of precision in his father’s now-lost preparatory material. Transfer of the Design to Panel: Father and Sons For the Battle between Carnival and Lent, painted in 1559, we concluded that Bruegel the Elder must

have made preparatory pricked cartoons and a model drawing, and that these documents were reused by his son Pieter the Younger for his copies.31 Rebecca Duckwitz also demonstrated this to be the case for Bruegel’s Flemish Proverbs and the copies, the original version also being painted in 1559.32 Whether this scenario also applies to the Triumph of Death will be explored next. We first verified whether the sons could have based their copies of the Triumph of Death on the same cartoon, as we previously demonstrated for their corresponding versions of the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist.33 In the case of the Triumph of Death, we made 1:1 tracings of the painted compositions of the Basel and Graz versions and superposed them. The resulting correlation is indeed too

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S TRIUMPH OF DEATH AND VERSIONS BY HIS SONS

close to consider copying by eye, even with the help of squaring-up. A common cartoon is the most likely scenario. The design was most probably spread over two or more separate sheets, as the left half fits perfectly when the tracings are aligned left, while the right side of the composition fits well when the tracings are aligned right. A seeming anomaly in the top third of the composition is explained by examining Jan’s underdrawing. Here, the painted motifs in Jan’s version are often smaller in scale and misaligned with those in Pieter’s version. However, the infrared image shows that Jan underdrew his motifs in the same positions as his brother but then went on to adjust them slightly during painting. This is particularly noticeable in the bells in the upper left. We were not able to trace the former Cleveland version, but we were able to digitally overlay the tracings of the Graz and Basel versions onto a scanned image of the Cleveland painting. Indeed, the tracings align well left and right, as with the Graz–Basel superpositions, confirming that the same set of cartoons was likely used. To test whether the cartoons could have been inherited directly from Bruegel the Elder, we digitally superposed the tracings of the Basel and Graz copies onto a correctly scaled image of the original painting (fig. 6.12).34 The results are revealing: when the motifs are lined up on the left, they do not quite match up to the far right, and vice versa. The correspondence, even in the distant background, is astonishing, suggesting that the sons used the same cartoon sheets as their father. In the original and the copies, smaller background elements were probably copied by eye after a model drawing, rather than being transferred to panel via the cartoon. This seems likely in view of the sketchy quality in the underdrawing stage of these motifs. In the original version, for example, the running figures, later abandoned during painting, are drawn very summarily, which is also the case for the corresponding figures in the copies (fig. 6.10). The same can be observed for motifs on the horizon such as the execution scene and the gallows.

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Pricked Cartoon The overall design and the main figures were most likely transferred to panel in all three cases by pouncing, the method of design transfer used in the studio of Pieter Brueghel the Younger.35 Firm evidence of the use of this technique was previously found in two paintings by the Brueghel sons: a version of Pieter the Younger’s Battle between Carnival and Lent (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium),36 and the large-format version by Jan Brueghel of the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist (Kunstmuseum Basel).37 With this technique, the cartoon would have been pricked along the outlines of the design, placed on the prepared painting support and then rubbed over with black pigment. The resulting dots would have been joined up with a sharpened piece of black chalk or graphite. The underdrawings are thus freehand drawings following pounced guidelines. The loose pouncing dust would normally have been wiped away, which is why pouncing is so rarely spotted in infrared reflectography. Bruegel the Elder’s underdrawing is a plain outline drawing without flourish or hatching for tone. It is remarkably similar in character to Pieter the Younger’s and Jan Brueghel’s underdrawings in their versions of the composition (fig. 6.13). This supports the idea that they all originally followed pounced guidelines. Even the areas underdrawn in red paint in Bruegel the Elder’s version could be joined pouncing.38 No remaining pouncing dots are seen in the copies of the Triumph of Death. Intriguingly, in the original version there are several areas in the foreground and middle ground that might show pouncing dots alongside the underdrawing lines. These are not without ambiguity, due to the unsharp nature of the infrared images.39 The Lost Original Preparatory Material Since Bruegel the Elder’s preparatory material for the Triumph of Death and indeed any of his other painted compositions is lost, we can only speculate as to its original extent. For the Triumph of Death,

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a

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b

c

Fig. 6.13 Underdrawing of lansquenet figure in Bruegel the Elder (a), Brueghel the Younger (b) and Jan Brueghel (c), IRR

the present study suggests that he had a full-scale cartoon of the design, probably split over two sheets and pricked for transfer. These sheets could have been used directly for pouncing or there could have been substitute cartoons. Bruegel probably also had a separate model drawing showing the whole composition, perhaps smaller in scale. He must also have worked out his initial ideas in the form of sketches. What ultimately happened to this trove of working documents is unknown, but much of it will have passed down to Pieter Brueghel the Younger, as part of his legitimate inheritance as elder son. Stylistic Differences in the Three Versions Differences in style between the various versions are quite significant, which is logical given that the sons did not have the original version in front of them while making their copies. This is unlike the situation in the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, where Jan Brueghel’s version closely mimics the brushwork of the original.40 The miniaturist-like rendering of the Order of the Golden Fleece of the emperor, for example, reveals Jan Brueghel as a painter of still life and distinguishes his version from the others (fig. 6.14). In the dead woman in the foreground, we also see

a different approach. Bruegel the Elder models the face using thick white brushwork with black outlines and shadows, swiftly suggesting the gaunt flesh with its deathly pallor; Brueghel the Younger paints the same face more graphically, using translucent paint and delicate hatching strokes to emphasize the cheek bones; while Jan models it with smoothly blended opaque paint, boldly defining the features. In general, Jan tends to paint with thicker, more opaque and blended paint than either his father or brother, as seen, for example, in their respective renderings of a lansquenet soldier’s breeches (fig. 6.8). Finally, in stilllife details such as the fish behind the cross in the centre background, each artist betrays his own characteristic brushwork. Creativity in Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Version Jan Brueghel shows a certain level of creativity in his copy of the Triumph of Death (fig. 6.3). Even though he had a detailed model showing his father’s original design, he takes liberties, updating the image here and there. For example, he adds a personal touch to the table setting in the lower right. Although his underdrawing shows all the motifs that we see in Bruegel the Elder’s version, Jan updates the arrangement during painting (fig. 6.15).

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a

c

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b

Fig. 6.14 Emperor in Bruegel the Elder (a), Brueghel the Younger (b) and Jan Brueghel (c)

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a

b

Fig. 6.15 Table setting in Bruegel the Elder (a) and Jan Brueghel (b and c, IRR). Jan followed his father’s design during underdrawing (here reinforced by red dashed lines), but added more copious and luxurious tableware during painting

c

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S TRIUMPH OF DEATH AND VERSIONS BY HIS SONS

The feast is infinitely more opulent than in the prototype, with plates of luxury food, fashionable glass, pewter and a gilded tazza. Pieter Brueghel the Younger follows Jan’s lead somewhat for this table display, particularly in the Cleveland version.41 The same applies to the pair of lovers in the lower right. Jan Brueghel’s underdrawing reflects his father’s underdrawing in this zone. However, during painting, he transforms their pose, adding a dog and updating the costumes (fig. 6.16). The lady now wears a standing lace collar known as the Medici collar, which was an alternative to the ruff and was at the leading edge of courtly fashion in the late sixteenth century, as in portraits of Marie de’ Medici by Frans Pourbus the Younger. In Jan’s painting, the couple might refer to real characters, possibly courtly patrons, but this remains speculative.42 A final example of Jan’s inventiveness is the addition of several luxury vessels in the lower left foreground, no doubt intended as vanitas symbols. Close-up inspection and infrared reflectography shows that the overturned tazza was painted over a part of the yellow robe behind it, and therefore not planned initially. Goods such as these were collected by the type of people who would have been clients for Jan Brueghel’s paintings, and he included such objects in his later allegories of Taste. Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Version: Collaboration with an Unknown Hand The lower right corner of Brueghel the Younger’s Basel version (fig. 6.2) includes several figures painted in a discordant style. Their brushwork is thick, blended and lacks the artist’s usual translucency and light graphic touch. Faces and figures are anatomically weak and somewhat caricatured. The underdrawing in this area is similarly atypical of Brueghel the Younger or his studio, being loose and approximate. Indeed, the drawing is completely disregarded during painting. The artist reworked the pose and costume of the lovers and transformed the figure standing in front of the table, exchanging his tunic for breeches and adding a foppish hat and ruff (fig. 6.17).

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The probable early date of the painting – 1608 – and the fact that Brueghel the Younger produced a later version in 1626 preclude the possibility that the work was left unfinished at his death. It is more likely that in this rare case, and for reasons unknown, another independent artist completed this corner of the painting. Georges Hulin de Loo proposed David Vinckboons as a possibility.43 Conclusion The technical study of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Triumph of Death reveals that he planned the composition carefully prior to painting, but that he continued to improve his design during execution. An unprecedented discovery is his use of both black chalk and reddish-brown paint as underdrawing materials. The analysis of the underdrawing of the original in relation to the sons’ versions proves that the copies must have been based on Bruegel’s preparatory material rather than the final painting, record drawing or engraving. Motifs abandoned or changed in the prototype during painting reappear in the copies. This means that the copies, to a certain extent, are witnesses to Bruegel the Elder’s original design. There is no evidence to suggest that either son saw the original painting at all; indeed, the copies’ alternative colour schemes and the different appearance of certain motifs argue for them not knowing it, despite the remote possibility that Jan could have seen the painting in Vespasiano Gonzaga’s collection in Sabbioneta during his stay in Italy. The close correspondence in outline between the original and the copies shows that the sons most likely based their paintings on a full-scale cartoon of the composition inherited from their father, spread over two sheets. These self-same sheets would initially have been used by Bruegel the Elder himself to transfer the original design to panel. The similarly functional, but lively, outline drawings in all the versions suggest that the design was transferred in each case by pouncing. Sporadic

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a

b

c

d

Fig. 6.16 Lovers in Bruegel the Elder (a and c, IRR) and Jan Brueghel (b and d, IRR). As in fig. 6.15, Jan’s underdrawing, reinforced here with red dashed lines, follows the original’s design, but he went on to adjust the pose and costume of the lovers during painting as well as adding a dog

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a

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b

Fig. 6.17 Detail from Brueghel the Younger’s version (fig. 6.2), showing work of another, unknown hand; addition of hat and ruff during painting

pouncing dots may still be present in the original version. Smaller background motifs would have been transferred by eye, probably after a smaller model drawing. While retaining the essentials of Bruegel the Elder’s design in terms of proportion and outline, Pieter and Jan Brueghel’s versions reflect their preferred colour schemes and personal painting styles. Jan even disregarded Bruegel the Elder’s

design in some places and brought it up to date, adding fashionable goldsmith’s work, among other things. In the Basel version, Pieter the Younger’s characteristic touch is manifest in the underdrawing and painting style, with the exception of the table and figures in the lower right corner, which have been drawn and painted by an inferior unknown hand.

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N OT ES For the documentation of the copies of the Triumph of Death by Bruegel’s two sons, we warmly thank Dr Christine Rabensteiner, Curator of Collections at the Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz, and Dr Bodo Brinkmann, Curator of Old Masters at the Kunstmuseum Basel, who welcomed the KIKIRPA team into their museums. For their practical help with the documentation process, we also thank Dr Paul-Bernhard Eipper, Head of Conservation at the Universalmuseum Joanneum and Amelie Jensen, former painting conservator at the Kunstmuseum Basel. We are most grateful to Dr Alejandro Vergara, Senior Curator of Flemish and Northern European Paintings at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, for inviting us to examine Bruegel the Elder’s Triumph of Death during the 2017–18 conservation-restoration and for sharing the Prado’s new high-resolution photography and scientific imagery. We also thank María Antonia López de Asiaín, painting conservator, and José de la Fuente Martínez, panel conservator, for their discussions with us and insights on Bruegel’s painting and its conservation treatment during our visit to the Prado on 20 March 2018. We are also grateful to Laura Alba Carcelén, conservation scientist at the Prado, for providing the infrared reflectography and radiography. We thank Molly Faries for sharing with us her infrared reflectography documentation of the version that was formerly in the Mildred Andrews Fund, Cleveland, OH. Finally, we thank the KIK-IRPA team for their dedication and hard work on the mission in Graz and Basel: Sophie De Potter (infrared reflectography), Jean-Luc Elias (photography) and Said Amrani (driver and assistant). 1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, oil on oak panel, 116.1 × 162 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. P001393. For provenance, see below and also . 2 Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The Triumph of Death, oil on panel, 123.3 × 166.5 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel, inv. G1995.29 (Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, cat. E199). Provenance: before 1995 private Swiss collection; gifted to the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1995. 3 Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, oil on canvas transferred from panel, 119.3 × 164.5 cm, Graz, Landesmuseum Joanneum, Alte Galerie, inv. 58. On this painting, see Biedermann et al. 1995, pp. 58–61, and Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 3, cat. 542, pp. 1164–8. Provenance: acquired by Prince Johann Seyfried von Eggenberg in Vienna in 1674; 1713

mentioned in the princely Eggenberg inventory as ‘Universalot von Prigl’; noted in Herberstein inventory in 1723; later in the collection of Count Brandis in Marburg; 1881 purchase by the State Committee (Biedermann et al. 1995, cat. 58). 4

See Currie and Allart 2017.

5 See López de Asiaín et al. 2019, for detailed observations on this panel during the conservation treatment. See also Van Schoute, Verougstraete and Garrido 1995. 6 We thank José de la Fuente Martínez, panel painting conservator at the Prado, for this information. The reverse of the painting had been planed prior to cradling for a former conservation treatment and the dowels are therefore now exposed. 7

Peter Klein (dendro ID P1393).

8 We are grateful to Maite Jover de Celis, conservation scientist at the Prado, for discussing the dendrochronology with us and allowing us to cite her unpublished results. 9 We thank Pascale Fraiture for examining Maite Jover de Celis’s dendrochronological data on the Triumph of Death and comparing them with her data on more than 2,000 individual series from Flemish paintings, including several by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Pascale Fraiture, personal communication, 3 May 2019. 10 For more on this common late sixteenth to early seventeenth-century northern practice, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 246–8 (for Bruegel the Elder) and vol. 3, pp. 732–3 (for Brueghel the Younger and his contemporaries). 11 In the artist’s Cleveland version (see below), the date on the funerary banners corresponds to the painted inscription in the lower left. 12 For stylistic comparisons of works from Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s studio, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, chapter 6, ‘Searching for the Hand of Pieter Brueghel the Younger’, pp. 784–814; see also ibid., vol. 3, ‘Appendix VI: Attribution in Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Production’, pp. 1017–21. 13 Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, cat. E200; Tokyo 1995, p. 115; Marlier/Folie 1969, pp. 103 and 107. Provenance: Sotheby’s, New York, 27–28 January 1999, lot 271; Mildred Andrews Fund; Peter Putnam collection, Cleveland, OH, USA (d. 1987); purchase by Peter Putnam in Switzerland in 1948; sale Galerie Le Roi, Brussels, 4–5 March 1936, lot 6 (as ‘Bruegel (Pierre) dit le Vieux, Ecole de’, with black and white illustration); formerly in collection of widow of Charles Kreglinger.

14 See extract from Robert Shepherd’s August 1991 report in Corcoran 1995, p. 14. Hélène Verougstraete and Roger Van Schoute, who examined the painting at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1990 and studied its iconography, read the inscription on the funerary banners as ‘1626’, which corresponds to the date in the lower left. They interpreted the date and the inscriptions in the lower centre on banner motifs as a joint commemoration of Jan Brueghel and his children’s death and the centenary of Bruegel the Elder’s birth (see Verougstraete and Van Schoute 1993). 15 See extracts from Molly Faries’s 1988 and 1990 reports in Corcoran 1995, pp. 11–13. For comparative studies of the various versions of the Triumph of Death, see Folie and Van Hauwaert-Thomaes 1995, and Klaus Ertz’s chapter in Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, pp. 257–74. 16 Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, cat. E201; Díaz Padrón 1980, pp. 300–03. Provenance: 1980 Mallo collection; Sotheby’s, London, 10 July 1974, no. 78; before 1974 collection of Sacheverell Sitwell. 17 Klaus Ertz questions the painting’s dating and places it in the second decade of the seventeenth century, based on his opinion that the still life on the table, the type of clothing of the lovers and the use of a canvas as support are all too modern to justify a 1597 dating (Antwerp 1998, p. 79; Ertz 1998– 2000, vol. 1, p. 260; Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 3, p. 1166). 18 We thank Paul-Bernhard Eipper, painting conservator at the Universalmuseum Joanneum, for sending us the museum’s conservation notes on Jan Brueghel’s Triumph of Death. 19 Vienna, Sammlungen des Fürsten von Liechtenstein, inv. 1134 (Marlier/Folie 1969, pp. 103 and 106; Ertz 1979, cat. 45; Folie and Van Hauwaert-Thomaes 1995; Antwerp 1998, p. 79; Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, pp. 260– 61; and Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 3, pp. 1166–8). The signature and date, ‘BRVEGEL 1597’, proved to be false and were removed during restoration (Antwerp 1998, p. 79). We have not examined this painting so cannot comment on its attribution. 20 For the underdrawing in the Detroit Wedding Dance, see You, Hanspach-Bernal and Bisulca, Chapter 9 in the present volume; for the underdrawing in the Tower of Babel and the Return of the Herd, see . 21 Burnstock et al. 2016, pp. 32–4 and fig. 12. On the use of red underdrawing in a painting by Bruegel, see also Haack Christensen et al., Chapter 7 in the present volume.

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S TRIUMPH OF DEATH AND VERSIONS BY HIS SONS

22 For previous comparative studies of the various versions of the Triumph of Death, see Folie and Van Hauwaert-Thomaes 1995 and Klaus Ertz’s chapter on the composition in Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, pp. 257–74. 23 Folie and Van Hauwaert-Thomaes 1995, p. 21. 24 Verougstraete and Van Schoute 1993, p. 214. 25 Denunzio 2011. 26 Ibid., pp. 8–9 and 15. For a detailed provenance from after 1591 until the present day, see also the Prado website: . 27 There are no traces of these running figures in normal light or in the X-radiograph. We discussed them with María Antonia López de Asiaín, who carried out the recent conservation treatment. She does not consider that this zone has been overcleaned and thinks that these figures never featured in the paint layer. 28 Yoko Mori (personal communication) suggests that Mayken Verhulst, widow of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, may have made such record copies. As an artist herself, she would have known how important it was to keep records of her son-in-law’s work for the next generation. 29 In the Basel version, abrasion damage and retouching in the sky above the

execution scene negates some of the details, including the breaking wheel to the left and the man hanging on the gallows on the far right. The sketchy indication of the breaking wheel and hanging victim is clearly visible in the underdrawing. 30 In the Basel version, this chain is only present in the underdrawing. It is present in the paint layer of the former Cleveland version. 31 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 344– 79. See also Currie, Chapter 5 in the present volume. 32

Duckwitz 2001.

33

Currie and Allart 2017.

34 We thank María Antonia López de Asiaín for her precise measurements of the four sides of the original panel, which enabled us to carry out a correctly scaled overlay of the copies’ tracings onto the photograph of the original version. 35 For a summary of the use of pricked cartoons in Brueghel the Younger, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, pp. 746–52. 36

See ibid., vol. 2, pp. 348–57.

37 On Jan Brueghel’s large-format version of the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, see Currie and Allart 2017. 38 Pouncing joined up by outlines in a liquid medium was common practice in the making of copies in the former Southern and Northern Netherlands: for example, in works

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by or after Aelbrecht Bouts (see Henderiks 2011) and by Gerard David (see Ainsworth 1993, pp. 21–3, and Ainsworth 1998, pp. 295–301). For an illustration of liquid underdrawing over pouncing in a copy after Marinus van Reymerswaele, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, p. 941, fig. 627. For an overview of the use of pouncing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and examples of joined pouncing in a liquid medium, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, pp. 939–47. 39 There are possible dots around a horse’s eye and mouth, a figure’s legs, a skull, for the two running figures and for a creature in the lower right. 40

See Currie and Allart 2017.

41 See Verougstraete and Van Schoute 1993 for discussion of the original features in Brueghel the Younger’s Cleveland version (1626), which includes banners with inscriptions, and a cake with ten sprigs on the table. 42 Other authors have suggested the possibility that these two figures are portraits. Ertz, for example, proposes Rubens as the lute player, as a nod to his friendship with Jan Brueghel (Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, p. 1166). 43 Van Bastelaer and Hulin de Loo 1907, p. 301.

Fig. 7.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Strife between Carnival and Lent, 1562, oil on panel, 24.9 × 34.3/34.5 cm, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst (inv. KMS1639)

7

P ieter Bruegel the Elder’s Copenhagen Oil Sketch of the Strife between Carnival and Lent, 1562 Anne Haack Christensen,1 Eva de la Fuente Pedersen,1 Aoife Daly,2 David Buti,1 Gianluca Pastorelli 1 and Jørgen Wadum 1

A BSTRACT : A thinly painted panel painting attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, at Copenhagen’s Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK), illustrates Strife between Carnival and Lent. It is signed ‘BRVEGHEL·1562’ and depicts three faces modelled over an underdrawing in red chalk. This contribution argues for a firm attribution of the painting to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, founded on the results from thorough technical analyses, including dendrochronology, infrared reflectography, X-radiography, SEM-EDX and XRF. The terminus post quem provided by the felling date of the tree used for the panel matches Bruegel’s lifetime, and examination by infrared reflectography revealed a hitherto unobserved signature and date in the upper right corner of the painting that corresponds with the dendrochronological result. The long scholarly debate on the attribution of the painting is also addressed through a study of the painting’s provenance and attribution history.

—o— Introduction The 1718 inventory from Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen lists a small oil sketch on panel depicting ‘three faces, of which the two thin ones eat the fat face’ in a cabinet of curiosities (fig. 7.1).1 This painting has been in the collection of the Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK; National Gallery

of Denmark) since 1899 and was first mentioned as a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1904.2 This attribution has, however, been a subject of debate among scholars until recently. This contribution presents new evidence for a firm attribution of the Copenhagen Strife between Carnival and Lent to Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569). The arguments are based on the first extensive technical examination of the painting combined with a critical review of its provenance and attribution history. A dendrochronological examination places the small piece of oak firmly within Bruegel’s active period, while infrared reflectography has revealed a hitherto overlooked signature and date in the upper right corner of the panel. A critical examination of the paint handling over an exceptional red underdrawing further substantiates this reattribution of the painting to Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bruegel’s versatile training in the workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502–1550) prepared the young artist for working in a variety of techniques, from miniatures to large-format waterverfdoeken (‘watercolour’ paintings).3 Coecke van Aelst also designed cartoons for the production of stained-

1. Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK), Sølvgade 48–50, 1307 København K, Denmark 2. University of Copenhagen, SAXO-Institute, Karen Blixens Plads 8, 2300 København S, Denmark

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ANNE HAACK CHRISTENSEN , EVA DE LA FUENTE PEDERSEN

glass windows and tapestries – as did also Bruegel the Elder and his sons for paintings.4 Although the majority of the works by Bruegel the Elder that have been preserved are of a considerable size, his oeuvre includes several other small-scale panels besides the Copenhagen painting.5 With this in mind, and considering Bruegel’s delicate and secure mastery of the technique of drawing on paper, we can assume that the artist also produced models in the form of oil sketches. His workshop would have included sketches and outline drawings of sold works, which would have functioned as aides-mémoire and atelier props for when new commissions were to be carried out in various media. The Copenhagen painting is so far the only known oil sketch by Bruegel the Elder comprising both drawn and painted elements and features recognizable within his versatile production. As we shall see, an oil sketch such as the Strife between Carnival and Lent would have first served as a modello or inspirational source for future compositions made in the workshop. Following this practical use, it would have become a desired object for collectors of artists’ most intimate creations, drawings and sketches, with the potential to reveal a unique insight into the artistic process. The Panel The panel, measuring 24.9 × 34.3/34.5 cm, consists of a single plank of radially-cut oak with a horizontal grain. The panel is 4–6 mm thick. The lack of bevelling on the edges on the reverse tells us that the panel was never intended for framing. The presence of residues of the ground layer along both vertical edges of the panel as well as along the top edge, but none along the bottom edge, suggests that, at an early stage, the painting was slightly reduced at the bottom. The X-radiograph confirms this assumption by revealing the brushstrokes from the application of the ground layer as continuous strokes running beyond the lower border of the painting (fig. 7.2). No barbe or unpainted wood appears along any of the front edges. The assumption of a reduction in height is supported

et al.

Fig. 7.2 Detail from Strife between Carnival and Lent (fig. 7.1), X-radiography. Brushstrokes from the application of the ground layer show as continuous strokes extending beyond the lower edge of the panel

by comparison with later artists’ emulations of the motif – for instance, in Carnival and Lent in the collection of the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp (see below), in which a larger part of the clothing of the man to the left, representing Carnival, is seen. A similar, although reversed, segment of the man is shown in an etching (see below). An estimate of the original width of the plank used for the panel would be 27–8 cm, which is approximately a foot across.6 The panel appears thin compared to average panel paintings of the period;7 however, the reverse bears no traces of it having been thinned later.8 One may speculate that the thinness and format of the panel relate to Bruegel’s activities in printing and book production. He may well have had access to thin panels cut for book covers in quarto format, which closely match those of the Copenhagen oil sketch.9 Non-invasive dendrochronology10 was carried out to determine a terminus post quem for the panel.11 The outermost hardwood rings are obscured by glue. The latest one that can be clearly measured dates from 1528. Adding to these an estimated

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S OIL SKETCH OF THE STRIFE BETWEEN CARNIVAL AND LENT

additional 16 hardwood rings obscured by the glue, plus the sapwood (using a sapwood range for the Baltic area of 8–23 years),12 the felling date for the tree can be placed at c. 1553–67, which falls within Bruegel’s active years. Given the high correlation of the ring patterns in a range of tree-ring datasets for northern Poland, and with many other so-called Baltic chronologies, a Baltic provenance could be established. Enquiries about a correlation with other panels used by Bruegel or his circle resulted in matches with planks from panels painted by Peeter Baltens (c. 1527– 1584), Joachim Beuckelaer (c. 1533–c. 1570/74) and Herri met de Bles (c. 1510–after 1555).13 Ground Layer Bruegel first applied a traditional white chalkcontaining ground layer to provide an even, absorbent surface for painting.14 The streaky pattern from the smoothing of the ground layer is clearly visible through the thinly applied paint, showing mainly a vertically orientated application. The ground, now appearing off-white due to the yellowing of the oil medium, shows through in almost all parts of the painting, playing an intended optical role in the lighter areas of the composition and, in particular, in the flesh tones of the three figures. In the forehead and nose of the woman, as well as in the hair of the fat man to the left, the ground layer is entirely exposed (figs 7.3a–b). There are no traces of a pigmented imprimatura applied on top of the ground. However, a layer of drying oil may have been applied to reduce the ground’s absorbency. Red Chalk Underdrawing The underdrawing is extraordinary, being done with a stick of red chalk, something only found in one other panel by Bruegel: the grisaille Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery, from 1565.15 The red underdrawing in the Copenhagen panel is executed in an extremely sketchy manner, merely indicating the shape and position of heads, headgear and the shirt with buttons, in a search for the right positioning of the figures in this packed composition

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that almost seems to break out of the edges of the small panel. Unlike the Courtauld grisaille, a more detailed black underdrawing did not succeed the red sketchy drawing. This underscores the fact that the Copenhagen panel was, from the very outset, conceived as an oil sketch and not meant to become a finished work. In the Triumph of the Death (c. 1562), the underdrawing of some figure groups in the foreground of the composition has also been done in red, but here in a liquid medium.16 However, as in the Woman taken in Adultery, a black underdrawing is present in other parts of the composition.17 The use of red chalk for underdrawing was not alien to Bruegel’s contemporaries: the Holy Kinship by Joachim Beuckelaer bears witness to this in the figure of the old man in the background.18 The underdrawing in Bruegel’s painting may have been intended as a visual component in the finished oil sketch, rendering important details in the facial expressions that Bruegel never reinforced with the brush. The chin and the furrows in the forehead of the fat man and the wavy fall of his hair are indicated only in the red chalk underdrawing, creating a sense of movement in the hastily executed motif. The mouth of the biting man is particularly sketchy in the underdrawing, showing multiple shapes of the corner of the mouth. The underdrawing of his teeth is slightly displaced upwards with respect to the white highlight and dark reddish-brown brushstroke forming this detail of the face (fig. 7.4a). For the woman’s tooth, the underdrawing is painted over with the semitransparent dark-brown colour rendering the shadowed neck of the biting man, followed by a white highlight (fig. 7.4b). The manner of the underdrawing is very close to a series of underdrawings in the late Bruegel oeuvre: the Return of the Herd and the Gloomy Day (1565) from the Seasons series, and the Conversion of Saul (1567). Here, the contour lines and brushstrokes of the final oil paintings do not follow the underdrawn lines meticulously, but rather in an interpretative way. In these and other late paintings the

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et al.

a Figs 7.3a–b Details from fig. 7.1. The whitish ground layer exposed in different areas of the oil sketch

underdrawing is often searching for the form and is not limited to contour lines, but includes lines suggesting plasticity. Palette and Brushwork Bruegel’s sensitive use of a reduced palette in the Copenhagen oil sketch is significant: it seems to lay the foundation for his monochrome Death of the

Virgin, c. 1564 (Banbury, National Trust, Upton House, The Bearsted Collection), the aforementioned Woman taken in Adultery, and Three Soldiers, 1568 (The Frick Collection), images destined for a rarefied circle of humanist collectors.19 The Copenhagen oil sketch cannot, however, be called monochrome, as the artist’s palette comprised a number of colours. White is used for the teeth of the

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S OIL SKETCH OF THE STRIFE BETWEEN CARNIVAL AND LENT

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b

thin couple and for highlights in and around the eyes. The woman’s bonnet is painted in grey and white with a thin, hardly visible, ribbon to hold it in place under the chin. With its lead white content, this thin tie-string shows through more clearly in the X-radiograph. A reddish brown, which is used for the woman’s gown, is applied as a uniform opaque paint layer in contrast to the other browns, applied thinly in

transparent hues.20 The contours and the lines shaping the eyes have been reinforced with a dark brown, which appears almost black when applied opaquely. This is also the colour used for shadow areas. The brushwork is very fluent, with the paint applied thinly in the flesh tones as well as in the greyish-brown tonalities of the background and the garments. The brushstrokes are clearly visible in

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a

et al.

b

Figs 7.4a–b Details from fig. 7.1. The sketchy nature of the red underdrawing and the shift between underdrawing and paint layer

the semi-transparent dark-brown background colour that seems to have been applied with haste (fig. 7.5). The white preparatory layer has been allowed to show through, in the same way as in the background to the fat man and the meagre woman in the painting Battle between Carnival and Lent (1559). The contours and eyes are worked up with precise lines using a thin brush handled masterfully without hesitation or second thought. A few black brushstrokes are visible in the hair of the woman, as well as along some of the contours, visibly applied after completion of the faces. The semi-transparent brown background, applied at the final stage of the painting process, serves also to outline the shapes of the faces. In other paintings by Bruegel, such as the Battle between Carnival and Lent, a similar reinforcement of the contours is visible in several faces of the figures, including in the face of the fat man sitting on the barrel (fig. 7.6). The brushwork of the Copenhagen oil sketch is applied alla prima and in many areas it is evident how quickly and wet-in-wet the sketch was achieved. For instance, along the chin of the fat man, the black paint used for underlining the contours of the face was applied while the greybrown paint of the garment was still wet, allowing Bruegel to blend the two hues to achieve a softer transition (fig. 7.7a). The same wet-in-wet tech-

nique is evident in the hair of the woman, where the white edge of her bonnet blends with the swift brushstrokes of her black hair (fig. 7.7b). Bruegel has a flair for tiny details: part of the edge of the fat man’s woollen hat is painted with miniature parallel strokes to give the impression of a ribbon or ribbed edge. The woman’s hair is worked up with long strokes that end in fine lines, as do the fat man’s locks of hair. In other late works by Bruegel, we see the same technique of hair-lock imitation, such as in Joseph’s white-grey hair in the Adoration of the Magi (1564)21 and in Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery (1565).22 The fat man is dressed in greyish clothing, in which Bruegel lets the red chalk underdrawing purposely show through the thinly applied paint. In this way he indicates a button along the closing of the garment. The tactile structure of the fabric in the garment and of the fat man’s matching headdress is achieved by dabbing a stiff brush into the wet paint. Thus, depth and structure are achieved not by modelling paint on paint, but Bruegel achieves a degree of spatiality in his oil sketch with the simplest exploitation of the underdrawing. This technique of creating texture in the paint is found in other Bruegel’s works: for instance, in the foreground of the Return of the Herd (1565) and in the Peasant Wedding (c. 1567) (figs 7.8a–b).

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S OIL SKETCH OF THE STRIFE BETWEEN CARNIVAL AND LENT

Fig. 7.5 Detail from fig. 7.1. The thinly applied brushstrokes in dark brown paint in the background

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Fig. 7.6 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Battle between Carnival and Lent, 1559, oil on panel, 118 × 164.2 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 1016). Detail

Models and Prototypes In the Copenhagen oil sketch, the juxtaposed extremes of Carnival and Lent have been condensed into an absolute minimum of figures and converted into a satire that criticises both the greediness of Carnival and the asceticism of Lent. The theme is known in a few cases in Bruegel’s oeuvre. In 1559, a couple of years before the creation of the oil sketch, Bruegel painted the Battle between Carnival and Lent, now in Vienna, and a year after the oil sketch he created compositions for the two engravings, the Thin Kitchen and the Fat Kitchen (1563).23 We know of five artworks (one engraving and four paintings) by other artists that bear the same motif as the Copenhagen oil sketch. These all appear to have been created later than the Copenhagen painting and differ from it by framing the heads within a circle. The engraving (fig. 7.10) is by Frans Francken and shows a reversed composition (due to the printing technique).24 The three heads are nearly identical to the Copenhagen painting, but a fourth

et al.

is added and is almost completely hidden behind the others. Two nearly identical rectangular paintings (Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh; formerly Vienna, Hermann Ritschl collection) underscore that the motif was seen as a symbol of the battle between Carnival and Lent, as still-life elements relating to Carnival and Lent decorate the painted frame around the circular composition of caricature heads (fig. 7.11).25 On the fat man’s side we see a pie, a wine jug and roasted chicken, and on the thin woman’s side a pancake, a bowl of water, some mussels and early garden turnips. The roles of the couple have changed: now the woman is biting while the man (no longer thin) is gazing directly at the viewer with a fool’s smile. The last two related artworks are tondos (circular panels) that include only three caricature heads.26 Both are very close to the heads in the paintings in the Museum Mayer van den Bergh and the former Hermann Ritschl collection. Signature and Date The signature found in the upper right corner of the Copenhagen painting is only visible by means of infrared reflectography. It reads ‘BRVEGHEL · 1562’ (fig. 7.9). It is positioned so close to the upper edge as to be hidden in the shadow of the frame – which might explain why it was not noticed in the past. The signature and date are executed in a greyish-brown colour very similar to the semitransparent brown nuances of the background on which they sit. Bruegel’s way of signing and dating is well discussed in the literature, suggesting that between 1557 and 1560 he changed his signature from ‘Brueghel’ to ‘BRVEGEL’.27 Lower-case signatures are mainly seen in Bruegel’s works on paper. Within his body of finished painted works signatures without an ‘h’ are seen, along with his return to dating in Arabic numerals after 1562: for instance, in the Magpie on the Gallows and in the Misanthropist, both from 1568.28 In his prints and drawings, the use of ‘h’ and ‘H’ is inconsistent during the period 1553 to

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S OIL SKETCH OF THE STRIFE BETWEEN CARNIVAL AND LENT

a

b Figs 7.7a–b Details from fig. 7.1. Note wet-in-wet application along the chin of the fat man (a) and a similar wet-in-wet application in the hair of the woman (b)

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Figs 7.8a–b Detail from the foreground of the Return of the Herd, 1565, oil on panel, 117 × 159.7 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1018 (a); and detail from the Peasant Wedding, c. 1567, oil on panel, 113.1 × 164.1 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1027 (b). These details show a similar texture in the paint application to that seen in the garment of the fat man in the Copenhagen oil sketch (fig. 7.1)

b

a

et al.

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Fig. 7.9 Detail from fig. 7.1, infrared reflectography, showing the signature and date in the upper right corner of the panel

1568. Surely the notion that Bruegel would sign his works in Roman capital letters with the date in Roman numerals to emphasize the humanist claims of his art could not apply in the case of the Copenhagen oil sketch.29 The oil sketch is a representation of the painter’s versatile skills as a master of disegno, and a tool within his repertoire of models, props, tronies and small compositions, and we believe that, seen in this light, a signature could well be expected to match the somewhat inconsistent manner used for his drawings. Bruegel rarely signed along the upper edge of his works, but exceptions are seen in some prints and drawings, such as the Alchemist (1558) and the Fat Kitchen (1563). Furthermore, a fragment of an inscription was uncovered in the upper right corner of the Head of a Peasant Woman (c. 1568) during a recent restoration campaign, revealing the letters ‘Pb’.30 This unique example of a tronie may have had a somewhat comparable status to the Copenhagen oil sketch, having served as a transitional stage in the process of sketching and studying faces and characters for larger compositions. Oil sketches of the sixteenth century might have attracted less attention in the past, but with the in-depth study of Bruegel’s contemporary Frans Floris (1519/20–1570) our understanding of contemporary painted heads has greatly improved.31 Floris’s heads, widely collected even in his own time, can be seen as representing individuals or as explorations of character types, physiognomic representations or emotional states, comparable to

Bruegel’s oil sketch with one fat and two thin faces. The liveliness of Floris’s heads is often achieved by ‘an exceptional vivacity of the handling of paint, with brilliant strokes and dabs of impasto calling attention to the complex and ongoing process of negotiating, in paint, between the emotions and character of an individual, whether real or imagined, and the visage exposed to the world’, as expressed by Wouk.32 The Copenhagen oil sketch, with its sketchy underdrawing and the dabbing of paint alternated with almost liquid brushstrokes and thin lines, is an exquisite example of Bruegel’s mastering of the medium and its visual effects. His rendering of a character or a group of faces by quickly capturing features and emotions would be essential for him in order to preserve these expressions for future inspiration or possible later use in larger compositions. There is no reason not to consider the signature and date in the Copenhagen oil sketch as original and unique in its form, in line with the distinctive nature of the painting itself. Provenance The Copenhagen panel was first mentioned in the 1718 inventory from Rosenborg Castle,33 as being among other artworks in King Frederick IV’s Kunstkammer.34 The Kunstkammer was Frederick’s private collection of precious curiosities. The panel was installed with Flemish paintings in three wall cupboards hidden behind panelling, which still cover the walls today.35 Some of the precious ivory, coral and amber objects had come from Gottorf

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et al.

Fig. 7.10 Frans Francken III (1607–1667) after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Four caricatured heads, n.d., etching, diameter 125 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (inv. RP-P-OB-52.242)

Castle in Schleswig-Holstein, but apparently not the Bruegel painting.36 After Frederick IV’s death in 1730, all items in his private Kunstkammer were transported to Christiansborg Castle between 1747 and 1749. Bruegel’s oil sketch in this way became part of the official Royal Kunstkammer at Christiansborg Castle by November 1749 and was first listed in the

inventory of 1775, where the fat man is identified as a monk: ‘Three Heads painted on wood, one a fat Friar’s Head, the other two thinner, ready to eat up the fat one; in black frame, 13 inches broad and 9½ high’.37 After the dissolution of the Royal Kunstkammer in 1824, the painting with the ‘Three Heads’ was transferred to the Royal Castle of Fredensborg and

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Fig. 7.11 After Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Carnival and Lent, c. 1600, oil on panel, 25.2 × 35.8 cm, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh (inv. MMB.1852)

placed on display in the Crown Prince’s Dining Room.38 The entry in the 1848 inventory again identifies the fat man as a monk and attributes the painting to ‘an old Netherlandish master’.39 Attribution History The oil sketch was for the first time attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder shortly after it became part of the collection of the Statens Museum for Kunst in 1899.40 Recent monographs and exhibition catalogues about Pieter Bruegel the Elder in most cases omit mention of the Copenhagen oil sketch,41 and when brought up in recent literature the painting is not accepted as being by Bruegel the Elder. However, in the first monograph on Pieter Bruegel the Elder, published in 1907, Georges Hulin de Loo lists the

Copenhagen painting in the section ‘Tableaux originaux présentement connus’.42 He may have seen the painting in the newly inaugurated Copenhagen museum, as he describes the work as ‘painted with a swift and rapid brush with very diluted colours. Its fluidity permits us to see, by transparency, the underlying drawing, which is executed in red chalk’.43 He believes the painting to be an oil sketch for ‘une Bataille entre les gras et les maigres’ (a Battle between the fat and the thin). He also mentions Bruegel’s work in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum and considers the two engravings depicting the Fat and the Thin Kitchen as related versions. Gustav Glück did not consider the Copenhagen painting to be a work by Bruegel the Elder, but rather to be related to the circle of Frans Floris,

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suggesting Frans Francken the Elder (1542–1616) as its originator and dating the painting to about 1600.44 Although Friedrich Horst Winkler expressed his doubts about Glück’s de-attribution,45 Glück’s opinion was for a long time a game changer for the Copenhagen oil sketch. Authors who from the outset had agreed on Karl Madsen’s and Hulin de Loo’s attribution later changed their view. This was the case for Max Friedländer, who, in his 1921 monograph on Bruegel, did not express any doubt regarding the attribution to Pieter Bruegel the Elder,46 but later changed his mind.47 In 1935, Charles de Tolnay published a monograph on Pieter Bruegel the Elder in which he lists the Copenhagen Bruegel under ‘Œuvres Contestées’, suggesting an attribution to the circle of Frans Francken the Younger.48 When a grisaille, Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery (1565), clearly by Bruegel, resurfaced, Fritz Grossmann in 1952 reconsidered Glück’s de-attribution.49 About the Copenhagen Bruegel, he writes: ‘the similar technique (manipulation of perspective) found in the small panel with Three Heads […] representing the Fight between Carnival and Lent, in Copenhagen, may give cause to reconsider the question of its authenticity denied by Glück and Tolnay’. Like Georges Marlier, Grossmann considered the Copenhagen painting to be a late autograph work. Surprisingly, Grossmann did not include the Copenhagen oil sketch in his 1955 monograph on Bruegel, which became the standard work on the artist for many years.50 The explanation comes from Grossmann himself in a letter dated 18 November 1956 to the then director of the Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK), Jørn Rubow: ‘when I was going to Copenhagen I was rather doubtful as to Bruegel’s authorship of the Fight between Carnival and Lent. My doubts were based on a poor photograph and on the opinion of earlier writers. When I saw the painting, I was struck by its extraordinarily high quality […] The points in favour of Bruegel outweigh greatly those against him and it now only remains for me to decide whether to bring the picture in my second volume

et al.

among the autograph paintings with or without a question mark.’51 In another letter, dated 6 December of the same year, Grossmann repeats his new opinion to Rubow: ‘from the poor reproductions I had seen, before I inspected the picture, I received a wrong impression of its quality. Therefore I am particularly glad at last to have seen the original.’52 Grossmann’s second volume was never published, but in an article published in The Burlington Magazine he stated that the Copenhagen panel should be regarded as an authentic Pieter Bruegel the Elder painting.53 Georges Marlier wrote extensively on the Copenhagen Bruegel in his monograph on Pieter Brueghel the Younger.54 Marlier attributes the Copenhagen painting to Pieter Bruegel the Elder and, as he did not know its date (1562), he classifies it as a preparatory study for the Battle between Carnival and Lent (1559) in Vienna. Thus, Marlier agrees with Grossmann, adding that the fat man’s head is very similar to the head of the bagpiper in the Peasant Dance, and that other examples of parallels between the three heads in the Copenhagen painting and Bruegel’s larger-scale works of his later period could be made. In Marlier’s opinion, this small chef-d’oeuvre was far beyond what Pieter Brueghel the Younger or ‘Velours Brueghel’ could ever have accomplished.55 Conclusion The oil sketch of the Strife between Carnival and Lent, signed and dated ‘BRVEGHEL · 1562’, can be traced back to King Frederick IV’s private Kunstkammer at Rosenborg Castle before 1718. After an interim period at Fredensborg Castle, it became part of the new Statens Museum for Kunst’s permanent collection two years after it opened in 1897. At the SMK the painting has always been treasured as a masterpiece by the Flemish artist, although it disappeared from art historians’ oeuvre lists long ago. With the extensive analysis of the panel that was carried out by dendrochronology, infrared imaging, X-radiography, scientific analysis of the

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER ’ S OIL SKETCH OF THE STRIFE BETWEEN CARNIVAL AND LENT

pigments and layer structure, together with the finding of a hitherto unnoticed signature and date, this unique oil sketch can be reinstated as being by one of the most versatile and skilled painters of the sixteenth century, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Not only does the signature confirm this conclusion, but the extraordinary combination of a free and skilled handling of both underdrawing and paint in

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rendering the three faces of the Strife between Carnival and Lent is superior to any alternative master of the mid-sixteenth century. Thanks to new and advanced research, and the recent conservation/ restoration treatment, this unique oil sketch will continue to excite and fascinate visitors to the permanent display of the Statens Museum for Kunst as being a genuine work by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

N OT ES This contribution is part of the project ‘The father, the son, the followers: Six Brueg(h)els in Copenhagen examined’, by Anne Haack Christensen, David Buti, Arie Pappot, Eva de la Fuente Pedersen and Jørgen Wadum, presented at The Bruegel Success Story: Symposium XXI for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting, Brussels, 12–14 September 2018. The current article focuses on only one of the six paintings: the Strife between Carnival and Lent by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The technical analysis of the painting discussed here is the result of a collaboration and we would therefore like to thank and acknowledge Loa Ludvigsen, paintings conservator and technical photographer (SMK), and Peter Stig-Nielsen and Annette Keller of Phase One for the advanced highresolution photography in VIS, UV, IR, and false-colour IR of the oil sketch.

(Banbury, National Trust, Upton House); Three Soldiers, 20.3 × 17.8 cm (New York, The Frick Collection); The Adoration of the Magi in the Snow, 33 × 55.2 cm (Winterthur, Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’); Two Monkeys, 19.9 × 23 cm (Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie); Head of a Peasant Woman, 22 × 18 cm (Munich, Alte Pinakothek).

1 Rosenborg 1718, p. 356, no. 65: ‘Eet Støcke paa træ, med trej Ansigter, hvor af tvende Magere, fortærer det fede ansigt.’ Oil on panel, 24.9 × 34.3/34.5 cm, SMK, inv. KMS1639.

9

2 Madsen 1904, cat. no. 58A, pp. 21–2. 3 Monballieu 1964, pp. 92–100; Tamis 2016, pp. 143–61. Of the much larger works by the master executed in an aqueous medium (waterverf) on linen only a few examples have been conserved, although we may speculate that there would have been many more of these large-scale works, which have unfortunately been lost over time. 4 New York 2014. On the Bruegel family’s use of cartoons, see Currie and Allart 2012 and Currie and Allart, Chapter 6 in the present volume. 5 For example, Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery, 24.1 × 34.4 cm (London, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery); The Death of the Virgin, 36 × 55 cm

6

Haack Christensen et al. 2012.

7 Panel paintings from the sixteenth century that have not undergone structural interventions – such as being thinned in connection with the attachment of a cradle – are normally found to have a thickness of 10–15 mm (Wadum 1998b). 8 Without thinning, eight small woodblocks have been attached with wax across a crack in the lower part of the panel. Gnirrep et al. 1992.

10 Daly and Streeton 2017. 11 Dendrochronological analysis of a panel painting, Fastens strid med Fastelavn, inv. KMS1639; dendro.dk report, 10/2018 (SMK internal non-published report by Aoife Daly, Copenhagen). 12 Figures taken from Tomasz Ważny, Aufbau und Anwendung der Dendrochronologie für Eichenholz in Polen, PhD thesis, University of Hamburg, 1990, p. 213. 13 Pascale Fraiture, personal email communication, 11 July 2018. 14 The composition of the ground layer was confirmed by means of scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray (SEM-EDX) spectroscopy carried out on one sample collected from the bottom edge of the painting, showing a ground containing mainly calcium (Ca) with some traces of silicon (Si), aluminium (Al) and potassium (K). Back-scattered electron (BSE) images show

the presence of shells of microscopic marine organisms (such as coccolithophores and foraminifera) typical of chalk. 15 Oil on panel, 24.1 cm × 34.4 cm, London, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, inv. P1978. PG. 48. Christina Currie (KIK-IRPA, Brussels) kindly drew our attention to this work, and Aviva Burnstock (Department of Conservation and Technology, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London) provided images for our research. 16 Oil on panel, 116.1 cm × 162 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado. See Currie and Allart, Chapter 6 in the present volume. 17 We may speculate that if a red underdrawing were employed in other instances it would be very difficult to trace with infrared photography or reflectography. 18 Oil on panel, 154.5 × 153.5 cm, SMK, inv. KMS4411. 19

Wouk 2018, p. 214.

20 Analyses of the paint layers were carried out non-invasively directly on the painting by means of X-ray fluorescence (XRF), fibre optics reflectance (FORS), Raman and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The palette used by Bruegel for this oil sketch consisted mainly of lead white (mainly cerussite), red earth pigments, vermilion and carbon-based black. 21

Vienna 2018, cat. 66, pp. 190ff.

22 London, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, inv. P1978. PG. 48. 23 For printmaker Pieter van der Heyden and publisher Joannes Galle/‘H. Cock excudebat’ (dated 1563 on the lower edge); New Hollstein 2006, cat. nos. 36–7, pp. 83–9. 24 Hollstein 1952, p. 10: ‘Four Heads in Caricature’, diameter 125 mm. An annotation on the verso of the Amsterdam sheet reads

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‘van Frans Francken gheets’ (engraved by Frans Francken), but this could be Frans Francken the Elder or Frans Francken the Younger. According to the Rijksmuseum, the small circular engraving is by Frans Francken III (1607–1667), and is after Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564/5–1637/8) . 25 For the Museum Mayer van den Bergh painting (oil on panel, 25.2 × 35.8 cm, inv. MMB.1852), see De Coo 1966, pp. 40–41, no. 893. Joz. De Coo listed the painting as ‘Naar Pieter Bruegel I’ and called it ‘Carnaval en Vasten’. Gustav Glück attributed the other related painting, which by 1932 was in Regierungsrat Hermann Ritschl’s collection in Vienna, to the young Frans Francken II due to a monogram ‘FFF’ (Glück 1932b, pp. 267–8, fig. 2: ‘Karneval und Fasten. Gemälde. Wien, Privatbesitz, Regierungsrat Hermann Ritschl’). Georges Marlier thought that this painting could be by Frans Francken the Younger; he calls the one in the Museum Mayer van den Bergh ‘Étude pour un Combat de Carnaval et Carême d’apres Pierre Bruegel le Vieux’, and dates it to c. 1600 (Marlier/Folie 1969, p. 312); the Mayer van den Bergh painting and the tondo sold at Fiévez, 8 April 1930, no. 22 (see below), are, according to Marlier, stylistically closer to Pieter Brueghel the Younger but neither should be attributed to him (Marlier/ Folie 1969, p. 312). According to Klaus Ertz, the painting in the Museum Mayer van den Bergh was painted by Hieronymus Francken the Younger, or perhaps by some other ‘Antwerpen Kleinmeister’ in the beginning of the seventeenth century (Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, p. 250). 26 Oil on panel, tondo, diameter 26.5 cm, Fiévez Auction in Brussels, 8 April 1930, cat. no. 22, according to Friedländer 1976, no. 49. Later in The Art Museum at Florida, Miami . A nearly identical composition: oil on panel, tondo, diameter 24.5 cm, formerly private collection, Vienna, whereabouts unknown .

27

Sellink 2014 (edn 2018), p. 75, note 2.

28 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 73–90. 29

Vienna 2018, p. 16.

30

Spronk 2018, p. 272.

31

Wouk 2018, esp. chapter 6.

32

Ibid., p. 218.

33

See note 1.

34 In 1718 the Kunstkammer referred to the Queen’s Chamber and today it is the Winter Room. Hein 2009, vol. 1, p. 106, fig. 20. 35

For the Winter Room, see Wadum 2015.

36 Hein 2009, vol. 1, p. 105. For the 1694 inventory from the Kunstkammer in Gottorf Castle, see Schleswig 1997, vol. 2, pp. 84ff; for the objects that were moved to Rosenborg (1718 inventory) and later Christiansborg Castle/The Royal Danish Kunstkammer (1747–9), see ibid., pp. 162–224. On King Frederick V as an art collector, see Hein 1996 (thanks to Bente Gundestrup for this reference). 37 Gundestrup 1775, inv. 53/a242: ‘Trende Hoveder, malede paa Træe, det eene et tykt Munke-Hoved, de tvende andre magere, ferdige at fortære det feede Hoved; i sort Ramme, breed 13 og høy 9½ Tomme.’ (Thanks to Bente Gundestrup for access to the Kunstkammer 1775 manuscript which is planned for publication ultimo 2021.) The measurements given here correspond with the current format of the painting. Thus a possible reduction in size along the lower edge had already been carried out by this point. 38

Stroe 1848, cat. no. 465.

39 Ibid., cat. no. 465: ‘Af en gammel Nederlænder’. 40

Madsen 1904, cat. no. 58A, pp. 21–2.

41 The painting is not mentioned in Vienna 2018, Büttner 2018, Huet 2016, Sellink 2014 (edn 2018), Vöhringer 2013, Currie and Allart 2012, Silver 2011, Sellink 2007, Marijnissen 1988. In their monograph, Philippe Roberts-Jones and Françoise

et al.

Roberts-Jones (Roberts-Jones 1997, p. 328) mention the SMK painting in the oeuvre list called ‘Former and recent attributions’, with Georges Hulin de Loo and Max J. Friedländer as the only authors accepting the SMK painting as a Bruegel. In his monograph published in 1974, Wolfgang Stechow adds a question mark to the attribution to Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Stechow 1974, p. 47). In the standard publication L’opera completa di Bruegel, the SMK Bruegel is categorized as ‘prevalentemente respinta’ (currently rejected) and dated 1559: Arpino 1967, p. 93, cat. 27. 42 Van Bastelaer and Hulin de Loo 1907, pp. 298ff, cat. no. A18, ill. p. 12. 43 ‘la peinture est largement et rapidement brossée avec des couleurs très délayées. Sa fluidité permet de voir, par transparence, les traits du dessin, qui est exécuté à la sanguine’. 44

Glück 1932a, vol. 1, p. 102, no. 80.

45

Winkler 1933, p. 306.

46

Friedländer 1921, p. 110.

47

Friedländer 1976, p. 62, no. 49.

48

Tolnay 1935, text vol., p. 99, cat. 67.

49

Grossmann 1952, p. 223, note 16.

50

Grossmann 1955.

51

Grossmann to Rubow 1956a.

52

Grossmann to Rubow 1956b.

53

Grossmann 1959, p. 344, note 32.

54

Marlier/Folie 1969, pp. 310–12, fig. 184.

55 Ibid., p. 311. Contrary to this, Klaus Ertz more recently considered the Copenhagen painting as a pedestrian oil sketch by Pieter Brueghel the Younger inspired by a number of different models, and dates the work to the beginning of the seventeenth century (Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, pp. 248–52).

Fig. 8.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Harvesters, 1565, oil on panel, 119 × 162 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1919

8

Is Bruegel’s Sleeping Peasant an Image of Caricature? Yoko Mori

A BSTRACT : Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicts sleeping peasants several times in his prints and paintings. The sleeping peasant in his Harvesters (1565, New York) is often mistakenly interpreted as a drunk and lazy figure anticipating his Land of Cockaigne (1567, Munich). The present contribution proposes positive readings of the sleeping peasant in the Harvesters, exploring both the pictorial background and the literary context. Sleeping peasants were represented without any moralizing intent in July by Hans Sebald Beham’s workshop and August by Jost Amman, as well as in French calendar prints produced by Étienne Delaune, the Atelier de la rue Montorgueil and others. Bruegel might well have been familiar with such non-caricaturized peasant images. His portrayal of the peasant’s well-deserved relaxation following hard labour in the fields merits attention as it challenges previous interpretations. Also worth discussion is an anonymous poem sympathetic towards peasants probably written by a rhetorician of Bruegel’s time. It is interesting to note that renditions of sleeping peasants in grain or hay fields became ‘popular’ motifs in artworks after Bruegel (for instance, by Hans Bol, Jacob Grimmer, Bruegel’s two sons and others), without properly incorporating Bruegel’s true meaning.

—o— The ‘sleeping peasant’ in Bruegel’s Harvesters (fig. 8.1; 1565, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) has often been considered as having negative connotations, and judgemental of presumably lazy or idle people. I propose some positive readings of this image through a review of Bruegel’s pictorial and literary references, which highlight his innovative approach to the figure of the ‘good peasant’.

Nicolaes Jonghelinck (1517–1570) commissioned Bruegel to paint the Harvesters and five other paintings for his ‘Cycle of Seasons’ for Jonghelinck’s villa in Ter Beke, not far from Antwerp’s southern city walls.1 Jonghelinck was a merchant banker, an important tax officer for the Habsburgs, and Bruegel’s major patron.2 Based on Archduke Ernst’s account book and several Habsburg inventories listing ‘six panels of the twelve months of the year’, this series seems to have consisted of six paintings, although only five remain today. According to Iain Buchanan3 and Claudia Goldstein,4 Jonghelinck might have displayed those paintings in his dining room. In addition, Goldstein gives the following reason as to why they might have been placed in the dining room: ‘Bruegel’s figures engage in activities which will put food on the table.’5 Bruegel’s Harvesters needs to be discussed not in isolation but rather within the context of the overall concept of his ‘Cycle of Seasons’.6 In the Harvesters, attention should be paid to two significant elements of peasant activity: namely, hard labour and rest, including pastimes. In The Gloomy Day, which represents early spring, peasants are busily collecting faggots and pruning willows, while devastating floods are wreaking havoc in the village and boats are left shipwrecked in the river. A peasant family returns from a carnival, and a young father enjoys eating waffles, a typical carnival batter cake. Haymaking represents

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summer. Peasants are cutting, drying and transporting hay with two horses. The white horse and brown horse combination is reminiscent of Simon Bening’s ‘July’ in his Hennessy Hours and Da Costa Hours. At the upper centre of Haymaking, we see a public archery game going on in the village. A similar scene in the Harvesters will be discussed in detail later. The Return of the Herd represents late autumn, with herdsmen bringing their cattle to the village. Hunters in the Snow represents winter, with hunters as well as village people singeing a pig in preparation for the long winter, and children enjoying sports on the ice. In 1938, Jean Videpoche described the harvester figure in the Harvesters as ‘The harvester, the man who works with his hands, the antithesis of everything that interested Bruegel’s elegant contemporaries, in short: the proletarian, lies there in the center of this huge panel, savagely possessed by the kind of sleep that only the working class knows.’7 In 1969, Wolfgang Stechow remarked that ‘Where there is plenty of food, drink, and sleep, Bruegel characteristically indulges his habit of making man appear as a slave to them: the faces of the eating and drinking peasants have dumb, somewhat animal-like features, their poses and movements are awkward, the posture of the sleeper anticipates the total abandon of the idlers in The Land of Cockaigne’ (fig. 8.2).8 In 1994, Margaret Sullivan stated: In The Harvesters, the traditional laziness of the peasants is in evidence as well as their industry. Some are cutting and stacking grain, or collecting apples, but others play games in the background, and in the foreground, one huge peasant is stretched out sleeping in a pose that recalls the sleeping and gluttonous figures in Bruegel’s Land of Cockaigne done about the same time, or the yawning peasant in Bruegel’s little painting in Brussels. Perhaps the sleeper’s nap in The Harvesters is due to the amount of drink he has imbibed rather than the result of hard work and honest effort. […] The accusation of

laziness was frequently levelled at the peasants, as in [Sebastian] Brant’s chapter on improvident fools in the Ship of Fools.9 In 2004, Annette de Vries newly observed that Bruegel applied his innovative take on the resting peasants, referring to the pictorial background of earlier such scenes. Bruegel depicts more resting peasants than workers. However, the issue is not convincingly delineated, and the boundary between well-earned rest and undeserved rest remains. De Vries relates Bruegel’s sleeping peasant in the Harvesters to the sleepers or lying figures of the Land of Cockaigne and considers him as one of the idle inhabitants of the latter.10 In 2018, Jürgen Müller and Thomas Schauerte also observed that the pose of the sleeping peasant of the Harvesters was carried into one of the figures of the Land of Cockaigne and interpreted as ‘a negative embodiment of human vice, not least in the juxtaposition to the hardworking harvesters surrounding him’.11 Indeed, the recumbent figures in Bruegel’s Land of Cockaigne comprise a daydreaming clerk, a sleeping soldier and a dozy peasant. These are certainly idle people. The inscription on the print reads: ‘Whoever is lazy and gluttonous: farmer, soldier or clerk / Who reaches there, may eat without working; / The fences are [made with] sausages and the houses with tarts; / capons and chickens fly already roasted.’12 But Bruegel did not single out peasants. Rather, he implies that human beings in general, regardless of class, are inclined to the vain desire for a carefree life of comfort without work. Sullivan assumes that Bruegel’s peasant is sleeping ‘due to the amount of drink he has imbibed rather than the result of hard work and honest effort’.13 Mary Sprinson de Jesús also remarks that ‘perhaps he is not exhausted from honest labor but rather, as Sullivan suggests, may have had too much to drink and illustrates Proverbs 10:5: “He that gathereth in summer is a wise son; he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.”’14 Although Sullivan assumes the sleeping peasant to be drunk, it may be that Bruegel’s sleeping peasant is not

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Fig. 8.2 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Land of Cockaigne, 1567, oil on panel, 52 × 78 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek (inv. 8940)

drunk at all. This is especially clear when comparing him with the drunken figure with red nose and cheeks in Peasant Dance (c. 1568, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). It is worth noting Bruegel’s shrewd depiction of the mouth of the sleeping peasant, which reveals his teeth (fig. 8.3). According to periodontist Dr Shoichi Asano, his mouth is in very poor condition, with several missing teeth. Deep nasolabial fold wrinkles (laugh lines) suggest the loss of further teeth from the upper jaw.15 A tall jug is placed within the tall stems of grain to keep it cool. It is interesting to note that bread was also placed on a jug to protect it from the sun’s heat. Bruegel was concerned with indicating a water source for the working peasants. In Haymaking a well is located in the garden of the farmstead. Similarly, in Village Landscape with Well (c. 1559– 61; see fig. 8.4), the Master of Small Landscapes

depicts a well in front of a farmhouse. Bruegel’s contemporary, Maerten de Vos, also included a sitting peasant drinking water from a well in the foreground of his Summer. In 2001, Reindert Falkenburg interpreted Bruegel’s sleeping peasant as a negative image, referring to a barren pear-tree branch above the sleeping peasant and a group eating: ‘The larger branch has a human echo in a sleeping peasant on the other side of the trunk, whose legs stretch away from the tree. […] Yet, barrenness in a world of fertility and productivity is potentially a charged theme.’ He further compares those resting with the figures in Bruegel’s Land of Cockaigne, stating ‘the dry branches in Bruegel’s Wheat Harvest may offer a similar, pictorial, gloss on peasants who sleep and eat and don’t work’. He seems to go too far in interpreting ‘a fruit-bearing tree with a large barren branch’ as ‘the tree of knowledge of good and evil’.16

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Fig. 8.3 Detail from the Harvesters (fig. 8.1)

Observing Bruegel’s Harvesters in detail, it is noticeable that peasants are using scythes rather than the more usual sickles. According to Paul Lindemans, this kind of scythe, called a Brabant scythe (zeis), to mow grain, is used only in the Brabant and Henegouwen (Hainaut) regions of Belgium.17 Bruegel shows peasants tying the grain together at the top of the stalks, women carrying sheaves on their backs towards a heavily loaded cart in the middle ground, and others collecting apples from an apple tree in the background.

Bruegel does not neglect relaxation in the scene and we can see a peasant group taking lunch. An old woman cuts a big round of old (brownish) cheese, while another grey-haired peasant opposite her cuts bread. Bruegel’s depiction of eating peasants in different ways is distinctive. They eat pap (porridge) with floating pieces of bread in the bowls (the floating pieces are often thought to be raisins but this is probably not the case, given that raisins would sink),18 drink liquid from a big jug or milk from bowls, and eat ‘brood en boter’ (bread and

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Fig. 8.4 Johannes and Lucas van Doetecum after Master of Small Landscapes, Village Landscape with Well, c. 1633–76 (first edn, 1559–61), etching, 137 × 200 mm, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR

butter), typical peasant foods. Peasant midday meals already appeared in the ‘July’ or ‘August’ illuminated pages of several Flemish books of hours, such as the Hennessy Hours of the 1530s (fig. 8.5) or the so-called Golf Book (London, British Library) of the early 1540s, both of which are famous manuscripts illustrated by Simon Bening.19 Bening and other miniaturists, however, might never have had the idea of depicting a sleeping peasant stretched out freely in a grain field (in particular, rye for baking brown bread). Rather than focusing exclusively on working peasants in his ‘Cycle of Seasons’, Bruegel sometimes represented labour with rest and pastimes. This was the pictorial statement of his humanistic beliefs. Bruegel was not constrained by traditional representations of monthly labours. Calendar pages

in illuminated manuscripts generally depict meetings of lovers, sports or other pastimes of the upper class, as well as the monthly labours of peasants. Bruegel, however, was also concerned with expressing the seasonal changes of nature as well as meteorological and celestial phenomena. The most remarkable meteorological phenomenon is the spring storm in The Gloomy Day. The celestial case is the light blue moon at noon represented by Bruegel in the upper left corner of the Harvesters. The moon only became visible when the old frame was removed from the panel during the restoration, prior to the 1998 From Van Eyck to Bruegel exhibition. According to Maryan Ainsworth’s research concerning ‘the moon’ at midday in high summer in this painting,20 this could be related to a solar eclipse that had taken place about ten years before Bruegel’s

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IS BRUEGEL ’ S SLEEPING PEASANT AN IMAGE OF CARICATURE ?

Harvesters.21 Might Bruegel have been so amazed by the solar eclipse that he decided to include the moon in his painting a decade after the event? Bruegel seems to enjoy the villagers’ pastimes in the Harvesters. This is one of the most characteristic elements of Bruegel’s ‘Cycle of Seasons’. Several boys in the centre throw sticks at a goose strung up as a target (fig. 8.6), while monks and others swim in a pond (fig. 8.7). A recent interesting argument by Reinier van ’t  Zelfde suggests that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries swimming

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and bathing inside many cities were forbidden because of the risk of immorality due to public nudity (since swimsuits were not used at that time).22 However, according to the Latin inscription on a sixteenth-century print depicting July by Étienne Delaune, swimming was a necessity during summer work: ‘In July when the thirst of the haymaker is inexhaustible, a person having free time learns to swim in order to cool down his limbs.’23 This indicates no moralizing view concerning swimmers. In the composition, one peasant in

Fig. 8.6 Detail from the Harvesters (fig. 8.1)

Fig. 8.7 Detail from fig. the Harvesters (fig. 8.1)

OPPOSITE

Fig. 8.5 Simon Bening, ‘August’, Hennessy Hours, 1530s, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR

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the field drinks water from a vessel, while a naked person in a river takes care of his child. As the second person takes off his shoes to swim, the third is naked and about to jump into the water. Apparently, Bruegel was not the first to depict a sleeping peasant in the field. Several sixteenthcentury German calendar prints are worth of analysis as examples of precedents for Bruegel’s image. One of the earliest sleeping peasants appears in July (c. 1529–30; fig. 8.8) executed by the workshop of Hans Sebald Beham, which is adapted after Beham’s print for Martin Luther’s Prayer Book of 1527.24 A peasant at the centre is cutting grass vigorously with his scythe. Beside him, a co-worker humorously leans against a haystack, about to fall asleep. But his figure is inconspicuously placed at the left corner of the foreground under a zodiac lion in a cloud-like frame. Jörg Breu the Younger copied his composition from the Beham workshop print when he illuminated the Ehrenbuch der Fugger (Honourable Book of the Family Fugger, 1545–9).25 He depicts a dozy peasant, but whether or not the peasant will fall asleep is not clear. Breu the Younger turned the scene into one that is more picturesque, adding two other working peasants in a pastoral landscape that includes a castle, a village church, farmhouses and so on. Virgil Solis’s July (fig. 8.9) depicts a sleeping peasant also taken from the motif of the Beham workshop. It is interesting to note that the sleeping peasant of Solis’s July was copied in the Sint-Truiden Hours (fig. 8.10) from the late sixteenth century.26 The composition was, however, simplified in comparison with the print by Solis: the latter’s sleeping peasant leaning against a haystack is changed by the Master of Sint-Truiden Hours into a sleeping peasant holding a hay-fork (pitchfork), against which he comfortably rests his back. Franz Isaac Brun’s August (fig. 8.11) is divided into two sections. While, on the left, Brun depicts peasants cutting grain, binding stalks or carrying stalks, on the right he represents the group eating their midday meal. Among the latter group, a sleepy peasant is lying on the ground, holding his

Fig. 8.8 Workshop of Hans Sebald Beham, July, c. 1529–30, woodcut, 250 × 570 mm, London, The British Museum

Fig. 8.9 Virgil Solis, July, 1530–62, engraving, 41 × 61 mm, London, The British Museum

head in his arms. This does not seem to indicate any moral message concerning the sleepy peasant. The print could have been used as a design to decorate silver or earthenware plates. Jost Amman may have got an idea from Brun’s sleepy peasants for his prints of April and August (fig. 8.12). In April a logger holding his axe lies under a large tree for comfort in the middle foreground, while in August a peasant sleeps under the shadow of the tree in the right foreground. In fact, the main purpose of this series is to depict the monthly pastimes of the upper class and the labours of the peasants. Yet Amman inserts a sleeping peasant as a small humorous motif. The print of November by French engraver Étienne Delaune inserts a sleeping female peasant leaning on the trunk of a tree near the bank of the river. Her companion is busy throwing sticks

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Fig. 8.10 Flemish Master of Sint-Truiden Hours, ‘July’, Sint-Truiden Hours, late 16th century, The Hague, Royal Library of the Netherlands (inv. 75A2/4)

Fig. 8.11 Franz Isaac Brun, August, 1559, engraving, 26 × 176 mm, London, The British Museum

Fig. 8.12 Jost Amman, August, late 16th century, etching, 75 × 277 mm, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett

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Fig. 8.13 Atelier de la rue Montorgueil, July, c. 1580, woodcut, 260 × 370 mm, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France

Fig. 8.14 Johannes and Lucas van Doetecum after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Fair of St George, c. 1559, etching and engraving, 332 × 523 cm, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR. Detail

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Fig. 8.15 Pieter van der Borcht, Peasant Fair, 1559, etching, 298 × 477 mm, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR. Detail

against branches, getting acorns to fall off the tree. The print is inscribed ‘November satisfies pigs with acorns, and it provides us with fowl and fat animal meat.’ There is also no negative word concerning the sleeping woman. Another French print, of July (fig. 8.13) by the Atelier de la rue Montorgueil, depicts three sleeping peasants in the foreground. It reads: ‘Les prez fleuris ont leur temps & saison / Pour faire veoir leur beauté tant exquise: / Mais quand ce vient au temps de fenaison / Le faucheur lors sa faux tortue aiguise. / Et ne l’à pas plustost au trauers mise / Qu’on voit soudain perir ceste beauté, / Ieunes & vieux ce miroir vous auise / De mediter vostre

fragilité.’27 The inscribed verse mentions nothing about the sleepers, meaning that the sleepers in the field were not objects of criticism, and their behaviour was viewed as natural after heavy labour. The inscription instead warns young and old that the fragility and vanity of beauty is like that of the pasture. In sum, German and French printed calendars did not carry moral messages related to sleeping peasants. The artists showed labourers taking a nap as natural after a long morning of work. Bruegel might have been familiar with the abovementioned German series and may have been interested in the sleepy or sleeping peasant figures.

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Fig. 8.16 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, 1563, oil on panel, 114.3 × 155.1 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 1026). Detail

Fig. 8.17 Crispijn de Passe the Elder after Maerten de Vos, June, 1580s, engraving, diameter 120 mm, London, The British Museum

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Fig. 8.18 Julius Golzius after Gillis Mostaert, August, late 16th century, engraving, 115 × 165 mm, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR

Bruegel’s representations of sleeping peasants prior to the Harvesters reveal a compassionate attitude towards them. In two prints after Bruegel depicting village feasts, the Fair of St George (fig. 8.14) and the Fair at Hoboken, drunken and sleeping peasants are being well taken care of by sympathetic wives or girlfriends. The figures are comparable with those of Pieter van der Borcht. In Van der Borcht’s Peasant Fair (fig. 8.15), a wife is distressed by the unsightly demeanour of her inebriated husband. In contrast to Van der Borcht’s sharp caricature of disorderly drunks, Bruegel humorously depicts peacefully sleeping figures, and he does not treat them as caricatures. Bruegel’s Tower of Babel (1563, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; fig. 8.16) presents four sleeping labourers in the foreground garden. Bruegel did

not depict them as lazy workers. He more likely simply intended to show them napping, having laboured arduously for many hours. Bruegel depicted all kinds of labourers’ workplace activities, including their rest or defecation. Indeed, in this composition several hundreds of labourers are involved in busy activities, including cutting and carrying stones, making mortar, building arches, and pulling heavy stones by operating crane wheels with their feet. The engraving after Maerten de Vos’s June (fig. 8.17) bears a Latin inscription regarding a peasant’s nap, which translates as ‘June, behold. I trim my rich sheep and pasture. Shade, green lettuce, and a short sleep are pleasant.’28 Such positive words as ‘a short sleep is pleasant’ are noteworthy. A young couple joking with each other sits

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Fig. 8.19 Hans Bol, July, c. 1580, engraving, 144 × 147 mm, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR

in the centre of the composition and they may soon fall asleep, while other peasants are working very hard in the background. Besides June, in seven other monthly representations, De Vos seems to enjoy himself and to express the merry pastimes of wealthy citizens for the entertainment of the viewers. However, the same artist, in his Time Rewards Industry and Penalizes Idleness (1582), depicts a working peasant as a virtuous person, and

a reclining peasant, supporting his head in his arm, as a lazy person. Here, we can see that the vicious person in fact is represented as an unworking person, who is therefore not meant to be seen as someone simply resting after hard work. In Gillis Mostaert’s August (fig. 8.18), a sitting woman is asleep covering her face with her clothes against the strong sunlight. We also see three peasants in the field taking lunch, indicating noontime.

IS BRUEGEL ’ S SLEEPING PEASANT AN IMAGE OF CARICATURE ?

Fig. 8.20 Jacob Grimmer, Summer, oil on panel, diameter 73.8 cm, whereabouts unknown

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Mostaert does not depict any hard workers, but he shows the peaceful midday meal of the peasants in the field in the midst of a pastoral landscape. Hans Bol’s July (fig. 8.19) has a very balanced composition of haymakers, hay collectors, transporters, someone drinking water and someone sleeping behind the haystack. However, Bol is simply cataloguing all the elements of haymaking, and the function of his sleeper is quite different from that of Bruegel’s sleeper as mentioned above. Abel Grimmer’s July, as well as several of his other paintings, imitate Bol’s prints. In his painting, one can see a tiny sleeping figure leaning on a haystack. His father, Jacob Grimmer, in his Summer (fig. 8.20), depicted people cutting wheat, a group engaged in eating, a kissing couple lying on a haystack and a peasant in the front falling asleep. All are given equal emphasis, rendering the activities simply as parallel occupations. Painters of the generation after Bruegel insert a sleeping figure as

Fig. 8.21 Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Summer, 1624, oil on panel, 72.4 × 104.8 cm, whereabouts unknown

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Fig. 8.22 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Allegory of Summer, c. 1595–6, oil on copper, diameter 12 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek (inv. 13710)

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Fig. 8.23 Circle of Jan Brueghel the Elder, Allegory of Summer, c. 1590, oil on copper, 20.3 × 27.3 cm, whereabouts unknown

a popular motif for the amusement of viewers without any other particular significance. A young peasant joking with a girlfriend as they lie on a haystack is seen in Cornelis Dusart’s June. Sleeping and joking peasants seem to be a favourite motif of the seventeenth century rather evoking laughter. Bruegel’s son, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, combined sleeping and eating peasants (fig. 8.21) from his father’s Harvesters and working peasants from his father’s engraving Summer. Moreover, Pieter the Younger added the landscape in the background at the right from his father’s Sermon of Saint John the Baptist,29 but he pointedly removed a tall tree, possibly thinking such a tall tree standing in the middle of a field would be unnatural. Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Allegory of Summer (fig. 8.22) departs somewhat from his father’s Harvesters. Jan delineated the sleeping peasant in the

left foreground next to the resting peasants, but his sleeping figure is not comparable with the pronounced pose of his father’s sleeping peasant. Jan places the sleeper and the resting peasants as a single group in the foreground, as if they were simply inserted to complement his idyllic landscape. Jan’s main concern for his small oil on copper was to impress viewers with a heavenly landscape of beautiful old castles, woods, villages, sea and rocky mountains. A well-dressed upper-class hunter with his hunting dogs appears with the peasant group, as is typical of Jan Brueghel’s mixing classes, as seen in several of his coastal landscapes. Klaus Ertz30 and Konrad Renger31 brought attention to the fact that Jan’s concept of the sleeping and eating peasant group is influenced by his father’s Harvesters. It is clear, nevertheless, that Jan’s concept is quite different from that of his father.

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Fig. 8.24 Pieter van der Borcht, Laborious Peasants, second half of the 16th century, etching and engraving, 227 × 295 mm, Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

The Allegory of Summer (fig. 8.23) by an artist in Jan Brueghel’s circle is largely influenced by Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Harvesters, particularly in the motifs of a sleeping peasant and the group of his companions eating under the tree. Yet, Pieter the Elder’s concept is weakened in this composition. In contrast to his powerful working peasants, this anonymous painter depicted the reaping labourers in a secondary role, with village people resting and walking among them. The main impression of the Allegory of Summer marks a pastoral landscape in the style of Jan Brueghel, populated with workers and resting figures that add to the idyllic atmosphere. Ertz attributed the Allegory of Summer to Jan Brueghel and dated it c.  1590, and rejected

the attributions to Pieter Schoubroeck, Maerten Ryckaert and Anton Mirou given at auctions. A more convincing analysis is offered by Elizabeth Honig who makes a comparison with the quality of secure works by the hand of the master and concludes that the Allegory of Summer may have been produced outside Jan Brueghel’s studio.32 As Bruegel left no written documents, it is useful to explore his humanist thinking, paying attention to the ideas respected by the rhetoricians of his time. In 1561, a Haagspel (literally, Hedge Play; meaning a small-scale play) was held in Antwerp after the Landjuweel, the larger scale rhetoricians’ national competition.33 Four Chambers of Rhetoric, from Turnhout, Brussels, Lier and Berchem,

IS BRUEGEL ’ S SLEEPING PEASANT AN IMAGE OF CARICATURE ?

participated, the theme being ‘What kind of manual work is the most useful and honourable, although it has very little esteem?’34 The answer to the question from all four chambers was ‘agriculture’. In other words, peasant toil was appreciated among the rhetoricians. A very interesting print entitled Laborious Peasants (fig. 8.24), by Pieter van der Borcht, first mentioned by Jeroen Vandommele,35 is worthy of discussion in this context.It is very clear that the idea of the print is to praise the peasant’s full day of heavy work. The Latin inscription in the top margin conveys the importance of the peasant: ‘These seeds, Good God, which are entrusted to that earth belonging to you, may bring multiple fruit to the peasants.’36 In the print, a richly dressed gentleman accompanying two fashionable young men encounters a hard-working peasant operating a heavy plough. The young man says, ‘Goodbye, bumpkin!’ and the peasant replies, ‘Without us you would starve to death. Let us pray to God, our Lord, that he will bless our hard work.’ The French text below is more critical of the haughty well-dressed rich man: ‘See the gentleman strutting about and despising this courageous peasant, who plants the seeds on the ground. And this latter answers him, think oh great one, that you and yours are fed through our labours.’ Their conversation recalls the Dutch proverb ‘arbeid adelt’ (working ennobles people). It is true to state that the peasant in Van der Borcht’s print is a noble person, not a bumpkin. ‘Without us you would starve to death’ is similarly implied in a sixteenth-century poem in the popular Antwerp Songbook of 1544: Let us praise the farmer With songs and delight, For he alone excels in true virtue. Villages, castles and towns, Day in day out he nourishes and feeds With his limbs aglow in sweat The noble and good farmer To whom everyone owes life.

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To feed dukes, princes and earls, The farmer must toil like a slave, It is right to praise him. At times when fine gentlemen shine And gaily celebrate, One can see him labour, The noble and good farmer, To whom everyone owes life.37 Although the anonymous Flemish poet highly praises the peasant, another serious piece of writing about the peasant by Sebastian Franck, the sixteenth-century German humanist and freethinker, makes the sharp observation that every peasant works extremely hard, but whether peasant, day labourer or shepherd, all live in miserable houses, and have wretched clothes and poor food. Moreover, they have the obligation of corvée to their landlords, including heavy requirements to perform community service and the payment of various taxes. ‘Yet they are not more pious [than others] and not simple-minded people, but wild, cunning, disobedient folk. Their duties, traditions, holy services, their construction are well-known. However, they are not everywhere the same, but rustic and moral as in all other places.’38 It is very interesting to realize that Franck does not simply praise the industriousness of the peasant, but that he sees the reality of the peasant’s life and the peasant’s flexibility to adjust to harsh conditions. In reality, the medieval peasant suffered hardship and toil throughout his life. The German fifteenth-century Carthusian monk and historian Werner Rolevinck wrote the moral booklet Von der Unterweisung der Bauern (Libellus regimine rusticorum, 1472), instructing the peasant that he was required to fulfil his religious duties as well as his obligations towards his landlord.39 The peasant should draw hope from the daily admonitions and, by passing through earthly hardships, learn how to attain eternal happiness and endless bliss. Rolevinck mentioned the sixteen requirements of the peasant among which four may have been particularly important for the peasant:

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1. Above all, every pious peasant should fear God. 2. He should respect his profession as ordained by God and he should merrily perform it. 3. He should obey his landlord humbly. 4. He should pay his tithe and taxes and meet his obligations faithfully.40 Paul Freedman points out that ‘servitude and seigneurial rights attendant on serfdom were major issues in German revolts that antedated 1525’, the year of the Peasants’ War. He also remarks that ‘Peasants asserted claims of human freedom against servitude without specifically invoking Christian doctrine at Altbirlingen’ and other cities.41 The situation in Flanders may not have been totally the same. However, the toil of the peasant, the arbitrary lordship and the problem of poor crops due to bad weather were the same everywhere. Bruegel, with deep compassion, expresses humanistic attitudes towards the hard-working peasant living under such difficult circumstances. The old Dutch proverb ‘Der heeren zonde, der boeren boete’ (The lord’s sin, the peasant’s penance) also reflects this situation. In conclusion, Bruegel’s sleeping peasant in the Harvesters is one of his most innovative and humanistic figures. It seems that Bruegel wished to convey to his viewers the image of a peacefully sleeping peasant as symbolizing well-deserved relaxation after exhausting work from before sunrise to midday. Peasants needed to sleep to refresh their energy for work in the afternoon. Although several German prints depict a sleeping peasant without any irony, Bruegel goes much further than those preceding examples. With this sleeping figure, Bruegel ingeniously depicts the popular Dutch proverb ‘Na gedaan werk is het goed rusten’ (After the work is done, it is good to rest). There are extensive traditions of medieval Latin proverbs concerning the significance of rest for regenerating energy and powerful activity: ‘Nil amentius labore, cui non est finis suus’ (Nothing is more senseless than work with no end); ‘Tam

malum est labor perennis quam optium perpes malum est’ (Continuous work is as much an evil as endless inactivity).42 Koenraad Brosens has also pointed out parallel Italian expressions in 2006: ozio vile (vile indolence) and ozio onesto (literally, honest indolence or leisure; metaphorically, regeneration).43 Thus, Bruegel’s sleeping peasant can be observed as ozio onesto, rather than as ozio vile. For Bruegel, peasants are also not slaves of labour to provide food for aristocrats and citizens. They have the right to enjoy their leisure when they are free of work. Recognizing Bruegel’s humanistic and compassionate feelings towards peasants, his sleeping figure in the Harvesters is one of the most significant peasant figures expressed by Bruegel. Bruegel’s ‘Cycle of Seasons’ is considered a unique series and his profound concept is different to those of the early sixteenth-century calendar pages of Flemish manuscripts and German, French and Flemish calendar prints. This is because these earlier manuscripts and prints depict labourers’ activities in certain months and the pastimes of the upper classes, such as hunting and picnicking, in other months. On the contrary Bruegel’s protagonists are none other than the peasants and workers. He did not include landlords or supervisors in his ‘Cycle of Seasons’, with the exception of The Return of the Herd.44 In addition, Bruegel tried to capture the natural landscapes of the different seasons by showing the changing colours of leaves, flowers, ground and sky, as well as various cloud configurations due to sudden storms or calm winds and other natural phenomena. In sum it should be emphasized that the behaviour of the sleeping peasant in the Harvesters is extraordinarily free from such constraints, allowing the sleeper peacefully to take a nap without the watching eyes of a supervisor. After Bruegel’s Harvesters, sleeping peasants in grain or hay fields became ‘popular’ motifs in prints, appearing in those by Hans Bol, and in paintings by Jacob Grimmer, but these representations did not follow the true spirit of Bruegel’s interpretation.

IS BRUEGEL ’ S SLEEPING PEASANT AN IMAGE OF CARICATURE ?

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N OT ES I am grateful to Maryan Ainsworth, Curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for her valuable support of my research at the Museum in 2018. I also appreciate the support of Christina Currie, Head of Photography and Scientific Imagery, Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), Brussels, for her continuous academic cooperation. I also appreciate Cheryl A. Silverman for her shrewd suggestions about English usage.

to cite her research on the moon (8 June 1999, memo from Maryan Ainsworth to the Director’s Office, in European Paintings Department files).

1

Buchanan 1990b, p. 541.

22 Van ’t Zelfde 2007.

2

Buchanan 1990a, pp. 102–4.

3

Buchanan 1990b, p. 549.

23 Latin inscription translated by Karin Winner and Eugen Ritzinger.

4

Goldstein 2013, p. 54, 137–8.

5

Ibid., p. 138.

6 Mori 1985, Mori 2005, Mori 2012, Mori 2021 (forthcoming). 7

Videpoche 1938, p. 55.

8

Stechow 1969, p. 104.

9

Sullivan 1994, pp. 43–4.

10

De Vries 2004, pp. 39–42.

11

Müller and Schauerte 2018, pp. 288–9.

12 Van Bastelaer 1908, p. 50, no. 147; Van Bastelaer 1992, p. 201. 13

Sullivan 1994, p. 43.

14

Sprinson de Jesús 1998, p. 386.

15 Dr Asano surmises that the sleeping peasant’s tooth loss may not have been due to the consumption of too much sugar. Sugar was not common in the lives of peasants in sixteenth-century Northern Europe. Rather, in Dr Asano’s assessment, poor sanitary conditions would have been the cause of dental problems. Personal communication, 2018. 16

Falkenburg 2001, pp. 272–4.

17

Lindemans 1952/94, vol. 2, pp. 62–3.

21 The suggestion of a possible solar eclipse was made to Maryan Ainsworth by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, New York.

unter dem Baum im Vordergrund noch eine besondere Auseinandersetzung mit dem Werk des Vaters.’ Mirjam Neumeister, ‘Jan Brueghel d.Ä., Die vier Jahreszeiten’, in Munich 2013, pp. 144–7. 32 Honig, and personal communication, 2019 and 2020. 33 Gibson 1991b, p. 23; Cartwright 1998; Kavaler 1999, pp. 67–70; Vandommele 2011, pp. 42–5.

24 Hans Sebald Beham designed and made the woodcut for Martin Luther’s printed Prayer Book of 1527.

34 Translated by Jeroen Vandommele (Vandommele 2011, p. 43) from the Dutch: ‘Welck hantwerck oirboirlycste is van doene en eerlycste, nochtans seer cleyn gheacht?’. Silver 2006, pp. 21.

25 Munich 2010, p. 46, Clm 9460, p. 76.

35

26 Sint-Truiden Hours, The Hague, Royal Library of the Netherlands, inv. 75A2/4. Jeroen Vandommele, Curator of Postmedieval Manuscripts, generously informed me about a sleeping peasant in the calendar page of July in the Flemish book of hours from SintTruiden Monastery. I identified the model for this manuscript as Virgil Solis’s August (one of his calendar prints series of the midsixteenth century) and I date the manuscript to the late sixteenth century. The Royal Library dates it to c. 1570–80.

36 Latin inscription translated by Karin Winner and Eugen Ritzinger.

27 ‘Flowery meadows have their time and season / To display their exquisite beauty. / But when harvest time comes / The reaper sharpens his crooked scythe / And as soon as he swings it / We suddenly see this beauty perish. / Young and old, may this mirror urge you / To meditate on your fragility.’ (Translation by Dominique Vanwijnsberghe.) 28 Latin text translated by Akihiko Watanabe.

18 Dr Eiko Funada, ethnologist in food culture specializing in bread, suggested what the peasants of the Harversters may have been eating. Personal communication, 2018.

29 Marlier/Folie 1969. Marlier did not mention about Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, p. 230 (fig. 141) and p. 231.

19 Tolnay 1935, text vol., p. 37–42. Charles de Tolnay was one of the earliest scholars to state that Flemish books of hours and breviaries may have inspired Bruegel’s ‘Cycle of Seasons’ iconography of monthly peasant activities in fields and yards. Herold 2002.

30 Ertz 1979, pp. 104–5. Ertz describes Jan Brughel’s View over the Valley River, Harvest and Busy Country Street with an Inn as follows: ‘Alle drei Kompositionen sind mehr oder weniger dem Vater Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. verpflichtet …’ Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 3, p. 1103.

20 I thank Maryan Ainsworth (Curator of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) for allowing me

31 Renger and Denk 2002, p. 105. ‘Neben der allgemeinen Übereinstimmung des Themas zeigt die Gruppe der rastenden Bauern

Vandommele 2016.

37 Meertens and De Groot 1942, pp. 29–32. Een schoon liedekens-boeck 1544, see Vandommele 2011, p. 358. Gibson 1991b, pp. 23, 48 (footnote 73). 38 Sebastian Franck, Weltbuch, Tübingen, 1534, p. 47a, quoted in Epperlein 2003, p. 267. 39 Werner Rolevinck, Von der Unterweisung der Bauern (Libellus regime rusticorum), 1472, pp. 77ff, translated in Epperlein 2003, pp. 256–7. 40

Ibid., p. 257.

41

Freedman 1999, pp. 282–3.

42 Hay 2006, p. 84. Latin proverbs translated by Karin Winner and Eugen Ritzinger. 43 Brosens 2006. He also pays attention to ozio onesto of Bruegel’s sleeping peasant. 44 In The Return of the Herd, the inconspicuous man on horseback to the right is most likely a ‘Schaffner’ (a guide?) or ‘Meier’ (a steward of a manor) according to Klaus Demus (Demus 1981, p. 99; Demus 1997, p. 87). He would have accompanied shepherds and cattle returning from the mountain meadows to the village, and does not appear to play a dominant supervisory role in Bruegel’s painting.

Fig. 9.1 Printed poster (n.d.) of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Wedding Dance (1566) showing the painting pre-1942 treatment

Fig. 9.2 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Wedding Dance, 1566, oil on oak, 119 × 158 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts, City of Detroit Purchase (inv. 30.374)

9

The Afterlife of the Detroit Wedding Dance: Visual Reception, Alterations and Reinterpretations Yao-Fen You, Ellen Hanspach-Bernal, Christina Bisulca and Aaron Steele

A BSTRACT : Recent technical investigation of Pieter Bruegel’s Wedding Dance (1566) – one of the Detroit Institute of Arts’s most iconic paintings – has yielded exciting data concerning materials and techniques that sheds new light on the painting’s original colour palette, the function of the underdrawing, and its original format. Apart from providing an assessment of the current state and appearance of the Detroit painting, this contribution discusses how the painting might have originally looked, based on an informed understanding of changes to both the surface and the painting support, caused either by natural ageing or human intervention. In addition to the crucial evidence provided by highresolution imaging and pigment analysis, the authors have also relied on source material in the form of early copies of the painting now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) and in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

—o— In the summer of 1930 the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) made international news with its acquisition of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Wedding Dance (figs 9.1 and 9.2). Headlines heralded the ‘rare work by Bruegel purchased for the Institute’.1 Measuring 119 × 158 cm and painted on wood panel, the previously unknown painting was comparable in size to the Vienna pictures. It was also dated, carrying the year 1566 in Roman numerals.2 As the second Bruegel the Elder painting to enter an

American public collection – the Harvesters was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1915 – the Wedding Dance was a great coup for Wilhelm Valentiner, who was tasked with building an encyclopaedic collection for Detroit when he was appointed director in 1924.3 Shortly after he spotted the Wedding Dance at the London gallery of Arthur Sulley, Valentiner quickly wired Clyde Burroughs, secretary of the Arts Commission, that a decision had to be made immediately: Sulley has extraordinary painting by Peter Breughel Elder / Greates[t] and rarest sixteenth century Dutch master / fortyseven by sixty two inches representing peasant dance about fifty figures / of same size and importance as great Vienna paintings / found in English country house one week ago / Never published / Price extremely reasonable / eight thousand pounds which means half of what London National Gallery and Berlin Museum paid for theirs / Would recommend concentrating our funds since we could not find anything greater for similar amount / No time for sending photographs since other museum interest / purchase has been decided within one week / Payment can wait for some time / Without doubt such

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acquisition would be outstanding for all future / Also Tannahall [sic] most enthusiastic / Leaving for Berlin Monday / Kindly let me know decision which hope so much will be favourable to Berlin adress / Valentiner Hotel Rubens / 320pm [sic].4 In a turn of events as extraordinary as the work of art itself, the Arts Commission approved the purchase of the Wedding Dance for £7,400, sight unseen. The discovery of the painting called into question the authority of the version held in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), acquired on the Berlin art market only a year earlier (fig. 9.4).5 The relationship between the two works – both oils on wood panel and alike in format, composition and colour scheme – was the subject of heated debate for the next few years, with both institutions arguing that they possessed the original version. The matter appeared to be settled definitively in 1935 when the two paintings were shown side by side for two weeks in the Brussels exhibition Cinq siècles d’art. As Maurice Delacre declared, ‘it appears to us irrefutable that the Detroit picture is better than the Antwerp picture, and that the latter must, in any case, be rejected’.6 The Detroit painting has subsequently been accepted as the authoritative work and the Antwerp version a copy. Despite being one of the DIA’s most iconic and rare paintings – during the 2013 Detroit bankruptcy proceedings there was great concern in the public sphere that it would have to be sold – the Wedding Dance (fig. 9.2) has received scant scientific attention. When in 2015 the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna announced plans to organize a monographic exhibition on Pieter Bruegel the Elder to commemorate the 450th anniversary of his death, the moment seemed ripe for the DIA to undertake a comprehensive material and technical investigation that would help us to better understand the painting’s construction, condition and original appearance. We undertook a full visual examination, captured new state-of-the-art imag-

et al.

ing, and conducted non-invasive pigment analysis, as well as reviewing existing photography and records of prior treatments.7 A priority was to assess and determine the extent of the alterations to the painted surface of the Detroit panel, whether naturally occurring due to the paint ageing process and colour shifts in pigments, or brought about by human intervention. We have made many exciting discoveries. High-resolution imaging, for instance, confirmed that the panel is both signed and dated. Although the signature is highly fragmented, it is an important discovery (fig. 9.3).8 We also cast our net further afield, travelling to study in person the copies held in Antwerp and Berlin, both of which have proven to be invaluable sources for insight into the Detroit painting,

a

b Fig. 9.3 Detail from the Wedding Dance (fig. 9.2), date (a) and signature, highlighted in yellow for readability (b) (bottom right corner)

THE AFTERLIFE OF THE DETROIT WEDDING DANCE

particularly its original colour palette, the function of the underdrawing, and its original format. By laying a tracing on polyester film of the Detroit panel over the Antwerp panel and the Berlin canvas, we were able to establish some correspondences and deviations between the original and the copies. In what follows, we will share an assessment of the Detroit painting’s current state and appearance, as well as discuss how the painting might have originally looked. Detroit Panel: State of the Painting in 2018 Painting Support Consistent with Bruegel’s paintings on wood, the Detroit panel is constructed from multiple planks joined horizontally. The grain of the individual planks runs parallel to the joins. The original unpainted edges on either side, measuring about 7 mm wide, correspond to a rebate on the panel’s verso of about the same width. This suggests that temporary battens were attached prior to ground and paint application to allow for easier handling during painting.9 A cradle with vertical moving battens was attached later. Its design closely resembles cradling systems popular in London in the late nineteenth century.10 This would suggest that the painting was in England as early as the 1890s. Painted Surface The preparatory drawing was executed on top of a thin calcium-carbonate ground and an imprimatura applied to the front of the panel. The ground was smoothed after application, most likely by a scraper, as suggested by a set of short diagonal striations across the surface observed in a small area located below the hair of the bride.11 The broad brush marks observed in the imprimatura suggest the presence of lead white, as confirmed by the distinct absorption patterns evident in the X-radiograph. This layer has a yellowish tone, which could stem either from slight tinting or from later discoloration. The paint is applied in thin layers, allowing the composition to be built in reserve.12 Adjacent paints

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rarely overlap, and in many areas a fine sliver of ground remains visible between painted zones. Forms are built from individual brushstrokes, slightly staggered to create an overall thin layer. Stippling was employed to depict woollen hats or knitted stockings. Modelling is achieved through light and dark shadings of the base tone. Sickleshaped marks are used to define the tubular contours of the legs. Although it is rare to observe Bruegel building up the surface in multiple layers, we note that fine red glaze lines have been applied over dense red layers to indicate folds and suggest modelling. Departing from the general monochromatic build-up is the representation of changeant fabrics. The vest of a dancer in the front, for instance, shifts from a light blue to a pink within one layer.13 The skin tones were achieved with the application of multiple shades of pinks, reds and whites over a light-brown base tone. The deep transparent reds Bruegel employed for lips, tongues and nostrils are remarkable. Light-brown paint appears to have also been used to indicate fine facial features. Unfortunately, the skin tones are heavily compromised, making a full assessment of the layering and degree of detail impossible. Nevertheless, some of the better preserved faces in the foreground suggest how the hands and faces may have once been rendered. Although the main forms were built up economically, accessories such as clasps, tassels or shoe buckles were painted with fine and elaborate detail. Even the smallest of strings, for instance, was executed in multiple colours, from a deep transparent red and pink to dark and light yellow. Each of the miniscule pearls decorating a red purse is painted with two shades of grey and a white highlight. Some deviations from the drawing occurred during the painting process. The bride’s haloshaped headdress shifted to a headband in the final state. The long feather of the second bagpipe player, visible in the infrared reflectogram, never materialized. Overall, the shifts and alterations made during the painting process are minimal and are restricted to the final layer of paint.

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Pigment Analysis Fibre optics reflectance spectroscopy (FORS), X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LCMS) were used to assess the pigment components of the paint layers. The results have been helpful in recovering the painting’s original appearance and the range of pigments Bruegel employed.14 Perhaps the most surprising discovery was the identification of a precious red insect dye in certain passages of red paint: for instance, in the red sleeves of the dancing woman adjacent to the bagpipe player.15 No principal green pigment has been identified thus far, but we were able to observe that the greens are frequently comprised of a mixture of lead-tin yellow and azurite.16 Furthermore, we can assert with confidence that a fair amount of fading has occurred in passages where smalt has been identified.17 For example, smalt was detected in the jacket worn by the male dancer in the bottom left, with red hose and his arms akimbo. We also find it with frequency in the garments worn by the figures in the middle ground. Take, for instance, the couple in an open position near the tree at centre. Smalt can be found in the now pinkish sleeves of the female figure with her right arm at her hip and her left arm outstretched to meet her partner’s right

et al.

hand. These dramatic shifts in coloration tied to the use of smalt, a notoriously unstable pigment, is consistent with changes observed in Bruegel’s other paintings. Further pigment and dye identifications are listed in Table 9.1. State of the Painting, 1930–42 Abrasions in the surface were already present when the DIA purchased the painting in 1930. In fact, large portions of the Wedding Dance were overpainted when it entered the museum’s collection. The codpieces, for example, were conspicuously absent (see fig. 9.1), having been systematically overpainted in deference to Victorian ideals of decency.18 The overpaint was not removed until October 1941, when the painting was the subject of a comprehensive treatment by the Germantrained conservator William Suhr.19 Although the treatment was supported with photographic documentation, Suhr did not describe the painting’s condition nor provide a treatment plan prior to restoration. Instead, he records his aesthetic assessment of the painting, discussing in detail, for example, the character of the underdrawing and the potential paint sequencing. His treatment photographs suggest that the initial strategy was to remove the varnish, as well as localized passages of

Table 9.1 Pigments and dyes identified in the Wedding Dance Material

Identification

Ground Pigments

Techniques used

Calcium carbonate

FORS, XRF

Red

Vermillion

XRF, FORS

Pink

Insect dye (cochineal)

XRF, FORS, LCMS

Yellow

Lead-tin yellow

XRF, FORS

Iron oxide yellow

FORS

Unidentified organic

XRF

Azurite

XRF, FORS

Smalt

XRF

Iron oxides/earths

XRF, FORS

Blue Brown Black

Carbon black

XRF

White

Lead white

XRF

THE AFTERLIFE OF THE DETROIT WEDDING DANCE

overpaint.20 It was not until the varnish was removed that the decision to ‘uncover’ the codpieces was ultimately made. Nonetheless, the sanitized version persisted in reproductions posttreatment, even at the museum itself, causing much confusion as to the painting’s true state.21 Considering Suhr’s remarkable talent for mimicking the techniques of the old masters – so evident in the other Detroit paintings that he treated – his approach to the Wedding Dance strikes us as unusually restrained. Overpaint remains in the top left corner and most of his retouches were applied locally.22 They do not attempt to reconstruct compromised details or losses in modelling. In reflecting on the treatment in 1955, director Edgar P. Richardson remarked that ‘in 1942 [sic] we had the picture thoroughly cleaned and restored as nearly as possible to its original form, allowing for the accidents of time’.23 His thoughtful comment quite accurately describes the degree to which the museum accepted the painting’s altered and abraded state, even after treatment. Comparing the pre- and post-treatment images (figs 9.1 and 9.2), it is clear that the faces, the garments and the background in the Detroit panel were extensively overpainted prior to Suhr’s treatment. Notable passages of overpaint can be seen in the face of the man standing with his back to the viewer along the left edge of the composition. Pre-treatment his face had more definition and his hands were more prominent. A cast shadow had also been added to the ground beneath the group of four men clustered next to the tree trunk in the upper left quadrant. The eyes of the central figures, including the bride and her dance partner, were also reinforced to appear more legible. In general, the pre-treatment paint surface reads as dense, filmy and opaque, and none of Bruegel’s painted corrections is discernible to the naked eye. We observe, too, that the figure of the man drinking from a jug, who appears highly unresolved in the panel’s present state, was already severely abraded prior to Suhr’s treatment. That and similar alterations to the Detroit painting could only have been

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wrought by a harsh cleaning campaign in the past, which resulted in the abrasion of the faces and the garments, as well as the signature. The exact nature of Suhr’s intervention remains to be ascertained: did he only remove overpaint and, in the process, reveal the true condition of the panel? Or did his treatment contribute to the overall erosion of the surface? Reconstructing the Original Finish and Colours of the Wedding Dance The Antwerp Wedding Dance (fig. 9.4) has been central to our attempts to reconstruct the colour and finish of the Detroit painting. Although the Antwerp panel is slightly wider – it measures 119.4 × 168.7 cm – the composition is largely identical except for the uppermost section, which is a nineteenth-century addition.24 When the Detroit tracing was overlaid on the Antwerp panel, sections aligned almost perfectly when isolated and shifted about 2 cm in various directions when viewed in the aggregate, suggesting that the composition was copied piecemeal.25 In addition to the largely identical proportions and composition, the high degree of correspondence in the smallest of details between the two panels indicates that the painter of the Antwerp painting most likely worked directly from the Detroit Wedding Dance. The Antwerp composition adheres very closely to the final design of the Detroit panel as painted. Further, it does not indicate any knowledge of the modifications made to the original design during the painting process, thus eliminating the possibility that the copyist worked from a preparatory drawing for the Wedding Dance. The closeness of the Antwerp painting to the original makes it a valuable primary source. The painting techniques and the character of the painted surface vary between the two, but the copyist’s focus on replicating exact details and shading assists in approximating the level of finish the Detroit painting once had (figs 9.5–9.8).26 Apart from localized losses, the fairly good condition of the painted surface of the Antwerp panel allows us

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et al.

Fig. 9.4 Anonymous, The Wedding Dance, after 1566, oil on panel, 119.4 × 168.7 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (inv. 973)

to mine it for crucial details of garments now lost in the Detroit painting. A one-to-one comparison of the bride figures, for instance, aids us in reconstructing the translucent undergarment worn under her black dress, as well as the fullness of her long, wavy hair (figs 9.5a–b) – hardly any visual clues to such fine and lovely details survive in the Detroit panel. Because the Antwerp painting also replicates almost exactly the colour scheme of the Detroit panel, it may be used as a reference point for understanding shifts in colour. The red lakes have remained rather stable in the Detroit painting, but the blues, the ones derived from smalt, have shifted a considerable degree. In some passages, the blue tones have faded so much that the detection of a blue pigment was completely unexpected, espe-

cially if we were to rely only on the initial visual assessment of the paint layer. For instance, we identified red lake and smalt in the predominantly salmon pink jacket worn by the male dancer with his arms akimbo on the bottom left (fig. 9.6a). What then was the intended colour of the garment? Was it once more of a light pink, almost a lavender, as we see in the Antwerp painting (fig. 9.6b)? The smalt (now faded) would have functioned to moderate the red lake. Consider also the radical shift in colour of the vest worn by the bride’s dance partner. Although his vest now reads as a drab grey, XRF analysis has identified both lead-tin yellow and smalt as present in the area. This would suggest that the vest must have been bluer in hue, perhaps a deep teal blue, as suggested by the dark vest worn by his Antwerp counterpart.27

OPPOSITE

Fig. 9.5a Detail from the Wedding Dance by Bruegel the Elder (fig. 9.2), bride Fig. 9.5b Detail from the Wedding Dance, anon. (fig. 9.4), bride

THE AFTERLIFE OF THE DETROIT WEDDING DANCE

a

b

175

176

a

b

YAO - FEN YOU , ELLEN HANSPACH - BERNAL

et al.

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Establishing the Function of the Underdrawing One of the biggest questions surrounding the Wedding Dance concerns the status and function of the underdrawing, much of which is presently visible to the naked eye (figs 9.5a–8a and 9.9). Infrared imaging and ongoing endeavours to extract the underdrawing digitally reveal a very extensive and vigorous drawing with numerous adjustments to the modelling and shading of the figures, but not to the composition as a whole (fig. 9.9). The positions of the dancing bodies, particularly the disposition of the feet and interlocking hand gestures, were slightly shifted and shading was added to achieve a more exuberant and dynamic composition befitting a festive wedding party.28 Because the Detroit underdrawing is so unusually comprehensive and so visually dominant – the legibility and coherence of the facial expressions depend on the drawn lines (for instance, figs 9.5a and 9.7a) – it is often assumed that it was intended to be part of the design of the final image. Nevertheless, a consideration of the Detroit painting’s surface with respect to that of the Antwerp panel has encouraged a more nuanced assessment of the underdrawing’s intended function. Bruegel continued to refine the positioning and the modelling of the figures during the painting stage; as a result, some figures are almost illogical in appearance. In the most severe instances, the drawn and painted lines are literally at odds with one another. For example, the male dancer in the lower right (fig. 9.7a) appears to have three eyes. Although the paint layer is highly abraded, close examination reveals that his face was once quite detailed. Comparison to the Antwerp copy (fig. 9.7b) confirms this was the case. So did Bruegel intend for his fine, delicate paint layer and graphic, sketch-like drawing to coexist in the final painted image? Here, too, the copy provides essential clues. The Antwerp faces are not characterized by dark and prominent contour lines – in fact, many of the drawn shadow lines visible in the Detroit panel cannot be found in the copy. These

observations confirm that large parts of the underdrawing in the Detroit panel have become more visible over time and were not meant to be part of the final design. That the underdrawing features prominently now is due to the natural ageing of the paint and the erosion of the painted surface caused by human interventions, both of which have resulted in increased transparency of the paint layers.29 Yet, one wonders if Bruegel intended for the underdrawing to function in multiple ways. The depiction of the stiff creases of the highly starched headdresses worn by the female dancers in the front row (fig. 9.8a) suggest that the underdrawing may, at times, have been intended to work in concert with the painted layer. The creases are not modelled with dark paint, but rendered white on white, relying on the initial drawn line to indicate a shadow. While it is possible that Bruegel was employing the preparatory layer as his base, microscopic observation reveals a glaze-like, now almost transparent, white layer over the underdrawing. The Antwerp copyist, interestingly, chose to depict the creases with a thin painted black line applied over the white layer (fig. 9.8b).30

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Fig 9.6a Detail from the Wedding Dance by Bruegel the Elder (fig. 9.2), male dancer Fig. 9.6b Detail from the Wedding Dance, anon. (fig. 9.4), male dancer

Fig. 9.7a Detail from the Wedding Dance by Bruegel the Elder (fig. 9.2), male dancer Fig. 9.7b Detail from the Wedding Dance, anon. (fig. 9.4), male dancer

Reconsidering the Painting’s Composition and Dimensions Since we first unframed the Wedding Dance in autumn 2015, we have grappled with the status of the uppermost plank, which measures 6.5 cm in height. Long speculated to be an addition, material analysis has proven to be inconclusive, providing us only with conflicting data. The handling of paint, the colour scheme and especially the traction cracks characterizing this uppermost plank deviate from the rest of the panel, but the panel’s unpainted edges continue all the way to the top. The corresponding peripheral rebate, nevertheless, is missing. Furthermore, there is no evidence of a preparatory drawing in the uppermost plank, and the paints in that section comprise different pigments from those used elsewhere. For instance,

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Fig. 9.8a Detail from the Wedding Dance by Bruegel the Elder (fig. 9.2), female dancer

Fig. 9.8b Detail from the Wedding Dance, anon. (fig. 9.4), female dancer

smalt was detected in the bottom two-thirds of the cloth of honour, but not in the top third, which belongs to the top strip. The leaves in the uppermost right corner differ in copper content to those painted below the join, in addition to displaying rather different tonalities. Apart from the perceived colour differences in the top strip, we also note a distinct and different craquelure pattern in the area above the join (figs 9.10a–c).31 These observed material differences, in sum, suggest that the top section is a later addition. A consideration of the panel’s construction, particularly the method(s) of joining and the size of the boards, lends further support to our hypothesis that the top section is a later addition. In its present state, the Detroit panel comprises five, possibly six, boards, aligned horizontally and joined in most cases by elongated oval dowels. While there are dowels between boards 1 and 2, 2 and 3,

and 3 and 4 – as indicated in the X-radiograph image (fig. 9.11) – they are not present beyond the bottom of board 4. This absence is telling. So, too, is the size of the boards. The bottom three planks are consistently sized, ranging in width from 26.8 cm to 29.5 cm. The top boards are irregularly sized, and measure 18 cm, 12.5 cm and 6.5 cm, respectively. Given that there is no evidence of historic dowels between those three boards, can we assume they once formed a discrete plank measuring 37 cm in width? This measurement seems unusually large given the width of the bottom three planks and the known average width of sixteenth-century boards.32 Alternatively, would it make more sense that the painting support once consisted of five planks, with the top two planks measuring 18 cm and 19 cm, respectively? Another possibility is that the bottom two sections, measuring 18 cm and 12.5 cm, once

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formed one board that is now split. If so, their combined width of 30.5 cm is closer to the width of the lower planks and there would originally have been a total of four planks.33 The hypothesis of four planks of similar widths is perhaps most plausible. It is consistent with the data gathered on the Vienna Bruegel panels, many of which comprise four planks of similar widths, including Return of the Herd or Hunters in the Snow.34 If the panel originally consisted of four planks, the uppermost section is most likely a later addition, and not a replacement. If this is the case, then the horizon in the Wedding Dance was not part of the original conception of the painting. But can we accept a ‘cropped’ version of the painting (fig. 9.12a) that would have measured around 112.5 × 158 cm, instead of 119 × 158 cm? While the current dimensions of the Detroit panel fall within the distribution of Bruegel’s known panels, the ‘cropped’ dimensions are closer to the median values. Furthermore, the ratio of 1:1.4 based on the proposed smaller dimensions is consistent with numerous Bruegel panels. In its current state, the Detroit panel has a ratio of 1:1.3.35 Support for this hypothesis is found in the copy of the Wedding Dance in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, a painting on canvas that can be dated to the first quarter of the seventeenth century (fig. 9.12b).36 Of particular interest is the fact that the canvas, titled Wedding Dance in the Open Air, has four seam lines: two horizontal and two vertical. The top horizontal seam line is in the same location as the join for the uppermost section in the Detroit panel, while the vertical seam lines

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Fig. 9.9 The Wedding Dance by Bruegel the Elder (fig. 9.2), infrared reflectogram (IRR), detail

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align with the known edges of the Detroit panel. Cusping along the sides and top edges of the inner canvas confirm that the outer strips, which also exhibit a difference in paint handling and condition, were added later. The ‘original’ portion of the painting is thus identical in composition and size to the ‘cropped’ Detroit panel – an identification that was further confirmed when the tracing of the Detroit painting was overlaid on the Berlin canvas. The compositions matched very closely and the deviations observed were similar to those obtained with the Antwerp panel. Apart from the material evidence of the Detroit panel, the persuasive relationship between the Detroit painting and the Berlin copy strongly indicates that the Wedding Dance was originally conceived of as a tighter and more compact composition. While the notion of a smaller format painting with a more dramatic perspective is certainly compelling, there are iconographic and compositional implications to work through. Not only would the painting be without a horizon line, which would be quite radical for Bruegel, but the cloth of honour (top right) would be cropped at the top. This would be very unusual given that cloths of honour feature prominently in Bruegel’s other wedding-related compositions, both painted and printed. Yet the material and visual evidence for a different-sized panel is overwhelmingly strong and we thus hope that further technical study of the Detroit panel, including dendrochronological analysis, might provide additional insight into the painting’s original appearance, as well as a fuller understanding of its present state.37

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Fig. 9.10a Detail from the Wedding Dance by Bruegel the Elder (fig. 9.2), top section

Fig. 9.10b Detail from the Wedding Dance by Bruegel the Elder (fig. 9.2), top section, IRR

Fig. 9.10c Detail from the Wedding Dance by Bruegel the Elder (fig. 9.2), top section, X-radiograph

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Fig. 9.11 X-radiograph of Bruegel the Elder’s Wedding Dance (fig. 9.2), with joins and splits indicated by dotted lines and dowels in yellow

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b Fig. 9.12a Bruegel the Elder’s Wedding Dance (fig. 9.2), with later join indicated by yellow dotted line Fig. 9.12b Anonymous, Wedding Dance in the Open Air, 16th century, paint on canvas, 149.5 × 197 cm, with later seams indicated by yellow dotted lines, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie (inv. II.204)

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Fig. 9.12c Digitally cropped format of Bruegel the Elder’s Wedding Dance (fig. 9.12a) Fig. 9.12d Digtally cropped format of Berlin Wedding Dance (fig. 9.12b)

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N OT ES We would like to acknowledge the following individuals at the DIA for their support and research assistance: Blair Bailey, Becca Goodman, Maria Ketcham, James K. Miller, John C. Steele and Eve Straussman-Pflanzer. Colleagues far and wide have also been exceedingly helpful with our research queries and we are grateful to Christina Currie, Elke Oberthaler, Marie Postec, Manfred Sellink and Babette Hartwieg for the lively exchange of datasets and ideas. Finally, the authors want to acknowledge the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Travel and Research Fund, which has helped make possible the research for this joint project. 1

Detroit News 1930.

2 Bruegel adopted the convention of dating his works with Roman numerals starting in 1562. See Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1 or pp. 74–79 for further discussion. 3 The painting allowed him to fill ‘one of the greatest gaps between the representation of primitive Netherlandish art and that of the time of Rubens and Rembrandt’. Valentiner 1930, p. 16. 4 Telegram from Valentiner to Burroughs, 20 June 1930. William R. Valentiner Papers, Box 17, Folder 18, Research Library & Archives, Detroit Institute of Arts. ‘Tannahall’ is a reference to DIA patron Robert H. Tannahill (1893–1969), who was a member of the City of Detroit Arts Commission from 1930 to 1962 and a very generous supporter of the museum. 5 The Art News reporter Flora Turkel-Deri reported in 1930 that the Detroit panel ‘is the long-missed original of several copies, one of which was acquired at the Spiridon sale by the museum in Antwerp. Belgian art authorities consider this later painting the original work; however, Dr. Valentiner’s recent discovery in London now brings irrefutable proof that this opinion cannot be maintained, because the newly found work is much superior in every respect.’ Turkel-Deri 1930, p. 3. 6 Valentiner 1930, p. 18, and Delacre 1936, p. 105. For a summary of the debate, see Scheyer 1965, pp. 167–8. The painting has not travelled to Europe since the loan to Brussels in 1935.

Enterprises. See Maastricht/Brussels 2001, p. 55. 9 The construction of the Detroit panel is consistent with those in Vienna: for instance, Christ carrying the Cross (inv. 1025). We are grateful to Elke Oberthaler for sharing her preliminary research with us in advance of the Vienna symposium. See also Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 246–8. 10 There is reason to believe that the cradle attached to the DIA’s painting may have been made by the London-based Morrill family of structural specialists. They were frequently employed by the National Gallery, London. The structure and material of the Detroit cradle are very much characteristic of their handiwork. In fact, it bears very strong similarities to the Morrill cradle (1891) found on Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors. Yet, we have not been able to find any evidence of stamps because the Detroit cradle was likely subject to a subsequent intervention. The sliding members appear to be of a different wood than the fixed battens. Our thanks to Britta New, painting conservator at National Gallery, London, for sharing with us her extensive knowledge of late nineteenthcentury cradling systems. For further information on the Morrill family, see . 11 For further discussion of how these striations were made, see Postec 2012, pp. 148–9, and Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, p. 249. 12 While Gustav Glück in 1936 asserted that this thinness was the result of ‘rubbing and repainting’, Manfred Sellink has cautioned that ‘the thinness of the painting cannot be attributed to wear and tear alone; Bruegel must have chosen to mix it to this consistency’. See Glück 1936b, p. 29, and Sellink 2007, p. 228. 13 For further discussion of the fashion for changeant in sixteenth-century Antwerp, see You 2004/5.

7 We have relied on material provided by the following DIA colleagues, former and present: Paul Cooney (IRR and X-radiography); Aaron Steele (high-resolution imaging, UV); Dr Cathy Selvius DeRoo (XRF); and Dr Christina Bisulca (FORS, XRF and LCMS).

14 The visible-near infrared spectral data was obtained using ASD FieldSpec Pro Spectrometer range up to 350 – 2500 nm with spectral resolution of 3 nm at 700 nm and 10 nm at 1400/2100 nm. A contact probe with an internal light source was used, where the spot size on the painting is approximately 3 × 1 mm. XRF was performed using Bruker Artax at 50 keV, 700μA, 180s in air, 0.85 mm collimator (2013 analysis by Dr Cathy Selvius DeRoo).

8 The autograph status of the Detroit panel was questioned in the exhibition catalogue accompanying the 2001 exhibition, Brueghel

15 The presence of a red anthraquinone lake was found in all pink areas analysed with FORS. The sub-bands at ~535 and 575 nm

also suggest that this is an insect dye (see Bisulca et al. 2008). In order to identify the source of this dye, a small sample was removed from the pink sleeves of the female dancer. The sample was extracted and analysed with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry by Dr Chika Mori at the Department of Conservation and Scientific research at the Freer|Sackler Galleries (Smithsonian Institution) according to the procedures described in Mouri and Laursen 2011. The only component identified in this sample was carminic acid, which is the primary dye component in several scale insect dyes: American cochineal, Polish cochineal and Armenian cochineal. In studies of raw materials, it is possible to distinguish between these dyes based on the relative proportion of minor components (see Wouters and Verhecken 1989). However, in the analysis of this small sample only carminic acid and no secondary components were detected. This issue of distinguishing between the dyes produced by these scale insects has been noted in other studies of historical objects (see Phipps and Shibayama 2010). However, it is likely that the red lake in this painting is American cochineal, which was readily available in sixteenth-century Antwerp (see Kirby 1999 and Vermeylen 1999 and 2010). 16 XRF of blue and green areas indicates a copper green and/or blue. In all cases, FORS was more consistent with azurite based on the carbonate bands at ~1490 nm, ~1950 nm, ~2290 nm and ~2350 nm (see Oluwaseye et al. 2016). An azurite mixture with yellow (lead-tin yellow, yellow ochre, or organic yellow) to create green has been found in other paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. See Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 118, 251 and 286, and Currie, Saverwyns et al., Chapter 2 in the present volume. 17 Smalt was identified by the presence of cobalt, arsenic, and nickel in XRF. As noted in Bacci and Picollo 1996, smalt has characteristic spectra in FORS analysis with strong absorbances in the visible (~550–650 nm) and the near infrared (~1200–1800 nm). However, these bands were not observed in the analysis of smalt areas in this painting. This may be indicative of deterioration, which is due to the leaching of ions from the glass matrix (see Spring, Higgitt and Saunders 2005). It is to be expected that these bands are not observed in FORS of deteriorated smalt, which has been noted in other studies: see Boon et al. 2001. On the presence of discoloured smalt in Bruegel’s paintings, see Currie, Saverwyns et al., Chapter 2 in the present volume; Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 160–65, 282–5; Vienna 2018, cat. 81, pp. 266–71; and Oberthaler 2018, p. 401.

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18 That the codpieces were a source of discomfort can be deduced from the multiple scratches to the pants of the dancer in the lower left. 19 For reasons still unknown to us, the Wedding Dance remained in its altered, ‘overpainted’ state for the first decade of its new life at the DIA. William Suhr was hired as the DIA’s first conservator in 1928 and remained in Detroit until 1935, when he moved to New York to work privately and was hired as paintings conservator for the Frick Collection. He continued to work on important paintings for the DIA until the 1960s. For further biographical information about Suhr, as well as his treatment of the Wedding Dance, see Stewart 2008b, FAIC 1977 and Stoner 2005. 20 His treatment report, including the photographs made during treatment, are preserved among his papers at the Getty Research Institute (GRI). See Bruegel Report, 5 January 1942, William Suhr papers, ca. 1846–2003, bulk 1928–1982, Box 84, Folder 23/24, GRI. 21 A 1946 publication of the DIA’s favourite paintings (Detroit Institute of Arts 1946) reproduced the Wedding Dance pre-treatment and the museum gift shop continued to stock posters of the codpiece-free version well into the 1970s. See also Dvořák 1941, pl. 59, Clayton 1966 and Stechow 1969. 22 Some of the nineteenth-century pigments detected during analysis, including a chrome pigment and zinc oxide, are believed to be associated with this treatment. 23 Letter from E. P. Richardson to Cr. L. Baker, 21 February 1955, 30.374 curatorial file, European Art, DIA. 24 We are grateful to our colleagues in conservation at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) for their close collaboration, in particular Gwen Borms and Lizet Klaassen, but especially Marie Postec, who treated the painting in 2018. She generously shared with us her research on the Antwerp copy. 25 The Antwerp Wedding Dance is notable for not having been produced by Pieter

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Brueghel the Younger or his workshop. For further discussion of the Antwerp panel, see Postec and Fraiture, Chapter 10 in the present volume, and Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 601–2.

in a brown tonality. The crackle pattern differs noticeably from the rest of the painting.’ Bruegel Report, 5 January 1942, William Suhr papers, ca. 1846–2003, bulk 1928–1982, Box 84, Folder 23/24, GRI.

26 For Ernst Scheyer, the thinness of the Detroit painted surface confirmed its status as the original: ‘certainly one of the most conspicuous features of the Detroit picture when compared to that of Antwerp is the extraordinary thinness and transparency of the glazes, in a mixed technic of tempera and oil’. Scheyer 1965, p. 168.

32 For discussion of the average width of oak boards in panels between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Streeton and Wadum 2012, p. 93.

27 For further information on smalt degradation in the Wedding Dance, see Detroit 2019, pp. 99–101 and 135–8. 28 Christina Currie and Dominique Allart describe Bruegel’s preparatory style as generally inconsistent, ranging from schematic tracings to looser sketches. They note that the Detroit drawing is unusually free – ‘a supreme example of an instinctive, creative underdrawing by a master draughtsman actively searching for the perfect composition’ – and wonder ‘if perhaps the painting was carried out under intense time pressure, with no time for preliminary study’. Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 278–9. 29 On increased transparency in the Dulle Griet for instance, see Currie, Saverwyns et al., Chapter 2 in the present volume; on the same phenomenon in the Vienna paintings, see Oberthaler 2018, pp. 398 and 403. Apart from the expected ageing, fading, and erosion of the thinly applied paint, one wonders how much of the conspicuousness of the underdrawing is tied to the environmental conditions to which the painting was subject. We know very little about the painting’s whereabouts prior to its appearance on the London art market in 1930. 30 For further discussion of the function of drawn lines within Bruegel’s paint layers, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, p. 278. 31 As Suhr already observed in 1942: ‘[…] at top an old addition two and fiveeighths inches wide – probably early 19th Century. It does not carry out the original colour scheme but trees and foliage are kept

33 While it was not possible to date the wood in this section, it exhibits much wider growth rings, suggesting a different growth zone from the remaining wood. Tomasz Ważny, ‘Dendrochronological Examination of the Painting The Wedding Dance by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–69)’, Report for the Detroit Institute of Arts, 31 May 2019. See also Detroit 2019, pp. 33–40. Dendrochronological analysis has since confirmed that these two sections belong to the same board. The same analysis revealed that the uppermost section came from a separate tree. 34 The plank widths of Return of the Herd (inv. 1018) are as follows (from bottom to top): 1/1.7, 29.5/26.7, 29.4/29.8, 28.4/28.9, 28.6/29.8 cm. The plank heights of Hunters in the Snow (inv. 1838) are as follows (from bottom to top): 30.2/32.5, 27.5/26.8, 29/29, 29.4/28 cm. We are immensely grateful to Elke Oberthaler for sharing the KHM data, which was acquired in the larger context of the Getty Panel Painting Initiative. 35 The Tower of Babel (inv. 1026), measuring 114.3 × 155.1 cm, falls on the narrower end of the distribution. Peasant Wedding (inv. 1027), 113.1 × 164.1 cm; Peasant Dance (inv. 1059), 113.5 × 164 cm. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels: Census at Bethlehem (inv. 3637), 115.3 × 164.4 cm. We are aware that some of these dimensions may not be the original ones as well. 36 We are extremely grateful to Babette Hartwieg, chief conservator at the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, for allowing Ellen HanspachBernal and Aaron Steele to examine the painting in storage and for providing them with access to the painting’s files. 37

See Detroit 2019, pp. 13–23, 33–40.

Fig. 10.1 Anonymous, The Wedding Dance, after 1566, oil on panel, 119.4 × 168.7 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (inv. 973). Painting after treatment

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The Antwerp Wedding Dance: A Little Studied Copy after Bruegel the Elder Marie Postec and Pascale Fraiture

A BSTRACT : The conservation treatment of the Wedding Dance in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) provided the opportunity for a new in-depth study. This work, painted on oak panel, is an accurate copy of the original version by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the Detroit Institute of Arts. The only notable difference is at the top, where there are motifs unrelated to those in the original composition. However, research shows that these elements were painted on a board added in the nineteenth century. The painting, now free of its thick and yellowed varnishes and overpaint, reveals its fine pictorial qualities and vigorous brushwork. Comparisons of motif and brushwork with the original version suggest that the copyist was intimately familiar with Bruegel the Elder’s original prototype and probably executed the painting in its presence. A relatively early dating is possible, given the dendrochronological terminus post quem of 1560 for the construction of the panel support.

—o— The Wedding Dance in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (fig. 10.1) is a precise copy of the original version by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the Detroit Institute of Arts. It was purchased in 1929 by the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp at the sale of the Spiridon collection in Berlin.1 The painting was initially attributed to Bruegel the Elder by René van Bastelaer and Georges Hulin de Loo (1907)2 and Édouard Michel (1931),3 but since the rediscovery of Bruegel the Elder’s original version in 19304 it has been considered an old copy.5 Indeed, it has never been seen as

a copy by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, as argued by Christina Currie and Dominique Allart (2012).6 This contribution will throw further light, through the use of dendrochronology, on the painting’s possible period of execution. It will also explore the question of its original format and its similarity in style and brushwork with that of the original version. Original Support The Antwerp version of the Wedding Dance is composed of five horizontal oak planks, but the upper plank is a later addition from the nineteenth century (fig. 10.2). The panel now measures 119.4 × 168.7 cm and is therefore nearly 11 cm wider than the original version (119 × 158 cm) but very nearly the same height.7 The right edge has an unpainted border, somewhat reduced, but only traces remain of the corresponding border on the left. Along the lower edge, there is no unpainted border, which is consistent with sixteenth-century practice.8 Unfortunately, the reverse side of the panel has been thinned, removing any possible rebates, original tool marks or panel-maker’s mark. The dendrochronological analysis carried out at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIKIRPA) demonstrates that the four original planks came from four different trees (fig. 10.3). These all originate from the Eastern Baltic regions. However, the weak correlations between the ring series

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Fig. 10.2 The Antwerp Wedding Dance (fig. 10.1), positions of joins

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Fig. 10.3 Correlations between the ring series of the four planks of the original support: the weak correlations demonstrate that they all came from different trees.

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Fig. 10.4 Map of the north of Europe showing the supposed vast provenance zone of so-called ‘Baltic’ oak. Map background from G. Duby, Atlas historique mondial, Paris, 2003, p. 74

indicate that the trees came from different subregions within the Baltic area (fig. 10.4).9 No traces of sapwood were identified on the planks of the original support; the results are thus to be considered as termini post quem for the felling (that is, the earliest possible dates for the felling of the trees). Given their Baltic provenance, the minimum number of six sapwood rings, corresponding to six years, can be added to the last ring measured on the panel in order to establish the earliest possible felling date of 1560 (1554 + 6).10 In addition to the loss of possible further years of tree growth (heartwood and sapwood), the time interval between the felling of the trees in the forest and the use of the wood to make the panel must also be taken into account. This includes transport time, seasoning, possible storage of the planks and of the final panel before use. This might vary considerably

from one panel to another and is thus impossible to specify.11 The earliest possible construction date for the panel obtained from dendrochronology – 1560 – is closer to the period of Pieter Bruegel the Elder than that of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, whose earliest signed and dated painting is 1593.12 However, the dendrochronological data does not link the painting to Bruegel the Elder’s output. Indeed, comparisons of the ring series from the Antwerp panel with the KIK-IRPA paintings database do not reveal that these planks came from the same tree as planks used in Bruegel’s supports, and no link, in particular, was evidenced with the Detroit original panel.13 On the other hand, all the paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder that we have analysed by dendrochronology and that are signed and dated by the artist reveal intervals of between

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thirteen and twenty-eight years between the dendrochronological termini post quem and the written inscriptions.14 Given that Bruegel the Elder died in 1569 and that the dendrochronological terminus post quem of the painting is 1560, this makes it highly unlikely that the painting was produced in his studio. Moreover, it must be noted that such an early terminus post quem was never obtained on other Baltic supports used by Brueghel the Younger analysed by dendrochronology.15 The main conclusion to be drawn from the dendrochronological result is that the painting could have been executed from the 1560s onwards. The Added Top Board: Dendrochronology and Pigment Analysis The Antwerp copy underwent a major restoration in the nineteenth century, during which a new board was added to the top, probably replacing a much shorter one. The top board of the Detroit original version also appears to be a later addition, suggesting that it too was initially much shorter in height.16 The copy is already mentioned in 1907 by René van Bastelaer and Georges Hulin de Loo as part of the Spiridon collection and is illustrated in their book. Here, it displays the modern top board. The modification was thus carried out before 1907. MA-XRF analysis of the green pigment used on the top board identified a chromium-based green, unlike the copper green used for the rest of the composition.17 Chromium based pigments were introduced in the nineteenth century. Without further analysis, it is impossible to be certain of the nature of this pigment, but it is probably viridian green, which appeared around the middle of the nineteenth century,18 making it possible to date the added top strip of the composition to the second half of the nineteenth century. Dendrochronological analysis helped refine the dating of the modification of the support, which also involved the thinning down of the original four planks on the reverse and their lining with four further oak boards. This treatment was carried out so carefully that the separation between the

1 cm

Fig. 10.5 Detail of an edge of the panel showing both layers of oak planks

original and the added boards is difficult to identify with the naked eye (fig. 10.5). The top plank gives a last ring of 1850 and the four planks applied on the reverse (all from the same tree, fig. 10.6) of 1857. The dating is supported by regional chronologies mainly from northeastern France. However, while the Grand Est of France is clearly indicated by the correlation results (fig. 10.7), it must be noted that for recent periods (nineteenth century), the reference database covers fewer regions in Western Europe than for medieval or modern times. Consequently, although these boards are securely dated, it would be too affirmative to conclude that the wood came from this area and not from a neighbouring one.19 However, these results, in terms of dating as well as provenance, support the idea of a single campaign for both additions. One sapwood ring is preserved on a plank of the back; this allows for the estimation of the felling period of the trees as in the range 1867– 90.20 Given the published photograph of the painting in 1907 with its added top plank, the tree-ring dating narrows down the transformation to the last third of the nineteenth century or the very beginning of the twentieth century. It seems likely that the added plank at the top replaces an older plank because it would be odd for the composition to end with background figures that are cut off abruptly. However, this plank was probably quite narrow, given the likely original format of Bruegel the Elder’s prototype in Detroit.21 The ‘painter-restorer’ who added the top board was probably unaware of Bruegel the Elder’s original version, as it is not the same at the top. However, in both paintings, the added sky area gives breathing space and a sense of perspective to the scene densely packed with figures, reflecting a different aesthetic to that of Bruegel.

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1674

1700

1750

1800

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1850 1857

Second plank from the top (last ring: 1795) Central plank (last ring: 1857) Second plank from the bottom (last ring: 1729) Bottom plank (last ring: 1821) Composite sequence for the four planks (last ring: 1857)

Fig. 10.6 Correlation between the series recorded on the four planks applied on the reverse, which demonstrates they came from the same tree (the second plank from the bottom was partly measured), and drawing of their composite sequence in bold (in red, the sapwood)

Fig. 10.7 Supposed provenance zone for the added planks deduced from the dating results with regional chronologies of the database: the Grand Est of France

Nineteenth-Century Overpaint In 1907, Van Bastelaer and Hulin de Loo already noticed the presence of overpaint that they believed to be applied by the same ‘restorer’ who painted the added top board. This included the concealment of some of the codpieces. The codpiece is a covering flap or pouch that is attached to the front of men’s trousers and usually empha-

sizes the genital area rather than concealing it. This was a fashion no longer in vogue in the nineteenth century. Interestingly, the codpieces in the original version experienced the same fate in the nineteenth century, only to be revealed again after the painting’s acquisition by the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1930.22

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It would seem that in the case of the Antwerp painting, the retouching was meant to be totally convincing, so that the viewer would be unaware of the previous appearance of the painting. In the added board and in the overpaint on the main panel, there are specific techniques that are more similar to a forger’s methods than those of a painter or a restorer – such as engraved lines made not in the fresh material but in the dry paint, probably in order to simulate the effect of wear. The nineteenth-century restoration also hid earlier damages, which had been most likely perpetrated during the Iconoclastic Fury. This destruction of religious images occurred in Europe in the sixteenth century, including in 1566 and 1581 in Antwerp. Damage was done to the eyes of several

Figs 10.8a–c Damages to the paint, probably made during the period of iconoclasm

a

figures and scratches made across their faces (fig. 10.8a–c), which may suggest that the copy was in Antwerp during the iconoclastic crisis. Conservation of the Antwerp Painting: Revealing its True Quality During the conservation treatment in 2017–18, the removal of yellowed varnish and old overpaint gradually revealed the original paint surface (figs 10.9 and 10.10). With the exception of some localized damage, especially along the joins and in the face of the foreground figure on the right, the painting is in good condition. The added top board was retained, as it is part of the history of the painting and it was felt that removing it would unbalance the composition.

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b

c

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Fig. 10.9 Painting before treatment

a

b

Figs 10.10a–c Detail before treatment (a), during cleaning (b) and after cleaning (c)

c

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Fortunately, its colours integrate well with those of the newly cleaned original paint layer. The spirit of the nineteenth century, however, still prevails in this section, as illustrated by the transformation of ‘festive’ scenes into more family-minded ones. For example, on the left, the woman who drinks – probably wine – from a jug has been transformed into a mother holding her child in her raised arms. In the original part of the painting, the overpainting hiding the codpieces – part of this same prudish spirit – was removed during the present restoration, the aim being to bring out the subtle pictorial qualities of the work. Relationship with the Original Model The copy scrupulously follows the original composition. The underdrawing reveals a very precise outline drawing of the main forms created by Bruegel the Elder, but no traces of the latter’s underdrawn hatching pattern and no changes in the positioning of forms (fig. 10.11). The underdrawing in the copy reproduces Bruegel’s painted composition and does not reflect earlier ideas visible in his underdrawing. The copy was therefore done after the finished painted work. However, in the original painting, the tree on the left is only suggested by the presence of the trunk base and some branches, while the trunk is fully visible in the copy. Similarly, the figure on the right side, whose body is missing in the original, is almost entirely present in the copy. Apart from these differences on both sides of the scene, the copyist has scrupulously followed the design of the original composition to the smallest detail, suggesting that the copy was made in the presence of the original. The completion of the tree and figure in the copy was most likely made at the initiative of the copyist. A scan of Ellen Hanspach-Bernal’s full-scale tracing of the Detroit composition was overlaid over a photographic image of the Antwerp version in order to compare their correspondence. There is no overall correlation, but many of the figure

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groupings do provide a perfect match, suggesting that the image was transferred using a series of separate one-to-one cartoons of details taken directly from the original. Transfer techniques during the period included, among others, squaring-up, pouncing and tracing.23 No discernible pouncing dots can be seen, but there is no reason to exclude the use of pricked cartons, pouncing normally being wiped away after underdrawing and before painting.24 As well as scrupulously following the design, the colours in the copy faithfully reproduce those in the original. The pigments, probably different, have aged differently in the copy, creating disparities of colours today: the red lakes are more faded and smalt-based blues have lost their hue (see, for example, the bagpipe player’s hose). The latter are clearly blue in the original, but grey in the copy.25 Indeed, the pigments used in the copy may be of lower quality than those used by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Pigment mixtures are not always the same either. In the copy, the grey jacket of the bride’s dance partner is composed of lead white, probably mixed with a black pigment, whereas a mixture of lead-tin yellow and smalt was used in the original.26 The copyist has reproduced the colours but without using the actual pigments used by Bruegel. The quality of the paint layer in the copy differs somewhat from that in the original, the paint being thicker and more opaque. The painter plays less with the contrast between transparency and opacity of the paint material than Bruegel the Elder, although the approach is vigorous and worthy of an accomplished painter. Finally, a comparison of motifs shows how very close they are (fig. 10.12). Even the positioning of highlights and the direction of brushstrokes are comparable (fig. 10.13). It would be difficult to find such similarity of treatment without intimate knowledge of the original prototype. The copy was therefore likely done in its presence, but whereabouts this might have been is unknown as the provenance of the original version can be traced back only to its purchase in 1930.

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a

b Figs 10.11a–b Detail, IRR: Detroit painting (a) and Antwerp painting (b)

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b

Figs 10.12a–b Similar treatment of blue jacket in original and copy: Detroit painting (a) and Antwerp painting (b)

Conclusion The recent restoration of the Antwerp version of the Wedding Dance has brought to light its exceptional pictorial qualities. With the exception of a strip at the top, which results from a nineteenthcentury intervention, the painting’s fidelity to the Bruegel the Elder’s original prototype in Detroit has become more apparent. As well as its colour scheme, the smallest details from the Detroit version are scrupulously reproduced, suggesting that the copyist had direct access to Bruegel’s original painting. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that

the copyist may have made one-to-one cartoons of figure groupings after the original to facilitate the accurate transfer of the composition. The copy could have been produced at any point from the 1560s onwards, given the dendrochronological terminus post quem of 1560 for the making of the oak support. However, its attribution remains a question of speculation, as the early provenance of Bruegel’s prototype is unknown and the production of his immediate followers, before that of his two sons, has been little studied.27

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a Figs 10.13a–b Similar treatment of blue dress in original and copy: Detroit painting (a) and Antwerp painting (b)

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N OT ES We would like to acknowledge the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) for their support and research assistance, and particularly Manfred Sellink, Lizet Klaassen, Gwen Borms and Madeleine ter Kuile. Thanks also to Ellen Hanspach-Bernal from the Detroit Institute of Arts and Christina Currie for fruitful exchanges, Geert Van der Snickt from the AXES Research Group, University of Antwerp, for MA-XRF analysis, and the editorial board for constructive advice about the text. 1 Cassirer and Helbing 1929, no. 72, pl. LXXXIX. 2 Van Bastelaer and Hulin de Loo 1907, no. A 34, pp. 315–17. 3

Michel 1931, pp. 79–80.

4 For discussions on the attribution of the copy and the original, see You, HanspachBernal and Bisulca, Chapter 9 in the present volume. 5

Friedländer 1937; Marlier/Folie 1969, p. 184.

6 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 601–2. The authors demonstrate that the work bears no relation to Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s underdrawing and painting style. 7 Due to the presence of the two lateral unprepared and unpainted borders, we know that Bruegel’s original painting retains its original width. Its paint layer extends to the extreme edges at the top and bottom (Stewart 2010). 8 Many of Bruegel the Elder’s and Brueghel the Younger’s large-scale panels display unprepared lateral borders and barbes at right angles with the wood grain, mirrored on the reverse by rebates, signs of the previous attachment of grooved battens to prevent the panel from warping (Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 246–8, and vol. 3, pp. 732–3) 9 The KIK-IRPA Baltic database is divided into several sub-groups of reference sequences, which are interpreted as reflecting different sub-regions in the Baltic area; these sub-groups can be termed ‘Baltic dendro-typologies’. The

tree-ring series from the different planks do not give the best results with the same dendrotypologies, which would reflect different provenance zones for the trees (Hillam and Tyers 1995, Fraiture 2009 and Fraiture 2019). 10

Sohar, Vitas and Läänelaid 2012.

11 See, for example, Fraiture 2012, Fraiture and Haneca 2017 and Fraiture 2019 for more details on this topic. 12 Nine years is the largest interval possible to consider for attribution, as Bruegel died in 1569. See Fraiture 2019 and Currie, Saverwyns et al., Chapter 2 in the present volume: these analyses reveal intervals between 13 and 28 years between the dendrochronological termini post quem for felling and the dates of the paintings. 13 We thank Ellen Hanspach-Bernal for sharing the dendrochronological data of Bruegel’s original version with us. 14 Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Massacre of the Innocents, signed and dated 1593, Lons-le-Saunier, Musée des Beaux-Arts. 15 The oldest termini post quem obtained on the sixteen medium and large supports by Pieter Brueghel the Younger dated by dendrochronology are 1582–3 for three of them, the others giving dates between 1590 and 1623 (with the exception of a reused plank from the fifteenth century, along with others dated after 1603). Fraiture 2012. 16 On the change in format in the original version, see You, Hanspach-Bernal and Bisulca, Chapter 9 in the present volume. The original format of another copy in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin also supports the hypothesis that Bruegel’s original version was initially shorter in height (ibid.). 17 Analysis carried out by Professor K. Janssens and collaborators, AXES Research Group, University of Antwerp, 2017. 18

Eastaugh et al. 2004, p. 391.

19 The database also includes nineteenthcentury chronologies from western Germany, Belgium and western France. However, those

from northeastern France are more robust (chronologies constructed by Dr Willy Tegel at DendroNet, Bohlingen), which could explain the quality of the correlations obtained with them and not with the neighbouring ones, without indicating the real provenance of the timber (see, for example, Fraiture 2009). 20 The given estimation takes into account the minimum of 11 and the maximum of 34 sapwood rings, following the statistics available for this zone and this age category of the tree (Hollstein 1980). 21 See You, Hanspach-Bernal and Bisulca, Chapter 9 in the present volume, for discussion about the original format of Bruegel the Elder’s version. 22 See You, Hanspach-Bernal and Bisulca, Chapter 9 in the present volume. 23 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, ‘Appendix II – Historical Copying Techniques’, pp. 934–55. 24 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 349, and vol. 3, pp. 746–52. 25 Smalt was identified by the presence of cobalt in MA-XRF (analysis carried out in 2017 by Geert Van der Snickt, AXES Research Group, University of Antwerp). 26 For the pigment analysis of the jacket of the bride’s dance partner in the Detroit painting, see You, Hanspach-Bernal and Bisulca, Chapter 9 in the present volume. In the Antwerp copy, no trace of cobalt (for smalt), or tin (for lead-tin yellow) were detected in MA-XRF, but lead is indeed present, probably from lead white. 27 Manfred Sellink, former director and curator of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), presented the problematic issue of Bruegel’s early followers during his joint presentation with the authors at The Bruegel Success Story Colloquium.

PART 3 JAN BRUEGHEL IN CONTEXT

Fig. 11.1 Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel, The Feast of Achelous, c. 1615, oil on panel, 108 × 163.8 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Alvin and Urwin Untermyer, in memory of their parents, 1945 (inv. 45.141)

Fig. 11.2 Jan Brueghel and studio of Peter Paul Rubens, Nymphs filling the Cornucopia, c. 1615, oil on panel, 67.5 × 107 cm, The Hague, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis

11

Copia, Copying and Painterly Eloquence Elizabeth Alice Honig

A BSTRACT : Jan Brueghel’s signature method of painting involves repeating compositions by shifting, altering and adding in individual elements, so that most of his works exist not in multiple copies, but in numerous complexly interconnected variants. This method of working can be understood through the rhetorical notion of copia, which was most famously articulated for a Renaissance audience by Erasmus in his De Copia. Writing, or painting, in a ‘copious’ style as described in the first book of Erasmus’s text, is not a persuasive form of eloquence but a celebratory one. Brueghel’s entire aesthetic produces and celebrates abundant variety for a culture concerned with material abundance and appreciation of a mode of working that praised it.

—o— When schoolboys in sixteenth-century Europe gathered famous sayings and aphorisms into ‘copybooks’ to use in their essays and in conversation, they were collecting words for the sake of copia.1 That term was often translated into English simply as ‘copy’, but its early modern implications were much greater than that. Humanists had inherited from antiquity a notion of copia that referred to wealth and resources, and also to a storehouse where those things were held. Erasmus, the prime theorist of the notion of copia, uses it to mean abundance, eloquence, variation, and the actual ability to vary.2 The copybook of a schoolboy was, then, a storehouse whose resources would enable him to produce a special kind of rhetorical eloquence marked by variety. In this essay I use the rhetorical notion of copia to frame the practices of copying and variation

employed in Jan Brueghel’s studio. For copia and copying are closely related, the noun and the verb of what enables both natural and creative abundance, two desirable qualities in European culture of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. My concerns will be, specifically, with the contexts in which copia takes on value in this period, and how that value becomes meaningful in the artistic economy of the time. I will argue that copia generates a particular kind of eloquence that was culturally appropriate at the turn of the seventeenth century; and I will also suggest that painterly abundance can form a discourse on a particular way of art-making, one that is presented by the Brueghel family as being natural and pleasurable. Brueghelian art-making was offered as an alternative to the classic difficulties of invention through ingenium and idea, instead joining human creativity to nature’s own joyful copia. The Feast of Achelous (fig. 11.1), painted by Jan Brueghel and Rubens in around 1615, is a pictorial response to a text that exemplified copia as the early modern period would have understood the term.3 As recounted in Books VIII and IX of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, when Theseus and his companions encounter a flooded road, the river god Achelous emerges and invites them for dinner. Ovid’s description of Achelous’s dwelling, written in his famously copious style, provided the inspiration for the setting devised by Brueghel for Rubens’s figures:

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Of porous pumice and rough tufa-rock The residence was built. The floor was damp And soft with moss, the ceiling diapered With shells of conch and murex laid in turn. [VIII: 566–9]

My Naiads filled [that horn] full of fragrant flowers And fruits, and hallowed it. From my horn now Good plenty finds her wealth and riches flow. [IX: 84–6]

But Achelous’s decor is less important to Ovid than the verbal eloquence that will emerge in that setting, stories with which the river god and his guests will regale one another, two of which are referenced in this painting. The first of these, told by Achelous near the beginning of the evening, is indicated by his gesture towards the riverscape beyond the cave: he speaks of a group of islands out there that were once nymphs. One, Perimele, was his own lover. Her father was so enraged by Perimele’s behaviour that he hurled his daughter over a cliff. Achelous caught her mid-flight and asked Neptune to save her, and Neptune obliged by turning her into an island within Achelous’s own river. At this point, one of Theseus’s friends rudely interrupts and mocks the whole idea of divine metamorphosis: ‘Fables! You make the gods too great, good Achelous, if they chop and change the shapes of things.’ Others at the banquet vehemently disagree with this scepticism, and Achelous’s tale becomes the pretext for many stories of transformative feats of the gods, the whole conceit of the Metamorphoses performed as table-talk. As the banquet spills over into Book  IX, Achelous reveals that he has personal experience with transformation. He actually possesses two metamorphic powers: he can become a snake, or a bull. And once, in a wrestling match with Hercules over the beautiful Deianira, he used them both. First he became a snake, but that was not enough to defeat Hercules, so Achelous took on his second possible form, a bull. Hercules brought the bull Achelous to its knees and then wrenched off one of its horns. ‘My brow was maimed!’ Achelous exclaims – and he still wears a wreath of willow leaves and reeds to hide the scar left by his missing horn. But he goes on to explain that

As if on cue, a nymph rushes in with that very horn, ‘with all its wealth, all autumn there // Fruits in perfection for our second course’ [IX: 90–91]. In the painting, Rubens has given her a companion to bear the overflowing cornucopia. The painting is a large work, within Brueghel’s oeuvre at least, and must have been done with a particular buyer in mind or, more likely, on commission from some local patron in Antwerp.4 It is a marvellous response by two painters who understood that Ovid’s text narrated the origin of a symbol, the cornucopia, but was also paradigmatic of the very idea of copia: the picture is likewise a kind of fulfilment of the very concept whose symbol it rehearses. Antiquity, and particularly the works of Ovid, actually provided several different stories to explain the cornucopia’s origin, rationalizing what had become a common symbol as being the result of a comprehensible narrative. Karel van Mander tracks the interconnected tales and their resonances in his commentary on Ovid, so that even painters less classically trained than Rubens could be well aware of what they were dealing with.5 But Rubens and Brueghel were particularly interested in Achelous’s version of the story, favouring a narrative in which the brutality of masculine combat results in a lack, a terrible emptiness, which is then repaired by the replenishing acts of women. This is emphasized in a second work, now in The Hague (fig. 11.2), where Brueghel worked with the studio of Rubens to show the nymphs busily filling the broken horn. To make sure that nobody mistook which tale of the cornucopia’s origin they were depicting, the painters added a kind of footnote in the left background, where Hercules is forcing the bull Achelous to its knees.

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Fig. 11.3 Copy after Lucas de Heere, Allegory of the Tudor Succession, c. 1590, oil on panel, 114.3 × 182.2 cm, New Haven, Yale Center for British Art. Detail

The cornucopia as a symbol had a long history in political allegories. It appeared on ancient Roman coins to signify the benefits attributed to those in power at the moment, and was in more recent times advocated by Cesare Ripa as essential in any depiction of the benefits of peace.6 In particular, in an era marked by an unusually large number of important female sovereigns, the cornucopia was a favourite signifier in allegories of women’s rule. Scholars of Flemish art are most familiar with the repeated use of cornucopias in Rubens’s Medici Cycle.7 Over half a century earlier, in Lucas de Heere’s Allegory of the Tudor Succession, Peace and Plenty – with her cornucopia – had been shown as the handmaidens to Queen Elizabeth (fig. 11.3), who brings that dynasty to its triumphant apogee.

The cornucopia of peaceful abundance worked well for female rulers because while standard signifiers of strength and power fit oddly with their gender – Marie de’ Medici’s side-saddle equestrian portrait at the Battle of Jülich springs to mind – women are ‘naturally’ the source of fruitfulness. A cornucopia, embraced by its female allegorical bearer, fitted comfortably beside a represented queen and perfectly embodied the benefits that a woman’s guidance would provide a nation. Even when associated with a man’s peaceful reign, as in Rubens’s Peace embracing Plenty which celebrates James I of England, the cornucopia operates within an intensely feminized allegorical performance.8 In these and many other images of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the cornucopia is

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mobilized as a symbol within a larger political allegory. It has become, as Ripa advocated, the accepted signifier of the abundance of riches that peace, created by a wise ruler, brings to a people. However, in the early seventeenth century the cornucopia took on a particularly central role in Flemish painting, and in the work of certain Dutch painters as well.9 Rubens, Brueghel, Jacob Jordaens, Abraham Janssens, Frans Snyders and others, working alone and in tandem with one another, produced large numbers of paintings that included the horn of plenty. But in many of their works, the horn was not acting as a symbol in some larger political allegory: it was a focus of interest in its own right, and in particular

narratives about its origin were repeatedly represented. Nymphs were shown busying themselves with the task of filling a horn, sometimes that of Achelous the steer, sometimes the horn of a goat from another myth. Some scenes are unspecific about which tale they reference, but each focuses on a process of creating the cornucopia. A bit actor in political discourse has suddenly become the star of its own popular imagery, the centre of attention that is narrative as well as symbolic. The cornucopia also continues to act its part in allegories, many of them from the hand of Jan Brueghel and his collaborators (fig. 11.4). But they are not, on the face of it, particularly political. The

Fig. 11.4 Jan Brueghel and Hendrik de Clerck, Allegory of the Four Elements, c. 1606, oil on copper, 51 × 64 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

COPIA , COPYING AND PAINTERLY ELOQUENCE

cornucopia stands at the centre of these works because the concepts that they allegorize – here the four elements, elsewhere just the element of earth, in still other instances the season of autumn – are of interest because of the copia that is part of their nature. For instance, from the Prado painting of about 1606 illustrated here, and from its many variants executed with different collaborators, we learn that since all the multitude of things in the natural world are made up of the four elements, the elements may be conceptualized as a catalogue or collection of things suitable for human consumption. Ceres is often at the centre of Brueghel’s world of bounty, but copia attaches itself to other female mythological figures too – for instance, to Venus who does not have such a standard association with agricultural abundance.10 The cornucopia and its full range of associations, both narrative and allegorical, are an obsession unique to this period. An obvious context for this extreme interest, as others have also suggested, would be the signing of the Twelve Years’ Truce in 1609, marking a welcome pause in the conflict between the Netherlands and Spain: the peace that would lead to abundance.11 But the obsession with copia was bigger than a single treaty or even a single war: I have introduced pre-1609 imagery above, from Lucas de Heere an early Jan Brueghel, to signal this. Copious thinking was not even confined to the Low Countries: in different forms, a fascination with copia and the kind of art-making it relates to exist in Northern Italy as well.12 That part of Italy, along with the Netherlands, were the areas most devastated by the effects of upscaled warfare in the sixteenth century.13 The hunger and scarcity that had been either imagined fears or very temporary events for earlier generations were real and protracted.14 The suffering of civilian populations was most dramatic and highly publicized in the case of urban sieges, but it was the destruction of the countryside that had the most profound effects. Sixteenth-century Spanish armies were larger by far than those of previous generations, and there was simply no official infrastructure for provisioning so

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many men. They were expected simply to appropriate the food intended for local populations.15 Especially when camped for a siege, the army would strip the surrounding countryside, taking first the meat, then the grain, then the wood.16 Armies’ enormous need of wood had a lasting impact on food production, for orchards were regularly felled for this purpose. Orchards were also destroyed when besieging armies levelled everything for miles outside a city’s walls to produce clear sight lines. While grains and vegetables were easily replanted after such devastation, it would take many years before a region’s fruit trees and vines began to bear again. Thus, the eventual reappearance of tree- and vine-grown fruit at local markets showed that peace was truly lasting. While some painters filled their cornucopias with vegetables, the fruit-filled horns of Brueghel, Rubens and their collaborators have a special resonance (fig. 11.5).17 As symbols, they at once convey the abstract idea of peace’s provision of plenty, and refer to an actuality that peace is enduring. The cornucopia’s two natures allow it to fulfil this dual function: it is both condensed, as a unified symbol, and also fragmented, in terms of its multiple, individual contents, the things that women gather to fill the emptiness of the original horn. The fruits of trees are also copious in another important sense. Beyond sheer quantity, they point to the principle of inexhaustibility, a potential for multiplicity that is truly endless, profusely and naturally bearing more and more.18 In early modern literary practice, this was an essential aspect of copia and was linked to imaginative writing: inexhaustibility is characteristic of the happily abundant mind, one that produces plentifully through sheer intuitive exuberance.19 To Erasmus as well, the perfect model for copia in written or spoken language is the profusion of the natural world itself. God generates both a physical universe of abundance, and the copious movements we experience in our minds.20 But discursive abundance, in the verbal or the visual arts, is of course more complicated than an

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apple tree, and early modern audiences had been trained to discern different types of abundance by Erasmus’s massively influential De Copia. First published in 1512, its final authorized edition appeared in 1534, and in the course of the sixteenth century it was printed over 150 times.21 The book is divided into two parts, the first being about copia of words and the second, which Erasmus claimed as the more important, about copious things, or ideas. Erasmus begins his book by warning about copia’s dangers: ‘futile and amorphous loquacity’ should be avoided, for it obscures your subject and ‘burdens the ears’ of your listeners.22 Your goal, in cultivating the tools of copia, is to move quickly onwards from gathering and arranging abundant words to generating abundant ideas. It will be within the abundance of ideas that arguments will be created and developed, as you expand your thoughts with exempla, similes, contrera, and so forth.23 You are, in other words, supposed to work towards persuading your listener of a point, in the same way that the argumentative Erasmus did himself in other works. This was the theory, but the practice was always rather different. The normal person who mined Erasmus’s book, or who taught schoolboys from it, was not a great persuasive orator. Remaining copies of Erasmus’s book show evidence that its first half was far more heavily consulted.24 This will surprise nobody who has read late sixteenth-century English prose literature, for they will recognize the delight people took precisely in ‘futile and amorphous loquacity’, words being played with to show the writer’s ability to expand and elaborate endlessly, using clever linguistic twists and turns. Because what we are looking for in discursive copia is never mere repetition, but ingenious variation, which had been a basic meaning of the word copia. The sheer delight, to the sixteenth-century mind, of producing what has been called ‘discursive hyperbole that boldly marries amplification with invention’ can hardly be exaggerated.25 Indeed, despite warning his readers against such self-indulgence, and despite insisting that the greater copia is that of ideas, Erasmus himself famously provides the reader

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of De Copia with 147 variations on the sentence ‘your letter pleased me very much’, and 203 variations on ‘always, so long as I live, I shall remember you’.26 Running through every grammatical and syntactical form, every use of synonyms and varied locutions possible, Erasmus performs pure linguistic tours de force that advance no argument but demonstrate the pleasures of variety. What Erasmus does in his copious variations is clearly not ‘invention’ in the way we are used to conceiving that in early modern terms, the product of individual intellectual effort resulting in an original idea. But it has other registers of value instead. For to vary is something far more interesting than merely to repeat. Erasmian varying is a delightful and playful display of imagination, demonstrating cleverness and wit. It feels quick, unforced, even natural. By that I mean that variation through copia should not feel like the product of effort in the way that invention is effortful. Copia simply flows forth, abundantly. Although Erasmus wrote his first version of De Copia nearly a century before Jan Brueghel was working, its effects on literary aesthetics reverberated into the early seventeenth century.27 To store materials and to create endless variations using those materials was even more characteristic of painters in that period than it was of writers. But there were different ways of treating such a storehouse, and those treatments could also be used to very different effects. The rhetorical use of stored images in this period that has the clearest theoretical underpinning from classical rhetoric is actually that of Brueghel’s colleague and collaborator, Peter Paul Rubens.28 When Rubens went to paint Theseus’s companions at Achelous’s banquet, for instance, he turned to his storehouse of drawings that he had made after great antique and Renaissance works of art (fig. 11.6).29 These prior artworks have already been absorbed into Rubens’s own personal vocabulary: that is, they are not simply repeated directly, but are referenced from within his style as great previous solutions to the representation of a strong masculine figure.30 Objects can be

OPPOSITE

Fig. 11.5 Detail from the Feast of Achelous (fig. 11.1). Nymphs with cornucopia

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Fig. 11.6 Peter Paul Rubens, Drawing after the Belvedere Torso, c. 1601, black chalk on paper, 375 × 269 mm, Antwerp, Rubenshuis

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quoted in this complex way because Rubens treats them as distant, things of the past, self-consciously revivified to solve a current figural problem.31 New, modern figures appropriate for persuasive eloquence are invented by a mind enriched by an abundant tradition. This is not unlike what Erasmus envisioned for his more sophisticated users, which is not surprising since Quintilian was an important touchstone for both his and Rubens’s theories and practices of imitation. However, that kind of distance and absorption is not at all how Jan Brueghel creates or utilizes his visual storehouse. In fact, Brueghel’s thinking is probably closer to what Erasmus modelled in the first part of De Copia. Keeping with our example of the jointly executed Achelous, Brueghel’s task had been to decorate the river god’s grotto, and his banquet, in a matter whose abundant variety would be appropriate to a narrative about the cornucopia’s origin. As Ovid described, the walls are encrusted with shells. Precious vessels sit on the sideboard and on the ground, the table is laden with seafood, and nautilus cups are used for drinking. All of this makes perfect sense. Less expected is the pair of macaws lurking in the upper left corner (fig. 11.7). Their plumage reiterates the rainbow colours of the cornucopia’s fruits below, and perhaps their loquacity complements that of the storytellers around the table, yet as creatures of the air, they are singularly out of place in the river god’s watery dining room. Brueghel has simply taken them from his storehouse of animal drawings to play a part in the scene’s greater copia. Animals, like figures or objects, structures or landscape elements, move easily between Jan Brueghel’s images. This particular pair of exotic birds can appear wherever convenient, splashing colour into upper corners in need of ornament. They make more regular appearances in iconographically appropriate scenes, such as Brueghel’s ‘paradise landscapes’, where they take their place among the many creatures populating humankind’s original home (fig. 11.8). Sometimes they are recoloured, or depicted separately from one

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Fig. 11.7 Detail from the Feast of Achelous (fig. 11.1). Pair of macaws

another, as in the upper left corner of the scene illustrated here. In this case they have also been drastically resized – the red parrot is nearly 20 centimetres tall in the rather large Achelous, but only 3  centimetres tall in this paradise landscape. Dozens of further examples of their use could easily be added here: these birds get around.32 Repetition, reshuffling and resizing are absolutely fundamental to the way Jan Brueghel makes a picture. To those who study his art, this comes to seem so normal as to be unremarkable: the same windmill here and then there, the same horse, the same cottage. But the degree to which eternal variation is actually quite unusual has been brought home to me in my collaborative work with colleagues in computer science at Duke University and at Berkeley.33 To them, the paintings of Jan Brueghel offer a unique ‘training set’, as they call it, to teach their machines how to recognize repeated elements within complex image fields. No other group of artworks they have been able to find functions in quite this way. They are now able to highlight an element in one Jan Brueghel painting – a boat, a basket, a human figure – and then query our set of over twelve hundred paintings and

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Fig. 11.8 Jan Brueghel, Paradise Landscape, 1615, oil on copper, 19 × 15 cm, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

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drawings to let the computer find matching elements among them. Sometimes it picks out things that a mere human art historian would have instantly noticed too, but sometimes it finds surprising repeats, elements that were flipped or resized or so totally recontextualized that we might not have looked there. But Brueghel looked there. He seems always to have been searching for a new way to recombine old elements from his storehouse. Brueghel’s store of visual material is both less historicized and less internally processed than Rubens’s. By that I mean that individual elements have not, necessarily, been reimagined into a new style that will be identifiably Jan’s own, and there is no sense of distance between him and his sources. Of course, there are things that he originally made up himself in a drawing – say, a village street lined by houses – or studied from nature. But there are also elements that he adopted from other sources, usually contemporary ones, and most notoriously from Rubens. In several instances, the fierce animals that inhabit Jan’s paradise landscapes come from study drawings that Rubens had shared with his friend, and in at least one case that drawing had actually been made after a Renaissance sculpture.34 In the two paradise landscapes illustrated here (figs 11.8 and 11.9), and in many others as well, Rubens’s animals play their roles along with Jan’s birds and other beasts he had seen, or invented, himself. But the animals’ exact relationships – to one another, to other animals – change constantly. They are part of a process of picture-making by assembly, in which the elements move about without needing to be materially altered, rethought, or even expressed in a very personal idiom as in Rubensian imitation. Rubens thoroughly reinvents even his favourite figures – say Hercules, as derived from the Farnese Hercules – for every new rhetorical situation within which he wants to deploy them. For Brueghel, such reinvention never seems necessary. A lion, taken from Rubens, remains simply that same recognizable lion across a dozen or more paintings. Brueghel’s individual elements, such as the lions, are the units that enable him to create vari-

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ation. But the resulting variant images themselves are more complexly and interestingly interrelated. One could make up whole clusters of connected flower bouquets, paradise landscapes, village streets, hellscapes. Here I illustrate two of a cluster of eight surviving versions of the Adoration of the Magi, all of which date from between 1594 and 1600, so quite early in Jan’s career (figs 11.10 and 11.11).35 Each painting expresses its subject slightly differently. In the two works illustrated here, which are tightly interconnected, one background seems to depict a Flemish city and the other, perhaps, an Italian one, while each stable seems to have a slightly different set of structural problems. There are also more subtle changes: the man beside the African magus has changed colour, and Mary alters her pose and her clothing. Other versions are more different from each other. In some, a group of ordinary villagers, of no particular importance, is given a considerable space in the foreground area. The stable changes its orientation. A white horse, very familiar from Jan’s landscapes, accompanies the African king. At the same time, certain groupings stay together across numerous variants, as if they were an established pattern that was moved in its entirety into a given scene: Joseph, whispering with a friend behind Mary, is a good example of this, as is the whole cluster of villagers in the right midground. In this sense Jan’s method is related to those of his father and brother, who seem to have used ‘partial cartoons’ in assembling their paintings.36 But Jan both works with smaller units and is more willing to alter and recombine those units into distinctive variants. He is at ease with painting in fragments, as it were, so that the pieces of a composition are from the beginning considered as individual bits rather than envisioned as a unified whole. This kind of additive way of thinking is what makes Jan Brueghel the ultimate collaborator as well: he is, for instance, entirely at ease painting five quite different landscapes around the identical group of figures sent to him on five copper plates by Hans Rottenhammer.37 He can populate a forest

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Fig. 11.9 Jan Brueghel and Peter Paul Rubens, Paradise with the Fall of Man, c. 1615, oil on panel, 74.3 × 114.7 cm, The Hague, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis

Fig. 11.10 Jan Brueghel, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1594, oil on copper, 25.5 × 35 cm, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh

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Fig. 11.11 Jan Brueghel, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1598–1600, oil on copper, 26.5 × 35.2 cm, Saint Petersburg, Hermitage

road with the same peaceable farmers, carts and livestock that have already visited different sites in his other pictures, although in differing configurations, but he can also allow Sebastian Vrancx to fill the identical woodland setting with a dramatic attack on a caravan by marauding soldiers.38 Simply moving macaws from one type of scene to another is a minor example of business as usual for Jan Brueghel. In a class that I taught recently, I had my students break down groups of Jan’s paintings into units – individual animals, or flowers, or pieces of armour, or peasant figures – and then I asked them to analyse and quantify the ways in which those units could be seen to relate to one another between artworks (fig. 11.12).39 The colours and distances in this visualization of the Adoration of the Magi

paintings, which includes some secondary works but is centred on autograph pictures by Brueghel, register the type of element and the closeness of repetition between works. Some works are more densely repetitive than others, but no single pair is particularly identical. On the other hand, when my students did the same thing with works produced by Jan’s brother, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, one work (usually by their father) was central to the network and was pretty evenly linked to each other work, which were not very interestingly related to one another. The practices of the Brueghel brothers register the difference between art-making through repetition, for Pieter, and through variation, for Jan. While I won’t claim that no two pictures by Jan are fully identical, the sheer degree of variation within

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Adoration of the Magi (Munich)

Adoration of the Magi (Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum) Adoration of the Magi (Antwerp)

Adoration of the Magi (Antwerp, Mayer-van den Bergh)

Adoration of the Magi (England) Adoration of the Magi (Saint Petersburg)

Adoration of the Magi (Prague)

Adoration of the Magi (Vienna) Adoration of the Magi (Dresden) Adoration of the Magi (Rome)

Adoration of the Magi (Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts) Adoration of the Magi (London) Adoration of the Magi (London, Christie’s, 1950)

Fig. 11.12 Visualization of relationships between Adoration of the Magi paintings by Jan Brueghel

his oeuvre is extraordinary. His works are both containers of abundant variety from his storehouse of elements, and exemplars of variety when taken as a group, proofs of the artist’s mental facility in creating endless difference rather than merely repeating similarity. This practice begins with Jan’s earliest works, which were executed in Italy for a small group of educated patrons who knew one another well. Each patron would have seen his friends’ versions of a subject, and recognized the intriguing and subtle differences between those works and the one Jan had created for him.40 Producing in groups of variants through an additive process of gathering individual elements sets Jan off, in terms of rhetorical theory, as a true painter of copia, for one of copia’s definitions as used by Erasmus was exactly the ability to vary. It is the creation of variety, as a maker in words or in images, that also links the artificer to nature itself, for

nature (as Erasmus puts it) ‘especially rejoices in variety; in such a great throng of things she has left nothing anywhere not painted with some wonderful artifice of variety’.41 Brueghel’s large group of ‘paradise landscapes’, his most complexly interconnected variants, are thus the perfect copious condensation of all the other uses to which the great copybook of nature could be put. Each alone, and the group as a whole, perfectly represent nature’s peaceful abundance at a moment when that was a prime cultural interest. But what is the rhetorical purpose of copia here? It is clearly not ‘persuasive’ in the way that Erasmus had envisioned for the readers of the second part of his treatise. There are no argument and counterargument to a Brueghel paradise landscape. Rather, the painter’s purpose lies in a second rhetorical mode provided by classical theory: the rhetoric of praise. What Brueghel does, however, goes even

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beyond that, for he glorifies the endless copia of nature not simply by representing it, but by imitating it as process. His variations, containing over and over the same wonderfully abundant elements, signal the endless plenty of art-making in general and his own in particular. Any sense of singular, effortful ‘invention’ would interrupt this fiction. It is actually critical that the picture feel as if it were naturally filled with things that come forth effortlessly through the painter’s wonderful sense of variety. In Jan Brueghel’s work, the art of painting perfectly meets the subject and process of copia in a celebratory mode. I want to conclude by considering why the painting with which I began this essay, Rubens’s and Brueghel’s Achelous, features prominently in the marvellous Art of Painting (fig. 11.13), possibly begun by Jan Brueghel but probably completed by his son, Jan the Younger.42 The Achelous is positioned near the foreground and is (fictively) the largest single work represented in this vast collection. It is balanced on the other side of the room by a second large work, this one a collaboration between Rubens and Frans Snyders with a landscape by Brueghel, showing Ceres with the cornucopia being chatted up by Pan.43 Also on that side of the room are two images of Diana and her Nymphs by Brueghel, working once in collaboration with Hendrick van Balen and once with Rubens, and a Peasant Brawl by or after Pieter Bruegel the Elder. All are easily recognizable products of the workshops of the Brueg(h)el family and the objects of frequent copying and variation.44 But it is Ceres and Pan that most significantly links across the pictorial field to Achelous, because the two pictures represent in narrative form what the work as a whole also tells us: that painting both creates and is a creation of copious abundance. In this formulation, the present picture stands in counterpoint to the famous work Jan executed some time earlier in collaboration with Rubens, the Prado Allegory of Sight, where the scene of pictorial representation encompasses the entire visible world and mediates our knowledge of that world.45 The

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Art of Painting does not make the same sort of courtly, intellectual argument that the earlier work had done. Although, as in the earlier series, an archducal palace, here Mariemont, is visible through the doorway just behind Pictura; the trajectory that opens down the middle of the scene takes us into an extension of the foreground studio. There, at a series of easels, painters are producing further works of art, including the portrait of a lady in brilliant yellow, and a landscape after the brightly coloured view out of the window next to this artist. These two types of work complement the picture of flowers being executed in the foreground by yellow-clad Pictura, who likewise works from life. Around the doorway into the secondary studio hang ten portraits representing famous masters of previous generations.46 These include, in particular, two great progenitors of the Bruegel dynasty: Pieter Coecke van Aelst, in an oval portrait, and, beside him, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (fig. 11.14). Pieter the Elder’s portrait has been placed between that of his famous father-in-law, designer of tapestries for kings and emperors, and that of Michelangelo, the greatest artist of Italy’s Renaissance. Raphael joins them on the other side of the door. On a direct line below Pieter, we find a self-portrait of Albrecht Dürer, boldly monogrammed in case we do not instantly recognize his features. Pieter’s portrait, at the nexus of these other international greats, establishes him as their equal, his art transcending the local to take its place in the greater world of the visual arts. Other famous figures, including Lucas van Leyden and Quinten Massys, are portrayed in other paintings beside the door. Their ingenious efforts created the works that now fill Pictura’s realm: Brueghel has taken care to include in her collection works recognizably by each of his touchstone figures. For it isn’t only nature that becomes art in this room. Art replicates itself. Even the work in process on Pictura’s easel is both from life and a variant of the one – boasting the same lilies and roses – revealed by the green curtain just below the nymph and cornucopia scene. Flowers have moved

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Fig. 11.13 Jan Brueghel the Younger, possibly begun by Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Art of Painting, 1620s, oil on panel, 47 × 75 cm, private collection

between images as well as between life and representation. Paintings beget more paintings: the portraits of earlier masters, arrayed around the door, point to a notion of ‘generation’ that is biological and artistic together. Some of the works displayed on the walls have already been Brueghel inspirations. For example, Titian’s Adoration of the Magi at the right, one version of which was owned by Jan’s patron, Cardinal Borromeo, is mentioned in the painter’s correspondence as a work after which artists often copied.47 He himself had used a version of Titian’s horse in several works before Rubens offered him a better equine option. On and around Pictura’s table, the tools of an early seventeenth-century painter’s studio are gathered, presenting us with a veritable catalogue of the technical contents of a busy workshop.48 A further necessity for such a workshop, of course, is a storehouse of visual material, the discrete elements that can be assembled into a picture. Therefore, we find on the floor at Pictura’s feet a heap of paper images,

Fig. 11.14 Detail from fig. 11.13. Portraits of famous masters

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Fig. 11.15 Jan Brueghel, Study of Parrots, n.d., ink and watercolour on paper, 142 × 196 mm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

with more on the table behind her. There are monochrome drawings in charcoal and red chalk, and ones with added watercolour, works on coloured papers, bound albums of drawings, and printed books, perhaps of emblems. Everything is here to assemble a new picture from a combination of natural observation and reused artistic elements. Among the material on the floor are a drawing of a horse with a lowered head, and also a pen and wash drawing of birds similar to a surviving drawing of macaws by Brueghel (fig. 11.15). That drawing on the floor, its birds flaming brightly amid other more monochrome images, speaks to us directly of the origin of the pair of birds in Brueghel’s and Rubens’s Achelous across the room. For what we are seeing in this image of Pictura’s realm is an idea not simply of painting, but of

pictorial production as it was associated specifically with the Brueghel studio. It is of course not an actual reflection of their practice, but it does give us an image of its conceptual ideal. By emphasizing the mechanics of a process of production, Brueghel shifts from an allegory of painting into a fiction of copia. While the main figure represents the concept pictura, she fails to condense the notion of ‘painting’ in the way allegory normally does. Instead, she actively multiplies, a co-performer with other art-makers in a realm of infinite production. Pictures flow into this Brueghelian studio space through a perpetual process of collecting, adding and varying. They are less individual objects of inventive effort, and more both the sources and the products of a pleasurable, ingenious mixing of and expansion from

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that which is given in nature and in other art. Jan represents a utopia of copious art-making in which art’s power lies in its ability to be fruitful and to multiply. Indeed, as Van Mander had argued in his commentary on Ovid, the cornucopia is rightly a signifier not just of abundance but of power.49 In Brueghel’s studio, it represents the endless strength of the ability to vary, to continually and naturally create. In adopting copia as a model

of artistic production, Jan Brueghel the Elder positioned his family at the centre of a culture overwhelmingly concerned with abundance, and comfortable with a mode of art that was less about persuasive rhetoric and more about celebrating peaceful plenty. The realm of Pictura is a visual cornucopia from which riches flow forth in inexhaustible profusion.

N OT ES My thanks to the members of the Golden Age research group in Amsterdam, to whom I presented a version of this essay and who asked important questions which I have tried to address in this version. Thanks also to Klaus Ertz and Gary Schwarz for image help and attribution debates. 1 On copybooks as copia-books, see Sloane 1991; Henderson 1982, pp. 141–4. 2 On the definitions of copia in antiquity, see Boon 2010, p. 44; for Erasmus’s definition, see Erasmus 1999, p. 9. See also Edwards, Chapter 20 in the present volume. 3 My account is taken from Ovid 1986, pp. 188–202 (VIII: 547–IX: 101). 4 The fact that the work appears in the Allegory of Painting by Jan the Younger, possibly completing a work by his father as discussed below, suggests that it was in a local collection; it is not a composition that exists in any copies. See below. 5

Van Mander 1604/1969, fols 73r–74r.

6

Boon 2010, p. 41; Cave 1976, p. 64.

7

McGrath 1977.

8 Lyon 2017. Peace embracing Plenty forms part of Rubens’s ceiling paintings for the Whitehall Banqueting House, London: the oil sketch for those two figures is now housed in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, CT. 9 On this, see De Clippel 2007. In the Northern Netherlands, Cornelis van Haarlem was equally as taken with cornucopia imagery as were the Flemish artists mentioned here. 10 See, for instance, the collaboration with Hendrick van Balen, Venus and Amor as Allegory of Abundance, in Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, from the first decade of the seventeenth century:

Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 2, cat. no. 393.

in successive editions, while leaving Part 2 alone: see introduction to Erasmus 1999, p. 5.

11 Suggested recently by De Clippel 2007, p. 78.

27

12 For instance, the studios of the Bassano family are analogous both in production methods and subject matter to those of the Brueghels: see Corsato 2011; Aikema 1996, pp. 60, 83. In a different sense, the copious way of thinking is also characteristic of the work of Arcimboldo. 13 A good overview of this subject is Chapter 7, ‘The Direct Impact of War on Civilians’, pp. 179–208, in Hale 1985. 14 On the largely imagined fears of famine, and its very short-term actuality, in earlier centuries, see Pleij 2001, pp. 100–03. 15 In the 1580s, Spain’s armies in the Netherlands also deliberately disrupted agriculture as a means of crippling the local economy. See Thoen 1980, pp. 25–6. 16

Hale 1985, pp. 191–3.

17 Abraham Janssens, for instance, often filled his cornucopias with vegetables. 18

Cave 1976, p. 64.

19

Ibid., pp. 60–61.

20 Johnson 2010, pp. 77–8. 21 The edition I have used is Erasmus 1999; for its publication history, see there, p. 2 (see also Edwards, Chapter 20 in the present volume). 22 Erasmus 1999, p. 11. 23 Ibid., p. 15. 24 Sloane 1991, pp. 114–15. 25 Johnson 2010, p. 75. 26 Erasmus could not stop adding new collections of ‘formulae’ to Part 1 of his book

Henderson 1982, pp. 138–9.

28 Muller 1982; see also De Clippel 2007. The fundamental work here from the point of view of literary studies is Greene 1982. 29 The works after which he drew often already belonged to their own internal chain of reference within the tradition. For instance, besides the Belvedere Torso illustrated here, he also drew after an ignudo by Michelangelo that was itself based on that antique sculpture. 30 On this issue, and Rubens’s routes to responding to it, see most recently Lusheck 2017, Chapter 4, ‘Figuring Eloquence: The Kneeling Man and Rubens’s Construction of the Robust Male Nude’. 31 On this type of citation, see Greene 1982, esp. pp. 17–18. 32 Sixty-two paintings come up under the tag ‘parrot’ at ; many of the birds in those works are related to the parrots at Achelous’s banquet. 33 See, for example, Yin, Monson, Honig, Daubechies and Maggioni 2016. 34 On Brueghel’s use of animals first studied by Rubens, including after the Renaissance bronze sculpture of a lioness, see Kolb 2005, pp. 67–72. 35 Besides the two works illustrated here, this cluster includes the following works: Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (1600); a second version in the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp (c. 1600); private collection, England (c. 1598); National Gallery, London (1598); Galleria Colonna, Rome (c. 1594); and Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (1598). All of these paintings can be

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seen (as works related to one another) on . 36 See Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 477–9 and elsewhere. 37 These are the works in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow; Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; private collections in Germany and Switzerland; and formerly on the art market, London. All date to around 1595. See for further details on all these paintings. 38 The work made in collaboration with Vrancx is now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA). There are five closely related versions of the same landscape with figures by Jan himself, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, one in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, one in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, and two in private collections in France and Florence. Some of these are partly/largely made by Jan Brueghel’s studio. For all these paintings and variants, see .

39 ‘Digital Travels’, taught in the Art History and English departments at the University of California, Berkeley, in the spring semester of 2017. I thank my graduate assistant Jess Bailey, and also the thirty students in this class, especially those who learned Gephi and produced visualizations like the one here. Our other visualizations were produced using Palladio. 40 On Jan’s early patrons, see Honig 2016, pp. 12–16. 41

Erasmus 1999, p. 16.

42 On this painting, see Schwarz 1993. He had identified the work as being by Jan Brueghel the Elder. Klaus Ertz attributes it to Jan the Younger, but there are some quirks (particularly the absence of Jan the Elder among the honoured ancestors) that make me believe that it must have been begun by the father even if completed by the son. 43 The painting of Ceres and Pan is now in the Prado, inv. 1474; on the attribution of the landscape to Brueghel see Díaz Padrón 1996, vol. 2, p. 1100.

44 The Diana and her Nymphs in the upper left corner is a work now in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; the work in the lower left corner is a variant of one now in the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris. On the Peasant Brawl, see Genaille 1980. 45 Jan Brueghel and Peter Paul Rubens, Allegory of Sight, 1617, in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. On this painting’s allegorical meaning, see Winner 1957 and Müller Hofstede 1984. 46 Some of these portraits are identified in Buijsen 1993. 47 Letter of 26 September 1608, in Crivelli 1868, p. 111. See also Honig 2016, pp. 25–6. 48 See Phoenix/Kansas City/The Hague 1999, pp. 159–60. 49

Van Mander 1604/1969, fol. 74r.

Fig. 12.1 Landscape with the Continence of Scipio, c. 1600, oil on oak panel, 79.8 × 118.6 cm, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Gallery no. 917)

Fig. 12.2 Detail from fig. 12.1. People listening to Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus

12

The Master of the Dresden Landscape with the Continence of Scipio: A Journeyman in the Studio of Jan Brueghel the Elder? Uta Neidhardt

A BSTRACT : The restoration in 2011 of a large-format landscape painting attributed to Pieter Schoubroeck cast light on a work that had been long forgotten. The composition of this broad landscape viewed from above, which features a battle as well as a scene depicting the story of the Continence of Scipio in the foreground, reveals a close association with works by Jan Brueghel the Elder. The discovery of a signature ‘BRVEG[…]’, along with the remnants of a date and a stamp by the panel-maker Guilliam Aertssen, likewise seem to point to the artistic circle around Jan Brueghel. The unidentified author of this painting was evidently familiar both with the teeming world landscapes of Jan Brueghel, dating from the latter’s early Antwerp period, and with the panoramic landscapes of Schoubroeck. The search for his possible sources of inspiration leads us to Antwerp as well as to the centre of émigré Flemish artists in Frankfurt and Frankenthal. The master of the Dresden Landscape with the Continence of Scipio was a journeyman who took his artistic inspiration from various stylistic and geographical sources. It remains to be investigated to what extent this master was representative of a hitherto overlooked group of unidentified but very good and fully trained painters in the proximity of the Antwerp studio of Jan Brueghel the Elder, who owed their success to the strong demand for landscape paintings in Brueghel’s early world landscape style.

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Until 1999 the large-format painting Landscape with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.1) was entirely covered over with a facing of tissue paper fixed with beeswax; and this was the only state we knew it in. In what was at that time the most recent gallery catalogue, dating from 1930, the painting was listed as a work of ‘Peeter Schoubroeck’,1 an attribution deriving from the Director of the Dresden Gallery, Karl Woermann, and his first catalogue of paintings published in 1887. More than 140 years earlier, this panel painting had come into the picture collection of the Saxon Elector Friedrich August II in an unspectacular way, being transferred to Dresden from Weißenfels (now in Saxony-Anhalt) in June 1746, following the dissolution of the Duchy of Saxe-Weißenfels.2 How it had come into the collection there is still a mystery, although the number ‘99’ painted prominently in the middle of the picture surface can undoubtedly be regarded as an indication that it was part of a historical collection. In the Dresden paintings inventory produced in 1754, the painting was listed for the first time under the designation ‘HöllenBreugel’ (Hellish Breugel)3 and was subsequently exhibited as a work by ‘Pierre Breugel’ in the Electoral Gallery Building on the Jüdenhof.4 About

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twenty years later, however, it was removed from the Gemäldegalerie, and stored among the socalled reserve stocks, i.e. the works that were regarded as insignificant. It was not until the opening of the new Gallery building designed by Gottfried Semper in 1855 that this landscape painting, now attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder, was once again taken into the canon of works considered worthy of display. Along with nearly all the Dresden art treasures, this Landscape with the Continence of Scipio was taken to the Soviet Union as a war trophy in 1945. The Soviet identity document for the painting reported blistering and flaking of the paint layer over the entire picture surface,5 resulting in the application of the aforementioned facing after its return in 1955. The rediscovery of this painting of uncertain authorship after more than fifty years began with the removal of the facing on the picture surface. In 2009 the Dresden restorer Christoph Schölzel began removing the severely browned varnish layer and some old areas of retouching which had covered large parts of the intact original painting surface. After the partial consolidation of the wooden panel and the application of a glue and chalk filler to damaged sections, countless areas of paint loss distributed over the entire painting surface were retouched. Since 2012 the painting has at last been in a condition in which the high quality of this extraordinary, large-format landscape can again be appreciated. The viewer of the painting sees an impressive, panoramic battle scene stretching out over a broad, highly varied world landscape with a high horizon. Hundreds of staffage figures of various sizes cover the barren landscape, which is apparently devoid of vegetation. They form groups portraying numerous scenes of war and conflict, which alternate with genre-like images of everyday life and display a high level of detail until well into the middle ground of the painting. In the foreground on the left a scene is taking place that is essential for understanding the picture’s narrative: a large number of people, some of them dressed in Middle

Eastern costumes, have gathered in front of a tent in order to listen to a Roman man wearing a blue toga and crowned with a laurel wreath (fig. 12.2). This is the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (c. 235–183 BCE), who in the year 209 BCE conquered the city of New Carthage (Cartagena) in Spain by means of a surprise attack. Opposite him is a young woman dressed in white, a member of a Celtiberian tribe who had been taken prisoner and handed over to Scipio as spoils of war. His magnanimous treatment of the beautiful young virgin was considered an example of extraordinary restraint (or ‘continence’) and virtue, and from the mid-sixteenth century onwards it was one of the most popular and frequently depicted episodes in Roman history in humanist circles both south and north of the Alps. The recent restoration of the painting has exposed a detail that has once again brought the question of its authorship back into the centre of debate. In a section of the painting with numerous areas of paint losses and old retouching, in the bottom left-hand corner, remnants of a signature have been revealed: the sequence of letters ‘B R V E G[…]’ and a date, only small remnants of which have survived but whose first three digits can be deciphered as either ‘1 6 0’ or ‘1 5 9’ (fig.  12.3a–b). The order and form of the letters, such as the visible serif of the letter ‘E’ and the slight enlargement of the first letter ‘B’, closely resemble the signature of Jan Brueghel the Elder in early works produced in Antwerp around 1600: for example, in the Munich paintings View of a Seaport with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.5) and the Great Fish Market. Following meticulous examination of the newly discovered Brueghel signature, there is in our opinion no reason to doubt its autographic authenticity. Furthermore, on the back of the oak panel measuring 79.8 × 118.6 cm is a punched stamp in the form of the segment of a circle with the capital letters ‘GA’ interwoven in a rune-like way (fig. 12.4). This stamp had hitherto been known as the quality mark of the Antwerp panel-maker

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b Figs 12.3a–b Details from Landscape with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.1). Remnants of the signature ‘B R V E G[…]’ (a) and the date ‘1 6 0 .’ or ‘1 5 9.’ (b), after retouching

Fig. 12.4 Reverse side of Landscape with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.1), detail. Punched stamp of Guilliam Aertssen

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Guilliam Aertssen, who was verifiably active in the city on the Scheldt between 1612 and 1626.6 It is, however, distinctly different from the mark with which Aertssen appears in the famous list of Antwerp panel-makers dated 13 November 1617.7 On the other hand, the clearly legible punched stamp found on the Dresden panel is found in exactly the same form on the backs of a number of other paintings: for example, on two panel paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich that were produced in 1598.8 In parallel with the restoration work, a dendrochronological investigation of the Dresden panel painting, which consists of three horizontal boards glued together, was performed in 2012 by Peter Klein.9 Based on an average of 15 sapwood rings per year and an assumed minimum storage period of 2 years, it was calculated by Klein that the earliest possible date for the execution of the painting was 1596. The discrepancy between this dendrochronological finding and the start of the documented activity of the panel-maker Guilliam Aertssen in 1612 could be explained only recently.10 The renewed legibility of the painting thanks to the restoration work performed, the discovery of the Brueghel signature and remnants of a date, and the results of the investigation of the support,

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prompted a more thorough analysis and arthistorical reassessment of the painting. These investigations focused particularly on questions relating to the painting technique, the context in which the work was produced and, finally, the authorship of the painting. It appeared to be of decisive importance to compare the motifs and the style of this unusual work with other paintings produced around the same time by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568– 1625) and Pieter Schoubroeck (c. 1570–1607), as well as by other artists in their circle. It is obvious that there are close relationships between this work and large-scale world landscapes produced around 1600 by Jan Brueghel, in which he combined popular themes of history painting with miniature staffage figures covering the entire picture surface, and which are among the most prominent works of his early period in Antwerp. In the manner of its composition with the picture space divided into diagonally arranged landscape segments, in the brilliant rendering of light, the colour and the emphasis of mood and atmosphere, the Dresden Landscape with the Continence of Scipio resembles Brueghel’s Harbour Scene with Christ Preaching dating from 1598 (Munich, Alte Pinakothek) as well as the Battle of Issus painted in 1602 (Paris, Musée du Louvre) and the Great Fish Market with Self-Portrait from 1603 (Munich, Alte Pinakothek). There are also striking similarities between these works and the Dresden painting as regards the dimensions and technical aspects. For example, in the case of the Harbour Scene with Christ Preaching, both the dimensions of the panel and the mark on the back are identical to those of the Dresden painting.11 Where the Dresden Landscape is concerned, the most important point of reference in the oeuvre of Jan Brueghel the Elder is the extraordinary copper plate depicting a View of a Seaport with the Continence of Scipio, dating from 1600, which is held in Munich (fig. 12.5).12 At first glance, the broad coastal landscape depicted by Brueghel is quite different from the panoramic battle scene in an otherworldly light produced by the painter of the

Dresden composition. Upon closer inspection, however, the scenery around the story of Scipio in the foreground on the left-hand side of the Dresden painting appears in some parts to be a mirror image of the right half of Brueghel’s Munich Seaport. A whole series of unmistakably Brueghel-esque figural types from the Munich painting are found again in the Dresden Landscape: for example, a page leading a white horse with a reddish mane (figs 12.6a–b), and the peasant wearing a hat and blue trousers while carrying a basket of vegetables, at the lower edge of the painting. The figure wearing a turban and dressed in yellow with her back bared, whom Brueghel has positioned as an eye-catching figure in the foreground, has become the counterpart of the vegetable seller in the Dresden painting. There is a conspicuous resemblance between the picturesque dignitary wearing a blue skirt who stands holding a lance, and the two soldiers in red and gold Renaissance costumes in the painting by Brueghel. What is more, an almost identical lansquenet soldier can be seen in the bottom left-hand corner of the Dresden painting (figs 12.7a–b). Besides the directly quoted individual figures, the artist who created the Dresden painting has evidently also copied some artistic and aesthetic aspects from Brueghel, as well as certain individual painting techniques. For example, he has adopted the principle of accentuating staffage groups by skilfully distributing strong local colours and ‘interspersing’ military figures in bright silver armour. The miniature-like market scenes and cavalry formations in the distant middle ground are executed by both painters using similar techniques: the tiny figures with their constantly varying poses are initially laid down in white or grey and then completed in pure white, always with a few strong touches of colour to depict individual items of clothing (fig. 12.11). However, following the completion of restoration work on the Dresden Landscape, our initial impression was confirmed when details were compared: particularly in the foreground, the Dresden figures are executed less elegantly and loosely than

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Fig. 12.5 Jan Brueghel the Elder, View of a Seaport with the Continence of Scipio, 1600, oil on copper, 72.2 × 106.3 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek (inv. no. 827)

the staffage figures in the Brueghel painting; they appear somewhat awkward in direct comparison (fig. 12.7a–b). The manner of their painting lacks the sleek effortlessness of Brueghel, seeming to have been an additive process. In Brueghel’s painting, the structuring of the groups of figures standing closely together, or moving, in the middle ground seems to follow a different organizational principle from the crowds of people in the Dresden battle painting, who are apparently all moving in different directions. Both Brueghel and the painter of the Dresden Landscape have based the imaginary architecture seen in the middle and background on specific Roman and other ancient buildings, but the latter painter has altered and modified the mostly Italian precedents to a greater extent (fig. 12.8a–b). An exception to this is the characteristic castle with high tower in the middle ground

on the left of the Dresden painting, which is based on a different type of architecture. Altogether, despite the adopted details and the quoted elements, the composition and spatial structure of the Dresden painting illustrates an attitude to landscape that is significantly more conservative in comparison with the ambitious world landscapes painted by Brueghel in about 1600. The name Pieter Schoubroeck has already been mentioned: in the late nineteenth century Karl Woermann and Eduard Plietzsch came to the conclusion that the Dresden Landscape with the Continence of Scipio could be attributed to this Flemish émigré and contemporary of Brueghel, who was active in Nuremberg and Frankenthal, or to another artist from his circle.13 It is a fortunate coincidence that the Battle of the Amazons (fig. 12.9), an impressive painting on copper meas-

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Fig. 12.6a Detail from Landscape with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.1). Page with white horse

Fig. 12.6b Detail from View of a Seaport with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.5). Page with white horse

uring 77 × 148 cm, which is a major work produced by Pieter Schoubroeck in 1603, is also held in Dresden and can be included in our argumentation.14 In his Battle of the Amazons, Schoubroeck likewise used the traditional image type of the world landscape. His broad, structured composition also

bears similarities to the Dresden Landscape with the Continence of Scipio. There is an unmistakable resemblance between the two paintings as regards the fortified town on the mountain, whose main tower in both cases appears somewhat oversized as it looms over the plain below. In both cases, the artists portray the respective battles as a complex event, incorporating numerous different scenes of fighting and everyday life. In a comparable manner, individual sequences of events within the battle are given emphasis by being lit up, while others are in shadow. Recent investigation of Schoubroeck’s Battle of the Amazons revealed that in the execution of the countless staffage figures, a distinctive second hand is evident alongside that of the master. The figures done in this second hand are astonishingly reminiscent of the staffage figures painted by Jan Brueghel the Elder in his early period, before and around 1600. The participation of an assistant in the

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Fig. 12.7a Detail from Landscape with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.1). Soldiers and horsemen

production of such a large-scale painting incorporating a huge number of figures is certainly not unlikely. It may possibly have been an artist from the circle around Jan Brueghel the Elder, who, having trained in Brueghel’s workshop, later took his style and repertoire of forms to another studio located elsewhere, where he worked as a freelance employee. Where the staffage figures are concerned, the Dresden Landscape with the Continence of Scipio has few stylistic features in common with the Battle of the Amazons. Neither the figures in the foreground, who are central to the narrative and can be attributed to Schoubroeck himself, nor the battle scenes and miniature figures in the background, which may have been executed by a Brueghel-trained assistant, correspond with the style of the artist of the Dresden Landscape (fig. 12.10a–c). Generally speaking, in this case the Dresden Landscape with the Continence of Scipio conforms to a more modern

Fig. 12.7b Detail from View of a Seaport with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.5). Soldiers and horsemen

concept, both of the representation of an ambitious panoramic battle scene and – at least in comparison with Schoubroeck’s own figures – in the more convincing execution of the staffage. But let us return to our rediscovered Dresden painting. As an interim conclusion, we can say that

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Fig. 12.8a Detail from Landscape with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.1). Background with imaginary architecture

Fig. 12.8b Detail from View of a Seaport with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.5). Background with imaginary architecture

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Fig. 12.9 Pieter Schoubroeck, Battle of the Amazons, 1603, oil on copper, 77 × 148 cm, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Gallery no. 916)

it was painted by an undoubtedly highly gifted and clearly very well trained and skilled artist, capable of producing a large-scale battle painting in the format of a world landscape. He executed this work on a large wooden panel, which was available for painting from about 1596. The picture support, whose quality had been approved by the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, had been produced by the panelmaking workshop of the Aertssen family. The execution of the painting was begun without any underdrawing and with a thin layer of brown underpainting, which the artist used to establish the basic composition. The dark areas of shadow in the foreground were prepared with a dark brown glaze, later to be populated by the highly detailed figures who feature in the narrative that accounts for the painting’s title. Following a precisely balanced compositional principle, the artist then proceeded to colour individual items of clothing in pure blue, red, white, yellow and a little green. The landscape in the middle and background displays great variety in the application of the paints, including both glazed areas and also loosely sketched, finely dabbed, impasto, dotted or

smudged areas. In a second step in the working process, the broad landscape was populated with countless figures, varying in size from a few centimetres down to one millimetre (fig. 12.11). The figures in the middle ground revealed dark brown, sketchy underpainting, over which the white, red and light blue paints have been applied very efficiently, only to shape the relevant sections of the bodies and garments. In the ‘swarms’ of miniature figures further back, the artist has produced a brilliant example of painting in white. After its completion, the painting was signed and dated, most probably by Jan Brueghel the Elder himself. In his ambitious Landscape with the Continence of Scipio, the as yet unidentified artist seems to have effortlessly combined themes, motifs and stylistic influences taken from various sources. As the signature indicates, the initiative for the execution of the painting appears to have come from Jan Brueghel the Elder himself. Large-format history paintings belonged to the repertoire of his studio in the years around 1600, although in Antwerp works dealing with non-religious themes such as ancient battles were not in such great demand as depictions

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Fig. 12.10a Detail from Landscape with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.1). Soldiers

Fig. 12.10b Detail from Battle of the Amazons (fig. 12.9). Figures by Schoubroeck

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Fig. 12.10c Detail from Battle of the Amazons (fig. 12.9). Figures by Brueghel-trained assistant

of biblical episodes.15 Nevertheless, some paintings of this category are among the undisputed highlights in Brueghel’s body of works: for example, the Battle of Issus from 1602 (fig. 12.12),16 or the View of a Seaport with the Continence of Scipio painted two years before. Around 1600 those paintings were probably produced for a small, elite circle of collectors, possibly also based outside Flanders. Against this background, the story behind the production of the Dresden Landscape can be hypothetically associated with the awarding of a commission to Jan Brueghel the Elder, who then passed on responsibility for its execution to a fully-trained artist who worked in his studio on an independent basis. Under these presumed circumstances, it would have been natural for the topic of the painting to have been prescribed by the master, if not directly by the client. This might explain why the Scipio story was decided upon and also why the painter of the Dresden Landscape used certain motifs and

figural types as literal quotations from works by Brueghel. The artist evidently had greater freedom when it came to embedding the scene in a monumental landscape, where he significantly deviated from Brueghel’s precedent. The signature and date added by the master himself indicate that he had wholly fulfilled Brueghel’s expectations. The individual style, and perhaps even the personality, of the artist who created the Dresden Landscape has become tangible for the first time through this hitherto unknown painting, even though we cannot (yet) identify him as a historical figure. It may be assumed with a good degree of certainty that this painter was not one of the many anonymous employees in Brueghel’s studio, who either assisted the master in executing his works as specialist painters or experts in producing certain details, or who prepared paintings that were then ‘retouched’ by the master, or who made exact copies of the original work for sale on the free market.

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Fig. 12.11 Detail from Landscape with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 12.1). Battle scene at the foot of the castle

The artistic habitus, and the treatment of motifs and stylistic inspirations taken from various regions and studios, would seem to indicate that the painter of the Dresden Landscape was a journeyman. In fact, he may have been one of those travelling artists who, after completing their apprenticeship, worked for a time in various studios in order to gather experience and earn the money they needed to gain the title of Master and set up a studio of their own. Artists with this status, who had already reached a high level of expertise and combined excellent quality with territorial independence, would certainly have been employed in the studio of Jan Brueghel the Elder. While it is true that no indication of this is found in the few sources concerning Jan the Elder, references are found in the diary of his son, who is known to have taken over the management of his father’s studio after the latter’s unexpected death. He retained all the exist-

ing structures, including the system of cooperation with other painters. Thus, in a list of expenses for 1628, the diary of Jan Brueghel the Younger mentions by name a number of employees who were paid for their daily work inside the studio: for example, ‘Dielis Leunis voor’t copieren van d 5  sinnekens’ (Dielis Leunis for copying of the 5 senses).17 In an even more specific example from 1632, Brueghel the Younger lists ‘Jan Baptista Caimo voort helpen opmaken van de figurkens …’ (Jan Baptista Caimo for making the little figures …).18 Two further entries may actually refer to journeymen working independently in Brueghel’s studio: in 1628, Brueghel paid 24 guilders ‘Aen Symon mynen gast’ (to Symon, my guest),19 and in the previous year he had noted ‘Den 6 september syn hier comen de 2 Duytsen werken’ (On 6 September the 2 Germans came to work here).20 Hence, employees of varying rank and status were

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Fig. 12.12 Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Battle of Issus, 1602, oil on panel, 80 × 136 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv. 1921)

active in the Brueghel family business, evidently including ‘guest painters’ and colleagues from Germany or from former Flemish refugees, meanwhile based in Germany. So far, nothing is known about where the painter of the Dresden Landscape came from, the routes he took or the places where he stayed. His Dresden painting does, however, provide some clues: apart from the obvious link with Jan Brueghel the Elder, there are also references to the works of the Flemish émigré, Schoubroeck. From 1601 until his early death in 1607, Pieter Schoubroeck lived in Frankenthal, the centre of émigré Flemish artists on the territory of the Counts Palatine. After a previous visit to Italy and a longer stay in Nuremberg, he produced his masterpiece there in 1603. It seems most likely that the painter of the Dresden Landscape worked for a time as a freelance employee in Schoubroeck’s studio, possibly in a similar position to that of the artist who had functioned as a second

staffage figure painter during the production of the Battle of the Amazons. From there, he may have moved to Antwerp in order to realize his own version of an ambitious panoramic battle scene within the sphere of influence of and on commission(?) to Jan Brueghel. Potential customers for such a complex work may, incidentally, also have been found in the immediate artistic circle around Schoubroeck, in the communities of Flemish émigrés in Frankenthal and Frankfurt around the Counts Palatine. Paintings depicting battles and large-scale landscapes featuring history scenes, including the Scipio story from ancient Rome, are found with surprising frequency here in the years around 1600, implying a particular local predilection for this narrative content. Finally, and very briefly, it seems necessary to introduce a fourth painting into the discussion, whose artistic quality, apart from its poor condition, does not match those of the three works dis-

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Fig. 12.13 Anonymous, Landscape with Large Military Camp, c. 1603, oil on copper, 66 × 115 cm, Speyer, Historisches Museum der Pfalz (inv. HM 36)

cussed so far. But as a ‘reception piece’ it can round off our ideas concerning the possible radius of artistic activity of the painter who produced the Dresden Landscape. The Landscape with Large Military Camp (c. 1603; fig. 12.13), not dated by the artist, held in the Historisches Museum der Pfalz in Speyer, is related in many ways to the paintings we have considered so far.21 Both in the composition of the landscape and in the figures, this less able painter shows a high degree of dependence on the works of Schoubroeck, particularly his Battle of the Amazons. The Scipio theme with the tent borrowed from Brueghel in the foreground on the left, and the manner of distributing the large numbers of staffage figures in the various planes of the picture, indicates that he was also familiar with the crowded scenes painted by Brueghel in the period around 1600. Evidently, the painter of the Speyer Military Camp, who was of relatively local significance, utilized influences from ‘both worlds’ and interpreted them in such a way as to create a relationship between this paint-

ing and the Dresden Landscape with the Continence of Scipio. The group of paintings presented here as examples allow interesting conclusions to be drawn about an evidently tight network of artistic relationships that existed between the Brueghel ‘family firm’ in Antwerp and the artistic circles in Frankenthal, Frankfurt and Nuremberg. Personal contacts within the families of the former Flemish refugees and their family members still in Antwerp formed a close relationship between the two regions until far into the seventeenth century. Moreover, direct contacts among the protagonists may have been made during Brueghel’s journey to Italy via Cologne(?) and Heidelberg in the years 1588/9, although the sources do not give any indication of him having stayed in the Palatinate.22 It seems most probably, on the other hand, that in the mid1590s Jan Brueghel the Elder met a number of other landscape painters from the Netherlands, including Pieter Schoubroeck, in Rome.23 That ‘melting pot’ of artistic approaches may have been

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a source of early mutual inspiration and influence, which also contributed to the pool of experience from which a young painter like the still anonymous creator of the Dresden Landscape was able to benefit in the years around 1600. On the basis of our Dresden material, we have been able to identify two as yet anonymous artists whose stylistic proximity to the ‘Jan Brueghel brand’, as well as their high professional standards and artistic quality, make it appear highly likely that they were associated with his early period in Antwerp. The aim of further research should be to investigate in more detail the occupational and social conditions under which these evidently fully

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trained artists worked, to trace the topographical and artistic routes they took as journeymen in Europe, and to establish what their relationship actually was to the leading painters and their studios north of the Alps, from whom they gained artistic inspiration and who presumably also provided them with clients and sales markets. The Dresden Landscape with the Continence of Scipio shows, however, that its author was a wanderer between two worlds, which he merged in his creative work; and, with a high degree of technical skill, he drew from both to create at least one masterpiece in a style all his own.

N OT ES I am most grateful to Erik Eising, Klaus Ertz, Peter Klein, Konstanze Krüger, Christoph Schölzel, Manfred Sellink and Jørgen Wadum for their manifold support.

from the 1560s onwards. See Moortgat and Wadum, Chapter 26 in the present volume. See also Moortgat 2018. 11

Munich 2013, cat. no. 28.

1 Posse 1930, p. 192, no. 917, Belagerung einer Festung.

12

Ibid., cat. no. 31.

2 See Inventory ‘vor 1741’, fol. 319v, 26. aus Weißenfelß.3790-3815. 3 Inventory 1754, fol. 92v, no. 495, Höllen-Breugel. die Belagerung Jerusalems von Tito Vespasiano, auf Holz. 4 Riedel and Wenzel 1765, G.E., p. 110, no. 555, Le Siege d’une Ville & d’une Fortresse. On remarque sur le devant des Ambassadeurs à genoux devant un Général Romain. 5 Sowjetischer Gemäldepass, Kiew, Oktober 1955, Archiv der Restaurierungswerkstatt für Gemälde der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD), no. 419. 6 For more detailed information regarding Guilliam Aertssen, see Moortgat and Wadum, Chapter 26 in the present volume. 7

Van Damme 1990, p. 195, fig. 1.

8

Munich 2013, cat. nos. 25 and 28.

9 Peter Klein, ‘Bericht über die dendrochronologische Untersuchung der Gemäldetafel Belagerung einer Festung von Pieter Schoubroeck’, Gal. no. 917, 13.2.2012, Archiv der Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (GAM), SKD. 10 I am most grateful to Jørgen Wadum who in advance informed me about new archival research revealing that panel-makers who were obviously members of the Aertssen family in Antwerp used the GA-mark already

13 Woermann 1887, no. 917; Plietzsch 1910, p. 92, no. 7, and p. 123, note 68. 14 Battle of the Amazons, signed and dated ‘PE […] SCH [illegible] – FRANKENTAL – 1603’, oil on copper, 77 × 148 cm, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Gallery no. 916. 15

Honig 2016, p. 100, p. 213, note 55.

16 Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Battle of Issus, 1602, oil on panel, 80 × 136 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. 192. 17 Vaes 1926, p. 214, ‘Annotations de l’année 1628’; Denucé 1934, p. 152, document 83: ‘Dagboek van Jan Breugel van 1625 tot 1651’. 18 Denucé 1934, p. 82, document 40: ‘1632. – Rekening Jan Breugel-Van Immerseel’. The mentioned Jan Baptista Caimo was probably a member of the Caymox (Caimox) family, coming from Antwerp and based in Frankfurt and Nuremberg since the 1560s. Jan Baptista, then likely in his twenties or early thirties, could have been the son – or already the grandson – of Balthasar Caymox (1561 Beers/ Brabant–1635 Nuremberg), famous art dealer, graphic artist and publisher in the Palatinate Frankenthal and in Nuremberg. Jan Baptista Caimo’s sister(?) Katharina Margaretha was married to the Antwerp art dealer Peter

Snellinck who himself was member of a prominent Antwerp family of artists and art dealers. And – much more important in our context – his aunt Catharina Caymox, sister of Balthasar Caymox, was married to the Frankenthal painter Pieter Schoubroeck. 19 Denucé 1934, p. 152, document 83: ‘Dagboek van Jan Breugel van 1625 tot 1651’. 20 Ibid., p. 148, document 83: ‘Dagboek van Jan Breugel van 1625 tot 1651’. 21 Unknown artist, Landscape with Large Military Camp, c. 1603, oil on copper, 66 × 115 cm, Speyer, Historisches Museum der Pfalz, inv. HM 36. 22 There is only the well-known early drawing View of Heidelberg, c. 1588/9, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 1995.15, which possibly indicates a journey through the Rhine Valley, including the region of the Palatinate. See Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 1, p. 12. Frankenthal, the centre of former Flemish refugees and home of Gillis van Coninxloo (from 1587 to 1595) and Pieter Schoubroeck (from 1601 to 1607), is situated only about 40 km from Heidelberg. 23 Honig 2016, p. 94, p. 212, note 49. Unlike Elizabeth Honig, judging from Schoubroeck’s stylistic position I don’t think that he worked as Jan Brueghel’s assistant in Rome, whereas it seems to me also very probable that both artists remained in closer contact after their return to the North.

Fig. 13.1a Jan Brueghel the Elder, River Landscape, 1602, oil on copper, 33.2 × 45.9 cm, Munich, BStGS, State Gallery Aschaffenburg (inv. 829). Figures and buildings drawn in warm pastel shades in the background

Fig. 13.1b Jan Brueghel the Elder, Village Street, 1610, oil on copper, 8.1 × 12.7 cm, Munich, BStGS, Alte Pinakothek (inv. 2860). White and red dots of paint suggest brickwork on the corner of a house

Fig. 13.1c Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, The Four Seasons: Winter, 1616, oil on copper, 57.1 × 84.6 cm, Munich, BStGS, State Gallery Neuburg an der Donau (inv. 13712). Light and dark accents added to an ochre area to imitate the texture of a waffle

Fig. 13.1d Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, The Four Seasons: Winter, 1616, oil on copper, 57.1 × 84.6 cm, Munich, BStGS, State Gallery Neuburg an der Donau (inv. 13712). Pie with a rhombus shape, scratched into the wet paint

Fig. 13.1e Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Harvest (Summer), c. 1596, oil on copper, diameter 12.4 cm, Munich, BStGS, Alte Pinakothek (inv. 4911). Grain stalks, scratched into the wet paint

Fig. 13.1f Jan Brueghel the Elder, Roman Carnival (Winter), c. 1596, oil on copper, diameter 12.4 cm, Munich, BStGS, Alte Pinakothek (inv. 1991). Architectural outlines and hieroglyphs on the obelisk scratched into the wet paint

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Examination of the Brueghel Holdings in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich Mirjam Neumeister, Eva Ortner and Jan Schmidt

A BSTRACT : Eighty-five paintings attributed to the Brueghel family and their workshops were the starting point of a scholarly project that began in 2011 and culminated in an exhibition at the Alte Pinakothek in 2013. Leading up to the exhibition, the Brueghel holdings in Munich underwent technical examination and art-historical study. The focus was placed on the works of Jan Brueghel the Elder, but also included paintings from his workshop and others attributed to various members of this family of painters. The main aim of the project was to verify existing attributions and to consider whether works were executed by the artist’s own hand, by his son Jan Brueghel the Younger, or by assistants. A second goal was to draft a chronology in which to integrate undated works to establish the characteristics of Jan Brueghel the Elder’s ‘handwriting’. Special attention was placed on the individual manner of paint application that he used for certain optical effects. Paintings created in collaboration with other artists were also studied. In such cases, it was not only a question of which section of a picture was executed by whom, but also the sequence in which the respective artists worked. The present contribution summarizes the main results of the research.

—o— Object of Study, Questions and Objectives, Methodology The Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen own eighty-five paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder, his workshop, by other members of the Brueghel family and the artist’s successors.1 These holdings were

examined in 2011 and 2012. The project team was made up of one art historian (Mirjam Neumeister) and two conservators (Eva Ortner and Jan Schmidt). The primary objective of this project was to verify existing attributions and to classify the works chronologically, including those undated, as far as possible. The technological examinations of the artworks were therefore orientated around this goal.2 The results were published in a scholarly catalogue of works on the holdings and presented to the public in an exhibition.3 This essay gives a concise overview of the study. Due to the number of works in the holdings, the spotlight was placed on Jan Brueghel the Elder; the two works (including the Land of Cockaigne) by his father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the three works by his brother, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, and the four by his son, Jan Brueghel the Younger, were also analysed. The main focus was on the sequence of working steps and the unique features in the manner of painting used to produce the pictures. In this respect, the aim was to identify characteristics of an individual style or even Jan Brueghel the Elder’s own artistic signature. This was needed to clarify attributions and, more importantly, to define the distinguishing features that characterize works by Jan Brueghel the Elder on one hand

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and by the Younger on the other hand, as well as to position their works qualitatively in relation to those produced by the workshop of Jan Brueghel the Elder, later run by his son, Jan Brueghel the Younger.4 The second important question tackled in this project was how those paintings were created on which two or more painters worked: who executed which part of the picture and in what sequence were the individual stages of work carried out?5 For their classification by date, the paintings on oak panels were investigated dendrochronologically.6 In addition, all pictures were examined using digital infrared reflectography and in certain cases also by X-radiography.7 Due to the specific focus of this project, neither cross-sections were taken nor material analyses carried out on either the ground or the paint layers. The most important instruments in the investigations, however, were the eyes, backed up by the stereomicroscope. The motto was always ‘look, look and look again’. The Supports: Oak Panels and Copper Plates Of the eighty-five Brueghel paintings in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, forty-five are on copper plate, thirty-eight on oak panel and two on canvas.8 The results of dendrochronological analysis of the wood panels correlate largely with art-historical dating. The panels of the smaller paintings are made from a single plank whereas the larger formats are constructed of several planks arranged parallel with an average width of c.  15 to 30 cm. These are generally glued together along the edges by simple butt joints and the joints additionally stabilized with dowels. The reverse of the paintings frequently have bevelled edges of different widths.9 Reverses of the copper plates mostly reveal concave deformations and repeated imprints caused by the planishing hammer during smoothing.10 In the case of Landscape with Village Tavern by Jan Brueghel the Elder, of around 1612 or 1615, apart from hammer marks, parallel series of grooves or undulations can be noticed. This may indicate

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that the plate was rolled in addition during the production process.11 For the painting Christ in Limbo from the workshop of Jan Brueghel the Elder, made in collaboration with the workshop of Hans Rottenhammer, a copper printing plate was reused: the reverse of the painting shows an engraved map of the Mediterranean coastline between Narbonne and Marseille that had formerly served for the printing of the atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius and appeared in several editions from 1570 onwards.12 Preparation of the Support for Painting The ground of the wooden panels is white or offwhite.13 In the case of the copper plates, it varies between light shades of grey and is just on a few pictures white or off-white. The ground on both wooden and copper supports has, in most cases, a clearly visible surface structure that indicates its application with a bristle brush. Colour and surface structure of the ground were incorporated many times in the actual painterly execution. Pieter Bruegel the Elder had already used the white ground in his Land of Cockaigne (fig. 8.2) as a reflector in the foreground. In the pictures of Jan Brueghel the Elder, the ground has been left visible in many places where it serves to provide a colour value midway between lighter and darker pictorial elements. The application of an imprimatura could be clearly proven in only a few of Jan Brueghel the Elder’s paintings in the Munich holdings and only on those on panels: for example, in the grisaille Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery, for which the infrared reflectogram reveals an imprimatura with streaky brushstrokes in changing directions.14 On the light-coloured ground, this creates a medium grey base tone from which the painter worked up to the white highlights and down to the dark grey shadows. However, several infrared reflectograms show a streaky pattern that, under the stereomicroscope, turned out to be an image of the paint that had accumulated between streaks of the ground.15

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Fig. 13.2 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, Feast of the Gods, c. 1617, oil on oak panel, 68.3 × 105.8 cm, Munich, BStGS, State Gallery Neuburg an der Donau (inv. 848) (a). Detail of the X-radiograph, showing a later overpainted figure in the foreground (b)

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Construction of the Composition and Painting Style The members of the Brueghel family adopted very different approaches when preparing their compositions. In the holdings in Munich, all paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Younger were prepared using underdrawings. Lightly applied lines, probably made with a black, dry drawing medium, appear in the infrared reflectogram of Land of Cockaigne and Head of an Old Peasant Woman by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. In some places the painterly execution of the figures differs very slightly from these. The three compositions by Pieter Brueghel the Younger in the holdings in Munich also reveal underdrawings. All figurative motifs are very precisely executed; elements of the landscape, on the other hand, have more fleetingly made underdrawings executed in a dry medium such as charcoal. The careful execution and merely marginal deviations made when carrying this out in paint are not surprising as, to a large extent these are exact replicas of his father’s pictorial creations.16 In the works of Jan Brueghel the Elder and the Younger, on the other hand, there are seldom traces of underdrawings to be found.17 The reason for proceeding without an underdrawing is most likely to be found in Brueghel’s standard work method, developing his compositions from coloured areas on which individual motifs probably were outlined by brush. Initiating the composition of a landscape, Jan Brueghel the Elder worked with areas of colour, applied thinly in clear brushstrokes. Scumbled shades of brown and green, translucent over the ground, create the immediate impression of natural vegetation in the landscape. At the same time, important compositional elements and motifs were prepared in places: thus, for example, tree trunks, where the structure of the bark is shown by drawing the brush through the paint. The sky was prepared at the next stage, covering a large area and executed in visible brushstrokes; it was painted around those areas where the vegetation had already been completed. Other parts, where the tops of trees or larger buildings were to be added but had not yet

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been painted, were left blank when painting the sky. During this same stage those sections of the landscape in the distance in shades of blue were added. Jan Brueghel the Elder then sketched individual motifs, such as the choir of a church in Village Feast.18 In most cases, their preparatory outlines, drawn with fine brushes, were covered up in the course of subsequent work or supplemented with later contouring. Continuing the work, Brueghel also used paint in a predominantly graphic manner. He placed thin lines and small areas of colour next to one another, whereby mixed effects that resulted are more coincidental. The smallest of details such as boats and houses in the River Landscape or the facades of buildings in Village Street are graphically painted, right into the far distance.19 During the final work phase Brueghel accentuated individual shapes, using fine black and brown outlines; these represent another of his graphic elements and are characteristic of his work. Although Jan Brueghel the Elder worked almost entirely without modelling colour gradients and glazes, subtle atmospheric coloration, defined during the first work phase, significantly determines the overall effect of many pictures. The transition from the middle ground to shades of blue in the distance is often suggested by a light-coloured staffage, drawn in warm pastel shades, as for example figures and buildings in the distance of River Landscape (fig. 13.1a).20 Jan Brueghel the Elder knew how to use painterly devices to great effect. Motifs that seem ‘solid’ when viewed at a normal distance turn out to be simplistic and effectively set lines and dots under a stereomicroscope. In this way, in Village Street, white and red dots of paint suggest brickwork on the corner of a house with plaster that has fallen off (fig. 13.1b).21 Similarly, light and dark accents added to an ochre area provide the plastic illusion of a waffle (fig. 13.1c). To conjure up a sense of plasticity, in individual motifs the paint was applied thickly with high impasto, such as around the edge of a pie in the depiction of Winter (fig. 13.1d). A circle inside

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the diamond pattern was scratched into the soft paint.22 Brueghel already used this technique in early works, for example in the tondos of the The Four Seasons – such as in the ears of grain and the architectural outlines and the hieroglyphs on the obelisk (figs 13.1e and 13.1f).23 Characteristic of the paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder are the efficient, planar execution of the pictorial composition and the precisely detailed depiction, even in the background, executed by means of an extremely confident, swift and economic painting style that became increasingly pronounced in later works. Pentimenti: Compositional Changes and New Iconographic Concepts Considering the large number of paintings, only very few pentimenti have been noticed.24 On multiple occasions changes to motifs made during the painting process were found in those paintings jointly created by two artists. This stands to reason as a division of work could lead to errors in what was agreed or in different creative ideas. The use of prototypes that were then reworked and altered during a second work phase may also have played a role. This was probably the case in the Feast of the Gods (fig. 13.2) of around 1617, a collaborative work by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, who painted the figures.25 X-ray images have revealed that a harpist seated in the foreground was overpainted at an advanced stage; it was possibly even a completed painterly composition.26 Comparison with another version previously on the New York art market that also depicts this figure27 reveals that Van Balen possibly decided to do without this figure for aesthetic reasons as, through doing this, the composition gained greater spatial depth and a more convincing narrative structure. The overpainting by Van Balen had already been completed by the time the panel again reached Brueghel, who then added the still-life details such as the rose in the foreground and Neptune’s trident in the gap that had emerged. The infrared reflectogram made of the Prophecy of Isaiah of around 1609 documents extensive icon-

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ographic changes (fig. 13.3).28 Hendrick van Balen reworked almost all parts of the figure composition. The group of smiths was scaled down to merge more with the background. In this way, the figures in the foreground gain greater prominence. This was also greatly reworked and, at the same time, contextually reinterpreted. Foelicitas was originally a Venus, from which only the latter’s attribute, the basket with roses, has been retained.29 The little Cupid was originally shown playing with the helmet that he now holds over the fire together with an olive branch to symbolize pax.30 And, as can be seen with the naked eye, the prophet was wearing a tunic and boasted a muscular torso. With these changes Van Balen created the picture of a prophet, with his message for peace written on the panel, from a depiction of Venus and Mars in the Forge of Vulcan.31 It is conceivable that the armistice between Spain and the Northern Netherlands of 9 April 1609 occasioned this reworking, possibly commissioned by a customer.32 The reverse of the Munich painting bears an inventory number from 1627/30 that refers to the private gallery of Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria.33 This painting may have been intended for the leader of the Catholic League. Workshop Practices: Advance Stockpiling and the Use of Prototypes The clearly more flexible treatment of the subject matter, as seen in the previous example, stems from practices adopted by the workshop, for which the tondo with the Rest on the Flight is also an example. It was created around 1600 at a time when Jan Brueghel the Elder frequently painted such round pictures with religious staffage.34 The infrared reflectogram revealed lines that suggest the composition of craggy rocks.35 It would appear that it had not yet been intended to add a staffage of figures at that point. A comparison with the drawing by Brueghel in the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich shows an identical clump of trees; the staffage, however, although once again showing a depiction of the Holy Family on the

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a Fig. 13.3 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, The Prophecy of Isaiah, c. 1609, oil on copper, 40.1 × 50.4 cm, Munich, BStGS, Alte Pinakothek (inv. 1999) (a). Details of the infrared reflectogram showing changes in the figure staffage (b and c)

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Flight into Egypt, was altered and can now be seen on the right, to the side of the tree.36 This allows us to conclude that the foreground was deliberately left blank so as to be able to add a staffage that would suit the customer’s requirements.37 In the case of the Munich tondo, it was only added later by a member of Brueghel’s workshop based on a Holy Family painted by Hans Rottenhammer.38 An efficient working method was also achieved in the workshop through the use of prototypes. Flower Garland with Saint Joseph, which has been attributed to the workshop on account of its inferior quality,39 includes identical floral motifs to those in the Madonna in a Flower Garland jointly created by Rubens and Brueghel.40 These are, however, much stiffer and nowhere nearly as realistic as in the famous collaborative Madonna painting. That these prototypes vary and appear in other formats, as well as in new combinations and other contexts, is shown in the Holy Family of 1620–23.41 The white lilies and red anemones that appear in both floral wreaths, on top of one another, become individual motifs in the flower garland that surrounds the Holy Family. The white lilies can now be seen on the left-hand edge of the picture, the red anemones on the right. Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Collaboration with Other Artists A look at the joint work carried out by two wellknown artists revealed a number of interesting facts, providing not only answers to the division of work during the production process. As a result, this has expanded the view on artistic collaboration and the exchange of works over large distances for art markets on this side of the Alps and the other. Hans Rottenhammer Peeter Stas’s hammered mark on the reverse of River Landscape with Rest on the Flight indicates that the copper plate was made in Antwerp, where Jan Brueghel painted the landscape before it was sent to Venice where Hans Rottenhammer added the staffage of figures.42 Conversely, the Rest on the

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Flight dated around 1595/7 was begun by Hans Rottenhammer in Venice. After the panel had arrived in Antwerp, Brueghel integrated the landscape, the flowers and fruit, as well as the lamb.43 In the case of both paintings, the execution of the different stages can be clearly traced under the stereomicroscope through the order in which the layers of paint were applied. Hendrick van Balen Being in the immediate local vicinity of one another was helpful for work carried out jointly to be much more complex and elaborate in nature. The short distance between the houses of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen in Lange Nieuwstraat in Antwerp made intensive communication between the two workshops possible, not only before work on a painting began, but also during its creation. In Bacchanal, painted around 1610, the complex working process can be traced particularly well (fig. 13.4). The opulent figurative staffage is to be ascribed to Van Balen, whereas the landscape in the background with the small figures and the still-life-like details in the foreground are to be attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder. In the infrared reflectogram a number of lines can be seen outlining the figures.44 Under the stereomicroscope it is not possible to establish definitely whether this drawing was carried out on the ground directly. Gaps in different parts of the picture, however, indicate that the figures were drawn at a very early stage in the painting process. These were made by Van Balen, as in drawings of his hand the confident contour lines executed without interruptions can also be observed.45 The subsequent painting process can be divided into three phases. First of all, Brueghel created the forest in the background and the wine press scene on the left; this was followed by the figures painted by Van Balen. These not only include the Bacchus procession but also the figures on the right in the background. Under the microscope it can be seen clearly how Van Balen once again left gaps for the details that were to be added by Brueghel at the final stage. As

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Fig. 13.4 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, Bacchanal, c. 1610, oil on copper, 41.9 × 70.2 cm, Munich, BStGS, State Gallery Neuburg an der Donau (inv. 847) (a). Photomicrographs, showing the complex working process with drawn lines by Van Balen (b) and gaps left by Van Balen to be filled in with details by Jan Brueghel the Elder (c)

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a result, only one half of the figures next to the thyrsus staffs with their garlands of vine leaves was executed. A similar approach was probably adopted in the case of the Four Seasons series, dated 1616.46 In Spring, individual lines can be detected using the stereomicroscope under areas of skin. These may possibly stem from an underdrawing of figures Van Balen sketched directly onto the ground.47 During a subsequent stage Brueghel defined the different sections of the composition when adding the first application of paint and executed the background. Van Balen then inserted the figures and handed the picture back to Brueghel who completed the painting. The detailing was executed during this final phase, including those areas that were initially prepared in paint by Brueghel and then left between Van Balen’s figures. This can be seen clearly in the flowers that one of the putti is holding in Spring. Van Balen left an open space around one of his figures that had been painted green earlier by Brueghel; in this reserve Brueghel later added flowers and stems. Differences in the Painting Style between Jan Brueghel the Elder and Jan Brueghel the Younger The detailed examination of the painting style and findings on the sequence of the work inevitably led to questions of attribution. In the case of Jan Brueghel the Elder, this is particularly complex as not only was the workshop large but his son, Jan Brueghel the Younger, was growing up to be an important artist in his own right. Very clearly the latter fitted into the family tradition and continued to run the business after his father’s death in 1625. There are, however, clear differences in the style and manner of painting and in the composition of details that point to each artist’s own characteristic handwriting, even when they are obviously based on the same prototypes. Comparing similar motifs makes this evident, as one can see in the vegetables in the foreground of Jan Brueghel the Younger’s Earth and Water from The Four Elements, painted around 1640 in collaboration with

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Frans Francken the Younger, and the Holy Family in a Flower Garland by the father.48 Jan Brueghel the Elder’s painting style is characterized by a more precise, nuanced, heavily drawing-like approach. The handwriting of his son, on the other hand, is of a more summary and painterly nature, with smoother colour transitions and a pastier application of paint. This can be seen in a comparison of the motif of two halves of a melon lying on the ground that are obviously based on the one common prototype. In his depiction of Earth and Water, Jan Brueghel the Younger painted them in thick, pastier strokes and made use of the paint relief created as a result to illustrate details with greater plasticity. A ridge of paint, for example, suggests the fruit’s thick, hard skin and embedded brushstrokes capture the seeds within the pulp of the fruit (fig. 13.5). The melon halves painted by Jan Brueghel the Elder in the depiction of Autumn from the cycle of The Four Seasons also include a paint relief (fig. 13.6).49 This is, however, much more finely and subtly executed – more graphically – in keeping with his typical style of painting. Based on these characteristic painting styles, the question of differentiating between the hand of Jan Brueghel the Elder, that of his son and their workshop can be answered with greater precision.50 It is still common practice to attribute works of lesser quality to Jan Brueghel the Younger. In the case of several works in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen holdings, however, attributions made in the past to Jan Brueghel the Younger were ruled out in favour of an attribution to the workshop – such as, for example, Busy Village Square in the State Gallery in Aschaffenburg, which was previously considered a work by Jan Brueghel the Younger.51 When compared to the original by Jan Brueghel the Elder, executed in his own hand and signed and dated 1609, qualitative weaknesses, however, in what is otherwise as perfect an imitation of the characteristic painting style as possible, become evident.52 This can be seen in particular in the composition of details – for example in the extension of the canal to the horizon – which is

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Fig. 13.5 Jan Brueghel the Younger and Frans Francken the Younger, The Four Elements: Earth and Water, c. 1640, oil on oak panel, 51.5 × 85.2 cm, Munich, BStGS, State Gallery Schleißheim (inv. 1998) (a). Photomicrograph, showing Jan Brueghel the Younger’s characteristic manner of painting (b)

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Fig. 13.6 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, The Four Seasons: Autumn, 1616, oil on copper, 56.6 × 85.2 cm, Munich, BStGS, State Gallery Neuburg an der Donau (inv. 13711) (a). Photomicrograph, showing Jan Brueghel the Elder’s characteristic manner of painting (b)

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b Fig. 13.7 Jan Brueghel the Elder (workshop), Venus and Mars in the Forge of Vulcan, after 1608/10, oil on oak panel, 33.9 × 53.4 cm, Munich, BStGS, Alte Pinakothek (inv. 1881) (a). Infrared reflectogram, showing overpainted details clearly indicating that the painting is a fragment of a larger composition (b)

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by no means as precisely executed as in the signed version in the Otterloo Collection.53 The Signature as a Means of Authentication – and its Abuse Finally, a critical appraisal of paintings actually accepted as works in the artist’s own hand was made. That an attribution based on a signature is not to be trusted can be seen in the Alte Pinakothek version of Venus and Mars in the Forge of Vulcan (fig. 13.7).54 Its comparison with authentic signatures, particularly evident through the precision, confidence and clarity in the execution of the letters, revealed considerable differences.55 The resultant suspicion proved to be justified. The infrared image of the painting shows quite clearly that this is a fragment of what was originally a much larger composition.56 The remnants of a still life of weapons and a smith’s tools that originally filled the foreground can now be seen at the very bottom edge of the picture. A totally similar situation can be seen with a version of Venus and Mars in the Forge of Vulcan attributed to Jan Brueghel the Younger and Hendrick van Balen.57 The Munich painting is very clearly a fragment and was reduced to the landscape that was originally in the background; the signature of the work was, beyond doubt, added at a later date. As such, this explains the poor quality of the figures and details, executed in a summarizing manner, that were merely part of

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a subsidiary scene in the background, before the panel was reduced in size, and clearly different in scale to the large figures that once occupied the foreground. Conclusion The examination of the qualitatively outstanding and varied holdings of paintings by the Bruegel dynasty in the Alte Pinakothek and the State Galleries produced a great number of new findings; this essay presents just a few of the more succinct examples. Different specialist fields in the museum worked together closely; expertise in art history and art technology was combined to produce new findings. So an in-depth knowledge of the different work stages in the highly productive workshops of the Jan Brueghels was achieved. Furthermore, close comparisons of style and brushwork helped solve tricky questions of attribution. This has contributed to the correct classification of Jan Brueghel the Elder’s oeuvre, Jan Brueghel the Younger’s oeuvre and the output of their workshops in the holdings of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen. These principal works by Jan Brueghel the Elder and characteristic paintings by other members of the Brueghel family verified through signatures and dating form a body of reference works. The results of this project thus provide a basis for further attributions.

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N OT ES This essay is based on a lecture delivered at the Bruegel Success Story Colloquium on 12 September 2018. It summarizes the most important results from the examination of holdings of works by Jan Brueghel the Elder, his family and the workshop that were presented in an exhibition at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich in 2013 (for further information see note 3). For this reason, no literary sources that emerged after the publication of the catalogue have been included – such as the essay by Christina Currie and Dominique Allart, ‘The Quintessential Replica: Jan Brueghel’s Large Format Version of his Father’s Sermon of St John the Baptist’, in Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art, 86(1), 2017, pp. 199–229 (Currie and Allart 2017). 1 The holdings of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (BStGS) are on display in the Alte Pinakothek, the Neue Pinakothek, the Pinakothek der Moderne, the Sammlung Schack and in thirteen State Galleries throughout Bavaria. Works by members of the Brueghel family are exhibited in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich as well as in the State Gallery in Neuburg an der Donau, the State Gallery in Schleißheim and the State Gallery in Aschaffenburg. 2 The index of paintings in the catalogue (Munich 2013, pp. 416–28) comprises eightyseven works (including two paintings that, as the result of our research, are no longer attributed to the Brueghel family); of these, seventy-one have been subject to technical examinations at the Doerner Institut (Munich). 3 Brueghel: Gemälde von Jan Brueghel dem Älteren, exhibition at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, 22 March–16 June 2013. The present contribution is based on the essay ‘Der Blick auf das Detail: Zur Maltechnik Jan Brueghels d. Ä. – Ergebnisse der Untersuchungen des Münchner Brueghel-Bestandes’ (Neumeister, Ortner and Schmidt 2013) in the accompanying catalogue (Munich 2013). 4 Neumeister 2013, pp. 27–32. Examples of works that, to date, have been attributed to Jan Brueghel the Younger, but due to the lack of certain stylistic characteristics are most probably from the workshop of Jan Brueghel the Elder, are Flora in the Flower Garden (BStGS, inv. 828; on the attribution to Jan Brueghel the Younger, see Ertz 1984, p. 354, no. 188; on the current attribution, see Munich 2013, cat. no. 76) and Landscape with Windmill (BStGS, inv. 830; on the attribution to Jan Brueghel the Younger, see Ertz 1984, p. 196, no. 15; on the current attribution, see Munich 2013, cat. no. 50). 5 Thirty-three works in the Brueghel holdings of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen were painted as a collaboration between

two artists or their workshops, as mentioned later in this essay. Such collaborations range from the simple addition of staffage motifs – for example, figures placed in a landscape setting – to extremely complex compositions that were developed in the course of a creative process on several levels, with the painting being worked on alternately. 6 See the contribution in Munich 2013 by Peter Klein on the dendrochronological analyses (Klein 2013). 7 Infrared reflectography was carried out using two different devices: 1) VASARI-Scanner (high precision positioning device, traversing range 100 × 130 cm), 320-1.7RT camera (Sensors Unlimited Ltd), InGaAs sensor with filter BG 39, spectral range 1000– 1800 nm, spatial resolution 48 pixel/cm or 96 pixel cm. Illumination: halogen tungsten light, 250 W; 2) OSIRIS-A1-Camera (Opus Instruments Ltd), InGaAs array, spectral range 1000–1800 nm, spatial resolution 50 pixel/cm or better. Illumination: halogen tungsten light, 2000 W. 2012–2013. X-radiography was carried out at the Department of Photography, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Munich). Device: Isovolt 60 (Seifert), Cr-tube Type PW 2188/00 (3 kW, Philips); excitation voltage typically 25–35 kV, exposure time typically 2–5 min, distance from painting 2–3 m, constant operation ‘P’; X-ray film: Agfa Structurix D7 DW, manual assembly from individual films, 30 × 40 cm. 8 Jørgen Wadum assumes a smaller proportion of copper plates in Brueghel’s oeuvre. He states that of the approximately 400 paintings by Brueghel about 165 were painted on copper (Wadum 1999, p. 102). Two relatively large hunting scenes, measuring 67.2 × 109.6 cm and 92 × 70.8 cm (BStGS, invs 344 and 346; see Munich 2013, cat. nos. 83 and 84), were both painted on oak panels made from one plank. The reverse of three panels show the initials of Guilliam Aertssen and two panels the monogram of Michiel Vrient. Two panels have hammered marks with the monogram ‘R’ and ‘B’: see Moortgat and Wadum, Chapter 26 in the present volume. See also the overview of marks used by panelmakers and brandmark stamps in Munich 2013, p. 432. 9 The paint layer of the following five pictures does not extend to the edges of the panels, which suggests that they were fixed in a temporary frame during the painting process: Jan Brueghel the Elder, Harbour Scene with Christ Preaching (oil on oak panel, 79.3 × 118.6 cm, BStGS, inv. 187; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 28), Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist (oil on oak panel, 40.9 × 59.2 cm, BStGS, inv. 834; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 25), Jan

Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, Two Nymphs Fishing and Two Nymphs with Hound (oil on oak panel, 51.1 × 80.5 cm, BStGS, inv. 1950; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 81; oil on oak panel, 59.3 × 85.7 cm, BStGS, inv. 850; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 82), Jan Brueghel the Elder (and workshop) and Peter Paul Rubens (workshop), Diana’s Sleeping Nymphs (oil on oak panel, 65.5 × 109 cm, BStGS, inv. 344; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 83). 10 Four plates bear marks of the workshop of the Antwerp coppersmith Peeter Stas on the reverse (BStGS, invs 1999, 821, 1888 and 1896; see Munich 2013, cat. nos. 51, 55, 33 and 63). See also the overview of marks used by panel-makers and brandmark stamps in Munich 2013, p. 432. 11 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Landscape with Village Tavern (oil on copper, 32 × 44.6 cm, BStGS, inv. 826; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 64; a detail of the reverse is illustrated on p. 93). The large-format copper plates of The Four Seasons of 1616 also reveal such grooves, albeit less pronounced. These may also have been rolled (BStGS, invs 13709–12; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 69). For further information on the copper plates of the paintings by Brueghel the Elder and the Younger in the holdings of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, see Neumeister, Ortner and Schmidt 2013, pp. 92–3, with references. 12 Jan Brueghel the Elder (workshop) and Hans Rottenhammer (workshop), Christ in Limbo, oil on copper, 21.5 × 27.7 cm (BStGS, inv. 6408; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 21; unfortunately, the reverse of the plate has been damaged by corrosion). 13 For further information on the ground of the paintings by the Brueghel family in the holdings of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, see Neumeister, Ortner and Schmidt 2013, pp. 93–5, with references. 14 For further information on the imprimatura of the paintings by the Brueghel family in the holdings of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, see Neumeister, Ortner and Schmidt 2013, p. 97, with references. An imprimatura can definitely be seen in the case of the following works by Jan Brueghel the Elder: Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery (BStGS, inv. 1217; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 24), The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist (BStGS, inv. 834; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 25), Harbour Scene with Christ Preaching (BStGS, inv. 187; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 28), Landscape with Windmill by the Brueghel workshop (BStGS, inv. 830; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 50), Landscape (Farm by a Stream) by the Bruegel workshop (BStGS, inv. 831; see Munich

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2013, cat. no. 68), Two Nymphs with Hounds (BStGS, inv. 850; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 82), The Holy Family (BStGS, inv. 149; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 85). 15 For example, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Jonah Leaving the Whale (oil on panel, 37.9 × 55.6 cm; BStGS, inv. 1887; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 23). 16 For further information on the underdrawings of the paintings by the Brueghel family in the holdings of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, see Neumeister, Ortner and Schmidt 2013, p. 95, with references. For Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s underdrawing and his copying process, see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, pp. 746–59. 17 Details of these exceptions are given below in this contribution. 18 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Village Feast, oil on copper, 22.6 × 33.6 cm (BStGS, inv. 1884; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 62; photomicrograph illustrated on p. 100). 19 Jan Brueghel the Elder, River Landscape, oil on copper, 33.2 × 45.9 cm, and Jan Brueghel the Elder, Village Street, oil on copper, 8.1 × 12.7 cm (BStGS, invs 829 and 2860; see Munich 2013, cat. nos. 41 and 56; photomicrographs are illustrated on p. 100). 20 Jan Brueghel the Elder, River Landscape; for support and dimensions, see note 19 (BStGS, inv. 829; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 41). 21 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Village Street; for support and dimensions, see note 19 (BStGS, inv. 2860; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 56). 22 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, The Four Seasons: Winter, oil on copper, 57.1 × 84.6 cm (BStGS, inv. 13712; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 69). 23 Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Harvest (Summer), oil on copper, diameter 12.4 cm, and Roman Carnival (Winter), oil on copper, diameter 12.4 cm (BStGS, invs 4911 and 1991; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 7). 24 See in this respect, Neumeister, Ortner and Schmidt 2013, pp. 102–3. 25 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, Feast of the Gods, oil on oak panel, 68.3 × 105.8 cm (BStGS, inv. 848; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 72). 26 See Neumeister, Ortner and Schmidt 2013, pp. 103–4, with fig.; for complete X-ray picture, see Munich 2013, p. 336. 27 New York, William Doyle Galleries; see Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 2, pp. 824–5, no. 411. 28 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, The Prophecy of Isaiah, oil on copper, 40.1 × 50.4 cm (BStGS, inv. 1999; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 51). The complete infrared reflectogram is illustrated in Munich 2013, p. 272.

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29 A painting of 1623 in a private collection in England, attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, gives an impression of the original appearance of the Venus figure (oil on copper, 39.4 × 34.3 cm; see Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 3, pp. 1071–3, no. 513). 30 On the iconographic meanings of this motif, see Baumstark 1974, pp. 131–7. 31 See Neumeister in Munich 2013, cat. no. 51, pp. 270–73. That the original composition was a Venus and Mars in the Forge of Vulcan was first mentioned in Los Angeles/ The Hague 2006, p. 149. 32 The connection between the subject of peace, embodied in The Prophecy of Isaiah and the later owner, Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, can be found in Munich 2002, p. 79 (with reference to Jost 1963, pp. 119ff); see also Los Angeles/The Hague 2006, p. 151, note 4. 33

See Melzer 2013, esp. pp. 80–82.

34 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Rest on the Flight, oil on oak panel, diameter 21 cm (BStGS, inv. 2876; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 35). Other examples of tondos with religious staffage in the oeuvre of Jan Brueghel are: Adam and Eve, in cooperation with Hendrik de Clerck (figures), of 1596/7 (oil on copper, diameter 27.5 cm, BStGS, inv. 1274; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 10), Forest Landscape with the Appearance of the Lord to Abraham at Mamre, c. 1597– 1600 or 1589 (oil on copper, diameter 10.4 cm, Cologne/London, Edel Galerie [1994]; see Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 2, p. 468, no. 206), the Sacrifice of Abraham, c. 1600 (oil on panel, diameter 21 cm, Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, inv. 1910-149; see Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 2, p. 472, no. 209), the Rocky Landscape with the Flight into Egypt, signed and dated 1600 (oil on panel, diameter 18.5 cm, New York, Sotheby’s, 20 May 1993, lot 25; see Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 2, p. 514, no. 232) and another version, c. 1605 (oil on panel, diameter 18.5 cm, London, Mrs Riva Twersky; see Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 2, pp. 514ff, no. 233), as well as the Swampy Forest Landscape with Hermit, c. 1600 (oil on copper, diameter 17.5 cm, Switzerland, private collection; see Ertz and NitzeErtz 2008–10, vol. 2, pp. 605ff, no. 285). 35 A detail of the infrared reflectogram is illustrated in Munich 2013, p. 228. 36 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Landscape with the Flight into Egypt, c. 1600, pen and brush in brown ink, grey and blue wash, later added framing line in brown and gold, diameter 18.3 cm (Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, inv. 1362 Z, formerly inv. 730). See Wegner 1973, text vol., p. 71, no. 498; also Susanne Wagini, ‘Jan Brueghel d. Ä., Landschaft mit Flucht nach Ägypten’, in Munich 2013, p. 230, cat. no. 36.

37 See Neumeister 2013, p. 25; also Munich 2013, p. 228. 38 The figurative staffage in the painting in Munich, the execution of which is of much lower quality, reflects the staffage in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Hans Rottenhammer, c. 1600 (oil on copper, 20.3 × 31.7 cm, Glasgow, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, inv. 25; see Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 2, p. 528, no. 240), see Munich 2013, p. 228. 39 Jan Brueghel the Elder (workshop), Flower Garland with Saint Joseph (oil on canvas, 178.5 × 143 cm, BStGS, inv. 1293; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 74); see Neumeister 2013, p. 32. 40 Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, Madonna in a Flower Garland (oil on oak panel, 185 × 209.8 cm, BStGS, inv. 331; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 73). For detailed information on the creation of the picture and the sequence of work carried out jointly by Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, see Schmidt 2013, pp. 109–23, with further literature. 41 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter van Avont(?), Holy Family (oil on oak panel, 92.9 × 70.8 cm, BStGS, inv. 149; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 85; including reference to a drawing in the Prentenkabinet at the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp, which repeats the left-hand section of the floral garland found in Munich). 42 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hans Rottenhammer, River Landscape with Rest on the Flight (oil on copper, 21 × 30.7 cm, BStGS, inv. 1888; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 33). 43 Hans Rottenhammer and Jan Brueghel the Elder, Rest on the Flight (oil on copper, 26.4 × 35.2 cm, BStGS, inv. 270; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 11). 44 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, Bacchanal (oil on copper, 41.9 × 70.2 cm, BStGS, inv. 847; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 57; infrared reflectogram illustrated on p. 292). 45 As in the drawing Diana and Actaeon of 1605, Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus, Prentenkabinet, inv. 537; see Werche 2004, text vol., p. 227–8, no. C 10, and illustration vol., p. 491. 46 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, The Four Seasons (BStGS, inv. 13709: oil on copper, 57.1 × 84.9 cm; inv. 13710: 57.1 × 85.1 cm; inv. 13711: oil on copper, 56.6 × 85.2 cm; for inv. 13712, see note 22; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 69). 47 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, The Four Seasons: Spring; for support and dimensions, see note 46 (BStGS, inv. 13709; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 69; in the infrared reflectogram of Spring, however, no underdrawing was detected).

EXAMINATION OF THE BRUEGHEL HOLDINGS IN THE BAYERISCHE STAATSGEMÄLDESAMMLUNGEN

48 Jan Brueghel the Younger and Frans Francken the Younger, Earth and Water (oil on oak panel, 51.5 × 85.2 cm, BStGS, inv. 1998; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 90), and Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter van Avont(?), Holy Family; for support and dimensions see note 41 (BStGS, inv. 149; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 85). 49 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, The Four Seasons: Autumn; for support and dimensions see note 46 (BStGS, inv. 13711; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 69). 50 As a result of recent research, Baptism of the Moorish Chamberlain (oil on canvas, 108.9 × 192.2 cm, BStGS, inv. 4672; see Munich 2013, p. 424), listed as being in the artist’s own hand in the monograph on Jan Brueghel the Elder by Klaus Ertz (Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 4, p. 1506, no. 711), can now be attributed to his son. The soft, painterly brushstrokes in the work are typical of Jan Brueghel the Younger. Over and above this, individual motifs point to this being the

son’s work: the dots covering the grey horse’s coat and the head that is too small in proportion to its body appear in other works that have been attributed beyond doubt to Jan Brueghel the Younger, such as, for example, in the signed Saint Hubertus in a Forest Landscape of 1621 (oil on copper, 49.9 × 71.9 cm, BStGS, inv. 2178; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 89; see Neumeister 2013, pp. 27–32). 51 Jan Brueghel the Elder (workshop), Busy Village Square (oil on copper, 22.5 × 33.6 cm, BStGS, inv. 1897; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 54). On the attribution to Jan Brueghel the Younger, see Ertz 1984, p. 249, no. 69. 52 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Village Street with Canal (oil on copper, 22 × 34 cm, Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection; see Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 1, p. 372, no. 181, with detailed illustration of the canal). 53 See Neumeister 2013, p. 30, and Munich 2013, p. 282, cat. no. 54. 54 Jan Brueghel the Elder (workshop), Venus and Mars in the Forge of Vulcan (oil on

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oak panel, 33.9 × 53.4 cm, BStGS, inv. 1881; see Munich 2013, cat. no. 53). On the attribution to Jan Brueghel the Elder, see Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 2, pp. 794–5, no. 397. 55 See ‘Übersicht der Signaturen’ (summary of signatures) in Munich 2013, pp. 429– 31, esp. p. 430. 56 The complete infrared reflectogram is illustrated in Munich 2013, p. 280. 57 Most recently at Christie’s, London, 16 December 1998, lot 7, attributed to Jan Brueghel the Younger and Hendrick van Balen. See also Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2008–10, vol. 3, p. 1073, note 2, and Ertz 1984, p. 421, no. 260. An attribution of the figures to Van Balen was not supported by Bettina Werche: see Werche 2004, text vol., p. 245, no. E 49.

Fig. 14.1 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Three Studies of an Owl on a Perch, c. 1600–15, oil on panel, 42.5 × 51 cm (framed), Wales, Powis Castle

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Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Oil Sketches of Animals and Birds: Form, Function and Additions to the Oeuvre Amy Orrock

A BSTRACT : A little-known painting in the collection of Powis Castle, Wales, can be used to explore a series of questions around the oil studies of animals and birds that were produced by the artists of the Bruegel dynasty. Recently attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder, the small panel depicting Three Studies of an Owl on a Perch relates to numerous finished paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder, and these links are examined. Comparing the Powis Castle painting to oil sketches of animals and birds from collections in Vienna, Ghent and Narbonne reveals both similarities and differences. Together these works enable an exploration of aspects of Jan Brueghel’s output, including his painterly technique, his interest in the natural world and commitment to observation from life, the potential function of oil sketches in his studio and the role of other artists, including Jan Brueghel the Younger.

—o— The painting of Three Studies of an Owl on a Perch (fig. 14.1) is one of the treasures of Powis Castle, Wales. The painting is thought to have been acquired by Robert, 1st Baron Clive (1725–1774) during his Italian tour in 1773–4, although how it got to Italy is a matter of conjecture.1 The panel is of modest size, and shows three studies of a ‘little owl’ (Athene noctua).2 The studies are arranged across the centre of the panel at differing heights, and the owl is shown in various positions. In the left-hand study the bird is depicted frontally with

the white feathers on its chest visible and its head turned to one side. In the central study the owl is hunched down on its perch, frowning out. And on the right the wooden perch and body of the owl are shown at three-quarter view, with the head and beak in profile. Over the years this beautifully painted study has been linked with a number of artists associated with the sprawling Bruegel dynasty, including Jan Brueghel the Elder’s friend and collaborator Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Brueghel’s son-in-law David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690) and his grandson Jan van Kessel the Elder (1626–1679).3 More recently, the panel has been attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625) himself, although it has not been included in any of the literature on the artist.4 The attribution to Jan Brueghel the Elder is supported by close correspondence between the study and depictions of owls in a number of Jan Brueghel’s biblical and allegorical paintings. Further comparisons can be made between the Powis Castle panel and the growing body of oil sketches of animals and birds that are attributed to either Jan Brueghel the Elder or his son, Jan Brueghel the Younger, and his studio.5 But the Three Studies of an Owl on a Perch also differs from these works in several important ways, meaning that it resists easy categorization. Nevertheless, it can be used to explore

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a series of questions around the oil studies of animals and birds that were produced by the artists of the Bruegel dynasty in the first half of the seventeenth century. Owls appear frequently in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century imagery, with a huge variety of allegorical meanings, from the bird’s ancient associations with wisdom and the goddess Athena, to its status as a nocturnal creature and consequent links with folly, debauchery and sin.6 Such allegorical readings seem remote from Jan Brueghel’s depictions of owls, however. Although owls appear regularly in Brueghel’s paradise landscapes, here they are treated factually, like the multitude of other types of birds depicted, with attention paid to their appearance and behavioural habits rather than their symbolic associations. An examination of details found in these paintings reveals many correspondences with the owls in the Powis Castle study. The first of these is found in Jan Brueghel’s series of the Four Elements, executed in collaboration with the figure painter Hendrick van Balen (1575–1632). The theme of the elements enabled Brueghel to expand on the array of animals featured in his early paradise landscapes, with four panels providing a rich opportunity to paint the bounty of the natural world according to specific categories: the Allegory of Water is filled with all kinds of fish and shellfish, the Allegory of Earth with mammals, flowers and fruit, the Allegory of Fire with the gleaming metal treasures produced in a forge and the Allegory of Air with many birds. An early iteration of the Four Elements theme is found in a series of panels now in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome, which are dated to around 1611.7 In addition to numerous versions and copies, another complete series of the Four Elements on panel is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (fig. 14.2).8 Both the Rome and Lyon versions of the Allegory of Air centre on a depiction of Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, who is surrounded by birds. While the arrangement of birds differs between these paintings, both include the second, central owl from the Powis study, perched on a bare tree stump over-

hanging the cliff at the lower right (fig. 14.3). The owl adopts the same hunched position as the central owl from the Powis study, with its feet gripping the tree branch rather than the perch (fig. 14.4). Brueghel’s last and most elaborate Allegory of Air was made for his friend and patron Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564–1631), Archbishop of Milan.9 Painted on copper, it belongs to a series of four panels that was begun in 1608, and are now split between Paris and Milan (fig. 14.5).10 The Allegory of Air was the last painting in the series and was not finished until 1621. The composition has been developed significantly from the earlier iterations – the tree stump has become a small tree in leaf, which is home to a greater variety of birds. As well as the central, hunched owl from the Powis study, the tree also accommodates a second owl that resembles the left-hand owl from the Powis study, although this might have been an unplanned, later addition, as it appears somewhat crammed in behind the trunk. It is interesting to note that despite considerable changes to the Allegory of Air composition, the owls, like many of the other birds, are represented in exactly the same poses each time. This suggests that Brueghel relied upon ‘stock motifs’ – studies of animals and birds that could be imported into his paintings and arranged at will.11 The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark (1613) in the Getty Museum is a particularly fine example of a paradise landscape by Brueghel, and also features an owl related to the Powis Castle panel (fig. 14.6). The painting depicts the moment before the flood, when Noah assembles his family and the animals to board the ark. In accordance with the biblical story, most of the animals shown in the foreground are grouped in pairs. This is not the case for all of the birds perched in the tree, however, which include an owl, shown alone and in profile, closely resembling the third owl from the Powis study (compare fig. 14.7 and fig. 14.8). Another high-quality paradise landscape to feature an owl that corresponds with the Powis study is the Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man (c. 1617) in the Mauritshuis, The

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Fig. 14.2 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Allegory of Air, 1611, oil on panel, 46 × 83 cm, Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts (inv. A77)

Fig. 14.3 Detail from fig. 14.2

Hague (fig. 14.9). This collaborative work by Brueghel and Rubens is the only one to bear both of their signatures. It shows Adam and Eve, both still unguarded in their nudity and surrounded in paradise by a rich array of animals, mostly painted by Brueghel.12 A few of the animals furnish the narrative of the painting, such as a monkey at the base of the tree biting into an apple, but most of the animals have been included to augment the broader theme of the rich variety of Creation. Again, many exotic beasts can be identified, but perched in the centre of the composition, at a fork in the tree branch, is the central owl from the Powis study (compare fig. 14.10 and fig. 14.4).13 While these examples are not an exhaustive list, they demonstrate the repetition of all three of the owls from the Powis study as individual motifs within Jan Brueghel’s allegorical and biblical paintings. The sheer number of times that the owls are repeated suggests that the Powis study is linked to these larger and more complex paintings, and may have functioned as, or been related to, a preparatory study sheet that was used in Jan Brueghel’s studio.

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Fig. 14.5 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen, Allegory of Air, signed and dated 1621, oil on copper, 45 × 64 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv. 1093)

Fig. 14.6 Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark, 1613, oil on panel, 54.6 × 83.8 cm, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum (inv. 92.PB.82)

OPPOSITE

Fig. 14.4 Detail from Three Studies of an Owl on a Perch (fig. 14.1). Central owl

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Fig. 14.7 Detail from the Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Arc (fig. 14.6)

Jan Brueghel the Elder’s richly detailed flower paintings and paradise landscapes possessed both spiritual and scientific dimensions, reflecting the climate in which they were produced. Unlike creatures or flowers in the natural world, which inevitably faded, wilted or perished, Brueghel’s paintings endured, and for patrons such as Borromeo their creation was a pinnacle of both artistic and spiritual achievement.14 Brueghel’s focus on flora and fauna was also informed by the rapid developments in natural history, which had blossomed during the second half of the sixteenth century following explorations to the New World. This period was marked by an intense growth in the number of new species being discovered, as well as a new attitude to cataloguing these findings, with the leading natural historians of the sixteenth century producing encyclopaedias and compendia that pushed the boundaries of the known world. Artists, antiquarians and curious collectors were intrigued by such advances in knowledge, and a number of drawn, painted and printed ‘animal series’ albums emerged in Antwerp at the same time as the encyclopaedias.15 These consisted of images of animals posed alone or collectively, and arranged into albums, sometimes with labels and sometimes independent of text. The earliest and most exclusive albums were the watercolour illustrations of the animal kingdom gathered together in book format in Hans Bol’s

three-volume Icones animalium avium (c. 1573–7) and in Joris Hoefnagel’s Four Elements (1575–82).16 Both of these sets of albums contain illustrations of owls, although the depictions do not match the Powis ‘little owls’. A relationship does seem to exist between the Powis study and an illustration of an owl in the Avium vivae icones, a series of engravings of birds by Adriaen Collaert (c. 1560–1618). As a printed collection the Avium vivae icones was widely available in Antwerp in the early seventeenth century. The first edition, issued around 1580, consisted of the title plate and fifteen plates, with sixteen more plates added to the second edition around 1600, including plate V, showing a Hoopoe and Owl (fig. 14.11).17 Collaert sets his engraving of a Hoopoe and Owl against a typically Netherlandish vista of a winding river valley and busy settlement. The owl is shown in reverse orientation from that in the Powis study, and is perched on a tree branch rather than a man-made wooden perch, but the similarity between the images is notable (fig. 14.12). Whether the painted Powis owl was the source for Collaert’s engraving, or vice versa, is unclear.18 Jan Brueghel used engravings to inform his flower paintings, carefully assimilating patterns for specific blooms within a bouquet of flowers observed from life, making it plausible that the painted owl was based on a print.19 But the high level of detail in the Powis study suggests that the subject was observed from life. If it was a source for Collaert’s engraving, then the Powis study would date from c. 1600 – earlier than the dates traditionally given to Brueghel’s oil studies of animals and birds, which are generally dated to c. 1615. While many of the animal series albums relied on recycling existing images, Brueghel’s studies of animals and birds are characterized by a fresh degree of observation that in their attention to detail served to correct the leading naturalists of the day.20 Brueghel was able to achieve greater levels of accuracy and detail in part because of his skill as an artist but also because of his commitment to observing species ad vivum or ‘from life’, a term which gained increasing currency during the period

JAN BRUEGHEL THE ELDER ’ S OIL SKETCHES OF ANIMALS AND BIRDS

Fig. 14.8 Detail from Three Studies of an Owl on a Perch (fig. 14.1)

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Fig. 14.9 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man, c. 1617, oil on panel, 74.3 × 114.7 cm, The Hague, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis (inv. 253)

Fig. 14.10 Detail from fig. 14.9

in which he was working.21 Jan Brueghel’s correspondence demonstrates that he valued images that were made from life, and was keen to convey to his patrons the primacy of observation from life within his working practice. Writing to Borromeo in 1606, Brueghel described how he had travelled to Brussels in order to portray a few flowers from life that cannot be seen in Antwerp, with the resulting painting sure to impress because of ‘the beauty and rarity of various flowers which are unknown and have never been seen here before’.22 In 1621, Brueghel described another painting in which ‘the birds and animals were done from life from several of Her Serene Highness’s specimens’.23 Jan Brueghel enjoyed privileged access to the botanic gardens, menageries and collections of naturalia that were maintained by the Habsburg rulers whom he courted. In 1604 he travelled to Prague, where he was able to observe birds and animals in the menag-

JAN BRUEGHEL THE ELDER ’ S OIL SKETCHES OF ANIMALS AND BIRDS

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Fig. 14.11 Adriaen Collaert, Avium vivae icones, Antwerp, c. 1600, bound volume with 32 engraved plates, 171 × 248 mm, pl. V: Hoopoe and Owl

erie of Rudolf II, as well as stuffed specimens in his cabinet of curiosities. Here Brueghel would also have been exposed to Rudolf’s large collection of animal imagery, which included many of the leading compendia of the day, as well as individual descriptive studies such as Albrecht Dürer’s A Young Hare (1502). Brueghel’s engagement with the works by Dürer in the collection of Rudolf II is demonstrated by his imitation of Dürer’s watercolour of the Madonna with a Multitude of Animals (1503) in oil on panel.24 In 1606, Brueghel was appointed court painter to the Archdukes Albert of Austria (1559–1621) and Infanta Isabella of Spain (1566–1633), a role which afforded him direct access to the rare plants and extensive menagerie of animals and birds in the grounds of their Brussels palace. His commit-

ment to observation from life and unrivalled access to live, rare specimens during this period means that Brueghel’s paintings frequently chart new findings and surpass the leading scientific compendia. Developments in knowledge can be traced across a relatively short time: for example, through increasingly detailed depictions of birds in various versions of the Allegory of Air.25 In these paintings Brueghel displays both new sorts of birds and more accurate depictions of birds, with the creatures rendered in full, in colour, and engaged in a greater variety of positions and activities such as flying, perching and fighting. Brueghel was interested in depicting rare species about which little was known, and in dispelling inaccurate myths, such as the popular misconception that birds of paradise, known primarily from skins brought back by sailors,

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lacked wings and feet.26 But he was also fascinated by everyday specimens, and was able to astound the viewer by depicting more familiar species with greater levels of accuracy, detail and liveliness than ever before. Two panels of oil studies in the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna, demonstrate how Brueghel spent time capturing the markings and behaviour of the most familiar of animals. The panel showing Studies of Hunting Dogs (fig. 14.13) and a second panel showing Studies of Asses, Cats and Monkeys (fig. 14.14) are considered to be pendants because of their near identical dimensions.27 Both feature a light ground over which a thin layer of imprimatura has been loosely applied, with visible strokes running in different directions. The animals are captured in different poses, and sometimes the same animal is observed from several different angles. The treatment is sketchy, with some figures remaining simple outlines quickly drawn in brown paint, and others fleshed out in colour with attention paid to the texture of their fur. There seems to have been little reverence for the panel itself, with the studies set on different picture planes (for the studies of cats to be viewed correctly the panel would need to be rotated by ninety degrees). The information contained within these panels and the manner in which it is displayed, in a fairly haphazard way, suggests that these works were visual storehouses, a vital element in the process of creating a finished painting and intended primarily for use within the studio. As with the Powis Castle owls, there are numerous examples of animals from the Vienna panels appearing in larger, finished works. The squirrel monkey from the Studies of Asses, Cats and Monkeys is integrated into the Mauritshuis Garden of Eden, biting into an apple (fig. 14.9), and the hounds from the Studies of Hunting Dogs reappear in Brueghel’s and Rubens’s paintings of Diana at the Hunt and Diana’s Sleeping Nymphs observed by Satyrs.28 Documentary evidence suggests that these sketches on panel were once more numerous – the inventory of items left to Jan Brueghel the Elder’s

OPPOSITE

Fig. 14.12 Detail from Three Studies of an Owl on a Perch (fig. 14.1)

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daughter Clara-Eugenia in 1641 lists a ‘largish panel with sketches of dogs’ (possibly the Vienna panel), as well as twenty-nine sketches on panel ‘of various things’.29 Could the Powis panel have numbered among this group? It shares with the Vienna panels a light-coloured ground and a careful attention to capturing an animal from several angles. There is the same emphasis on characteristic behaviour – just as the dogs are shown standing, sitting, bowing and lying down, the owl appears to have been observed from life in an unhurried manner, turning its head and adjusting itself on the perch. Owls are not listed in the inventories and references to the Habsburg menageries, but neither are dogs or cats; such animals were perhaps too commonplace to merit special record.30 The ‘little owl’ depicted in the Powis study is a sedentary species with a wide geographical distribution. Its behavioural characteristics include perching boldly and prominently during the day – an ideal model for a keenly observant artist. While the two Vienna panels are universally attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder, the attribution of a number of similar oil sketches is disputed, raising interesting questions about the Powis study. Jan Brueghel the Elder’s output is large, varied, and resolutely challenging to chart. As subcategories within this body of work, his drawings and oil sketches are also difficult to quantify, with uncertainty around the extent to which Jan employed studio assistants, and the level of involvement of his son and pupil Jan Brueghel the Younger. It is likely that Jan Brueghel the Elder’s studio was run on a different model to that of his brother, Pieter Brueghel the Younger. While Pieter registered at least nine apprentices with the guild, evidence suggests that Jan was more selective in his use of apprentices, but nonetheless did rely on professional painters to expand the output of his studio – the artist referred to this practice himself in at least two letters.31 Tragedy struck the Brueghel family in 1625, when the cholera epidemic in Antwerp claimed the lives of not only Jan Brueghel the Elder but also three of his children by his second mar-

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Fig. 14.13 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Studies of Hunting Dogs, c. 1615–16, oil on panel, 35.8 × 57.2 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum (inv. 6985)

Fig. 14.14 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Studies of Asses, Cats and Monkeys, c. 1615–16, oil on panel, 34 × 55.5 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum (inv. 6988)

JAN BRUEGHEL THE ELDER ’ S OIL SKETCHES OF ANIMALS AND BIRDS

riage. It was left to his eldest son, Jan Brueghel the Younger, to continue the family studio, and records indicate that this included paying the wages of assistants.32 Born in 1601, Jan Brueghel the Younger had trained with his father from the age of ten and was well equipped to continue the studio on his father’s death. Although he worked on many of the same subjects, and continued to collaborate with his father’s contacts, Jan the Younger lacked his father’s ‘Velvet’ finesse. A coarser execution is usually the justification cited for a work being attributed to the son rather than the father.33 Two oil studies that are comparable to the Vienna panels and the Powis study are the Head of a Roebuck in Narbonne (fig. 14.15) and a Study of Monkeys, a Deer, and Other Animals in Ghent, and both are currently attributed to Jan Brueghel the Younger.34 Both the Narbonne and Ghent studies are executed on modestly sized panels, on a light ground. Both show an interest in capturing animals and birds from a variety of angles, are left unfinished, and relate to larger finished works.35 A second panel of studies of a stag, recently sold at auction, has been grouped with the Narbonne painting, but when seen together the handling of these studies is quite different, perhaps indicating that the Narbonne panel is by Jan the Elder, and the second panel a weaker work in the same mode by his son or an assistant.36 Questions around Jan Brueghel the Elder’s working practice and the potential sequence and use of these types of oil sketches remain unanswered. Although Northern European painters typically relied on detailed underdrawings to map complex compositions (as was certainly the case for Jan’s brother, Pieter Brueghel the Younger), both Jan Brueghel and Rubens rarely used underdrawings. If they did, these were sketchy outlines that were executed directly in paint rather than the more traditional materials of chalk or metal point.37 This suggests that for Jan Brueghel oil sketches functioned as an independent means of capturing ideas quickly, as they did for Rubens. When executed on panel, oil sketches had the benefit of being suitably durable for the

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demands of studio use. However, it is difficult to know whether the small panels discussed here were used for directly recording observations from life or functioned as an intermediary stage, developing upon an initial drawing. Jan Brueghel the Elder also produced bird studies on paper, such as the Two Studies of an Ostrich, on which the artist has added notations on the colour of the bird’s head and its height, ‘9 voeten hooghe’ (9 feet high), and the pen and ink drawing of Ostriches, peacocks and other birds, which appears to be a compositional sketch for part of the Allegory of Air.38 A key difference between the Powis study and the oil studies in Vienna, Narbonne and Ghent is that it is far more highly finished. In their neat execution and naturalistic perfection the Powis owls are comparable to Dürer’s finished portrait of A Young Hare, or to the depiction of the guinea pigs in the foreground of Brueghel’s and Rubens’s collaborative painting The Return from War: Mars Disarmed by Venus (fig. 14.16). Guinea pigs were first brought to Europe between about 1550 and 1580, and Brueghel’s frequent depictions of the creatures suggest that he observed the same pair from life repeatedly.39 Brueghel is known to have worked slowly and meticulously, often painting several works at once to allow paint layers to dry.40 Comparing the owls with the guinea pigs in the Return from War reveals the same meticulous approach to depicting these small creatures, with the warm brown imprimatura layer used as the mid-tone for the fur on the guinea pigs and the breast of the owl, and the same emphasis on realistically capturing the texture of the feathers and fur. In both examples, the creatures’ feet are similarly outlined with fine black lines of paint that have been ‘drawn’ on, and dots of white have been used to highlight the eyes, as well as details such as the beak of the owl and the ears of the guinea pigs. Qualitative comparisons such as this support the attribution of the Powis panel to Jan Brueghel the Elder, although the function of this image, which is more highly finished than was typical for a studio study, remains unclear. It seems likely that there are one

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Fig. 14.15 Jan Brueghel the Elder or Jan Brueghel the Younger, Head of a Roebuck, c. 1615, oil on panel, 20 × 23 cm, Narbonne, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (inv. 859.3.49)

Fig. 14.16 Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, The Return from War: Mars Disarmed by Venus, c. 1610–12, oil on panel, 127.3 × 163.5 cm, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum (inv. 2000.68). Detail

JAN BRUEGHEL THE ELDER ’ S OIL SKETCHES OF ANIMALS AND BIRDS

or perhaps several lost links in the chain – a panel of looser oil studies of varying sizes, like the two Vienna examples, or a sheet of drawn studies, like the Ostriches, peacocks and other birds – which were more ‘workaday’, and would have been used in Brueghel’s studio in the creation of both the allegorical paintings and the Powis study. The attribution of the Powis study to Jan Brueghel the Elder is strengthened by documentary evidence. Jan Brueghel the Younger kept a Dagboek, detailing his activities during the period in which he took over the family studio.41 Entries in this journal suggest that studies of birds executed on panel existed in Jan Brueghel the Elder’s studio at his death in 1625, and were easily sold on. In 1626 the journal lists those pictures by his father that Jan the Younger sold, including two bird pieces – ‘an owl done by S Snyers’ (perhaps Frans Snyders) and ‘three small panels of bird life’.42 The journal also lists a ‘bird concert’ by Jan Brueghel the Younger that was sold in 1626.43 The ‘Concert

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of Birds’ was a new picture type, characterized by a virtuoso depiction of different types of birds gathered around a songbook or sheet of music, as though giving a concert. An early example that is attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder includes among the birds two of the owls from the Powis study.44 The composition shows a naturalistic landscape, dominated by a large tree before a river. Propped against the base of the tree trunk is an oversized songbook, and surrounding it is a host of birds. The left-hand owl from the Powis study is among those birds on the ground, while the central, hunched owl from the Powis study is positioned in the tree branches above. The theme of the bird concert was to become increasingly popular, with versions of this composition repeated by Jan Brueghel the Younger, and other similar scenes created by Jan van Kessel, Jan Fyt (1611–1661) and Frans Snyders (1579– 1657). The performances often centre on an owl on a perch, as in Snyders’s Concert of Birds now in the Prado (fig. 14.17).

Fig. 14.17 Frans Snyders, Concert of Birds, 1629–30, oil on canvas, 98 × 137 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado (inv. P01758)

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It is easy to see how the panel showing Three Studies of an Owl on a Perch might relate to these developments, but harder to plot exactly where it sits within them – the painting is not a bird concert or a single study, yet it is far more highly finished than was typical for Brueghel’s working oil sketches. Nevertheless, this deceptively simple panel can lead to a rich exploration of the reach of the Bruegel

dynasty into the seventeenth century and beyond. Equally engaged with the latest developments in natural science, trends in popular printed images and the curious and rare live beasts collected in the Habsburg menageries, Jan Brueghel’s oil sketches of animals and birds deserve close attention, and still have the power to delight us with their ambitious fidelity to life.

N OT ES I would like to thank Lord Powis and staff at the National Trust for their help with my research, particularly Elizabeth Green, Gareth Sandham, John Chu and David A. H. B. Taylor.

by Alistair Lang and Alison Fuller in the painting’s file were the starting point for this article, and identify many of the appearances of the owls in works by Jan Brueghel the Elder outlined here.

10 The Allegory of Air and Allegory of Earth are in the Louvre, Paris, invs 1093 and 1092, while the Allegory of Fire and Allegory of Water are in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, invs 68 and 65.

1 Handwriting on the reverse of the frame reads: ‘Shipped from Leghorn 1778’. Leghorn was the English name for the port of Livorno, and it is likely that the painting was shipped from Italy by Clive’s eldest son, Edward Clive, 1st Earl Powis (1754–1839). The painting was recorded in an eighteenthcentury list of the contents of the Clive family home at 45 Berkeley Square, London, and today hangs in Powis Castle, Wales, which became the family seat when Edward Clive married Henrietta Herbert in 1784. Intriguingly, the reverse of the panel also bears the linked initials ‘AB’ painted in a scrolling script in the centre of the panel, about 5 cm high. The initials are not a panelmaker’s mark, but may relate to an early owner of the painting. The lettering bears some similarity to the signature of the painter Abraham Brueghel, who signed his name with the AB linked and in monogram. The son of Jan Brueghel the Younger and grandson of Jan Brueghel the Elder, Abraham Brueghel (1631–c. 1690) was a talented painter who left Antwerp in 1649 and settled in Italy, residing in Rome and Naples until his death. It is possible that the Powis owl painting was owned by Abraham and taken to Italy, although this is highly speculative.

5 These include: Studies of Hunting Dogs, oil on panel, 34 × 55.5 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum, inv. 6988; Studies of Asses, Cats and Monkeys, oil on panel, 34.2 × 55.5 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum, inv. 6985; Study of Monkeys, a Deer and Other Animals, oil on panel, 20.1 × 30.9 cm, Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, inv. 1902-C; Head of a Roebuck, oil on panel, 20 × 23 cm, Narbonne, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire; Study of Parrots, Toucans and Songbirds (whereabouts unknown; Leggat Brothers, London, 1963); Sketches of Ducks and Birds, oil on panel, 24 × 34.5 cm (whereabouts unknown; sold Paris, Galliera, 23 November 1972, lot 28); Studies of a stag, oil on panel, 19.2 × 31.6 cm (sold London, Sotheby’s, 10 July 2014, lot 140); A Landscape with studies of Dromedaries and their Keepers, oil on panel, 35.3 × 52.6 cm (London, Rafael Valls). For further references to these works and details on pen and ink animal studies attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder, see Los Angeles/The Hague 2006, pp. 69 and 206–7, and Ertz 1984, p. 501.

11

2 The framed dimensions of the panel are 42.5 × 51 cm; or 29.5 × 39.5 cm as seen. 3 PET.POW.P.60, National Trust Pictures and Sculpture Archive, London. 4 National Trust Pictures and Sculpture Archive, London. This attribution was first proposed by the British art historian and connoisseur David Carritt (1927–1982). Notes

6 On the variety of symbolic associations with the owl in the period, see Paszkiewicz 1982 and Slive 1963. 7 The series is painted on panels measuring c. 55 × 95 cm and is dated to around 1611 by Ertz 1979, p. 599. Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, invs 322, 328, 348 and 332. 8 The series is painted on panels measuring c. 46 × 83 cm and the Allegory of Fire is dated 1606. Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, invs A75, A76, A77 and A78. 9 For Brueghel’s relationship with Borromeo, see Cutler 2003.

Rikken and Smith 2011, p. 92.

12 It is likely that Rubens was responsible for the horse and the serpent. Los Angeles/ The Hague 2006, p. 67. 13 The left-hand owl from the Powis study appears in the upper left of Jan Brueghel the Elder’s the Garden of Eden, 1613, oil on copper, currently on loan to the National Gallery, London, from a private collection in Hong Kong. 14 Pamela Jones argues that for Cardinal Borromeo, Brueghel’s realistic depictions of natural things, rendered in miniature and gathered together in an encyclopaedic manner, were a deeply satisfying means of glorying in God’s creation. Borromeo repeatedly praised Brueghel’s ability to imitate nature – writing about the Allegory of Water he stated: ‘Brueghel has introduced so many and such varied kinds of fish as to make one believe him no less skilled at fishing than at painting.’ Jones 1993, p. 81. 15 Artists producing such albums included Lambert Lombard (1505–1566), Hans Verhagen (b. 1540–45), Joris Hoefnagel (1542– 1600), Hans Bol (1534–1593) and Abraham de Bruyn (1538–1587). See Rikken 2012 and Meganck 2014, pp. 67–72. 16 Bol’s three-volume illustrated manuscript is in the Royal Library, Copenhagen: Ms. GM. Kgl. Saml. 3741 I-III 8: (I) Icones quorundum animalium quadrupedium; (II) Icones quorundum animalium avium; (III) Icones animalium quorundum piscem. Hoefnagel’s albums of The Four Elements, c. 1575/80, watercolour and gouache on

JAN BRUEGHEL THE ELDER ’ S OIL SKETCHES OF ANIMALS AND BIRDS

vellum, 14.3 × 18.4 cm, are in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, invs 1987.20.5 (Ignis), 1987.20.6 (Terra), 1987.20.7 (Aqua) and 1987.20.8 (Aier). 17 In the second edition the new plates were inserted at the beginning, and the plates from the first edition numbered 18–32. New Hollstein 2005, vol. 6, 1404–35 (1408), p. 123. See also Rikken 2012, p. 124. 18 Scholars have previously suggested that Collaert’s engravings were sources for Brueghel’s paradise landscapes. Los Angeles/ The Hague 2006, p. 68, and Kolb 2005, pp. 26–7. 19 Bath 2017, p. 82. 20 Rikken and Smith 2011. 21 Throughout the sixteenth century, usage of the term ‘from life’ (naer het leven or ad vivum) increased, and by the early seventeenth century it had been fully integrated into art discourse, used to designate images that were truthful and accurate in their replication of their subject. See Swan 1995. Jan’s father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569), also depicted animals in a strikingly realistic way – his small panel depicting Two Monkeys (1562, Berlin, Staatliche Muzeen zu Berlin, Gemäldegarie; fig. 18.1) suggests direct observation from life. Meganck 2014, pp. 72–91. 22 Crivelli 1868, p. 63. Letter dated 14 April 1606. 23 Ibid., p. 272. Letter dated 5 September 1621. 24 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Madonna with a Multitude of Animals, 1604, oil on panel, 34 × 25.3 cm, Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilj. Brueghel’s painting follows its model in featuring over twenty animals in the foreground, including two owls. For a discussion and images of both works, see Kolb 2005, pp. 32–45. On Dürer’s original, see Eichberger 1998. The atmosphere of peaceful coexistence between the animal species in this scene prefigures Brueghel’s paradise landscapes. 25

Rikken and Smith 2011.

26

Ibid., p. 96.

27 Los Angeles/The Hague 2006, pp. 202–7.

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28 Ibid., pp. 108–15. Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, Diana at the Hunt, c. 1620, oil on panel, 57 × 98 cm, Paris, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, inv. 68.3.I; Jan Brueghel and Peter Paul Rubens, Diana’s Sleeping Nymphs observed by Satyrs, c. 1620, oil on panel, 61 × 98 cm, Paris, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, inv. 68.3.2.

however, this link has conversely led to the current attribution of the Ghent sketch to Jan the Younger, with the suggestion being that the sketch was made by the son after his father’s finished painting.

29 Honig 2016, p. 25; Duverger 1984, vol. 4, p. 393; Denucé 1934, no. 74, 1641 ‘Inventaris Ambrosius en Clara-Eugenia Bruegel’, pp. 129–30. Anna Brueghel and David Teniers held these in their capacity as Clara-Eugenia’s guardian. Hans Vlieghe suggests that the studio contents of Jan Brueghel the Elder may have been left to his daughter Clara-Eugenia because she showed signs of artistic talent. Vlieghe 2011, pp. 18–19.

37

30 Records were kept when the aviaries of the Archdukes received particularly exotic birds, including a red macaw, a toucan, parrots, parakeets and canaries. Kolb 2005, pp. 14–15. See also Brussels 1991, pp. 109–10.

39 Guinea pigs appear in many of Brueghel’s compositions: see Los Angeles/The Hague 2006, p. 198, note 38, and cat. nos. 2, 4, 6, 12, 21 and 16.

31 Daniel Seghers (1590–1661) was the only painter who registered with the guild in 1611 as a formal apprentice of Jan Brueghel the Elder. Letters written by Brueghel to Ercole Bianchi in 1608 and 1611 are discussed in Honig 2016, p. 24.

41 The original journal/account book has not survived, but its contents have been preserved in part in a copy made in 1770 by Jacob van der Sanden and covers the years 1625–51. See Vaes 1926–7 and Denucé 1934, pp. 141–7.

32

42 No. 25 ‘Een uyl gedaen van S. Snyers’ and No. 33 ‘3 cleynplattiens met vogeltiens en een schipken’. Vaes 1926–7, pp. 207–10.

Ibid.

33 Klaus Ertz also highlights that Jan Brueghel the Younger’s compositions are distinguished by being less visually sophisticated, with motifs more widely spaced and isolated than his father’s, and with few interrelated motifs. Ertz 1984, pp. 21–4. 34 For an image of the Study of Monkeys, a Deer, and Other Animals, see Los Angeles/ The Hague 2006, p. 206. For an image of the Sketches of Ducks and Birds, see ibid., p. 69. 35 The young stag is prominent in the foreground of Hearing, one of five panels on the Senses, executed in collaboration with Rubens. Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, Hearing, 1617–18, oil on panel, 64 × 109.5 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado. The Ghent study informs the studio painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens of Diana after the Hunt in Munich;

36 See note 5 and Ertz 1984, p. 333. Ertz dates both to before Brueghel the Younger’s trip to Italy in 1620, when he was working alongside his father. Los Angeles/The Hague 2006, p. 223.

38 Jan Brueghel’s Two Studies of an Ostrich, ink on paper, 204 × 141 mm, was acquired by Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, in 2003 (inv. 2003.156). Ostriches, peacocks and other birds, c. 1605, pen in brown ink with grey wash, 250 × 380 mm, is in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig. It is discussed in Rikken and Smith 2011, p. 92.

40

43

Ibid., p. 226.

No. 13 ‘Een vogelsanxhen’. Ibid., p. 210.

44 The present location of the painting is unknown but an image of it is filed in the Witt Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. The painting is on copper, 13.3 × 18 cm, and is listed as ‘With Martin Ascher Collection before 1970’. A weaker version of the composition (inv. 73) is in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig. This is reproduced in Ertz 1984, p. 492, and is attributed to Jan Brueghel the Younger.

Fig. 15.1 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Crucifixion, 1594 (signed and dated ‘BRVEGHEL 1594’), oil on copper, 25 × 35 cm, Italy, private collection

Fig. 15.2 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Crucifixion, c. 1595, oil on copper, 26 × 35 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 627)

15

Sibling Rivalry: Jan Brueghel’s Rediscovered Early Crucifixion Larry Silver

A BSTRACT : Jan Brueghel’s early career in Italy is now enriched by the recent discovery of a small-scale Crucifixion on copper (private collection, Italy), signed and dated 1594. It bears a close resemblance to his familiar 1595 Vienna Crucifixion, and it shares motifs not only with that work but also with some elements in the numerous later versions of a larger Crucifixion by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, which in turn goes back to a lost image with the same figural composition by Pieter the Elder. Thus the new picture contributes to our understanding of how each son relates – innovatively versus literally, respectively – to the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

—o— The important small-scale Crucifixion on copper (Italy, private collection; fig. 15.1), signed and dated 1594 by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625), displays a multitude of figures against a dark, cloudy landscape.1 It relates closely to another early version of this same subject, a 1595 variant also by Jan Brueghel (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; fig. 15.2), and together with several works by Jan’s older brother Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564– 1637/8), it almost certainly points to a missing original by his more celebrated father and namesake, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. A survey of the events depicted in the 1594 copper Crucifixion reveals that this image presents a typical ‘figure-rich’ Crucifixion, a popular topic in late medieval painting, beginning in Germany with the Cologne School of the early fifteenth

century but also adopted by Early Netherlandish artists, such as Dutch engraver Lucas van Leyden (1517, B. 74).2 This Crucifixion by Jan includes crowds of small-scale figures across the rising setting of Golgotha, with the round, domed Temple of Jerusalem in the left background.3 Its narrative features not only the main figure of the cross with Jesus but also the two adjacent crosses with figures of the thieves beside him, one either side. Below the crosses stand the observing crowd of ordinary onlookers, in various costumes, including some turbans, plus a few infantry soldiers in red caps and brighter colours towards the right foreground. A Roman soldier in yellow, mounted on horseback, appears with a banner under the cross at the right. The holy figures – the Three Marys and Saint John the Evangelist – are crowded onto a hillock in the right foreground margin. They appear above a pair of skulls that not only signal the execution context of the setting but also the Aramaic name of the site, Golgotha, ‘the place of the skull’.4 The entire scene accords with the Gospel of Luke (23:32–49). One specific torment of Jesus is featured: a vinegar-soaked sponge applied to the wound of Jesus (John 19:28–9) by two men, dressed in prominent pastels, pink and aqua, beneath the central cross. One prominent accessory vignette is featured in the lower centre against a light background: the strife among Roman foot soldiers, one wearing a

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helmet, over the seamless cloak of Christ (John 19:23–4). This fracas is witnessed by two other helmeted onlookers in red and blue as well as by an itinerant peddler with his pack on his back. Jan Brueghel was celebrated as one of the most distinguished and well-rewarded painters of the early seventeenth century. He served as a court painter for the archdukes in Brussels and produced some of the most expensive paintings of the day, including sumptuous still-life flower bouquets as well as finely wrought miniature landscapes, often crowded with tiny figures.5 Jan travelled to Italy in 1589, connecting in Rome with the Colonna family and with Cardinal Federico Borromeo, whom he joined in Milan in 1595 and with whom he maintained a long-term correspondence. This 1594 copper panel would thus have been painted while the artist was still in Italy, and it includes an important insertion in its lower left corner, which points to a strong reassertion of Catholic CounterReformation doctrine during the artist’s stay. One truly anomalous feature is the (semi-)nude figures in the shadowy, lower left corner, who are writhing in distress. These are the tormented souls in Purgatory, in need of redemption as they await the unfolding, ultimate sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, which will be followed (according to the Nicene Creed) by Christ’s descent into Hell and his subsequent liberation of the souls imprisoned in punishment there.6 Jan Brueghel would depict this event on several other occasions within his celebrated Hell scenes, populated with lively Boschian demons; some others instead, associated with the same Roman patrons and still in the Palazzo Colonna, depict learned topics from Greco-Roman mythology, such as Aeneas and the Sibyl (Aeneid, VI: 268–94) or Orpheus before Persephone and Pluto in Hades.7 Purgatory as a doctrine was already well established when it formed the middle section of Dante’s Divine Comedy in the early fourteenth century.8 Its existence was believed to be above Hell, albeit warmed by those flames to serve as the temporary location for Christian souls, who needed to be

purified of venial, or forgivable lesser sins, before being admitted to heaven through God’s mercy. But this doctrine was expressly attacked by Protestants, along with Pope Gregory the Great, with whom it was associated in the Mass of St Gregory iconography, because they believed (especially under Calvin’s doctrine of predestination) that punishment in Hell and salvation through Christ alone redeemed sinful humanity.9 Thus for Jan Brueghel to assert the presence of expectant souls as witnesses to the Crucifixion – a detail that he would omit from the 1595 version (Vienna) – offers a reassertion of traditional Catholic doctrine in a period of doctrinal and sectarian contestation. Images of the damned among demons in Hell appear with some regularity in Early Netherlandish painting, beginning with Jan van Eyck’s Last Judgement diptych wing (c. 1440–41; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and continuing in an image by Dirk Bouts (1468–70; Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts), not to mention Hieronymus Bosch at the turn of the sixteenth century.10 These slender figures, seen at modest half-length (although not surrounded by demons, showing that they are closer to redemption than those who burn in hellfire), evoke the Northern figural tradition far more than the heroic, ideal body types that Jan would have encountered in Renaissance Rome, especially in the wake of Michelangelo.11 Another documentary element besides the Hell paintings mentioned is a surviving drawing of uncertain attribution (Paris, Louvre, inv. L2207), sometimes associated with the dots and flecks of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, but now usually neglected because the most recent scholarship has denied that connection.12 Hans Mielke has perceptively noted that Jan used some motifs of the drawing for his painting, Aeneas in the Underworld (c.  1600; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum).13 Framed by a tree trunk at the left edge, the background setting of Jan’s 1594 Crucifixion presents a landscape expanse in panorama across the horizontal format of the painting. In the sky above, separated by a silhouetted towering cliff face at

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centre, darkness masses over Golgotha, as described in all four Gospels, in the form of a gathering storm cloud. At the left distance appears the large domed building, the traditional image in Flemish paintings of the Temple of Herod, which identifies the setting as Jerusalem.14 Jan Brueghel the Elder painted one other early Crucifixion (fig. 15.2).15 This completely truncates the imagery at the left, and it shoves the disputing soldiers, now enlarged, to the foreground left corner. It also repeats the two colourful soldiers with slashed garments, now between the crosses, as well as a group of conversing foreground witnesses, led by a pointing woman with a red skirt, common to both Jan and Pieter the Younger. Here, Jan relegates the domed building of Jerusalem to the hazy blue distance of the right horizon, and he makes the holy figures almost disappear, miniatures in the distance at the far right side. Like the several Pieter the Younger Crucifixion images, Jan’s Vienna painting shows the cross at the viewer’s left being lifted into place rather than firmly planted as in the 1594 copper. While the 1595 Vienna picture is more daring in its shifted composition and diminution of the prominence of the holy figures to the distance, both of Jan’s Crucifixions reveal a close overlap with his brother in overall conception, even of specific motifs, especially the nearly exact trio of battling soldiers – all of which strongly suggest that Jan Brueghel also relied on an underlying prototype by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Numerous versions of a composition of the Crucifixion by Pieter the Younger make clear that its own basic figural layout is consistent throughout.16 The larger version (signed and dated 1615; Perth, Kerry Stokes Collection, fig. 15.3) frames the scene within towering background cliffs and takes a slightly more elevated bird’s-eye view of the scene, with a high horizon. A woody copse above the holy figures backs up the main figural clusters at right. In a second version, exemplified by paintings in Philadelphia and Budapest (signed and dated 1617; Szépművészeti Múzeum; fig. 15.4),

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the cliffs are absent, and the background city, suffused in loosely painted blue-green atmosphere, appears in a plane set close behind the figures from a lower viewpoint. Its Temple building remains indistinct, placed here at the left edge of the composition, and sheltering trees end the scenery at right. What is common to all versions by Brueghel the Younger is their identical, congruent layout of the figures, which clearly implies a common cartoon used in the workshop of Pieter Brueghel the Younger.17 This procedure is confirmed by detailed outline figural underdrawings common to all works that have undergone technical examination by the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), but no drawings exist in the backgrounds or in certain fine details that were seemingly added from scratch without prior layout.18 No prototype by Pieter Bruegel the Elder himself survives, nor are there engraved or painted copies other than these works from the workshop of Pieter the Younger; however, this elder Bruegel son almost invariably copies far more literally, even ‘slavishly’, after his father’s original compositions than did Jan Brueghel.19 A notable exception, however, is the pair of meticulous replicas (Basel, Munich) by Jan after Pieter the Elder’s Sermon of Saint John the Baptist (1566; Budapest).20 Indeed, Pieter the Younger’s Crucifixion fits very comfortably within the oeuvre of Pieter the Elder, the celebrated father of both painters. The closest comparison for overall effect also is Bruegel’s largest panel: his signed and dated 1564 Way to Calvary (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; fig. 15.5).21 That painting also includes a welter of bystanders and observers, even as it almost completely submerges the figure of Jesus, fallen under the cross but located at the geometrical centre of the composition. Here the holy figures are again isolated on a ledge in the lower right foreground. Way to Calvary also features gathering storm clouds above an extended horizontal landscape expanse with the distant dome of the Jerusalem Temple suffused in the blue haze of the left background. While its

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Fig. 15.3 Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Crucifixion, 1615 (signed and dated ‘∙P∙BRVEGHEL∙1615∙’), oil on panel, 99.9 × 147.5 cm, Perth, Kerry Stokes Collection (inv. 2014.113)

earlier moment in the Gospel narrative precludes any direct overlap of figural motifs from the Crucifixion scene, such as the struggle for the seamless cloak, its sheer crowd of peasant types provides a vast, common store of onlooking figures. In the foreground several peasants are making their way to market – in precisely the opposite direction to that of Jesus carrying the cross to his execution. More specifically, for the Pieter Bruegel identification of the missing original, one can even point to individuals, such as the figures raising the cross at left, or the quarrelling soldiers, who closely resemble active characters among the actors of Bruegel’s celebrated Netherlandish Proverbs (1559; Berlin, Gemäldegalerie). Based on just such comparisons, Walter Gibson assigned a date of around 1559 for the missing original Bruegel composition.22 This very date also matches the recorded

date of 1559 for a lost Crucifixion mentioned in an early seventeenth-century publication, Res Pictoriae, by Arnoldus Buchelius (1583–1639) of Utrecht, although that work is described as partly painted in grey tones and on canvas, i.e. as a semigrisaille with colour accents.23 On the other hand, dating of Bruegel figures is not easy to pin down, and Manfred Sellink (in conversation) thought that the overall compositional resemblance to the Vienna Way to Calvary argued for a later date, closer to that 1564 work. Several other documentary references to a Bruegel Crucifixion stretch from the late sixteenth across the seventeenth century. Pieter the Elder’s Way to Calvary emphasized the quotidian activities that still proceed uninterrupted even while the epochal sacrifice of Jesus is under way. Indeed, one main point of his Vienna image is to force the viewer to discern the tiny

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Fig. 15.4 Pieter Brueghel the Younger, with landscape attributed to Joos de Momper the Younger, Crucifixion, 1617 (signed and dated ‘∙P∙BREVGHEL∙1617∙’), oil on panel, 82 × 123 cm, Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum (inv. 1038)

figure of Jesus with his cross in the midst of so much activity, which threatens to overwhelm the significance of the event. Viewer distraction across the composition is further scattered by vivid red coats of mounted soldiers who punctuate the entire expanse of the panel. Opposite, and equally quotidian is the ultimate destination of the Way to Calvary, the summit of Golgotha, where the Crucifixion will take place. For Pieter Bruegel, this place resembles contemporary sites of punishment and execution, as he illustrated them in his Justice drawing (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR) and his print of 1559 after it for a series of engravings of the Seven Virtues.24 In both cases, crowds have massed under the gathering storm clouds to behold the spectacle of painful death. From all of this activity, the holy figures stand isolated but prominent on a ridge in the lower right of the compos-

ition. Their archaic costumes contrast utterly with the sturdy bodies of the peasants below the cross, as in Jan’s 1594 copper panel. A return to the two Jan Brueghel Crucifixions reveals that their imagery preserves much of the same figural composition as the lost Bruegel the Elder representation of the same scene, as preserved more literally and on a larger scale in the Pieter the Younger versions, where the figures and overall composition (except for the distant background landscape) are identical across all extant versions. Two of these are signed and dated (Stokes and Budapest), revealing that Pieter the Younger’s large workshop produced these works during the 1610s. By contrast, Jan Bruegel only took smaller figure groups from his father’s then-surviving cartoon of the composition, and he varied his own overall composition in both works from 1594 and 1595,

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Fig. 15.5 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Way to Calvary, 1564 (signed and dated ‘∙BRVEGEL. MD∙LXIII’), oil on panel, 124.2 × 170.7 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 1025)

suffusing the darkened setting with his own distinctive, meticulous, small-scale rendering of figures. Regarding the religious content of the imagery, we note anew the marginal presence of the holy figures during this ultimate Passion event, as briefly noted in Luke 23:49: ‘And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things.’ Thus the perpetrators of this sordid execution (including the prominent gambling soldiers), as well as its ordinary, passive witnesses, have become the principals of the scene in this conception. But Jan’s 1594 Crucifixion adds a poignant, (Catholic) theologically informed element by showing the tormented souls of Purgatory as further witnesses to Christ’s sacrifice.

Concerning dress and staging, only a few fashion elements of Orientalism, chiefly turbans, appear to localize and to distance the events away from contemporary Flanders. While this is no typical Jan Brueghel Flemish village setting for its biblical subject, most of the costumes of the crowd remain contemporary to Bruegel’s Flanders – especially the uniforms of foot soldiers, with striped pants, slashed leggings, and partial armour, body armour or helmets; a few cavalry soldiers wear full field armour. A beggar with his hurdy-gurdy instrument appears directly above the quarrelling soldiers.25 As a result, this Crucifixion, with its detached holy figure witnesses, becomes chiefly a work of the present, like Bruegel the Elder’s own composition of the Massacre of the Innocents,

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another of his works frequently copied by Brueghel the Younger, which was also vividly punctuated with redcoats and grieving village peasants.26 This sensibility, therefore, of seeing Gospel events anachronistically, as if in the present, stems ultimately from the father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder.27 He also fashioned the original composition of these figures, now copied with exactitude of replication by his son, Pieter the Younger, but adapted and altered by his more creative younger son, Jan, whose more compressed figures and more striking bright colours add more personalized variants compared to Pieter the Younger. In effect, this newly discovered Jan Brueghel the Elder Crucifixion not only confirms its identity in relation to the 1595 Vienna picture, but it also reaffirms some of the principal traits that distin-

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guish this scrupulously detailed but creatively inventive painter from his illustrious father and his uninventive brother.28 In such other ambitious, near-contemporary works as the 1596 Raleigh Paul’s Departure from Caesarea, the 1598 Munich Harbour with Christ Preaching by the Sea of Galilee, the 1598/9 Getty Sermon on the Mount and the even more crowded and meticulous Calvary in Munich,29 the young painter fulfilled the promise that he set with his two earlier Crucifixions. Already as a young, emerging artist, aged twenty-six in 1594, Jan Brueghel was able to draw inspiration and even small figure groups as motifs from his father’s groundbreaking biblical imagery while also establishing his own signature style on an intimate scale, repaying both close attention and thoughtful spiritual reflection.

N OT ES 1 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Crucifixion, 1594 (signed and dated ‘BRVEGHEL 1594’), oil on copper, 25 × 35 cm (BruJI 52). The author is deeply grateful to Laura de Jonckheere of her De Jonckheere Gallery, who showed this painting at the October 2017 TEFAF exhibition in New York City and granted permission to publish it. 2 Roth 1958; Merback 1999. For the Lucas engraving, Philadelphia 1983, pp. 161–3, nos. 56–8. 3 Krinsky 1970; Pinson 1996; Rosenau 1979, esp. pp. 64–75. 4 Matthew 27:33; Mark 15:22; Luke 23:33; John 19:17. 5 Essen/Vienna/Antwerp 1997–8, esp. pp. 21–30; for the Jan Crucifixion, pp. 104–5, no. 12. For Jan Brueghel, see also Munich 2013 and Honig 2016. 6 For the iconography of souls in Purgatory appearing in fifteenth-century scenes of the legendary Mass of St Gregory, where Christ appeared to the Church Father while the latter was celebrating Mass, Göttler 2010, pp. 58–64. On Purgatory, Le Goff 1984. 7 ‘Jan Brueghel’s Poetic Hells’, in Göttler 2010, pp. 335–76; for Bruegel and his patrons, both Colonna and Borromeo, Honig 2016, pp. 12–14, and for the Hell scenes, both classical and Christian, pp. 84–99.

8 Le Goff 1984, pp. 334–55; for earliest images, pp. 367–8. For Purgatory and visual culture, Binski 1996, esp. pp. 24–6, 115–16, 181–99. 9 Calvin 1957, Book III, Chapter v, Part iii, pp. 576–82: ‘We are bound, therefore, to […] cry aloud that Purgatory is a deadly device of Satan; that it makes void the cross of Christ; that it offers intolerable insult to the divine mercy; that it undermines and overthrows our faith.’ (p. 576). See also Walker 1964, esp. pp. 59–60; and for the Catholic side (in Spain), Eire 1995, esp. pp. 172–6. 10 Belting and Eichberger 1983; for Bouts, Leuven 1998, pp. 537–41, no. 235. Bosch’s own Last Judgement is examined in Büttner et al. 2017. 11

Hansen 2013.

12 Leuven 1998, p. 542, no. 238; also discussed – and rejected as a Pieter original – by Hans Mielke in Mielke 1996, pp, 71–2, Probl. 4; Antwerp 2002, pp. 58–60, associating the dotted manner with a group of drawings around Hugo van der Goes and noting its ox-head watermark as dating from the third quarter of the fifteenth century. Also Sellink 2007, p. 281, no. X12. 13 Essen/Vienna/Antwerp 1997–8, pp. 503–4, no. 190. Thus, regardless of the original draughtsman of the drawing, likely passed to Jan in his father’s inheritance.

14 Such a Temple building appears, for example, in earlier images of Christ carrying the Cross – for example, by an artist copying a lost Jan van Eyck (Budapest) or by Herri met de Bles, from the generation previous to Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Princeton University Art Museum). 15 Essen/Vienna/Antwerp 1997–8, pp. 104–5, no. 12, where Alexander Wied also argues for a lost Bruegel the Elder model for these figures; the Stokes composition in its Budapest version of 1617 appears in ibid., pp. 100–03, no. 11. Christina Currie and Dominique Allart summarize these arguments and show the Jan Brueghel Vienna painting (dated ‘around 1595’): Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, p. 636, fig. 436. They also summarize, p. 637, the extant documents that mention a Crucifixion by Bruegel the Elder: a 1595 inventory of Archduke Ernst as well as a bequest to the daughter of Pieter the Younger in 1627. 16 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 614– 45. The largest version, in the Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth, Australia, but formerly in the Coppée-le Hodey Collection, is illustrated, ibid., as fig. 418. See Silver 2018. Its composition is replicated in another version in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA). Also Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, pp. 414–38, where the Stokes painting is p. 435, fig. 292, no. E414. Only the Stokes

286 picture (signed and dated 1615) and the variant in Budapest (Szépművészeti Múzeum; signed and dated 1617) are signed and dated. The core of eight Pieter the Younger versions are ascribed with confidence by Ertz along with thirteen other more uncertain attributions, known through photographs. See the catalogue entry of a Philadelphia version, 69.2 × 122.2 cm; Sutton 1990, pp. 44–8, no. 15, with a list of copies and variant versions, where the Stokes panel is number one. Ertz 1998–2000, vol. 1, p. 436, no. E420, ascribes the fine background of the Philadelphia panel to Joos de Momper as well and considers it a variant of the Budapest picture. 17 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 632– 4, showing traced overlays of the figures with precise alignments among Antwerp, Budapest and Stokes compositions. They attribute this close correspondence to the use of cartoons, transferred to the panel by pouncing. However, the Budapest painting, as noted, was produced in collaboration with Joos de Momper the Younger, who painted the atmospheric landscape (De Momper also collaborated frequently with Jan Brueghel the Elder, the painter’s brother). 18 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, p. 622, note that the Stokes painting has no landscape underdrawing, whereas light outlines of rock and fortress as well as the domed building in the Antwerp version suggest a more direct copying of its prototype. Their assessment of the authorship of the Stokes painting, p. 626, clearly suggests that it stems from the ‘confident, bold, yet accurate handling of form typical of Brueghel the Younger, whereas the [Antwerp] KMSKA version’s more numerous yet feeble out-lines can be interpreted as the work of a workshop assistant or apprentice’. 19 Currie and Allart 2012; see also Maastricht/Brussels 2001. Pieter the Younger followed some of his father’s most celebrated large compositions, including the 156[6?]

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Census at Bethlehem (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium), with close fidelity to the original composition. His source was likely a lost compositional drawing by his father. Fourteen copies are known, and the three dated versions stem from 1604 to 1610. Even the measurements of Pieter the Younger’s various Census at Bethlehem compositions correspond closely to Pieter the Elder’s large extant 1566 panel. Despite the existence of a prior model, Pieter the Younger proceeded like his father with careful underdrawings that outline the figures and buildings on the ground. Thus, by implication, he would have proceeded from a lost full-size cartoon that could be reused for all other versions of the same composition that came from his atelier. In the case of the Census at Bethlehem he changed the colours of costumes from version to version, so he likely did not work from the original Brussels panel of his father, but rather from the preparatory compositional drawings instead. Christina Currie and Dominique Allart, ‘Understanding the Father through the Son: Lost Secrets of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Working Practice’, in Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 3, pp. 878–98, esp. p. 879, where the Crucifixion is analysed as based on ‘two to four sheets divided vertically’. Currie 2001, based on study of ten of the fourteen known copies. The Brussels panel is 115.3 × 164.5 cm, approximately 4 × 6 Antwerp feet. Currie also notes, p. 84, that these dimensions are consistent for Pieter the Younger’s larger-scale panel formats.

’s-Hertogenbosch as fig. 5.23, but there he dates the original composition as early as 1555.

20

29 Munich 2013, pp. 200–02, no. 26. This Crucifixion, in turn, should be compared to the Calvary (Florence, Uffizi) that Jan Brueghel produced in 1604 in Rudolf II’s Prague, closely based on a Dürer drawing (also Florence, Uffizi); see ibid., p. 204, no. 27; Silver 2008, esp. pp. 217–19, fig. 5.

Currie and Allart 2017.

21 Recent discussion by Silver 2011, pp. 15–33; for the missing Crucifixion and its place in Bruegel’s oeuvre, ibid., pp. 260–61, there more loosely dated somewhat later, to the early 1560s. 22 Earlier literature summarized by Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 635–6. Gibson 1989, p. 69, illustrates another copy, unattributed, in the Noordbrabants Museum,

23 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, p. 637, note 39. Buchelius mentions seeing a Calvary by Pieter the Elder at the house of collector Bartholomeus Ferreris in Leiden; and an old inventory of the collection of H. Bartels from 1672 mentions a Bruegel Crucifixion. It is always possible that those references are responding to a version by Pieter the Younger. For Buchelius – also cited by Sutton 1990, p. 44, note 4 – see Hoogeweff and Van Regteren Altena 1928, p. 78: ‘I saw at Ferreris’s house a Crucifix by Bruegel, very piously painted with many small figures, with distant views in colour, in tempera with egg whites, but if you look higher, that is further, the distant views are painted with oils, in black and white. The year was 1559.’ (author’s translation) 24 Rotterdam/New York 2001, pp. 177–93, nos. 72–3. 25

Winternitz 1979, pp. 66–75.

26 Essen/Vienna/Antwerp 1997–8, pp. 322–5, nos. 98–9; with variant composition, p. 328, no. 100. Fourteen versions are associated with Pieter the Younger. 27 On the re-experience of the Passion, particularly the torments of the Crucifixion, as spectacle, Merback 1999, esp. pp. 41–68, 126–57. 28

Honig 2016, pp. 123–57.

PART 4 THE BRUEGEL NETWORK AND LEGACY

Fig. 16.1 Pieter Aertsen, Peasant Meal, 1550, oil on panel, 84.9 × 170 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 2365)

Fig. 16.2 Hans van Wechelen, Peasant Wedding Feast, c. 1565, oil on panel, private collection

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Peasant Passions: Pieter Bruegel and his Aftermath Ethan Matt Kavaler

A BSTRACT : We should reconsider the common view of Pieter Bruegel as a stoic, at least regarding his paintings of peasants. Bruegel’s villagers are full of passion. The artist shows some sympathy with their emotional states, which register most clearly at their extremes. The heightened experience of the kermis with its uninhibited dancing, drinking and lovemaking offered the painter an ideal narrative through which to explore this aspect of life. The emotions of his villagers cut two ways: they could brand them as other, but they could also connect with the civilized viewer. Although the passions were potentially dangerous, they were also an essential aspect of life, and Bruegel accommodated them as a part of the human condition. Indeed, Bruegel used the figure of the peasant to explore different properties of humanity at large. Few of his colleagues treated the villager in this light.

—o— Pieter Bruegel is famous for his paintings of Flemish villagers. Long known as ‘Peasant Bruegel’, his depictions of rustics have captured the imagination of many generations of art historians – from Wilhelm Hausenstein and Wilhelm Fraenger at the beginning of the twentieth century to Svetlana Alpers, Hans-Joachim Raupp, Margaret Sullivan and many others. This view has held despite the fact that Bruegel’s peasant pictures comprise only a small part of his oeuvre.1 Bruegel was not really a painter of genres. He did not approach the subject as a unified category with a set of givens and requirements. Rather, he seems to have used the figure of the peasant to

explore different properties of humanity at large. To an extent, this was Bruegel’s approach to another genre that was soon established and for which he has become well known: the winter scene or winter landscape. Bruegel painted four snowy images of the Flemish countryside, yet again he approached each with distinct intentions.2 Bruegel’s villagers are full of passion. I think we should reconsider the view of this artist as a stoic – as a Montaigne of the brush and easel. Bruegel’s monumental paintings of peasants treat aspects of humankind unfettered by the restrictive codes of city life. Further, Bruegel shows emotions at their extremes, the states at which they register most clearly. The heightened experience of the kermis, with its uninhibited dancing, drinking and lovemaking, offered the painter an ideal narrative through which to explore this aspect of life. Yet we find few of the visual markers that other painters used to signal condemnation of similarly liberated behaviour. The emotions of his villagers – what Karel van Mander called ‘interior affects and passions’ (affecten en passion van binnen) – cut two ways: they could brand the villagers as other, but they could also connect with the civilized viewer.3 Who among us has never felt the rush of the dance, the pull of the appetites? Although the passions were potentially dangerous, they were also an essential aspect of life, and Bruegel shows some sympathy with them. His pictures require a more nuanced interpretation.

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The Development of a Peasant Genre Although Bruegel is the most famous painter of peasant life, he did not invent the subject. German printmakers such as Albrecht Dürer and Hans Sebald Beham had frequently depicted villagers during the first half of the sixteenth century.4 And by the time that Bruegel executed his large panels of peasant festivity in the 1560s, the theme had been established in Flemish art for more than a decade.5 Many successful painters had tried their hand at this topic. These include Pieter Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer, Hans Bol, Peeter Baltens, Marten van Cleve, Hans van Wechelen, Gillis Mostaert and Cornelis van Dalem. And several more artists would join this group in the decades after Bruegel’s death. What did it mean to paint Flemish peasants? Should one emphasize the behaviour that distinguished them from their urban visitors – their unmannered and boorish bodily acts? Or should one concentrate on more neutral folkloric practices: their dances, games and sayings? 6 Or perhaps their artefacts: their houses, food and dress? The peasant is most often a type in Flemish painting, a vehicle for some broader representation of society, its stratification and its tensions. Actual farmers might be encountered daily in the city. There were peasants who regularly entered the towns, bringing their wares to market. And there were specialized guilds of market gardeners (hoveniers) who interacted with these farmers and sold their products at specified sites throughout the city.7 Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer frequently depicted this manner of exchange. Yet this was not the most frequent portrayal of rustics. One common approach was to catalogue various customs. Bruegel developed this technique of enumeration in his earlier works from around 1558–60. His paintings of Children’s Games, Netherlandish Proverbs and the Battle between Carnival and Lent, while not specifically of the countryside, inventory these items in an ethnographic manner.8 But there were many others who concentrated explicitly on rural folklore. Among the innovators

was Pieter Aertsen, who frequently integrated villagers and townspeople. Aertsen, who had come to Antwerp from Amsterdam, seems to have initiated several of these peasant subjects in painting. His large panel of the Return from the Pilgrimage of Saint Anthony from around 1550 shows a village populated by numerous small figures.9 Aertsen was partly inspired by prints executed just prior to his painting, but he significantly revises their view of the kermis. The image no longer emphasizes crude behaviour. There is no overindulgence and vomiting, no drunken brawling. Rather, Aertsen seems to express acceptance of the many different activities that take place on these days. The nominal reason for the celebration, the church commemoration of a local saint, is clearly in evidence. A long procession led by clergy carrying tall lanterns winds its way through the town. A statue of Saint Anthony has been mounted on poles and is carried by priests by the chapel in the background. There is a stand where religious articles are sold, and a beggar lies on the ground at the right, hoping for alms. Aertsen tries to present many of the goings-on that one finds at one of these festivals. His picture is a harmonious fabrication, a representation of a complex event intended to evoke pleasant memories in the minds of his urban viewers. Aertsen includes many city people, distinguished by their dress, as standins for his audience. Some walk with pilgrims’ banners in their hats. Some arrive in carriages. Others dance in the openings of the village. Aertsen introduces another type of rural subject in his large Peasant Meal of 1550 (fig. 16.1).10 Rustics gather in the foreground and, in fact, seem to invite the observer to take place at the table and join in the meal. Others cook porridge in a large vat at the left. The painting is another genial construction, a pictorial conciliation of the mores of town and country. The setting appears to be a country inn, perhaps one of those taverns just far enough outside Antwerp to avoid the local beer tax. A well-dressed man is feted by servants within the building. Outside, in the clearing at the right, visitors from the city dance with their country

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colleagues. Differences in dress again identify the estates of the participants, and the dim outlines of Antwerp’s skyline are visible on the horizon. Paintings frequently portray urbanites visiting these fairs, who are easily distinguished from their rural hosts. A panel by Peeter Baltens includes portrait-like representations of city dwellers conversing with the locals at such an event.11 Baltens paints a large panorama of a kermis with scenes of drinking, dancing, and the performance of a farce presented by a modest theatre company. Amid these activities, two groups of eminent visitors engage with the locals and observe the festivities. The idiosyncratic features of their faces suggest that these figures may be portraits of the urban family who commissioned the painting. The biographer Karel van Mander reports that Gillis Mostaert painted a similar picture, representing the brothers Melchior and Balthasar Schetz at a kermis at Hoboken, a village that they had acquired.12 Netherlandish artists carefully depicted the realia of rural life, the objects and artefacts typical of the region. Aertsen, for instance, celebrates the making of pancakes and waffles – distinctly local fare. Around the hearth in a simple rural house, a nuclear family cooks and displays this food.13 These treats were proper to the Netherlands but not exclusive to village life. In his painting of the Battle between Carnival and Lent, which takes place in a town, Pieter Bruegel conspicuously equips a pair of gamblers with waffles at the lower left.14 This was clearly indigenous food, but food appreciated by both town and country. Others followed suit. Hans van Wechelen includes the familiar cooking of porridge in his small panel of a country wedding (fig. 16.2).15 Visitors from the city and soldiers are in the audience. The bride is feted at her table at the far right, while dancing has ensued in the middle ground among both villagers and townspeople. Detailed, halftimbered cottages frame the picture on the right side and indicate the rustic setting. The small scene of a knife fight at the centre of the painting seems at first a minor throwback to earlier repressive

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images, but it is here played to comic effect: a man rushes in with an enormous ladder to separate the combatants. This picture likewise presents an affable integration of estates.16 Another painting by Aertsen shows a different type of celebration: the performance of an egg dance, a noisy village custom ultimately deriving from fertility rituals (fig. 16.3).17 A young man dances heavily on the tile floor, hoping that the vibrations of his footsteps will dislodge the egg from the top of the overturned bowl and cause it to move within the chalk circle – all without breaking the egg. A bagpiper provides the music behind two couples who visibly enjoy the occasion. Aertsen once more maintains an impartial attitude towards this practice. The event is portrayed for its local colour and as a source of undifferentiated amusement for those present. The painting bears none of the satire visible in a contemporary etching of the subject published by Hieronymus Cock, which presents the rural household as a stinking and revolting site.18 And indeed another print produced by Cock has the egg dance performed by a family of fools who are considered interchangeable with peasants.19 Children play an important role in Flemish peasant paintings, which is particularly significant given their absence from German depictions. In Aertsen’s Egg Dance a family enters a doorway at the far right, the mother gesturing to the child that he should pay attention to the proceedings before him. In his large painting of a kermis, Baltens has a father teach his son to drink.20 And in an equally sizeable panel now in Vienna, Marten van Cleve has a mother welcome her son to the common table and the proceedings conducted there.21 Children are unofficially instructed in the ways of their elders. These motifs impart a sense that village life is unchanging from generation to generation. The young inevitably follow their parents: ‘Like father; like son’. Or as the Flemish proverb says, ‘the young dance as the old pipe’, a saying that Bruegel illustrates literally at the lower left corner of his Peasant Dance, also in Vienna (fig. 16.10).22

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Fig. 16.3 Pieter Aertsen, Egg Dance, 1552, oil on panel, 84 × 172 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (inv. SK-A-3)

Fig. 16.4 Pieter Aertsen, Kitchen Scene, c. 1550, oil on panel, 110.5 × 213 cm, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst (inv. KMSsp339)

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On occasion the lesson is more pointed. Aertsen depicts a rather cryptic kitchen scene in a painting now in Copenhagen (fig. 16.4).23 In the foreground are luxurious comestibles: meats, vegetables, fruits and fish. At the left, two couples sit by a fire; the man on the right seems to be liberally enjoying his drink. He smiles jovially as he peers into his jug to see if any liquid is left, while he wraps his arm around his female companion.24 At the far right of the picture a peasant family stands apart. The son is fed a modest bowl of porridge while the mother and father regard the observer soberly, with reservation and dignity. Aertsen suggests that the parents are instilling some discipline and restraint into their child, disregarding the sumptuous spread before them, while remaining distinct from the moderately lax conduct within the cottage itself. These were all attempts to get at the heart of rural life. What was its attraction? The Exemplarity of the Farmer The countryside provided a foil to city life in many ways. Village festivals promised a carefree outing for urbanites seeking to escape the busy and congested existence in the town. But peasants were also thought to offer a direct and unmediated access to all humanity. Renaissance writers scoured the horizon for such exemplary figures. Sebastian Franck had stated: ‘all men one man. Who sees one natural man, sees them all’ – a widely held notion that individuals bore in them the trace of all people.25 But peasants were particularly promising. For one thing, their lives were seen as bound to their locality, unchanging in their particulars and representative of the region. The voguish proverb books had first purported to catalogue the sayings of villagers rather than philosophers or theologians – it was this origin that gave the proverbs their authority. The aphorisms reflected an unchanging life, subject to the forces and vicissitudes of nature, and consequently voiced a fundamental, practical wisdom that was widely applicable.26

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The use of the peasant as representative humanity had an older pedigree that embraced the description of shepherds in religious literature. Shepherds play an inordinate role in the story of Christ’s infancy, for instance. The angel of the Lord announces first to them the coming of Jesus’s birth because of their exceptional innocence and virtue. They are untouched by the practised behaviour of the city.27 Hugo van der Goes, for example, shows them overcome by their emotions, by their pure joy, as they awkwardly and unstably run to witness the holy infant in the manger (fig. 16.5). Peasants were often conflated with shepherds in the arts of the fifteenth century and thereby gained something of their exemplary status. Flemish tapestries show courtiers visiting the countryside, witnessing dances and games conducted by rustics accoutred as shepherds. A tapestry from about 1510 in the Cleveland Museum of Art, for example, portrays a shepherds’ dance (fig. 16.6).28 A noble couple emerges from the castle in the background to look down on the playful shepherds as do visitors from the town in later paintings of village fairs. A bagpiper performs at the far right, and at the centre of the rear line of dancing herdsmen and women, a young pair steals a kiss, their heads shown in profile. This motif would soon become traditional, making its way into depictions of peasant festivals, from prints by Hans Sebald Beham to paintings by Pieter Bruegel.29 The ebullient and unconstrained peasant offered a vision of humanity at its most basic and elemental. For one thing, peasants were closer to nature. They lived within it and were subject to its rules. Indeed, farmers can seem to partake of natural generative processes. In Lucas van Leyden’s engraving, the Milkmaid, of 1510, a peasant woman at the right and a farmer at the left are both products of the same sexuality and fecundity that propagate the natural world. The man stands next to a tree stump with a conspicuous upward protuberance at the level of his groin. The woman rests in front of a tree with an unusual cavity in its trunk

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that suggests female genitalia.30 The cow has both horns (next to the man) and a bladder (by the woman). On one level this was a coarse joke at the expense of the peasants for the benefit of the urban viewer. But on a deeper level it closely associated the farmers with the sexuality and fertility of nature from which the urban viewer had been distanced. This was a running conceit: Abraham Bloemaert would adopt the same visual puns a century later. We find a similar outlook in several of the market pictures by Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer: peasants in amorous embrace that reveal them in close contact with natural forces. Costume and Custom as Signs of Identity The study of dress was very much part of this same enquiry. Dress, like language, was considered an inimical and distinguishing characteristic of a particular people. Hans Weigel, the author of a Nuremberg costume book of 1577, put it succinctly: ‘Everyone’s manner is made known through clothing.’ In fact, he continued, dress reflected the ‘inner senses’.31 Great care was taken in this endeavour: Roelandt Savery diligently transcribed the costumes of peasants in his drawings, even noting the colours of the different garments.32 From the early 1560s onwards, costume books proliferated, illustrating, describing and commenting upon the clothing of the different lands of Europe, Asia, Africa and the New World. Bruegel’s friend, the cosmographer Abraham Ortelius, possessed at least one of these books and put it to good use: on the back of his maps, he noted the traditional dress of various countries that he charted in his bestselling atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.33 On the map of Russia, Ortelius illustrated a pair of Tartars in traditional garb and carrying a bow – much as they were portrayed in the near-contemporary costume book of Abraham de Bruyn, dating from 1577.34 Costume illustrations frequently privileged the peasant. Albrecht Dürer had shown Irish warriors and Irish peasants together in a drawing dated 1521 (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett).35 Christoph von

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Sternsee’s costume album of the Habsburg lands (1548–9) included Spanish farmers threshing corn alongside nobles from the Order of the Golden Fleece.36 The earliest costume books made special allowance for peasant garb, sometimes comprising ten per cent of the entire volume. Among the many depictions of rural dress in De Bruyn’s compilation is a plate illustrating peasant costumes from several regions of the Netherlands and the adjacent Lower Rhine (fig. 16.7). Fashion for the people of city and court was constantly changing and offered no fixed reference point. Antwerp urbanites, for instance, were depicted in different attire for the market and for their walks into the countryside in De Bruyn’s album. Lucas d’Heere refused to dress the fashionable Englishman at all, illustrating him naked, since, as Van Mander related, ‘the [Englishmen] varied so much from day to day; for if [d’Heere] had done it one way today the next day it would have to be another – be it French or Italian, Spanish or Dutch’.37 This conceit did not refer only to the English. In Cesare Vecellio’s Venetian costume book of 1590, the naked man of mutable fashion is now the Italian. In an embroidered chimney cover from Leipzig’s town hall dated 1571, it is the German.38 These figures of self-mockery were all wellhealed urbanites. The costume of the peasants, by contrast, was stable and a reliable index of both character and place. In this light it is interesting that Van Mander stated that Bruegel had dressed his peasants in the Kempen manner, referring to the Kempenland, the rural surrounds of Antwerp.39 Whether Bruegel actually did tailor his farmers in a recognizably Kempen style is questionable. But it is important that Van Mander might think so, that he identified the dress of Bruegel’s peasants as of a specific cut and assumed that it must be peculiar to the particular locality. And he considered this essential to Bruegel’s enterprise. Peasants, of course, differed from the wellhealed city dwellers of Bruegel’s circle. They spoke differently and played differently. But they also moved differently. And their distinct movements

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Fig. 16.5 Hugo van der Goes, Adoration of the Shepherds, c. 1480, oil on panel, 99.9 × 248.6 cm, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie. Detail

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Fig. 16.6 Netherlandish, Shepherds in a Round Dance, c. 1510, tapestry weave, wool and silk, 360.5 × 401.1 cm, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., for the Coralie Walker Hanna Memorial Collection (inv. 1939.158)

were most apparent in dance. At the end of the century, Theodor de Bry engraved two very different depictions of dance: one conducted by peasants and one by burghers.40 In the first, the contours of the bodies are broken and angular, partners pull against each other, and a male villager lifts his female companion off the ground. The city dance is staid by comparison, arms and legs held in stiff poses and torsos erect, a display of the controlled and disciplined body.

Pieter Bruegel turned to dance in all seriousness in his large painting of a Peasant Wedding Dance of 1566 now in Detroit (fig. 16.8).41 Village weddings had become an established subject. They had appeared in prints and in paintings by artists such as Pieter van der Borcht and Marten van Cleve. And they had already become a recognizable subject of art in the laconic language of urban inventories. Indeed, registers of collectors in Antwerp and other Flemish cities show that these paintings

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Fig. 16.7 Abraham de Bruyn, Peasant Costumes of the Netherlands and the Lower Rhine, from Omnium Pene Europae, Asiae, Aphricae atque Americae Gentium Habitus, Cologne, 1577, Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent

were widely established by the 1560s and had received standardized titles from notaries. ‘Peasant Fairs’, ‘Peasant Weddings’ and paintings of individual male and female villagers already adorned well-to-do urban homes by the time that Bruegel took up the subject.42 Bruegel, however, de-emphasizes the obvious folkloric details of the wedding; the bride’s table and family are a small detail at the upper right. They signify the wedding as a nominal subject, but they are not the objects of Bruegel’s attention. Instead, the artist focuses on the guests, the myriad couples dancing, the groups standing in conversation, and the bagpipers playing their instruments. We see a boisterous and energetic event populated by a great variety of actors. In a way Bruegel returns to his practice of enumeration, but here it is a catalogue of the unmediated behaviour of a village festival. We see the body at rest and in abandon. Limbs protrude at odd angles and arms interlock at unexpected moments

in this near sea of humanity that fills the village square. Codpieces flare. A man in a blue jerkin at the lower right seems to kick his legs out from under him as he reaches back for the hand of his partner (fig. 16.9). The man in red at the lower left juts his elbows akimbo, abruptly turning his upper body at a different axis from his lower half. The pace is rapid and spirited. One man has entirely rejected the regulated movements of the dance, embracing and kissing his female partner on her lips. The action gradually quiets as we gaze further back into the scene. In the rear we find groups engaged in conversation and the table of the bride. The gestures seem distinctly peasant-like – rough, generous and free, of a sort that we imagine we would find in the village but not among cultivated townspeople. Robert Muchembled has written of a growing cultural bipolarization beginning in the sixteenth century that left its mark on codes of gesture, separating educated society from the unlettered populace.43 Such habits of parsing

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Fig. 16.8 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peasant Wedding Dance, 1566, oil on panel, 119 × 158 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts (inv. 30.374)

gesture, however, were considerably older; JeanClaude Schmitt has noted the medieval distinction between the appropriate gestus and the disreputable gesticulatio.44 It is clear that Bruegel viewed the poses and gesticulations of his villagers as integral to their identity. Bruegel, however, is not interested in movement for its own sake. The rough and ostentatious gestures of the peasants are signs of their passions, their drives and desires. Since the high Middle Ages, gestures were considered expression of the movements of the soul, of the feelings of the individual.45 Posture and gesture betrayed acute aspects of the self. These, in turn, are given outer form by their dress. As the sociologist Erving Goffmann wrote about costumes, ‘when they issue uniforms,

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Fig. 16.9 Detail from fig. 16.8

they issue skins’.46 The peasants’ clothes are an inseparable part of their being. Bruegel the Anti-Stoic There has been a tendency to see Bruegel as an exponent of Renaissance Stoicism – Bruegel as a painter strongly advocating the restraint of the passions. Justus Müller Hofstede introduced this interpretation in 1979, and it has been followed by many subsequent scholars, including most recently Joseph Leo Koerner.47 Such an interpretation agrees with a dominant stoic imperative in western culture that has structured many discourses over the centuries.48 Yet this view is unhelpfully reductive. Does Bruegel really sympathize with Michel de Montaigne,

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who condemned ‘those vulgar codpieces, which make a parade of our hidden parts’?49 Is Bruegel so different in this respect from his rival Frans Floris, whose erotic mythological paintings embraced sensuality and passion as a means of humanizing the ancient gods?50 Floris, whose amorous subjects have prompted comparison with Janus Secundus’s Basia, or kiss poems, was enthusiastically collected by Nicolaes Jonghelinck, who also owned sixteen paintings by Pieter Bruegel.51 Bruegel seems similarly to accommodate the physical aspects of life, to acknowledge the inevitable pull of intense emotions – their attraction, their pleasures, but also their dangers. It is in fact these feelings that make his villagers so recognizable and relatable to the viewer. Passion and control formed no simple opposition. Indeed, certain historians such as Richard Strier, Michael Schoenfeldt and Gail Kern Paster (et al.) believe that the antistoic strain in early modern humanism has been seriously undervalued.52 Strier, in particular, insists that the Renaissance accommodated a significant positive understanding of affect that we have been slow to acknowledge. At the beginning of the period stands Petrarch, who recognized the essential value of strong feelings in ethical behaviour: It is one thing to know, another to love; one thing to understand, another to will. He [Aristotle] teaches what virtue is, I do not deny that; but his lesson lacks the words that sting and set afire and urge toward love of virtue and hatred of vice, or has only the smallest amount of such power.53 Many later writers would likewise value the role of emotions in experience. Erasmus’s Dame Folly is not entirely ironic when she advocates an appreciation of their force as essential to the human condition. Folly takes Seneca to task as representative Stoic in denying any role for the emotions in the life of the wise man [who] is left with something that cannot even be called human; he fabricates some new sort of

divinity that never existed and never will […] he sets up a marble statue of a man, utterly unfeeling and quite impervious to all human emotion […] who would not flee in horror from such a man, as he would from a monster […] a man who is completely deaf to all human sentiment […]54 This speech is intended to be persuasive despite Folly’s authorship. It is not much different from that of Erasmus’s friend, Juan Luis Vives, who wrote an important treatise on the emotions in which he castigates the Stoics for having ‘tried without success to transform into stones what nature had shaped as human beings’.55 Folly’s words may not present a fully adequate perspective on affect, but they voice a partial and valuable truth that is unsatisfyingly denied by the dominant Stoic discourse. Among the many defenders of affect was Shakespeare, who expressed considerable sympathy for the emotional vulnerability of his characters, who were unable to embody the unmoved stoic self. This is most obvious in King Lear, which displays compassion for characters who lack the ability to control their strong and often unproductive feelings. Perhaps we should extend to Pieter Bruegel the same sensitivity. His peasants in the Detroit painting are reasonably well behaved. There is no fighting, no vomiting or defecation – none of the acts that have traditionally branded rustics as an inferior species. What we see is a spirited enjoyment of the moment. And indeed, it seems to have been this liberty from the behavioural strictures of urban living that drew so many city people to these village weddings and fairs. Pieter Aertsen’s Peasant Meal (fig. 16.1) depicts the two gentlemen dancing in the background at the right; they exult in their momentary freedom, vigorously raising their arms and tilting their bodies in a manner they would not adopt in town. Bruegel’s peasants are passionate. Their poses, gestures and implied movements present a stirring image of embodied feeling. We tend to think of the

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various aspects of a person – body, emotion and cultural conventions like costume – as all separate: three different categories for discussion and analysis. But the distinction between mind and body is primarily a modern idea.56 For Bruegel, as indeed for many modern researchers, these categories were all intimately related.57 The way Bruegel’s peasants felt, the way they hungered or desired, comes into existence through their bodies. Emotion, motion and commotion were terms inextricably linked in the early modern period.58 We might, thus, consider feelings as mere abstractions until they are enacted – until they are realized in deeds. In other words, the body does not simply respond to an emotion conceived previously in the mind. The body, rather, is the medium in which the emotion exists to begin with. This was already the view of William James writing in the late nineteenth century, who classified the emotions as ‘physical arousal’.59 Renaissance authors were well aware of the association between emotions and the body. In his immensely popular educational treatise, On Good Manners for Boys (De civiltate puerilium), Erasmus counsels his young readers to adjust their physical comportment lest they signify undesirable feelings: Thus, for the well-ordered mind of a boy to be universally manifested – and it is most strongly manifested in the face – the eyes should be calm, respectful, and steady: not grim, which is a mark of truculence; not shameless, the hallmark of insolence; not darting and rolling, a feature of insanity; nor furtive, like those of suspects and plotters of treachery; nor gaping like those of idiots; nor should the eyes and eyelids be constantly blinking, a mark of the fickle; nor gaping as in astonishment – a characteristic observed in Socrates; nor too narrowed, a sign of bad temper […]60 Van Mander put it succinctly: ‘It is the painter’s duty to make known the stirrings of the heart by conveying the gestures of the body.’61

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The anthropologist Monique Scheer is one of many scholars who have recently emphasized this embodied nature of emotions.62 The actions and apparent desires of Bruegel’s peasants might be seen as a sort of universal prompt to urban viewers – to imagine embodying them and giving them a reality in a way both shared with and distinct from the experience of actual villagers. Emotions were and are not static. Scheer has described them as a type of practice in a Bourdieuian sense, one configured by historically and socially specific conventions and adjusted to particular situations.63 Scheer and Benno Gammerl have also spoken of them as a style, responding to place, class and event.64 Which feelings are expressed by Bruegel’s peasants? Giving emotions fixed names or labels may not be helpful. Such a practice might be seen as a reductive form of emplotment – of connecting emotional life with a limited set of plots or stories. In fact, naming an emotion changes it as it reorganizes our experience according to recognized models. As Scheer states, ‘Like snowflakes, every emotion is unique and gets put into a category – is typified – only through naming.’65 It might be more productive to focus on the high level of excitation, on the intensity of emotions signalled by Bruegel’s peasants. We can imagine that their feelings arise in the narrative context of the village fair. In fact, this temporal dimension should be understood as two-fold: addressing the events of the moment, but also the remembrance of earlier related activity.66 Both situations guide affective experience. This is a performative view of the emotions in which feeling is both immediate and grounded by prototypes of previous encounters.67 These models impart what Pierre Bourdieu calls a ‘feeling for the game’, a set of paradigms that guide present emotions.68 And it applies to both villager and urban viewer of Bruegel’s pictures. For the peasants, the experience of the kermis brought about a set of specific heightened feelings in their mobile bodies that were influenced by emotions at previous fairs. For Bruegel’s cultivated viewers, the dynamic and robust gestures of the

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villagers reminded them of their visits to country festivals but more essentially of their own bodies’ propensity for exhilaration, for motion and emotion. The viewer’s intuitive mapping of his or her body onto those of the frolicking villagers established a kind of artificial grounding or prototype for an understanding of the painting.69 Were the feelings of villagers communicable only to other peasants? Bruegel’s paintings seem to raise the question of the permeability of social boundaries – of shared experience – despite ideologies that argued against this. Clothing also played a role. It permitted and inhibited different types of behaviour and provided an external shell, the visible surface of the body, much as ornament was the visible dress of architecture. In Bruegel’s paintings sleeves fly, trouser legs protrude and codpieces project. They convey hurried movement and the liberty of the moment. In his Peasant Dance in Vienna (fig. 16.10), Bruegel articulates a more complicated view of human passion, one that expresses its varied nature and contradictions.70 The Peasant Dance shows a radical change from his Detroit picture (fig. 16.8). Bruegel ceases to enumerate types of behaviour and concentrates on a more limited set of actors. In place of an ocean of farmers we have a restricted frieze of figures set across the foreground. At the right a man and woman dance vigorously, heading towards a table at the left with various figures seated about it. Behind this couple we see another pair dancing; the man extends his arm to grasp his partner, his leg kicked forward. And a third couple, at centre, is more fully in step with the spirit of the moment – arms, legs and heads bent to the rhythm of the music. The angular, active figures exemplify the helter-skelter character of the peasant dance, so removed from the dignified and restrained poses of elite dancers. This is a scene in flux. The sense of movement is conveyed by the limbs that protrude at odd angles and by the heavy black shoes that occlude the foreground, suggesting the loud stomping sound made by these feet on the ground.

Feelings are heightened throughout the scene. At the far side of the table a group of peasants have obviously had a good deal to drink and are in agitated communication (fig. 16.11). One, with his hat over his eyes and mouth agape, roughly places his hand on the shoulder of his companion, who assertively extends his own arm, perhaps rejecting a blind beggar, who enters the picture at its left margin.71 And behind them a young couple kisses openly in public. The table scene suggests release but also incipient disorder. Inebriation, solicitation and antipathy mark the attendants, while desire is given free reign by the young couple kissing. Bruegel’s faces are remarkably individualized. The bagpiper’s cheeks are fully expanded as he plays, and his neighbour looks to him sympathetically and inquiringly (fig. 16.12). The lead dancer, however, makes a particularly stark impression (fig. 16.13). His mouth is open, bearing his teeth in a sort of grimace. His eyes seem to squint, and his rough appearance is accented by his beard stubble. He is evidently no patrician. His elbow juts aggressively outwards as he moves rapidly forwards. This is an image of physical and emotional arousal. The peasant proceeds fiercely, dragging his female companion in his train. For Bruegel, emotions manifest clearly and distinctly only in their intensity. These feelings represent extremes. Yet, they are not necessarily reproachable; they exist within the broad range of everyday experience. The artist had already expressed a similar viewpoint in his Battle between Carnival and Lent from the end of the previous decade.72 Here the adherents of Carnival are shown without the typical overindulgence that earned condemnation. Nor is the Lenten side of the panel presented as a positive counterpart, subject to praise for abstemious behaviour. The two sides are presented rather neutrally as the limits of acceptable conduct, the permissible poles of a spectrum. The central couple in the painting, travelling with backs to us, may signify the search for a golden mean, but it is an ideal mark within a licit range.73

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Fig. 16.10 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peasant Dance, c. 1567, oil on panel, 113.5 × 164 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 1059)

Fig. 16.11 Detail from fig. 16.10

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Fig. 16.12 Detail from Bruegel’s Peasant Dance (fig. 16.10)

Bruegel was not unique in choosing to represent the emotions in such intensity. He had an unexpected predecessor in Bernard van Orley, whose tapestry designs for the series The Battle of Pavia and The Hunts of Maximilian showed soldiers and huntsmen in states of extreme excitement (fig.  16.14). Bruegel’s lead villager in his Peasant Dance bears an uncanny resemblance to the ferocious warriors in the finished tapestries of the Battle of Pavia, even given the differences in media.74 They both exhibit untempered passion, although the narratives are distinct. Van Orley understandably chose war and the hunt as his arenas. Bruegel radically chose the village fair. Both artists explored heightened arousal as an experience of body and mind inextricably linked. Bruegel’s peasant dance is much more than a foray into rustic customs; it is an essay on the limits

of human existence. The peasant has become his vehicle in this broader project. Significantly, there are no urban visitors to this kermis, unless they are the viewers of the painting who imagine their participation in the festivities. Indeed, Bruegel manages to imply the presence of the observer in an extremely subtle manner. The figures in the painting rapidly increase in size from the diminutive villagers in the background to the monumental peasants who form the foreground frieze. The viewer seems a natural extension of this progression in the space in front of the picture plane. The artist prompts his audience to consider the Vienna picture from a second perspective: as an oblique sort of allegory. The two foreground groups part to reveal the hardened soil of the village square. This vacant area forms a sort of pyramid. At its apex and at the far side of the opening stands

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305

Fig. 16.13 Detail from Bruegel’s Peasant Dance (fig. 16.10)

the small figure of the fool (fig. 16.15). Although fools characteristically appeared in representations of village fairs – in Bruegel’s earlier engravings, for example – this instance is different. Here Bruegel’s fool raises his hand and appears to address the viewer across the expanse of the square. The raised arm as a sign of proclamation goes back to the classical gesture of adlocutio given by Roman orators. Fools might adopt this telling pose, as we

see in Cornelis Massys’s print of Two Pedlars in an Inn. As the humble merchants are pilfered by the female innkeepers, the fool similarly extends his arm and utters the cynical wisdom of the legend printed beneath.75 Bruegel’s fool is at the very centre of the painting, a site that Bruegel reserved for particularly telling details in other pictures such as his Road to Calvary.76 The fool is difficult to discern and is

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eventually identified in a moment of revelation, for the radical diminution in scale delays discovery. Once having noticed this figure, however, observers may become sensitive to his implications. Bruegel’s elite viewers might lose themselves vicariously in the energetic lives of these peasants until they discover themselves explicitly welcomed to the dance by the fool. His invitation questions their sense of separation and superiority. As potential participants in the kermis, viewers must acknowledge a shared humanity with these villagers and a shared potential to extreme states of motion, emotion and existence. This ambiguous relation between viewer and subject has a long tradition in western art. A carved Gothic capital, for instance, depicts six foolish beings who look out at the observer, while underneath an inscription proclaims: ‘Nous Sommes Sept’ (We are seven).77 Who is the seventh? The viewer suddenly realizes that he or she completes the group. We find this device of ironic inclusion in a variety of images and texts, from Shakespeare to sixteenth-century Netherlandish fools’ tracts.78 Among this latter group is the performance piece ‘Concerning the Long Wagon’ that promises all listeners an inexpensive ride. After an advertisement of all the attractions, the speaker announces the list of passengers and the audience discovers a catalogue of urban follies and failings.79 Does the audience still wish to be included? But Bruegel’s allegory is not the be all and end all to this picture, not its answer in any meaningful sense. Bruegel’s allegory is an intellectual frame placed about the painting. It is a conceit that acknowledges the equivocal nature of the proceedings, but this intellectual construct does not displace Bruegel’s appeal to a visceral and existential understanding of the peasant and of humankind. Bruegel presents village excitement as the epitome of humanity at its extremes. That Bruegel might use the peasant to stand for all people is apparent from his more obviously allegorical works. His small picture of the Nest Robber is centred around the corpulent figure of a rustic

307

who has left the farmstead at the right and points to the bird thief at the upper left.80 The painting clearly refers to the proverb: ‘He who knows where the nest is has the knowledge; he who robs it, has the nest.’ The entire message about a conflict between active and passive behaviour is told in terms of farmers and their world.81 Larger issues are also at play in Bruegel’s small painting of the Magpie on the Gallows of the same year.82 A trio of peasants joyfully dances at the foot of the gallows, which rises up ominously in the middle of the picture. A magpie, that ignoble fowl, that traitorous and deceptive animal, rests on its cross beam, again, precisely at the centre of the painting. Whether Bruegel intended the picture to refer to contemporary political troubles or whether he simply wished to comment on the folly and naivety of his brethren, he took the peasant once more as representative.83 Peasant Bruegel’s Aftermath Images of peasants proliferated in the years following Bruegel’s death but few followed his intellectual lead. Many of these shy away from more neutral depictions of rustics and revert to the repressive critique of crude behaviour found in the prints of the early 1550s. A Flemish virginal of around 1580 is decorated with motifs of village fairs that have been culled from earlier prints, including those by Bruegel (fig. 16.16).84 The rustics, however, are portrayed as crude and repellent. Drinkers guzzle their brew around a barrel doing service as a table. Two men vomit and a woman defecates at the side. This censorious view of village life might seem at odds with its placement on an expensive musical instrument intended for leisure and delight. Audiences, however, seem to have grown dulled to the specifics of these representations and accepted them indiscriminately as a familiar genre. Bruegel’s peasant paintings themselves were highly influential during the final years of the sixteenth century and the early years of the century that followed, especially with artists favoured by the Habsburgs and granted access to their collections. Yet with

OPPOSITE

Fig. 16.14 Bernard van Orley, The Battle of Pavia, tapestry, wool and silk, 440 × 818 cm, Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte. Detail

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Fig. 16.15 Detail from Bruegel’s Peasant Dance (fig. 16.10)

Fig. 16.16 Netherlandish, painted board of virginal made by Johannes Grauwels, c. 1580, Brussels, Musical Instruments Museum (inv. 2929). Detail

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few exceptions, these younger painters focused on the folkloric aspects of village life, on the telling confrontation between rural and urban or courtly classes, and on the traditional practices of festivals. Few of these artists chose to exploit the peasant as archetypal, as representative of a broader population. Roelandt Savery spent a few years in Prague, where he must have seen Bruegel’s large peasant paintings in the Habsburg collection. Savery’s Peasant Meal, signed and dated 1608, is a response to Bruegel’s Peasant Dance.85 The later artist, however, has altered the focus and has, likewise, reverted to a reproof of coarse and ill-mannered behaviour (fig.  16.17). The dance is now only a small vignette at the right, while the table occupies the greater part of the foreground. Savery assimilates many of Bruegel’s motifs. Savery’s dancing couple, joining raised arms, is a clear riff on Bruegel’s peasants. But Savery makes explicit several aspects of the narrative that are ambiguous in Bruegel’s picture. Pieter Bruegel places a man at the far left, cut off by the edge of the painting, who assertively extends a bowl towards the company at the other side of the table. Is he another member of this group or does he represent a threat? Savery resolves this dilemma by transforming him into an indigent pilgrim in full ritual attire who proffers his begging bowl. Savery does not capture the more radical and ambiguous conduct of Bruegel’s villagers. In Savery’s hands they revert to stereotypic boorishness, much as we saw on the virginal. Two villagers are shown in a drunken stupor at the table, and at the lower right an inebriated man has fallen to the ground and vomits. Savery’s peasants are comfortably distanced from the well-healed viewer and converted to objects of derision. Lucas van Valckenborch was another painter who responded to Bruegel’s pictures in the years after the artist’s death. First active as master in 1560, Valckenborch became court painter to Maximilian II of Habsburg in 1579. Valckenborch devoted most of his efforts to landscape painting, and here he responded to Bruegel’s prototypes.86

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Valckenborch was especially fond of portraying meetings between peasants and their betters. His paintings, like that of his Autumn Landscape (October) from the Months series, focus on interactions between villagers and visitors to the countryside from the court.87 One of his paintings of a Village Fair is particularly interesting. The picture, now in Saint Petersburg, shows a group of soberly and superiorly dressed spectators stopping by a rural festival though remaining noticeably apart from it.88 The man at the left of this group engages a willing villager in conversation. The female figure at the right with her back to us, also dressed as a member of this elite, momentarily abandons her distance and station for a restrained dance with an accommodating villager. Near the centre of this group, one of the visitors, in top hat and lace collar, smiles at the observer and pauses in his play on a borrowed set of bagpipes. Valckenborch’s gathering conveys a sense of the freedom that accompanied a jaunt into the countryside, of the liberation from the restrictive social conventions that governed urban and court society. The faces of these elite gentlemen are particularized in a way that suggests portraits. We know that in certain paintings Valckenborch depicted the Emperor Rudolph II of Habsburg on a country outing.89 In his painting in Saint Petersburg, he seems to have represented Bruegel’s friend, Abraham Ortelius, among the group. Our information comes from the Antwerp businessman Peeter Stevens, who owned a copy of Karel van Mander’s book of biographies of artists, the Schilder-boeck of 1604. Around 1650, Stevens annotated his copy of Van Mander, which is preserved in the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. Writing in the margins of Van Mander’s ‘Life of Valckenborch’, Stevens noted a landscape in which Valckenborch himself was playing the bagpipes, standing next to Ortelius. And, in fact, the figure purporting to be Ortelius in the painting strongly resembles a portrait of Ortelius on a contemporary design for a medal. Van Mander reported that Bruegel would foray into the countryside with his friend Hans Franckaert and visit peasant fairs.

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Fig. 16.17 Roelandt Savery, Peasant Meal, 1608, oil on panel, 46 × 50.5 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 6216)

Clearly this was a common practice, carried out by Ortelius and others from their circle. Yet even when Valckenborch does not explicitly show the urban or courtly visitors in the company of villagers, his sense of social distinction is apparent. Although he does not mock the crude behaviour of his peasants, he views them with a distance and condescension foreign to Bruegel’s pictures. A particularly interesting example is the large painting of a rural tavern now in Linz, Austria (fig. 16.18).90 The painting bears Valckenborch’s

monogram but is dated 1598, the year after the painter’s death, and must come from his workshop. There are close parallels with Bruegel’s works, but also the works of other Flemish painters such as Pieter Aertsen and Marten van Cleve. There are many narrative details. At the lower left an old man laughs as if to comment on the behaviour of the two chickens before him. Above him an old woman threatens another man at the table – her husband? – who has obviously had much to drink. A bagpiper stands at the right, next to a woman

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311

Fig. 16.18 Workshop of Lucas van Valckenborch, Peasant Meal, 1598, oil on canvas, 132 × 239 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 3537), on loan to the Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum, Linz (inv. G 655)

who politely raises a glass and places her hand on the back of her male companion, who has collapsed on the table. And an amorous couple embraces at the lower right corner. This vision of the villagers is kinder than Savery’s. There is no vomiting and no fighting but neither do the peasants rise above types. There is little individualization of these rustics. They are outsiders, foreign – of interest for their quaint local customs and simple passions and offering little opportunity for the elite viewer to identify with them. Bruegel did have one true follower who emerged out of these later artists but who shared several of his artistic goals, a painter who viewed the passions as an area for investigation rather than condemnation. This was Adriaen Brouwer, who spent time in both Antwerp and Haarlem and was soon seen as Bruegel’s natural successor. In the mid-seventeenth century Brouwer was even thought to have engraved a series of painted heads of peasants by Bruegel that portrayed various emotions.91 It is, thus, little surprising that Brouwer’s early biographer, Arnold

Houbraken, praised the artist for having ‘represented everything so naturally in terms of the passions’.92 And it is no accident that Peter Paul Rubens owned many pictures by Brouwer, much as he had acquired several by Pieter Bruegel. Rubens, student of action and emotion, was naturally attracted to both artists. Especially in his later works, Brouwer relies less on conventional subjects and motifs. These pictures are frequently about pain, anger and other extreme states. Arms flail, blows land and faces grimace (fig. 16.19). The inhabitants of Brouwer’s Inn Scene, indeed, represent emotion as a fully embodied experience. Brouwer’s famous picture of the Bitter Draught (fig. 16.20) has little conventional narrative.93 The peasant reacts violently to the bitter medicine as he readies a drink to erase the unpleasant taste. This is no doctor’s visit, no dentist’s burlesque. Brouwer eliminates the narrative details and radically concentrates on the peasant’s extreme action – inner and outer – his convulsion. His eyes squint

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Fig. 16.19 Adriaen Brouwer, Inn Scene, c. 1635, oil on panel, 33.3 × 49.7 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek. Detail

bitterly, his mouth widens and we can almost hear his breathy grunt. We come to know him through his body. His gestures and movements are seemingly natural and unpremeditated. They are in some ways also class-specific, registering coarse gestures that might be acknowledged publicly only in his social environment. Yet they are easily interpreted by the viewer and clearly transcend the peasant’s station. The contemporary Amsterdam writer Gerbrand Bredero used the character of the rustic similarly. He classified a third of the items in his Great Songbook of 1622 as ‘Peasant’ or ‘Rustic Songs’ but explicitly intended their

messages to apply beyond the confines of the village. Bredero writes: I have put many things in a rustic peasant way, which nonetheless takes some city dwellers into account. Being aware of their sickness, disease or scabbiness, I have had to handle them in this way, knowing that they would otherwise be too coarse, or bitter, or bite too sharply, and that not many would find it blameworthy if they went about disguised, in the appearance of peasants, with changed names and clothing.94

OPPOSITE

Fig. 16.20 Adriaen Brouwer, The Bitter Draft, c. 1636, oil on panel, 47.3 × 35.5 cm, Frankfurt am Main, Städel Museum (inv. 1076)

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313

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For Brouwer, as for Bruegel, the peasant represented natural man. The drinker has become an avatar for Brouwer’s investigation of humanity in its unmediated state – devoid of the obscuring social niceties of cultivated townspeople. The peasant was a protean figure for Flemish painters. Peasants were ideal personages in many respects. They offered the vision of a simple life, removed from the exigencies of the city – an opportunity to take off one’s lace collar. Their coarse behaviour could provide a comforting foil to a variegated urban population unsure of its identity. But the peasant could also stand for all humanity in

a more comprehensive sense, physically and ethically. The peasant moved and expressed emotions with a directness and intensity that could reveal essential truths about the human condition, truths concealed beneath the self-consciously disciplined bodies of city dwellers. Pieter Bruegel and Adriaen Brouwer were among the few artists to use the peasant as an instrument to probe these profound issues. Seen in this light, the notion of Bruegel as a stoic should be revised. The emotions were for him an inescapable part of life – to be kept within bounds, but celebrated rather than abjured.

N OT ES I want to thank Jeffrey Freedman and Elizabeth Legge for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

p. 229, vol. 2, fig. 400; Alexander Wied in Antwerp/Cologne/Vienna 1992–3, p. 182.

1 Hausenstein 1910; Fraenger 1923; Alpers 1972–3; Raupp 1986; Sullivan 1994. See also Carroll 1987; Gibson 1991a, pp. 11–52.

18 Saint Louis/Cambridge 2015–16, pp. 174–9, cat. no. 22.

2

Kavaler 2018, p. 225.

3

Van Mander 1604, fol. 22v.

4

Stewart 2008a; Raupp 1986, pp. 9–194.

5

See, for instance, Gibson 2004–5.

17 Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. SK-A-3.

19 Ibid., pp. 214–17, cat. no. 32. 20 Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, c. 1570, SK-A-2554. 21 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 3579; Vienna 1981, pp. 157–8.

(overall). Gift of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., for the Coralie Walker Hanna Memorial Collection, inv. 1939.158. 29

Kavaler 1999, p. 192.

30 On the correspondences between natural and human sexuality in Lucas van Leyden’s Milkmaid and Abraham Bloemaert’s drawing, see Kavaler 1986, p. 23; Munich 2017, p. 90. On the notion of erotic symbolism and moral allegory in Lucas’s print, see Wuyts 1975.

6 For a discussion of the peasant as other and as foil to the insecure image of the bourgeoisie, see Vandenbroeck 1984; Vandenbroeck 1987a, pp. 63–116, which also discusses the subjective attitude towards ethnographic observation, both of the early modern period and of recent times.

22 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1059.

31

Weigel 1577, p. 2; Rublack 2010, p. 150.

32

Berlin 1975, cat. nos. 220–39.

23 Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, inv. KMSsp339.

33

Hessels 1887, p. 36.

7

25

Honig 1998, p. 67.

8 Koerner 2004; Koerner 2016, pp. 318–30. On such early modern ethnographic enterprises, see also Vandenbroeck 1987a, pp. 37–9. 9 Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 7524; Brussels 1984, pp. 2–3.

24 The man looking into his jug is literally a kannenkijker. See Van Bruaene 2018, p. 99. Benesch 1965, p. 110.

26 On proverb books and their relation to collected sayings of peasants, see Suringar 1864; Suringar 1873. On Bruegel and proverbs, see Meadow 2002.

15 Private collection. On loan to the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne, 2017.

27 Ludolph 1503, fol. 28r: ‘Die me(n)sche Waerom so v(er)scheen he(n) dese heylighe engel meer den herdere(n) da(n) ander heere(n) en(de) luyden Scriptura. Dese herdeke(n)s die zij(n) o(n)nosel en(de) duechsa(m) reyn va(n) herte(n) gheweest die welcke al vore(n) sculdich zij(n) opte(n) berch des heren te clime(n) dat is sijne godlike gracie te bescouse(n) en(de) te ghebruyke(n) end(er) ten andere(n) dat god ons heeft wille(n) toene(n) dat hi totte(n) ghene(n) comet en(de) sijn blischap doet ko(n)dighe(n) die in duechde(n) wake(n)de zij(n).’

16 On Hans van Wechelen, see Sterling 1959; Brockhagen 1963; Franz 1969, vol. 1,

28 The Cleveland Museum of Art. Tapestry weave, wool and silk, 360.5 × 401.1 cm

10 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 2365; Vienna 1991, p. 22. 11 Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, c. 1570, inv. SK-A-2554. 12

Van Mander 1604, fol. 261.

13 Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, inv. 1006. 14

Pleij 1969.

34 De Bruyn 1577; Kavaler 1999, pp. 171–81. 35 Rublack 2010, p. 183, fig. 109. Even the elite manuscript costume book of Matthäus Schwarz of Augsburg includes a page with the costumes of peasants. See Rublack and Hayward 2015, p. 61. 36

Bond 2018.

37 Meganck 2017, p. 117; Lucas d’Heere, ‘Théâtre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre avec leurs habits, et ornemens divers, tant anciens que modernes, diligemments depeints au naturel par Luc Dheere peintre et sculpteur Gantois’, Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent, HS 2466, fol. 104; Bond 2017; Van Mander 1604, fol. 255v: ‘Hy antwoorde, dat te hebben gemaeckt voor den Engelsman, niet wetende wat ghedaent oft maecksel van cleedinghen hem gheven, dewijl sy daeghlijcx soo veel veranderden: want hadde hy’t heden dus ghemaeckt, morgen soudt moeten wat anders wesen, t’zy op zijn Fransch, Italiaensch, Spaensch, oft Nederlantsch, daerom

315

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heb icker het Laken by ghemaeckt, en de reedtschap, op datmer altijt mach af maken sulck als men begeert.’ 38 Rublack 2010, pp. 144–5, figs 79–80; Bond 2017. A book of costumes from the court of Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria also included a naked German. The Leipzig hanging is in the Grassi Museum in this city, inv. V 466. 39 Kavaler 1999, p. 174; Van Mander 1604, fol. 233r: ‘Dese Boeren en Boerinnen op zijn kempsche en anders wist hy oock seer eyghentlijck te cleeden, en dat Boerighdom wesen seer natuerlijck aen te wijsen, in dansen, gaen, en staen, oft ander actien’. 40

Sullivan 1994, pp. 28–9.

41 Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. 30.374. For early conservation of this painting, see Scheyer 1965. 42

Kavaler 1999, pp. 54–6.

43 Muchembled 1988, pp. 203–89; Muchembled 1987; Muchembled 1991, pp. 133–41. On historical codes of posture and gesture, see also Roodenburg 2004. 44

Schmitt 1984, p. 2.

45

Schmitt 1991, p. 64.

46 Quoted in Scheer 2012, p. 204, note 54. See Hochschild 1979, p. 556, who cites Goffmann’s observations from Goffmann 1974. 47 Müller Hofstede 1979; Koerner 2016, pp. 305–18. 48 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, for instance, have discussed the overriding ethic of self-restraint that has dominated the pictorial representation of scientific phenomena – the stoic insistence that human intervention with its inherent bias be purged from the operation. See Daston and Galison 1992. 49 Montaigne 1987, p. 301; Rublack 2010, p. 9. 50 Fiorenza 2017, pp. 236–43. On Floris’s mythological paintings, see also Wouk 2018, pp. 417–66. 51

Fiorenza 2017, p. 238.

52 Strier 2004; Schoenfeldt 2004; Paster, Rowe and Floyd-Wilson 2004, pp. 11–13. For one history of the study of the emotions, see Plamper 2015. 53 Petrarch 1948, p. 103; Strier 2004, p. 24. 54 Erasmus 1979, pp. 45–6; Strier 2004, p. 28. 55 Casini 2002, p. 208; Vives 1974, p. 558: ‘Sed Stoicos dimittamus, qui se, quos natura homines condiderat, scholasticis cavillatiunculis saxa volerunt reddere: nec sunt tamen assecuti.’ Vives adopted a basically Aristotelian appreciation of moderate emotions as opposed to the Stoic insistence that all emotions be eliminated and controlled by reason.

For a fuller and slightly divergent treatment of Vives and the emotions, see Noreña 1989.

70 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1059. Vienna 1981, pp. 115–18.

56 Descartes notably opposes rationality to the passions, but even he concedes the embodied essence of the emotions. They are ideas but ideas rooted in the body. See Brown 2002, p. 261.

71 I am grateful to Elizabeth Honig, who has suggested that this intruder is blind.

57 Paster, Rowe and Floyd-Wilson 2004, p. 2. ‘Emotion’ entered the English language as a term for affect or passion only around 1660. 58 The philosopher Robert Solomon has described emotions as ‘acts’ – ‘the activity of intending in the world’. See Solomon 2007, pp. 155–7; Scheer 2012, pp. 193–6. 59 James 1884; Scheer 2012, p. 195. 60 Erasmus 1985, p. 274. 61 Van Mander 1604, fol. 23r: ‘Hier heeft den Schilder wel neerstich te waken […] / Te kennen gheven, die t’herte beroeren, / Om met sLichaems gesten sulcx uyt te voeren.’ The literature on the emotions from the past two decades is extensive. For late medieval and early modern views of the emotions, see, for instance, Ferrer and Ramond 2017; Paster, Rowe and Floyd-Wilson 2004; Kann 2014; Poeschke, Weigel and Kusch 2002.

72 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1016. Vienna 1981, pp. 61–8. 73

Kavaler 1999, pp. 123–48.

74

Kavaler 2017, pp. 73–8.

75 Van der Stock 1985, pp. 34–5, no. 27; Raupp 1986, pp. 208–9; Kavaler 1999, pp. 200–01. The legend reads: ‘TIS HIER GOEY VENTE LAET DRUCK VERSLAEN / DWORT AL VERCOCHT EEERT VOORT IS GHEDAEN’ (Here’s a good customer; let’s have a quick turnover. The sale’s complete before there’s any exchange). 76 On Bruegel’s Road to Calvary, its semiotic properties, and its relation to the vernacular, see Meadow 1996; Freedberg 1989. 77

Bax 1979, p. 264, fig. 111.

78

Kavaler 1999, pp. 204–9.

79 Pleij 1983, pp. 180–93. On Netherlandish fools’ tracts, see Moxey 1982. 80 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1020. Vienna 1981, pp. 107–10. 81

Kavaler 1999, pp. 249–54.

62 Scheer 2012.

82 Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, inv. GK 165.

63 Ibid., esp. pp. 194–202.

83

64 Ibid.; Gammerl 2012; Broomhall 2015, pp. 4–6. I use emotions, affect and feelings interchangeably in this essay. William M. Reddy, however, distinguishes between what he regards as ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling’: see Reddy 2001.

84 Brussels, Musical Instruments Museum, inv. 2929. Vandenbroeck 1987a, pp. 94–5.

65 Scheer 2012, p. 213. 66 This understanding of emotional paradigms guiding our experience of feeling is advanced by several scholars. See Nussbaum 1988, p. 226; De Sousa 1990, p. 182; Kleres 2011, pp. 185–6; Katz 1999, pp. 324–7. 67 For performance theory and the ‘consciousness of doubleness’, see Carlson 1996, p. 5. For the related concept of ‘restored behaviour’ – the repetition of some archetypal or original behaviour, real or imagined, that serves as a grounding for performance, see Schechner 1985, pp. 33–7; Schechner 2002, pp. 28–35. Richard Schechner refers to ‘restored behaviour’ as ‘twice-behaved behaviour’. Monique Scheer describes emotions as ‘scaffolded by the environment both synchronically, in the unfolding of a particular emotional experience, and diachronically in the acquisition of an emotional repertoire’. See Scheer 2012, pp. 196–8.

Kavaler 1999, pp. 217–33.

85 Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 6216; Cologne/Utrecht 1985–6, pp. 81–2, cat. no. 5. 86

Wied 1990, pp. 13–16.

87 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1069. 88 Saint Petersburg, Hermitage, inv. -450 1563; Wied 1989–90, pp. 10–11; Wied 1990, pp. 23–6, 145–6, no. 31; Kavaler 1999, pp. 193–4; Briels 1980, p. 220: ‘tot Antwerpen by Pieter Stevens een Landtschap van Lucas van Valckenborch daer hy met een moesel spelt, seer cureiux gedaen, met dato 1577, ende daerachter staet Abraham Ortelius ende voor een die een groen taxken in de hant heeft’. 89 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 5655; Wied 1990, pp. 169–70, nos. 68–9. 90 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 3537; on loan to the Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum in Linz (inv. G 655). See Wied 1990, p. 184, no. 94.

68 Bourdieu 1990, p. 66; Scheer 2012, p. 202.

91 Lichtert 2018a, pp. 70–71. For Brouwer and the emotions, see Lichtert 2018b; Renger 1986, pp. 41–4. On Brouwer as successor to Pieter Bruegel, see Lichtert 2018a.

69 For the mapping of viewers’ bodies onto represented ones, see Kavaler 2013, pp. 23–6.

92 Houbraken 1718–21, vol. 1, p. 323; Lichtert 2018b, p. 79: ‘Alles was zoo

316 natuurlyck naar den aart der hardstochten in de wezentrekken verbeelt, en zoo verwonderlyck vast geteekent, en los geschildert, dat het wel tot een proefstuk van zyn konst kon verstrekken.’ 93 Frankfurt am Main, Städel Museum, inv. 1076. 94 Alpers 1975–6, pp. 120, 142; Bredero 1622, ‘Voor-Reden’, lines 99–108: ‘Veel

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dinghen heb ick op sijn boertsch gheset, die nochtans voor ettelijcke Stelieden haar Rekeninghe zijn, die ick, vermits ick hare sieckte, kranckheyt en schurfte kende, aldus heb moeten handelen, wetende dattet anders al te korresyvich, bitter en te scharp byten soude, en om dat het by velen niet qualijck genomen soude werden, gaan sy al vermomt, onder boeren ghedaanten daer henen met

veranderde namen en bekleedinge’. The 1622 edition of the Groot lied-boeck was the fourth edition and the first to refer to the first category of songs as ‘boertige liedkens’ or songs ‘in a comic in a rustic way’. See Alpers 1975– 6, pp. 116–17.

Fig. 17.1 Jan (Johannes) Wierix (1549–1615), publisher Theodoor Galle (1571–1633), Pieter Coecke van Aelst, engraving, plate 206 × 120 mm, sheet 315 × 200 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, A. Hyatt Mayor Purchase Fund, Marjorie Phelps Starr Bequest, 1983 (inv. 1983.1115.5)

17

Behind the Scenes in Pieter Bruegel’s ‘Success Story’: Pieter Coecke’s Networks and Legacy Annick Born

A BSTRACT : This contribution aims to shed light on Pieter Bruegel’s ‘success story’ by showing to what extent the broad social and familial networks of Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Mayken Verhulst-Bessemeers were beneficial to the young artist. They helped to launch his career and were a solid support throughout his life. This study also delineates the intellectual and artistic milieu in which he was trained and worked. In addition, it brings forward a new perspective on the influential role of Coecke. He introduced his pupil within the intellectual and urban elites of the time and, besides the teaching of painting, he contributed to the development of Bruegel’s artistic personality through the prism of observation, knowledge and reflection.

—o— Introduction Shortly after Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525–1569) became a free master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1551–2, he went on a trip to Italy. On his return, in 1554, he settled in the Scheldt city. When he appeared on the art scene, he was already a confirmed artist working for the famous print publisher Hieronymus Cock (1518–1570).1 This contribution aims to show to what extent the broad familial and social networks of Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502–1550) and Mayken VerhulstBessemeers (1515/22–1596) were beneficial to the young Pieter.2 It also proposes an overview of the entangled ties within the same family – in the

broad sense – used as an efficient tool to build a solid network, expand and diversify activities.3 This study sheds light on the intellectual milieu in which Bruegel trained and worked, and on the influential role of Coecke. The Network of the In-Laws and their Relatives Pieter and Mayken were at the centre of extensive networks that stretched from Antwerp to Brussels via Mechelen, the three most important artistic hubs of the Low Countries (fig. 17.1). Coecke was well introduced at the court and among the influential people of the empire. He and his wife had close contacts with Antwerp’s urban elites, the wealthy merchants, and moved in the city’s intellectual circle of leading humanists. The Mertens van Dornicke Family The origins of this success go back to Coecke’s first marriage with a daughter of the painter Jan Mertens van Dornicke (before 1485–1527), alias most probably the Master of 1518 (table 17.1).4 The Mertens van Dornicke were ancestors of a dynasty of artists connected with the Bruegel, Van Cleve and Van Coninxloo families. Jan is inscribed in the Liggeren, the register of the Antwerp Guild of St  Luke, in the year 1509–10 as ‘Jan Mertens

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Janssone’ when he became master.5 Jan and his wife, Lysbeth Puynders (?–before 13 November 1515) had five children – three daughters, Anna, Adriana and Lysbeth, and two sons, Frans and Marten – about which little data are available. At an unknown date but before December 1526, Anna Mertens (before 1510–1527) married with Pieter Coecke. He is already mentioned as a painter, suggesting that he was active as a workshop assistant in Antwerp, probably for his father-in-law.6 Pieter joined the guild in 1527–8, possibly after the death of Jan Mertens.7 Anna and Pieter had two sons. Pieter II (1525/6–1559)8 became master in 1550– 51 and Michiel (1526/7–?) in 1551–2, the same year as Pieter Bruegel. They are each registered in the Liggeren as being a master’s son.9 Coecke’s sons and Bruegel must have known each other very well since they most likely were trained and worked together in the same workshop. On 10 November 1554, Michiel married Margareta Verhulst, the youngest sister of his father’s second wife.10 Anna’s sister, Adriana (before 1511–1562), wedded Jan van Amstel (d. 1540) before November 1527.11 Apparently the couple was childless. Jan is inscribed in 1528–9 as master painter.12 He is identified with Jan den Hollander, the outstanding landscapes master cited by Karel van Mander.13 The biographer was the first to mention Jan’s widow as being the mother of Gillis II van Coninxloo (1544–1606) and to point out that Bruegel borrowed from Van Amstel the use of barely covered ground canvases and panels.14 Indeed, Adriana remarried with Gillis van Coninxloo (d. 1544), master in the Guild of St Luke in 1539–40.15 From this union was born Gillis II (1544–1606), who became master in 1570–71 and in 1585 had as pupil Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564/5–1637/8).16 Lysbeth, sister of Jan Martens, married the painter Willem van Cleve (?–before 1547).17 Willem, master painter in 1518–19,18 and his wife had three sons – Hendrik III, Marten (1527–1581) and Willem – who in turn became painters. They are registered together in the Antwerp guild in 1551–2 as master’s sons, the same year as Pieter Bruegel.19

According to Van Mander, Marten and Hendrik also learned with Frans Floris (1519/20–1570).20 Despite the lack of documentary evidence to support this assertion, Marten van Cleve’s early painted and engraved works attest the influence of his putative master. Marten is mostly known for his genre scenes of peasant weddings, dances, kermises and landscapes, which share similarities with the work of Bruegel.21 The kinship ties that bind the two masters could explain common characteristics in their production. Similarly, the strong influence of Pieter Aertsen (1507/8–1575) found in some Marten van Cleve’s compositions of around 1550– 60 could also be justified by family connections. Indeed, Aertsen is considered to be the brother of Jan van Amstel, the first husband of Adriana, daughter of Jan Mertens. Beside the many copies that Pieter Brueghel the Younger made after his father’s creations, the oeuvre of Marten van Cleve was also an important source of inspiration.22 Van Mander specified that Marten collaborated with Hendrik, his brother, Gillis II van Coninxloo, the son of his cousin, Adriana, and with other landscape painters for which he had ‘beelden te maken’.23 Van Sant At the earliest in 1534, Pieter Coecke had a relationship with Anthonette van Sant (tables  17.1 and 17.2). Two children were born of this union: Pauwels (c. 1538–1569) and Antonia (c. 1539–?).24 A document dated 20 December 1555 states that Adriana Hermans van Dornicke, widow of Gillis van Coninxloo and wife of Pieter van Else alias van den Winckele, bought an eight gold Carolus hereditary rent from Pieter and Michiel Coecke for Pauwels and Antonia Coecke alias van Aelst, natural children of Pieter Coecke.25 From this act, it is clear that the Coecke and Mertens families remained very close. Adriana, the sister of Coecke’s first wife, bought annuities for her brother-in-law’s illegitimate children. Her third husband, Pieter van Else, registered as master in the Antwerp guild in 1545–6, the same year as Hieronymus Cock.26

BEHIND THE SCENES IN PIETER BRUEGEL ’ S ‘ SUCCESS STO RY ’

As reported by Van Mander, Pauwels painted copies after works by ‘Ioan Mabusen’ and glasses with flowers. His widow, Mayken Robroecx, married Gillis II van Coninxloo.27 The Verhulst-Bessemeers Family Pieter Coecke married – at an unknown date but not before 1540 – the miniaturist and printer Mayken Verhulst-Bessemeers (table 17.2).28 She was already working in the Scheldt city as a ‘book printer’ according to a document dated 3 November 1538.29 From this union was born Mayken (before 1547–1578), the future wife of Bruegel, Pauwels and Cathelijne, who both died in Brussels at the same time as their father. They are mentioned in an Antwerp act dated 15 February 1555 in which Pieter and Michiel, sons from the first marriage, discharged their stepmother and guardians, the painter Marten Peters and their uncle Marten Coecke, from the management of their father’s estate.30 A genealogy established in 1583, during the lifetime of Mayken Verhulst, at the request of Pieter Coucke, lawyer at the Council of Flanders and nephew of the painter, published by André Dumon, provides additional information on Coecke’s family.31 Pieter and his wife appear to have had two other children, Margriete and Johanna. In the document, Bruegel is mentioned as ‘Pieter van den Bruule’.32 Mayken taught Bruegel the art of miniature painting and maybe to paint tüchlein. She belonged to a large family of artists active in Mechelen33 and some members of the Verhulst-Bessemeers family moved to Antwerp. Two of them, Anthonis Bessemeers and Christoffel Verhulst (before 1520–1565), became masters of the Guild of St Luke, as painters on canvas, in the years 1544–5 and 1545–6, about the same time that Bruegel would have started in Coecke’s workshop.34 Anthonis and Christoffel could also have initiated Bruegel in the art of tempera painting on linen. We note that several painters on canvas and of ‘patterns’ (pateroonschilder) were admitted to the Antwerp guild at about the same time.

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Mayken’s sisters were married to artists as well. Before 1550, Lysbeth (?–1573) wedded the painter, engraver and printer Hubert Goltzius (1526– 1583).35 He did his apprenticeship with Lambert Lombard (1505/6–1566)36 in Liège and was in contact with many humanists of his time. He collected medals and antique coins, like his friend and colleague, the map illuminator and cartographer Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598), master in Antwerp in 1547–8.37 Between 1546 and 1558, Hubert lived and worked in Antwerp,38 where he published in 1557 a book of engravings with medallions and busts of Roman Emperors, Vivae omnium fere imperatorum imagines, ac. Iulio Caes. usque ad Carolum V et Ferdinandum […], in the print house of Gillis Coppens, the favourite printer of Coecke and Verhulst.39 Barbara was the wife of Jacob de Punder or de Poindre, alias van Heyst (1527– c.  1570). He was a portrait painter in Mechelen where he became master at the Guild of St  Luke in 1551–2. The youngest sister, Margareta, as mentioned above, wedded Michiel Coecke in 1554, son of her sister’s husband, Mayken.40 To summarize, at the time Pieter Bruegel became master at the Antwerp guild in 1551–2, no less than a dozen painters, members of Coecke’s family, were active in the city. Bruegel is not mentioned among the masters’ sons and his name is not found in the apprentice list of the Liggeren. At an unknown date, he could have started in Coecke’s workshop as a companion; their names are not included in the guild’s register.41 In his Milieu: Pieter Coecke’s Social Capital From 1527 to 1549 After Coecke became a free master in 1527–8 and before his travels in the Ottoman Empire in 1533, he was active in Antwerp. In 1529 he took on a first apprentice, Willem van Breda, identified as Willem Key (1516–1568). After moving to Liège in around 1539 for advanced training in the academy of Lambert Lombard, he returned to Antwerp and acquired master status in 1542–3.42

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Jan Mertens van Dornicke 1509/10 (before 1485–1527) × Lysbeth Puynders (?–before 13 November 1515)  Anna (before 1510–1527)   × Pieter Coecke van Aelst 1527/8 (1502–1550)

 Pieter II (1525/6–1559)

1550/51

Michiel (1526/7–?)



Adriana Frans Marten Lysbeth (before 1511–1562) × Jan van Amstel (?–1540) 1528/9 × Gillis van Coninxloo 1539/40 (?–1544)

Hendrik

Marten Willem (1527–1581) 1550/51

 1551/2

   × Anthonette van Sant    Pauwels (c. 1538–1569) × Mayken Robroecx

Lysbeth Mertens van Dornicke × Willem van Cleve (?–before 1547) 1518/19

Gillis II van Coninxloo × Mayken Robroecx (1544–1606) 1570/71

Antonia (c. 1539–?)

× Pieter van Else 1545/6

× Mayken Verhulst-Bessemeers (1515/22–1596)

× First marriage

× Second marriage/union × Third marriage Master in the Guild of St Luke, Antwerp Direct descendant and siblings

Table 17.1

Contemporary of Bruegel, the two artists knew each other. Besides their common master, Willem’s older brother, Wouter, was in 1515–16 the apprentice of Jan de Cock (?– before 1527), father of Hieronymus (1517/18–1570),43 for whom Bruegel started to work maybe before he left for Italy. In the meantime, Coecke was designing tapestry projects for the most important weavers established in Brussels. It is probably through his collaboration with his putative master, Bernard van Orley (before 1490–1541), that he came into contact with the court and the influential figures of the emperor’s entourage. Coecke’s journey in the Ottoman Empire is attested by historical sources related to the

Dermoyen Brussels weavers’ attempts to sell tapestries at the court of Sultan Suleiman (1494–1566). The protagonists involved in this commercial enterprise were Jacob Rehlinger and Pieter Van der Walle, art dealers and merchant bankers close to the emperor, and Marco di Niccolò, agent of the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha (1493–1536). This venture benefited from the patronage of Cornelius De Schepper (1501–1555), envoy of Charles  V (1500–1558) and his brother Ferdinand (1503– 1564), dispatched to Istanbul to negotiate a truce concerning Hungary. This expedition was most probably set up to enter enemy territories and spy on behalf of the Habsburgs. The itineraries of official representatives were organized by the

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Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502–1550) 1527/8 × Anna Mertens van Dornicke (before 1510–before November 1527)

 Pieter II (1525/6–1559)

Michiel (1526/7–?)

1550/51

1551/2

×

× Anthonette van Sant  Pauwels (c. 1538–1569)

Antonia (c. 1539–?)

× Mayken Verhulst-Bessemeers (1515/22–1596)

Anthonis Bessemeers Christoffel Verhulst Lysbeth Verhulst 1544/5 (before 1520–1565) 1545/46 (?–1573)

 Pauwels (?–1550)

Cathelijne Mayken Margriete (?–1550) (before 1547–1578)

Johanna

× Hubert Goltzius

Barbara Verhulst

Margareta Verhulst

× Jacob de Punder (1527–c. 1570) 1551/2 (Mechelen)

(1526–1583)

× Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525–1569) 1551/2 Table 17.2

Ottoman government in order to limit their contact with the local population. Merchants, scholars and artists created more opportunities to gather information, which could be used by the ambassadors. They often acted informally on the political scene because their access to the rulers’ innermost circles could build confidential relationships. Organizing political plots under the cover of art and commerce was a longstanding practice.44 As his late works demonstrate, Coecke had a first-hand knowledge of the fresco cycles by Giulio Romano (1499–1546) adorning the Palazzo Te in Mantua, which he may have visited during his trip to the Ottoman Empire or later.45 Mantua was the stronghold of the Gonzaga allies of Charles V. Federico II of Gonzaga (1500–1540) received the emperor in 1530 after his coronation at Bologna and again in 1532. His brother Ferrante (1507– 1557) had fought with him against the Turks at Tunis. It was on the occasion of the emperor’s sec-

ond visit to Mantua that Titian, Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/90–1576), was introduced to Charles  V. From 1533, he was appointed court painter of his imperial majesty. Titian’s landscapes, through the medium of prints done by other artists, had a great influence on Bruegel’s early drawings.46 The engravings circulated easily and quickly via different channels, especially among artists, the erudite elite and the court. It seems very plausible that Bruegel knew Titian’s work before his departure for Italy and benefited from the wide network of Coecke who was also the court painter of Mary of Hungary (1505–1558).47 In addition, the possibility that Coecke personally met the Venetian master should also be considered. The essential role of Coecke in the delegation sent to the Sultan and how he was introduced to the Gonzaga have not yet been well determined.48 The journey in Ottoman territories marked a turning point in Coecke’s life, not only for his personal

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artistic development, but also for his career. After his return, in 1534, he received the title of Painter of the Emperor.49 From his trip he brought back sketches made on the spot that were reworked, around 1545, into modelli (final drawings) for seven large-scale tapestries, a commission from Charles V or his entourage, probably as companion pieces for the Battle of Tunis set to which Coecke made a remarkable contribution.50 The tapestry project was abandoned but the modelli were transferred onto woodblocks for prints. His widow, Mayken Verhulst, published Ces Moeurs & Fachons de faire de Turcz avecq’ les Regions y appartenantes (Customs and Fashions of the Turks with the Regions belonging to them) in 1553. Apart from some occasional quotations (Suleiman’s portrait, mosques, tents, etc.) scattered in his designs for tapestries, it was only when the Moeurs series were issued that the drawings revealing Coecke’s incredible faculty of observation were disseminated. As we shall see further, this ethnographic-like reportage had a decisive influence on Pieter Bruegel.51 In 1539, Coecke published his first Dutch translation of the Book IV of Architecture by Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) and, in 1542, the French version.52 His friend, Cornelis Grapheus (1482–1558), wrote a poem in Latin as the introduction to his book, attesting to the close relationship between the two humanists, both from Aelst. Grapheus, condemned for his subversive sympathies, returned to public function as the city’s secretary in 1540.53 He was also interested in architectural treatises.54 With the exception of the German version of Book  IV, which was provided by Rehlinger, his fellow adventurer in the pseudo-sale of tapestries in Turkey, Coecke translated the original Italian texts into Dutch and French. Between 1545 and 1550, when Bruegel is considered to be in Coecke’s workshop, several volumes were published: Book III in Dutch (1546) and French (1550), Book  IV as a second edition in Dutch (1549) and second and third editions in French (1545, 1550) and in German (1543 N.S.). Mayken Verhulst posthumously continued the work of her husband. Thus, the

Dutch translation by Coecke of the Books of Architecture I and II in one volume, and Book  V, were issued in 1553 and again in 1558, at the same time as a re-edition of the German Book IV. Bruegel was then more than familiar with these art-theoretical discourses, the content of which he made use of in his compositions.55 In 1544–5, Pieter Coecke took on a last apprentice, Pauwels Colve. If he continued his training, he must have learned and worked with Bruegel.56 We do not know anything about Bruegel’s education. We can only hypothesize that, besides learning the art of miniature with Mayken Verhulst, he was, like any apprentice and assistant, associated with current projects in the studio. Bruegel may have attended one of the major events of this mid-century, the Joyous Entry of 1549, whose success resulted from a collective effort and the interconnectivity within artistic and intellectual elites. The Joyous Entry of 1549 in Antwerp In 1549, Philip  II of Spain (1527–1598) made an inauguration tour in the Low Countries as the future successor of his father, Charles  V.57 The Entry on 11 September constituted a major event for the city of Antwerp, which had enjoyed special privileges since the reign of Maximilian I (1459– 1519).58 In turn, the metropolis as a financial marketplace played a crucial role as a credit provider for the Habsburgs. At the time, Antwerp was one of the most significant international platforms in Europe for banking and trading, particularly luxury goods.59 In addition, foreign nations and merchants constituted an important source of income.60 Traditionally, they actively participated in festivities organized in honour of the rulers. For the foreign mercantile communities, the Joyous Entry was an opportunity to show allegiance to the imminent new monarch, acting as ‘unofficial ambassadors’ of their hometown or republic. The Italian merchants, subdivided into several nations, reflected the political fragmentation of Italy. The Genoese had enjoyed a special status since the agreement made between Andrea Doria (1466–

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1560) and Charles V in 1528; they were an integral part of the Spanish Empire and the merchants in Antwerp were also subjects of the emperor.61 Little is yet known about the role of the foreign nations as cultural and political mediators in the development of exchanges and the dissemination of ideas between the Low Countries and their native land. Due to its rapid economic growth and its cosmopolitan character, Antwerp was the place to be, not only for the wealthy but also for all those who tried to establish their niche in the flourishing market and take advantage of the profit-making situation. The Entry of the Emperor and his son was carefully prepared and supervised by Grapheus, the city’s secretary, who was influenced by the ideas of Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536).62 He and his friend Coecke were the main designers and choreographers of the event.63 Cornelis also ensured that the Joyous Entry was immortalized by publishing an official account, Le triumphe d’Anvers, faict en la susception du Prince Philips, Prince d’Espaign (The Triumph of Antwerp, created for the succession of Prince Philip, Prince of Spain), which included detailed descriptions of the festivities accompanied by woodcut illustrations of the temporary decorations after designs by Coecke.64 The Antwerp Council forbade painters, sculptors and printers to reproduce in any form whatsoever the decorations erected on the occasion or even to publish descriptions.65 In other words, only official publications were authorized.66 Bearing the title of sworn bookseller of the emperor, Coecke was granted the privilege to publish in 1550 the memorial book, issued the same year in Flemish and Latin.67 This honour attests to Coecke’s status within the urban elite. As specified by Grapheus himself, the official festival description offers a more elaborate and idealized rendition of the Entry than what really happened.68 For the Antwerp municipality, the Entry was the ideal opportunity to bring together all its artistic and financial resources in order to impress the Holy Roman Emperor and the future King of Spain. In this regard, Grapheus provided some details

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about this huge enterprise. Twenty-one triumphal arches were erected and financed by the city and five by the foreign merchants. The municipality paid the extravagant amount of 130,000 crowns and the foreign nations 26,800 Carolus guilders. In total, 1,716 artists and artisans, including 234 painters, all from Antwerp, were involved in the realization of the temporary settings.69 The streets and the main points of the processional route were punctuated with arches and tableaux vivants staged in open-air theatres decorated with tapestries, paintings, trompe-l’oeil, sculpted decorations in wood, stucco and papier mâché, such as the famous giant of Antwerp. Druon Antigonus (Antigoon) was a key figure on the path that the prince performed through the city. Grapheus portrayed the giant in detail and described his exploits (fig. 17.2).70 Leen Huet suggests that the monumental sculpture of the giant Druon could have influenced Bruegel for his Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), painted in 1563.71 This collective project, which brought together the intellectual and humanist elite and artists from all backgrounds, even foreigners living in Antwerp, at different stages of their training or career, was without a doubt a unique opportunity for them to distinguish themselves from their colleagues and to expand their network. At that time, Pieter Bruegel, more than likely a member of Pieter Coecke’s studio, was a privileged observer of the preparatory works for the event, from their conception to their achievement. The realization of the whole had to be completed in thirty-two days but a few months before, in March and April, Council meetings were held concerning the preparation of the Entry.72 Through his master, who played an important role, Bruegel may have collaborated in this Gesamtkunstwerk or at least was immersed in the hectic atmosphere and the bustle of the city.73 It was a favourable time for him to meet many artists and personalities. Some were (directly) related to the circle of Pieter Coecke and his wife, and would play a fundamental role in Bruegel’s career.

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Fig. 17.2 Cornelis Grapheus, published by Pieter Coecke van Aelst and printed by Gillis Coppens van Diest, The Giant of Antwerp, from Le triumphe d’Anvers, faict en la susception du Prince Philips, Prince d’Espaigne, 1550, woodcut, 265 × 205 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 20 (inv. 20.43)

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Due to the fire of 1576 that destroyed part of the city archives – the accounts of the Antwerp treasurers and administrators around the middle of the sixteenth century – the documents concerning the Entry are scarce. The remaining documents examined by Edmond Roobaert divulged the name of a few artists. Some of these are only known through archival sources as no work can be attributed to them: such as the painter Gommaer van Nerenbroeck alias van Eerenbroeck (?–in/or before 1555), who was paid for street decorations.74 His name is mentioned several times in the Liggeren. In 1551–2, Gommaer was the dean of the guild, together with Christiaan van den Queeckeorne (c.  1515–1578),75 not unknown to Bruegel, who became master that year.76 Jan van Wueluwe (c. 1485–1550) coordinated with the assistance of Jan Crans,77 both painters of the city, the practical aspects of the realization of the decorations, the organization and the distribution of the work. Van Wueluwe was an important figure in the Antwerp social and cultural life. Four times dean of the Guild of St Luke, he was the Prince of the Violieren, at the head of the largest rhetoric chamber in Antwerp for a period of twelve years.78 Van Wueluwe commissioned other artists to carry out the works entrusted to him, was the intermediary between them and the authorities, and paid their wages.79 The following painters were hired to decorate the arches and stages.80 Jan Mandijn (c.  1500–c.  1560), who became the city’s painter in 1555, was famous for his paintings in the manner of Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) for which there was an important market in Antwerp.81 A few years later, Bruegel in turn would successfully exploit this vein, receiving the nickname ‘the second Hieronymus Bosch’, as mentioned by Lodovico Guicciardini (1521–1589) in his 1567 Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi (Description of the Low Countries), the earliest written reference to the artist.82 Although paintings such as the Battle between Carnival and Lent (1559), Dulle Griet (1563) and the Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562) may be associated with Bosch,83 Bruegel

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earned his sobriquet mostly in producing designs for prints published by Hieronymus Cock. Registered in the Antwerp guild in 1546–7 as a painter, Cock contributed to the decoration for the 1549 celebration.84 A year before, with his wife Volcxken Diericx (c.  1525–1600), he founded the publishing house Aux Quatre Vents (At the Sign of the Four Winds).85 The first print series issued by Cock in 1548 was a set of Designs for jugs and dishes after drawings by Cornelis Floris (1514– 1575).86 In the accounts of the Entry, Cornelis is mentioned as painter. Might he have carried out the decorative work with grotesques, strap- and scrollwork that appears on many of the arches erected by the city?87 Anthonis Palermo (d. 1588/9) was in charge of designing the costumes for the parade and for carrying out some painting work.88 A painter from Mechelen, master in Antwerp in 1545–6, he was an important art dealer in the second half of the sixteenth century.89 Elected dean of the Guild of St  Luke five times, he shared, in 1555–6, this responsibility with Adrian van Hellemont. In January 1556 (N.S.), the Chapter of the Golden Fleece Order met, presided over by Philip  II. On this occasion, street decorations with arches were displayed in the city and the tapestries of the Conquest of Tunis, woven between 1546 and 1552, were hung in the Church of Our Lady.90 This theme was really appropriate, as it constituted a double homage to Charles V who had recently abdicated in favour of his son, Philip II. The victory of the Holy Roman Emperor in 1535 over the army of Hayreddin Barbarossa (c. 1478–1546), Suleiman’s admiral, was considered throughout Christendom as a triumph over the infidels. From a political point of view, the crushing of the military forces of Suleiman, a sworn enemy of the Habsburgs, proving that the Sultan was not invincible, had a great impact in the West. The cartoons of the Battle of Tunis were designed by two court painters: Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen (1503/5–1559), who received the commission, and Pieter Coecke, who carried out almost all the main groups and figures in the

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foreground. Bruegel may have had the opportunity to follow the execution of the cartoons of the Tunis tapestry set or may even have been involved in making them, as Manfred Sellink and Ron Spronk suggest.91 Coecke’s work was executed on independent cartoons that were cut and pasted into the overall compositions.92 The names of a small number of artists involved in this collective project are known from other sources. Among them, Frans Floris and Claude Noirot were of significant importance in the life of Bruegel. Floris, who likely passed through Coecke’s studio in the late 1530s,93 received from the town’s Genoese community the prestigious commission to paint their triumphal arch (fig. 17.3). The iconography was produced in close collaboration with the Genoese financier, merchant and man of letters Stefano Ambrosio Schiappalaria (d.  1581), who settled in Antwerp in the 1540s.94 Noirot created the matrix for silver and copper pennies with the effigy of the King of Spain, ordered by the two Muntmeesters (Masters of the Mint), the international merchants and art dealers Joris Vezeleer and Pieter Van de Walle.95 Both belonged to the innermost circle of the imperial court and had close contacts with tapestry weavers and Coecke. Claude Noirot was a relative of Jean Noirot, one of Bruegel’s major patrons.96 After 1550 Pieter Coecke remained active in the Scheldt city until his death, in Brussels, on 6 December 1550. Oudekleerkopers (second-hand clothes dealers) sold the contents of his house on 18 July 1553, and on 4 June 1554 the remains of his workshop, including paintings.97 Unfinished works of art and projects were completed during the maintenance of the workshop’s activities and perhaps other works were created before its closure. It was probably Coecke’s eldest son, Pieter  II – who became master in 1550–51, just after the death of his father – who took on the direction of the workshop. The following year, his brother Michiel and Pieter Bruegel registered in the guild.

In the meantime, in 1551, Bruegel worked for the painter-dealer Claude Dorizi (1517–1565), who was probably of Italian origin and is mentioned in the registers of the Guild of St Luke in Mechelen from 1536 onwards. Pieter Baltens (1527–1584)98 painted the interior wings of an altar for the Glovers’ Guild in Mechelen, for which Bruegel executed the exterior wings. This first documented work is unfortunately lost.99 Dorizi, who lived in Mechelen until his death, ran a prosperous studio and shop, the ‘Sheep’, near the Horenbrugge on Katelijnestraat, the epicentre of the city’s activities.100 Katelijnestraat was an important axis, giving access to the road to Antwerp, only 25 kilometres away. It is also the street where the Verhulst-Bessemeers family had its headquarters.101 In other words, Dorizi was their neighbour. In the 1560s Mechelen was still an important market centre for luxury goods. About 150 painters’ and sculptors’ workshops were active, including the one led by the court painter Michiel Coxcie (c. 1499–1592).102 The city also was famous for its production of distemper on canvas. As mentioned before, members of the Verhulst-Bessemeers family were involved in this sector and they could have worked together to make cartoons for Coecke’s tapestry projects. In 1552, Bruegel went on a trip to Italy, possibly accompanied by the painter Maerten de Vos (1532–1603) and Jacob Jonghelinck (1530– 1606).103 On his return in 1554 he worked for Hieronymus Cock. From 1562 onwards, Bruegel was mainly active as painter.104 Most of his surviving works date to the last seven years of his life. The majority of his paintings known today are large panels that he produced for the upper segment of the market and educated private collectors. His friend Ortelius owned a small grisaille and Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517–1586), counsellor to Margaret of Parma (1522–1586), Governor of the Netherlands, possessed several works. The cardinal’s father, Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle (1486–1550) held an influential position in the Netherlands. From 1530 until

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Fig. 17.3 Cornelis Grapheus, published by Pieter Coecke van Aelst and printed by Gillis Coppens van Diest, Triumphal Arch of the Genoese, from Le triumphe d’Anvers, faict en la susception du Prince Philips, Prince d’Espaigne, 1550, woodcut, 265 × 205 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 20 (inv. 20.43)

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his death he was one of Charles  V’s most trusted advisers and certainly met Coecke. Two of the most important of Bruegel’s patrons came from the Antwerp mercantile upper class. Bruegel painted the Tower of Babel (1563) and, a year later, the Christ carrying the Cross (1564) for Nicolaes Jonghelinck,105 brother of Jacob, sculptor and medallist, and very close to Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle.106 A decade before Nicolaes commissioned the Months cycle of 1565 for his villa suburbana, called ’t Goed ter Beken (The Estate by the Stream),107 he ordered two important series from Frans Floris, The Labour of Hercules and The Liberal Arts, dated respectively 1555 and 1557. Four additional monumental paintings with mythological topics were added later to his prestigious collection.108 As convincingly argued by Edward Wouk, Bruegel’s large-scale landscapes and realistic peasant labour scenes were consciously planned to dialogue with the mythological programme of Floris’s cycles, especially The Liberal Arts.109 Moreover, as suggested earlier, Pieter and Frans had known each other since at least 1549. Gillis II van Coninxloo had also delivered a landscape for the villa.110 It is worth noting that the three artists whose important works of art decorated Jonghelinck’s house belonged to Pieter Coecke’s circle. Jean Noirot was Master of the Mint in Antwerp between 1552 and 1555, and again from 1562 until 1572.111 The inventory of Noirot’s possessions drawn up for the public sale of 15 September 1572 listed five works by Bruegel. The collection, most likely made during the artist’s lifetime, included five paintings, four of which are on canvas, and a large Peasant Wedding on wood, acquired in July 1594 in Brussels by Archduke Ernest and now in Vienna.112 Pieter Coecke’s Artistic Legacy Although this topic is worthy of a detailed study, I focus here on Coecke’s seven woodcuts of Ces Moeurs & Fachons de faire de Turcz avecq’ les Regions y appartenantes, published by Mayken Verhulst in 1553 (figs  17.4–7). As mentioned above, they were initially modelli for tapestries commissioned

maybe as companion pieces for the Tunis series.113 The seven scenes together form a chorographic frieze (45.5 × 482.5 cm) with, on the right, Suleiman riding into the Hippodrome and looking west across his vast conquered territories to the borders of the Habsburg Empire. Coecke innovated the art of landscape painting with his extended panorama and city views, including the multi-ethnic, multireligious and multilingual peoples living in the Ottoman Empire (fig.  17.4). In addition, his selection of themes taken from daily life and religious practices, which reveals a sensitive understanding of foreign cultures and Muslim values, contrasts with the propagandistic images and literature of violent and cruel Turks that were widely disseminated in the Habsburg Empire. This ethnographic-like reportage is unprecedented in Netherlandish art. Coecke’s sharp-witted observation brings to life the cultural practices of ordinary people, including worship rituals, religious celebrations, greetings exchanges, popular dances and music playing (fig. 17.5). Most of the figures are presented as distinct characters with individualized emotions, confirming the artist’s first-hand experience. He also captured commonplace details, such as the way the Turks eat on a circular animal hide spread on the ground or how they relieve themselves. Coecke has masterfully rendered various atmospheric effects, as in a nighttime encampment, with torches brandished and fires burning, around which soldiers and travellers meet (fig. 17.6), and in his depiction of festivities for the sighting of the new moon, which was celebrated with flaming torches, loud music and cries of wonderment (fig. 17.7). He also described with great accuracy the large variety of costumes of the peoples living in the Ottoman Empire. As a participating observer, the painter knew how to dress them while they were walking, standing or moving in different ways. The Moeurs set soon became a model book.114 Coecke noticed and delineated new and original angles of reality with an extraordinary eye for detail. Imbued in humanist culture, he was also

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a keen observer of nature, depicting it in all its diversity, ranging from broad plains stretching to the horizon and rocky landscapes, to cityscape and historical places (fig. 17.4). Following major discoveries and the exploration of new maritime routes, there was a growing interest in cartography, in the mapping and representation of (un)known lands and cities. Coecke was a pioneer in this. In 1533–4 he portrayed from life and with geographical exactness the urban fabric of Istanbul with its walls seen from Pera, on the northern side of the Golden Horn. It is the oldest topographical view of the Ottoman capital.115 The Moeurs drawings made on the spot were reworked, in around 1545, into designs for seven large-scale tapestries, confirming that Coecke was a draughtsman in possession of a mature compositional style. He exploited spatial depth with surprising freedom, the main figures close but rarely parallel to the picture plane and moving in several directions. They stand out in front of vast and versatile panoramas into which smaller individual scenes are scattered, leading to a dynamic perception of the space (see figs 17.4 and 17.7). Coecke skilfully used natural landscapes to orchestrate the setting up of his narrative. Figures stand on promontories with vast plains looming down to the horizon or, conversely, processions take winding roads with mountainous and rocky backgrounds hiding part of the skyline. No outdoor sketches made during his trip and stay in Istanbul and no preparatory drawings related to the seven woodcuts have been found.116 It is certain, however, that Coecke’s travels aroused the interest and curiosity of his contemporaries. This body of drawings (or this material) are the first images of the Ottoman territories and peoples taken from life by a Netherlandish artist. They would have been seen and discussed by intellectuals. One may wonder to what extent some works published in Antwerp at the time were based on the painter’s oral and visual accounts. Literate men

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with curious minds such as Grapheus and Ortelius were undoubtedly among the privileged persons who had access to this unique source based on eyewitness experiences. Bruegel would have been able to unrestrainedly study and contemplate the drawings. As previously pointed out, except for a few ‘quotations’ in tapestry projects, the drawings were not accessible and were not disseminated before the 1553 publication.117 In addition to ethnographic content, the seminal Moeurs series, with multi reading levels, conveys a strong political message that must be understood within the geopolitical context of the time.118 It emphasizes all that was perceived as nonChristian, fashioning the consciousness of the European identity in early modern times by the antithetical elements, ‘we’ and ‘the Other’.119 The seven prints can be seen as Coecke’s ultimate artistic legacy, embodying the distinctive characteristics of an educated man with an inquisitive mind and well aware of the politics and challenges of his time. They paved the way to the art of Pieter Bruegel as they contain all the ingredients that would later characterize his work.120 Conclusion This study has highlighted how the family and social networks of the Coecke-Verhulst dynasty not only helped to launch the career of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, but constituted a solid support throughout his life.121 Thanks to his master, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Bruegel was included in a vivid and thought-provoking environment that allowed him to meet the most influential intellectuals of the time. With Coecke, he learned to develop his critical mind and curiosity, to observe the world from different angles and to transmit his knowledge through images, making it possible for him to portray subjects of ‘intangible cultural heritage’ such as the Twelve Proverbs and the Children’s Games.122

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Fig. 17.4 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, published by Mayken Verhulst in 1553, Ces Moeurs & Fachons de faire de Turcz …, Turkish Soldiers Resting, late impression (17th century?), woodcut, Ghent University Library (inv. BHSL. RES. 1323/2)

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Fig. 17.5 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, published by Mayken Verhulst in 1553, Ces Moeurs & Fachons de faire de Turcz …, A Turkish Burial, late impression (17th century?), woodcut, Ghent University Library (inv. BHSL. RES. 1323/2). Detail

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Fig. 17.6 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, published by Mayken Verhulst in 1553, Ces Moeurs & Fachons de faire de Turcz …, Encampment in Slavonia, late impression (17th century?), woodcut, Ghent University Library (inv. BHSL. RES. 1323/2). Detail

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Fig. 17.7 Pieter Coecke van Aelst, published by Mayken Verhulst in 1553, Ces Moeurs & Fachons de faire de Turcz …, The Feast of the New Moon (17th century?), woodcut, Ghent University Library (inv. BHSL. RES. 1323/2). Detail

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N OT ES 1 The bibliography on Bruegel is so vast that these notes will only refer to essential and recent material published before 2019, such as the monograph exhibition catalogue Vienna 2018. The biographical data concerning Pieter Bruegel are really scarce. For a recent biography and his oeuvre in context, see Huet 2016. 2 For a biography of Coecke, see Van den Branden 1883, vol. 1, pp. 150–59; Marlier 1966, pp. 21–52; Roobaert 2004, pp. 21–45; New York 2014, pp. 18–21. In an attempt to evaluate the size of Coecke’s workshop, Jansen 2007 reviews archival data, most of which are published. On Mayken Verhulst, see Huet and Grieten 1998, pp. 91–4; Op de Beeck 2005. 3 Only the names of members directly related to the Mertens van Dornicke, Coecke, Verhulst-Bessemeers family are included in this study. 4 For the identification of the Master of 1518 with Jan Mertens van Dornicke, see Born 2010, pp. 131, 142–3, 264–5, 275 (with bibliography). 5 Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 71 and note 2. He was probably the son of the famous sculptor, Jan Mertens. Hessel Miedema rejected the hypothesis and suggests that Jan is the son of a Merten, dean in 1497. For now, it is difficult to precisely track back the genealogy of the Mertens van Dornicke family. Born 2010, pp. 131–40; and Miedema 2014, pp. 89, 95, 97–8. 6 In an act dated 3 December 1526, the guardians of the five children that are still minors declare themselves satisfied with the management by Jan Mertens of the maternal estate’s partition. This is the oldest document that refers with certainty to Pieter Coecke van Aelst: ‘Anna Mertens als Van Doernicke, Jan dochtere, met Peteren Coecke als van Aelst, schilder, eius marito et tutor …’ Stadsarchief Antwerpen (= S.A.A.), Schepenregister (= S.R.) 169, K.B., 1526, fol. 147v. Lysbeth Puynders had already died in 1515. Denucé 1936, p. xix, note 1; Marlier 1966, p. 40. 7 Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 108. In an act dated 13 November 1527 concerning the division of a rent on a house, probably after the death of Jan Mertens, Coecke is mentioned as guardian of the other children and his wife’s name is missing. It can be inferred that he already was a widower. S.A.A., S.R., 171, K.B., 1527, fols 279r–v. Van den Branden 1883, vol. 1, p. 288; Marlier 1966, p. 40. 8 According to Van den Branden (1883, vol. 1, p. 151), on 28 January 1552, Pieter II Coecke married Cornelia Muys. She is

9 Registered as Machiel Koeck, schilder. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, pp. 171, 176.

Frans received an early training in the same studio is a compelling hypothesis and could explain some of the affinities that works of Frans share with those of his putative teacher. On Floris, see the recent monograph by Edward Wouk (Wouk 2018), pp. 34–69.

10 Van den Branden 1883, vol. 1, p. 151, note 2; Monballieu 1974, pp. 119–20.

21 On the oeuvre of Marten van Cleve, see Ertz and Nitze-Ertz 2014.

11 In the same document as mentioned in note 6 above: ‘Adriane martens alias van doernicke Jans dochtere met Janne van Amstel schildere eus marito et tutore …’ See also Van den Branden 1883, vol. 1, p. 288.

22 As, for instance, the Massacre of the Innocents, another popular theme of Marten van Cleve: see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 2, pp. 646–69.

12 He became an Antwerp citizen on 1 February 1536 as ‘Jan van Amstel, Aertssone, van Amsterdam, schilder’. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 110.

24 On Pauwels Coecke, see Duverger 1979. In a document dated 21 June 1555 the two children are mentioned as ‘Pauwels Scoecx des voors. wylen Peters natuerlic sone’ and ‘Anthonette Coecx zyne natuerlicke dochter’. S.A.A., S.R., S.B. 256, 1555, fols 257r–v. Ibid., p. 212, note 6.

mentioned as a widow in June 1559. S.A.A., Vierschaar, 1.391, fol. 111v. Roobaert 2004, pp. 44–5, note 87.

13 The identification is not fully accepted: among others, Miedema 2014, pp. 94–5. Another Jan de Hollander is master in Antwerp in 1522–3, the same year as Lucas de Hollandere, painter, who is considered as being Lucas van Leyden. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, pp. 99–100. 14 Van Mander 1604, fol. 215: ‘Hy heeft al vroegh geleeft / want hy was geweest den man van de Moeder van Gillis van Conincx Loy […] op de Penneeelen oft doecken de gronden mede te laten spelen, het welck Brueghel seer eyghentlijck nae volghde.’ 15 Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 134. The same year, Cornelis Floris de Vriendt, sculptor and architect, enrolled in the guild, after the death of his father, Cornelis, stonecutter, on 17 September 1538. Cornelis and his brother Frans must have known Gillis van Coninxloo, father and son. 16 Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 241. Miedema wrote an essay on the Van Coninxloo’s genealogy based on the research carried by Adolf Monballieu. See Miedema 1994–9, vol. 6, pp. 74–84; Roobaert 2000 and Miedema 2012, passim. 17 Van den Branden 1883, vol. 1, pp. 294– 7; Miedema 2014, pp. 92–3, 98. 18 His wife is mentioned as widow in the accounts of Our Lady Church in the year 1546–7. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 90 and note 1. 19 He is called Hendrik III to distinguish him from two other Hendrik van Cleve inscribed in the Liggeren. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 176. 20 Van Mander 1604, fols 230r–v, 242v. Floris was the exact contemporary of Bruegel. Both started to work in Antwerp in the midsixteenth century and were trained in the same stimulating environment. If the hypothesis that Coecke was the master of Bruegel is generally accepted, the possibility that

23

Van Mander 1604, fol. 230v.

25 S.A.A., S.R., W.G. 2, 1555, fol. 31. First mentioned by Van den Branden 1883, vol. 1, p. 307. 26 Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 156; Van den Branden 1883, vol. 1, p. 151, note 3, p. 307; Miedema 2014, pp. 91, 94. 27 Van Mander 1604, fol. 218v: ‘Hy woonde en starf t’Antwerpen: zijn Weduwe wert d’Huysvrouwe van Gielis van Conincx loo.’ 28 Georges Marlier (Marlier 1966, p. 41) suggested a date of c. 1538–40 but Antonia, Coecke’s daughter, was born c. 1539, as it appears from two documents dated 14 November 1547 and 18 February 1548 (N.S.). Stadsarchief Aalst, S.R., 1547, fols 63v–64r, 115v–116r. See Jansen 2007, p. 92, note 51. 29 Concerns the arrears of ‘Cornelis the bookbinder’ for rent he owed to Mayken. S.A.A., Vierschaar, 182, fol. 55. Roobaert 2004, p. 37. 30 S.A.A., S.R., W.G., 1554, vol. 1, fol. 310: Van den Branden 1883, vol. 1, p. 159, note 1. 31 I would like to thank Joost Vander Auwera, who many years ago brought these documents to my attention. Pieter was the son of Jan Coecke and Elisabeth Scuuper and had two brothers, Jan and Marten, and two sisters, Marguerite and Marie. Dumon 2000. According to Marlier (Marlier 1966, pp. 36–8), he was the son of Jan Coecke and Ida de Pauw and had at least one brother, Gillis. These data seem to be wrong or to refer to a namesake. Indeed, Pieter’s brother, Marten, is mentioned as former guardian, in 1555. 32 Bruegel is mentioned as living ‘ontrent het manneken pist recht over den bogaert’.

338 See also Bastiaensen 2016. An Albert de Brulle or van den Brulle, sculptor, born in Antwerp, who moved to Venice in the middle of the sixteenth century, is recorded by Philippe Baert in his manuscript on sculptors and architects from the Low Countries. See Reiffenberg 1848, pp. 51, 544. 33

Monballieu 1974, pp. 109–12, 116–21.

34 Unlike some artists that tardily or never acquired their citizenship, both wanted to permanently settle in the city and enjoy their civic rights. Anthonis Bessemeers became a bourgeois on 28 November 1544 and Christoffel Verhulst on 6 February 1545 (N.S.). Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, pp. 147, 153.

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46 As, for instance, the Landscape with a Fortified City, London, The British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, inv. 1909.0406.1, 236 × 3335 mm, signed and dated 1553. See notice by Manfred Sellink, in Vienna 2018, cat. 3, pp. 26–7. 47 Many paintings by Titian were exhibited in Habsburg palaces. Mary of Hungary commissioned four canvases in 1547–8 for her castle in Binche: the Furies, today in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. 48 The Brussels tapestry-makers, including Dermoyen, who wove, between 1530 and 1535, the History of Scipio after designs by Romano, probably facilitated Coecke’s contact with the Mantuan artist.

35 On 16 April 1550 they bought a house near the Bourse. Monballieu 1974, p. 118.

49 Marlier 1966, p. 42.

36 Lambert Lombard founded an academy in Liège, which would be attended by Frans Floris, Wilhelm Key, Lambert Suavius, Lampsonius, etc. For the most recent research, see Liège 2006.

51 On the influence of tapestry and life-size cartoons on Bruegel, see Sellink 2018a, pp. 303–6. For connections between Bruegel and tapestry designs by Bernard van Orley, Kavaler 2017.

37 On Ortelius as collector, see Lenz 1994, Büttner 1998a.

52 The same year he published a Dutch edition after Vitruvius’s treatise, Der inventive der colommen, in February 1539 (1540 N.S.). On the translations of Serlio’s books, see De la Fontaine Verwey 1976 and De Jonge 2004a.

38 The date of his enrolment as master in the Antwerp guild is not known; the only mention in the Liggeren concerns the record of an apprentice, Willem Smout, in 1552–3. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 181. 39 Between 1558 and 1560, he visited Italy. Monballieu 1984, pp. 205, 207, 215. 40 On 10 November in the Saint Jacques Church. Van den Branden 1883, vol. 1, p. 151, note 2; Monballieu 1974, pp. 118–20. 41 On the status of assistants in artists’ workshops, see Peeters 2007. 42 He became an Antwerp citizen only on 25 April 1550, many years after enrolling in the guild. Key is not an isolated case. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, pp. 113, 143. For Key’s biography, see Tillemans 1979–80 and Jonckheere 2011. 43 He became master in 1531–2. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, pp. 87, 117. The works attributed to Jan Wellens de Cock belong to Antwerp mannerism and show the influence of Bosch. See also Van der Stock 2013, pp. 17, 20–21, note 28, p. 30. 44 On Coecke’s travels in the Ottoman Empire, see Born 2018, pp. 99–133. 45 Mostly in works done after 1540, such as the drawing of the Fall of the Giants (Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, inv. RP-T-1951253) and the Descent of the Cross triptych (Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, inv. 112). See notices by Stijn Alsteens and Maryan Ainsworth in New York 2014, pp. 94–104, cat. nos. 20–22; Born 2018, pp. 94–9.

50 See below.

53 On Grapheus’s background and ideas, see Roobaert 1960, pp. 44–7; Wouk 2018, pp. 141–2. 54 Cornelius was the first to translate the 1504 De Sculptura by Pomponius Gauricus published in 1528 at his brother Joannes Grapheus’s printing house. Roobaert 1960, pp. 43–4; De Jonge 2014, p. 2. Coecke may have been on familiar terms with Grapheus and/or they may have been relatives before he settled in Antwerp. Similarly, it is likely that he also knew the Aelst editor-printer Dirk Mertens, who published poems by Grapheus and many works by humanists, including those of Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More’s Utopia in 1516. 55 This is especially seen in the Children’s Games, the only work that has a perspective point and is constructed on the basis of central perspective. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1017, 116.4 × 160.3 cm, signed and dated 1560. See notice by Sabine Pénot and Elke Oberthaler, in Vienna 2018, cat. 50, pp. 130–34. 56 In 1539–40, about ten years after he registered his first apprentice, Coecke took on Colyn van Nieucasteel, nicknamed Lucidel, identified as Nicolas Neufchâtel. He was a famous portraitist, like Willem Key mentioned previously. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, pp. 135, 150. 57 On the meaning and iconography of the 1549 Entry, see Bussels 2012.

58

Van der Wee 1963, vol. 2, pp. 100–03.

59 For a general overview of Antwerp as world marketplace, see Van der Wee 1963; Van der Wee and Materné 1993. 60 On the contribution of the merchants from foreign nations and from the Low Countries to the prosperity of Antwerp, see Puttevils 2015. 61 The Italians are represented by four nations: the Florentine, Genoese, Lombard and the Lucchese. The Genoese merchants that were members of the massaria or nation had to belong to the Genoese nobility; that is to say, to be one of the twenty-eight alberghi. See Beck 1982, pp. 760–61, 763. The Genoese were closely connected with the Habsburgs and provided military assistance, especially the naval forces of Doria. Despite this alliance, Charles V did not take their side in the quarrel of precedence that opposed the Genoese and the Florentine nations. He forbade both to parade during the Entry. On the financial support of (merchants) bankers to the Spanish Crown, see, among others, Dauverd 2014. On the quarrel seen from the Florentine side, Schellekens 2015. 62 As, for instance, his Institutio principis christiani (The Education of a Christian Prince) of 1516, which fuelled Cornelius’s thought in the conception of the scenario. 63 Grapheus and Coecke van Aelst 1550b. Grapheus stipulated that the representations of the arches and echafauds are by ‘Pierre de Allos painctre de la Majesté Impériale’. Some scholars concluded that Coecke was the author of the woodcut plates only. This is not the place to discuss this question in detail. Nevertheless, it is obvious that it was a collaboration project and that Coecke took part in the design of temporary decorations. As the illustrations show, the style is far from uniform, attesting to the participation of several designers. 64 Marlier 1966, pp. 386–90; De Jonge 2004b; notice by Nadine Orenstein in New York 2014, cat. 23, pp. 104–7. 65

Roobaert 1960, pp. 46, 58 (doc. V).

66 There are two well-known accounts by contemporary witnesses, mostly based on the official narrative, written by Juan Cristóbal Calvete de Estrella, member of Charles V’s entourage, and Lodovico Guicciardini. Calvete de Estrella 1552, fols 220–260; Guicciardini 1567, fols 84–88. 67 There are a few differences between the three versions. Coecke probably requested his licence in order to issue the re-edition of the Dutch translation of Serlio’s Book III of Architecture, which came out the same year. He obtained his printing permit from the central government on 11 March 1549 (N.S.). Algemeen Rijksarchief Brussels, Rekenkamer,

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n. 20789, ad. ann., fol. 22: ‘Van een octroy om te moegen prenten voer peeteren coecke alias van aelst in date den XIen each marcy anon XV° XLVIII. Signata Lens … XII sc. IX d.’ Roobaert 1960, p. 70, note 89. Not on 17 March 1549 as mentioned in the literature. 68 Grapheus and Coecke van Aelst 1550b, fol. A2v. 69 Ibid., fols O3r–v. By counting the numbers of people employed in each category, I get different totals from those mentioned by the authors, e.g. 916 carpenters instead of 895 and for the total of ‘workers’, 1627 instead of 1716. There are other inaccuracies. 70 Ibid., fols K4v–L2. The giant seems to have made a strong impression on Calvete de Estrella (Calvete de Estrella 1552, fols 220v–221v), calling him ‘un ferocissimo Gigante’. 71 Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, inv. 788, 116.4 × 162.1 cm, signed and dated 1563. On the influence of the giants, see Huet 2016, pp. 36–44, and Huet, Chapter 1 in the present volume; notice by Sellink, in Vienna 2018, cat. 61, pp. 168–71. 72 Grapheus and Coecke van Aelst 1550b, fol. A4. The thirty-two days probably correspond to the time elapsed between the date they were warned of the coming of the Prince and the D-Day. The staging and the various architectural projects were more than likely planned long before. For the Council meetings and the ordinances, see Roobaert 1960, p. 65, note 27. 73 Grapheus and Coecke van Aelst 1550b, fol. A4: ‘Sy tu avois veu, la incroiable multitude des ouvriers travaillans painctres, architecteurs, ymaginiers, menuysiers, sijeurs, charpentiers, febures ou ferronniers, & aultres ytieulx besongnant de la hache, du marteau, de la sie, du wymbrequin, lineal, compas, esquerre, levier, au chizeau, espinces, pincheau a la paincture, & c. iour & nuict travaillans, a grosses sueurs, excitans ou admonestans lung laultre au travvail, menant bruict, courant cha & la comme formis, eulx esiouyssant a icelluy œuvre, & souvent se entretenssant pour le pris ou coustaige d’icelluy.’ 74 Most of the data come from the city’s accounts for the year 1550 and some payments for the Entry are still recorded for the years 1551 and 1552. Roobaert 1960, pp. 38–40, 50, 59 (doc. VIII). 75 He belonged to an important family of artists. He is registered in the Liggeren as ‘Meester Kerstiaen vanden Queeckborne, schilder’ in 1545–6. According to Van Mander (Van Mander 1604, fol. 230), he was a good landscape painter and lived near the Bourse. He took on five apprentices, including Denys Calvaert in 1556–7. He was friends with Anthonis Palermo (see below). They

bought together three houses on 6 May 1562. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, pp. 153, 167, 174, 178, 199–200, 261, 265; Van den Branden 1883, vol. 1, pp. 290–93. 76 Van Nerenbroeck, master in 1519–20, registered four apprentices. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, pp. 92–3, 103, 111, 119, 123, 174. 77 Few data are available on Crans. In 1535–6 he was dean with Eduwaert Buyst. They enrolled in the guild in 1523–4, during the deanship of Hendrik van Wueluwe, father of Jan. Buyst was connected by a chain of inlaws to the Wueluwe (see below). Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 102 and note 1, p. 123; Roobaert 1960, pp. 50–51, 61 (doc. XV). 78 Jan was the son of Hendrik van Wueluwe (d. 1533) and Heylwich Tonis (d. 1528), a well-to-do Antwerp painters’ family. The father of Heylwich was a key figure in the artistic milieu at the end of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. On Hendrik van Wueluwe (alias the Master of Frankfurt), see Goddard 1984, esp. pp. 26–51, 118–25 (biography); on Jan van Wueluwe, see Van Roey 1954–60. 79 Roobaert 1960, pp. 50–51. 80 Jan van Schelle painted the inscriptions and Hendrik van Schelle, probably his brother, did some painting. Their names regularly appear in the Liggeren after 1532–3. They both had an apprentice that became master the same year as Bruegel. This shows once again that they all moved in the same circle. Roobaert 1960, pp. 50–51, 60 (doc. XII). 81 Mandijn seems to have had a flourishing workshop as he took on seven apprentices between 1530–31 and 1557–8. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, pp. 116, 121, 135, 140, 146, 151, 205; Van den Branden 1883, vol. 1, pp. 159–63; Roobaert 1960, pp. 51, 60 (doc. XIII). 82 Guicciardini 1567, fol. 99. On connections between Bosch and Bruegel, see Ilsink 2009. 83 The Battle between Carnival and Lent, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1016, 118 × 164.2 cm, signed and dated; The Fall of the Rebel Angels, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 584, 117 × 162 cm, signed and dated. See notice by Pénot and Oberthaler, in Vienna 2018, cat. 48, pp. 122–8; Meganck 2014. 84 Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 156; Roobaert 1960, pp. 51, 60 (doc. XIII), 62 (doc. XIX). If Cock went to Italy, he perhaps travelled between 1542 and 1546 or even earlier, with his brother Matthijs. Van der Stock 2013, p. 17.

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85 On Cock and the printing house, see Van Grieken 2010, Van Grieken 2013 and Van der Stock 2013. 86 Van Mulders 1996; notices by Peter Fuhring in Leuven/Paris 2013, cat. nos. 76a– b, pp. 280–83. 87 It appears from the available accounts that he was the highest paid artist. Roobaert 1960, pp. 51, 62 (docs XVII–XVIII). He is documented in Rome in 1538 but returned to Antwerp the same year, probably because of his father’s death. In 1539–40 he became master as sculptor. For a biography, see Van Damme 1996. 88 Roobaert 1960, pp. 40, 59 (doc. III: payment on 19 July 1549). 89 Pieter Goetkind was his apprentice in 1554–6 and married his daughter Catharina. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, pp. 152–3, 189–90, 194, 223, 229, 239, 243 (with description of the festivities for the meeting of the Chapter of the Golden Fleece); Roobaert 1960, pp. 40, 51, 60 (doc. XIII), 62 (doc. XIX); Ciulisová 2012. 90 Ten pieces of the original twelve tapestries set are preserved in Madrid, Patrimonio Nacional (inv. TA 13/1-10), and ten cartoons in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. For a detailed study of the commission, realization and his author, see Horn 1989. For a recent status quaestionis with bibliography, see Buchanan 2014; and for the cartoons, see Vienna 2013. 91 Sellink 2018a, p. 306; Spronk 2018, p. 361. 92 Hendrik Horn (Horn 1989, vol. 1, pp. 122–5) denied the participation of Coecke. However, the typology of the figures, their plasticity, their individualized emotional approach and their movement in the pictorial space are a trademark of his later works. The drawing shows idiosyncratic characteristics in the outlines and shadowing effects, similar to that of Coecke’s Martyrdom of Saint Paul cartoon (Brussels, Musée de la Ville, inv. L1898-3, 340 × 383 cm). 93

Wouk 2018, p. 44.

94 The arch was one of the most prestigious with its 28-metre height; 187 carpenters, 72 painters and 22 sculptors worked on its execution and it cost 9,000 Carolus. For comparison, the construction of the Florentines’ arch required 77 carpenters, 28 painters and 18 sculptors, while the city employed 421 carpenters, 37 painters and 16 sculptors. The numbers of painters hired for the Genoese arch seems very high. Grapheus and Coecke van Aelst 1550b, fols E4r–G1v, fol. O3. For the contribution of Floris and his connection with the Genoese, see Wouk 2018, pp. 121–59.

340 95

ANNICK BO RN

Roobaert 2004, p. 149.

96 On the Noirot family and relatives, see Pinchart 1858, pp. 214–26; for Claude (mentioned between 1550 and 1563), esp. pp. 222–6. 97 S.A.A., Gilden en Ambachten, 4.287, fol. 37 and fol. 129v. Roobaert 2004, pp. 42–3, note 78. 98 Inscribed as Pierken (Balten) Custodis, painter, in 1540–41. Rombouts and Van Lerius 1864–76, vol. 1, p. 139. Based on archival data, Baltens was born after 1525. He could not therefore have been a master that year. This is probably an error in the enrolment. Van der Stock 1998, pp. 158, 241, notes 60–62; and on Baltens as print publisher, ibid., pp. 158–72. See also Huet 2016, pp. 95–101. 99

Monballieu 1964.

100 Monballieu 1966. Dorizi held a lottery in Mechelen in 1559–60. For a recent discussion on this topic, see Raux 2018, pp. 175–93. 101

Onclincx 1989.

102 On Mechelen as artistic production centre in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see also De Marchi and Van Miegroet 2006b. 103 A detailed account is given by Huet 2016, pp. 109–46. 104 His first attributed painting, dated around 1557, is a decorated plate, The drunk cast into the pigsty, private collection, diameter 20 cm. See notice by Sellink, in Vienna 2018, cat. 22, pp. 72–5. 105 The Tower of Babel, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1026, 114.3 × 155.1 cm, signed and dated 1563; Christ carrying the Cross, in the same museum, inv. 1025, 124.2 × 170.7 cm, signed and dated 1564. See notices by Pénot and Oberthaler, in Vienna 2018, cat. nos. 63 and 67, pp. 174– 81, 194–201. 106 Jacob Jonghelinck studied with the Milanese sculptor Leone Leoni, who worked at the court for Charles V. Jacob moved from Antwerp to set up a workshop in Brussels in 1562 and was appointed court sculptor the following year. See Smolderen 1996. 107 ‘Sesthien stucken van Bruegel onder de welcke is den Thoren van Babilonyen, eenen Cruysdrager, de Tweelf maenden’. Document dated 21 February 1565, when Jonghelinck put his collection as pledge for the debts of Daniel de Bruyne: S.A.A.,

Stadsprotocollen 1563–70, VIII, 1551, published by Denucé 1932, p. 4. On Nicolaes Jonghelinck’s collection, Buchanan 1990a and Buchanan 1990b. Five paintings of a series of six have been preserved. For the Months series, signed and dated 1565, three in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum: The Gloomy Day, inv. 1837, 117.6 × 162.2 cm, The Return of the Herd, inv. 1018, 117 × 159.7 cm, Hunters in the Snow, inv. 1838, 116.3 × 162.5 cm; The Haymaking, Prague, Lobkowicz Palace, 114 × 158 cm; Harvesters, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 19.164, 119 × 162 cm. See notices by Pénot and Oberthaler, in Vienna 2018, cat. nos. 72–5, pp. 214–41. 108 See also Denucé 1932, p. 5. Cornelis Cort turned the two cycles for Hieronymus Cock into prints. On Nicolaes Jonghelinck and Floris, see Wouk 2018, pp. 326–79, for The Labours of Hercules, cat. pp. 85–96, and The Liberal Arts, cat. pp. 110–16. 109

Wouk 2018, pp. 328–31, 361–79.

110 ‘Een stuck voor de Jongeling in zyn huys / buyten Antwerpen’: Van Mander 1604, fols 267v–268r (Van Coninxloo) and fol. 242 (Jonghelinck). 111

Pinchart 1858, p. 226.

112 Smolderen 1995; Hoppe-Harnoncourt 2018, p. 334. Peasant Wedding, dated c. 1567, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 1027, 113.1 × 164.1 cm. See notice by Pénot and Oberthaler, in Vienna 2018, cat. 80, pp. 258–65. 113 See Born 2014; Orenstein 2014 (with a reproduction of the set), and her notice in New York 2014, cat. 45, pp. 184–6, 358, 371; Born 2018, pp. 112–33. The only completed printed version of the editio princeps, to my knowledge, is preserved in London, The British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, inv. E, 6.1-7. 114 Early references are found in the Theâtre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre avec leurs habits et ornemens divers, tant anciens que modernes diligemment depeints au naturel par Luc Dheere Peintre et Sculpteur Gantois, Ghent, Ghent University Library . Lucas D’Heere quoted literally several figures from the Moeurs, attesting that he was in possession of a set. Fols 108, 109, 111–113 with figures carefully reproduced, demonstrate the rhetorical convention of the expression ‘after life’. As mentioned by Karel van Mander in the preface to the Schilder-boeck, Lucas

D’Heere was his master. This may explain Van Mander’s emphasis on the engravings set in his biography of Coecke, which he may have discovered in his master’s studio. Van Mander 1604, fol. 218v. 115 Born 2018, pp. 124–32. It is worth mentioning that the Master of 1518 (alias Jan Mertens van Dornicke) represented, around 1516–18, a topographically accurate view of the Sainte-Baume site on the right wing of the Triptych of Mary Magdalene (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 329). See Born 2010, pp. 199–229; Born 2015. 116 An almost unknown drawing based on the artist’s direct experience is preserved in London, The British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, inv. Pp, 1.19, 214 × 176 mm, pen and black ink. The careful execution suggests that the Seated Oriental Soldier is a model drawing belonging to a repertoire of patterns used in various compositions and media. Born 2018, p. 112, note 6. 117 With the exception of a few engravings, the drawings of the Tunis expedition were only revealed at the occasion of the creation of the tapestries set. Was there a desire to preserve some primacy to the commissioners of the woven series? In the case of the Moeurs series, the confidentiality linked to a diplomatic mission may have played a role. 118 See, for instance, the scene with Suleiman riding through the Ruins of the Hippodrome: Born 2018, pp. 112–24, and the general meaning of the set, pp. 132–3. 119 Despite the difference of the topic, the same rhetoric prevails in the Tunis series. In my view, Coecke was not only in charge of executing cartoons but co-authored some compositions. In addition, the hypothesis that he accompanied Charles V to Tunis and followed him during his Triumphal Entries in Italy should be considered. The groups and figures painted by Coecke, very close to the Moeurs, suggest indeed a first-hand experience. 120 For a summary of the essence of Bruegel’s compositional technique, see Sellink 2018a, pp. 309, 311. 121 Although I am not able to show it here, the networks set up lived on and worked for the future generations. 122 Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, inv. 339, 74.5 × 98.4 cm.

Fig. 18.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Two Monkeys, 1562, oil on oak panel, 19.8 × 23.3 cm, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie (inv. 2077)

18

Bruegel and Beuckelaer: Contacts and Contrasts Lorne Campbell

A BSTRACT : Bruegel and Beuckelaer (probably several years Bruegel’s junior) painted their most important pictures during coinciding periods: 1559–68 and 1561– 70. They worked on similar ranges of subject, took an interest in encyclopaedic surveys of certain categories (Bruegel’s Proverbs and Months, Beuckelaer’s Four Elements) and employed similar conventions. Both would frequently relegate the main narrative to the middle ground or background. Perfectly capable of depicting reality with exacting accuracy, both, if it suited their purposes, would resort to violent though carefully disguised distortion. They sold to the same collectors: Jean Noirot, for example. Beuckelaer must have known Bruegel and learned a great deal from him about the handling of oil paint, in grisaille sketches ( Joshua tricked by the Gibeonites, J. Paul Getty Museum) as in large-scale compositions (the Four Elements). Beuckelaer developed a remarkable rapidity and spontaneity of execution, in which he may have rivalled Bruegel and Antonis Mor. Mor’s speed, celebrated by Karel van Mander, would have been well known to Beuckelaer, who sometimes worked as his drapery painter. Comparisons between Bruegel’s and Beuckelaer’s representations of peasants, soldiers and animals reveal instructive differences in their attitudes to past and present, to the exotic and to normality.

—o— Pieter Bruegel the Elder was in my view the greatest painter who has ever lived. Joachim Beuckelaer, a considerable though neglected genius, was not in the same league. I cannot demonstrate from the documentary evidence that they were in contact but I am convinced that they knew each other and

exchanged ideas. Usually it was Beuckelaer who learned from Bruegel; but occasionally Bruegel took inspiration from Beuckelaer, whose paintings may help in the interpretation of Bruegel’s. Bruegel’s painting of two red-capped mangabeys, dated 1562, shows the animals painfully chained and isolated from each other by Bruegel’s faultless sense of geometric pattern (fig.  18.1). Far away, across the wide estuary, is the skyline of Antwerp.1 Contrast Beuckelaer’s painting of 1566 of a man selling exotic animals, including two roloway monkeys, outside the new Exchange in Antwerp (fig. 18.2).2 The monkeys are surrounded by people, a dog, two parrots and a profusion of dead birds. The parrot on the man’s hand is remarkably like the bird in Antonis Mor’s Portrait of a Woman with a Parrot, dated 1564(?) (fig. 18.3).3 Karel van Mander, who seems to have been well informed about Beuckelaer, stated that Beuckelaer worked as Mor’s drapery painter.4 Perhaps he also painted accessories. Joachim Beuckelaer became a master of the Antwerp guild in 1560–61 and died probably in 1575. His signed or monogrammed paintings bear dates between 1562 and 1570. He specialized in market scenes, market squares and kitchens.5 His one series, the Four Elements,6 can perhaps be related to the same encyclopaedic tradition that gave rise to Bruegel’s Proverbs and Children’s Games. According to Van Mander, Joachim painted for an

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Fig. 18.2 Joachim Beuckelaer, Man selling Exotic Animals, 1566, oil on canvas, 139.5 × 204.5 cm, Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte (inv. Q 1930 nr. 659)

unnamed mint master of Antwerp a kitchen piece. Every day the mint master brought something new to be included and the picture was completely filled with fowl, fish, meat, fruit and vegetables.7 The mint master was evidently Jean Noirot, who disappeared from Antwerp in 1572 in mysterious circumstances. In the inventories taken after his departure was listed a large painting described as ‘Martha’s kitchen’, highly valued and probably Beuckelaer’s kitchen piece.8 It may have resembled the Prado Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, attributed to Beuckelaer.9 Noirot owned several Bruegels, including ‘a large panel of a peasant wedding painted in oils by P. Bruegel’.10 This was perhaps the Peasant Wedding purchased in 1594 by the Archduke Ernest from a cousin of Philippe Prats, Secretary of the Privy Council.11 Prats had married in 1587 Marie van Eeckeren, whose aunt

had married Jean Noirot and who was therefore first cousin to Noirot’s children.12 If Noirot’s Peasant Wedding was indeed the picture sold in 1594 to the archduke, it may be plausibly identified as the Peasant Wedding now in Vienna and possibly painted in 1567–8.13 The presence in the picture of a portrait of Hans Franckaert has not yet been explained.14 In the Four Elements, dated 1569 and 1570, Beuckelaer was painting with great freedom and spontaneity and was clearly working at considerable speed (figs 18.4 and 18.5). Mor’s speed of execution was celebrated by Van Mander in his account of his portrait of Hubert Goltzius.15 It can be illustrated by a detail from a portrait in London (figs  18.6 and 18.7). Painting the ruffled collar, Mor has loaded his brush with white and has deliberately picked up some wet paint from adjacent

BRUEGEL AND BEUCKELAER

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Fig. 18.3 Antonis Mor, Portrait of a Woman with a Parrot, 1564(?), oil on panel, 120 × 94.7 cm, Glasgow, Hunterian Art Gallery (inv. GLAHA 43764)

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Fig. 18.4 Joachim Beuckelaer, Water (from the Four Elements series), 1569, oil on canvas, 158.1 × 214.9 cm, London, National Gallery (inv. NG 6586)

Fig. 18.5 Detail from fig. 18.4. The scales of the dead pike on the left

BRUEGEL AND BEUCKELAER

areas to create, with minimal effort, an illusion of layers of semi-transparent fabric.16 Bruegel’s skill and speed of execution are wonderfully demonstrated in enlarged details. In the Massacre of the Innocents, the two greyhounds playing in the snow are splendidly observed, marvellously reduced to memorable geometric patterns and painted, without underdrawing or a reserve, directly on top of the snow (fig. 18.8).17 In Bruegel’s Death of the Virgin, the crucifix, seen from above and resting on a pillow at the end of the bed, is painted with great rapidity, extraordinary economy and breathtaking skill (fig. 18.9).18 Mor’s, Bruegel’s and Beuckelaer’s exceptional abilities in handling oil paint have nothing to do with developments in contemporary Venetian art but are founded on a Netherlandish tradition that goes back to Jan van Eyck and perhaps to his predecessors. In Jan van Eyck’s portrait of Giovanni(?) Arnolfini and his wife, the reflection in the mirror of the brass chandelier gives some idea of the spontaneity and speed with which, even on this tiny scale, Jan handled his brushes.19 Beuckelaer’s oil sketches on paper appear to be heavily indebted to Bruegel’s grisailles: for example, the Death of the Virgin. Beuckelaer’s Joshua tricked by the Gibeonites (Joshua 9:4–15), dated 1565,20 is painted in black, white and tones of grey on brownish paper (fig. 18.10). It has been boldly blocked in in grey; some paper has been left exposed, to register as a mid-tone and to give some effect of colour. It was then heightened in white and black, the black applied after the white. Bruegel used the same method in the Death of the Virgin; Beuckelaer followed a similar process in his underpaintings – for example, in his Four Elements.21 In his great Christ carrying the Cross of 1564, Bruegel isolated, on an escarpment in the lower right corner, the group of the Virgin, Saint John and three of the holy women (fig. 18.11). They resemble in their placing and in their poses the group in Beuckelaer’s Christ carrying the Cross,

347

dated 1562 (fig. 18.12).22 Here we have a possible instance of Bruegel taking an idea from Beuckelaer. Bruegel’s figures, who have very small heads and elongated bodies, are painted in a self-consciously mannered style – I don’t know why, perhaps merely to set them apart from the hurrying crowds below. Bruegel and Beuckelaer had different ideas about placing episodes from the Gospel narrative in contemporary settings. In two Flights into Egypt, both dated 1563, Beuckelaer showed the holy family boarding a public ferry.23 In both pictures, there is activity on the opposite riverbank. In the Brussels Flight, there are a church and a religious procession with three tonsured clerics: one carries a crucifix(?); another holds a book (fig. 18.13). They are preceded by two boys carrying small flags on crossshaped poles; and another two boys carrying large lighted candles. In front of them are two archers, each with a longbow and arrows. They follow a man bearing a large flag, a drummer and a man playing a fife. In front of them are more archers. What will happen, I wonder, when the holy family reaches the other bank? The three men with the flag, drum and fife are reminiscent of Bruegel’s Three Soldiers of 1568 (fig. 18.14).24 I’d like to end with a question that may seem frivolous but which I can’t answer. It may be important. Why do Beuckelaer’s men wear trousers, whereas Bruegel’s men wear hose?25 Beuckelaer’s men are not all sailors, who are believed to have worn trousers.26 Bruegel’s men are peasants and do not seem intrinsically different from Beuckelaer’s peasants and tradespeople. It is well established that there is a lot of sexual innuendo in Beuckelaer’s pictures yet he does not use codpieces to convey phallic references. In his Two Women and a Man selling Poultry, dated 1567, however, the man’s shirt and pouch are arranged to be more suggestively phallic than any of Bruegel’s codpieces.27 An informed comparison between the clothes worn by men and women in the works of Beuckelaer and Bruegel could be very instructive.

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Fig. 18.7 Detail from fig. 18.6. Photomicrograph of part of the man’s collar

OPPOSITE

Fig. 18.6 Antonis Mor, Portrait of a Man, oil on oak panel, 51.2 × 42.6 cm, London, National Gallery (inv. NG 1231)

349

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Fig. 18.8 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1566, oil on oak panel, 109.2 × 158.1 cm, Windsor Castle, Royal Collection Trust (inv. RCIN 405787). Detail, greyhounds playing in the snow

Fig. 18.9 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Death of the Virgin, c. 1565, oil on oak panel, 37 × 55.7 cm, Banbury, National Trust, Upton House, The Bearsted Collection (inv. NT 446749). Detail, crucifix and pillow

BRUEGEL AND BEUCKELAER

351

Fig. 18.10 Joachim Beuckelaer, Joshua tricked by the Gibeonites, 1565, oil on paper, 26.1 × 19.1 cm, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum (inv. 90.GG.133)

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Fig. 18.11 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Christ carrying the Cross, 1564, oil on oak panel, 124.2 × 170.7 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie (inv. 1025)

BRUEGEL AND BEUCKELAER

Fig. 18.12 Joachim Beuckelaer, Christ carrying the Cross, 1562, oil on panel, 96.5 × 79 cm, Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art (inv. P.1999-0001)

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Fig. 18.13 Joachim Beuckelaer, Flight into Egypt, 1563, oil on oak panel, 112.5 × 153.5 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 3888). Detail, procession

BRUEGEL AND BEUCKELAER

Fig. 18.14 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Three Soldiers, 1568, oil on oak panel, 20.3 × 17.8 cm, New York, The Frick Collection (inv. 65.1.163)

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N OT ES I am grateful for much help from many colleagues, especially Margreet Wolters, Rachel Billinge and Nicola Christie. 1 Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. 2077. The red-capped or white-collared mangabey, Cercocebus torquatus, is found in West/ Central Africa (Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon). 2 Naples, Capodimonte, inv. Q 1930 nr. 659: Campbell 2014, vol. 1, p. 128, fig. 48. The roloway monkey, Cercopithecus roloway, is found in West Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana). 3 Glasgow, Hunterian, inv. GLAHA 43764: Friedländer 1975, no. 398, plate 193. 4

Miedema 1994–9, vol. 1, fol. 238v.

5

Campbell 2014, vol. 1, pp. 92–102.

6 London, National Gallery: ibid., vol. 1, pp. 103–36. 7

Miedema 1994–9, vol. 1, fol. 238.

8 Smolderen 1995, p. 38: ‘Item een groot stuck schilderyen genaempt de kuecken van Martha, LXIII g. X st.’ 9

Silva Maroto 2001, pp. 198–9.

10 Smolderen 1995, p. 38: ‘Item een groot tafereel van eender boeren bruyloft van P. Bruegel [olie werve in lyste gestoffeert], LXXX g.’

11 Haupt and Wied 2010, p. 227: July 1594 ‘Item dem secretario Prats für seinen vettern durch den camerfurier geschickht umb ain gmäl der baurn hochzeit des Brüegels 100 cronen, sindt 160 fl.’

22 Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, inv. P.1999-0001: Friedländer 1975, plate 157, no. 315 (confused with a painting of the same subject by Aertsen).

12 Campbell 2014, vol. 1, p. 189 and references.

23 Antwerp, Rockoxhuis: D’Hulst 2005, pp. 61–2; and Brussels, Royal Museums, inv. 3888: Wolters 2011, p. 222.

13 Demus, Klauner and Schütz 1981, pp. 110–15.

24 New York, Frick, inv. 65.1.163: Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, p. 303.

14 The man on the extreme right is clearly Franckaert: compare the silver medal by Jacques Jonghelinck dated 1565 and published in Smolderen 1967.

25 Compare, for example, Beuckelaer’s Two Women and a Man selling Poultry, dated 1564, Toledo, OH: Baumann et al. 1992, p. 317; or his Market Square with the Ecce Homo, dated 1565, Stockholm: Campbell 2014, vol. 1, p. 94.

15

Miedema 1994–9, vol. 1, fol. 248v.

16 Campbell 2014, vol. 2, pp. 562–6 (esp. p. 565, fig. 7). 17 Windsor Castle, inv. RCIN 405787: Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, p. 289, fig. 151d. For comparable dogs in the Vienna Christ carrying the Cross, see pp. 256–7. 18 Upton House, inv. NT 446749: Campbell 2014, vol. 1, pp. 45, 55, fig. 12. 19

Campbell 2017, esp. p. 259, fig. 16.2.

20 Los Angeles, Getty Museum, inv.  90.GG.133: Campbell 2014, vol. 1, p. 111, fig. 16. 21

Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 6, 110–11.

26 De Bruyn 1581, fol. Z 8, shows three sailors from Holland, one from ‘Belgium’ and one from ‘Britain’, all wearing trousers. On fol. Z 7 is a ‘Rusticus Brabantus vulgari vestitus’, dressed in hose with a codpiece. 27 Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum, inv. 964: Campbell 2014, vol. 1, p. 96.

Fig. 19.1 Max J. Friedländer (1867–1958) Photo: The Hague, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, Collection Max J. Friedländer, inv. 2

19

Max J. Friedländer’s Perception of Bruegel: Rereading the Art Historian from a Historical Perspective Hilde Cuvelier Dem Bauernbruegel war er besonders zugetan.1

A BSTRACT : Max J. Friedländer published with regularity on Bruegel from 1904 until the last volume of Die altniederländische Malerei in 1937 and additionally in his Essays über die Landschaftsmalerei und andere Bildgattungen in 1947. Nevertheless, his essays on Bruegel have never been analysed. His method was primarily based on the concept of the artistic personality upon which he classified the oeuvre. This is precisely important in Bruegel’s case because the acknowledgement of him as an artist – the attributions, distinguishing between original works and copies – depended mainly on a specific perception. A study of Friedländer’s method can offer a better understanding of how and why the art historian’s or historian’s opinion is led by an ingrained method and the spirit of the age. A conscientious analysis can offer insight into the mechanism and ideas that Friedländer used to develop his perception of Bruegel.

—o— From 1903 to 1947 Max J. Friedländer (fig. 19.1) published extensively on Pieter Bruegel the Elder. His articles, monograph, book chapters and book reviews span the whole of his career. A rereading of Friedländer’s texts is of particular interest in order to understand his interpretation of and thoughts on the artist in the first half of the twentieth century. Friedländer was appointed research assistant at Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie (1896), director of the Kupferstichkabinett (1908) and director of the Gemäldegalerie (1924–33), where he worked under the supervision of the director-general Wilhelm

von Bode (1845–1929), the so-called Bismarck of the Berlin museums.2 Friedländer was writing about Bruegel at the most tragic time for Europe. In June 1933, Friedländer had to leave office due to the Nazification of public institutions.3 The Exposition des Primitifs flamands et d’art ancien held in Bruges in 1902 was an international breakthrough for Friedländer and the start of his research on Bruegel. On view for the first time were three authentic, little known Bruegel paintings: the Adoration of the Magi (1564),4 the Census at Bethlehem (156–)5 and the Land of Cockaigne (1567).6 Bruegel’s inclusion in this exhibition, as Francis Haskell has pointed out, was due to the fact that Bruegel remained true to tradition and resisted the influence of the Italian Renaissance.7 In his three reviews of the exhibition, Friedländer stresses the importance of Bruegel. In accordance with the exhibition’s objective, he describes Bruegel as an unconventional artist who was able to surpass all his contemporaries because he remained true to the national style. A style that he defines as popular and Germanic.8 He assigns the artist’s selfconscious personality as the source and cause for his adherence to tradition. As to the basic features of Bruegel’s work, he identifies: a determined description of the essence of things, naturalistic observation, humour, ingenuity and his perception

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of the landscape. Regarding the influence of Bruegel’s Italian journey, Friedländer concludes that it did not have an impact on the healthy Germanic character of his drawings and paintings. Jörn Retterath’s research on the use of ‘Volk’ and ‘Nation’ has proved the close interlinkage between these concepts.9 Moreover, as Jo Tollebeek demonstrated, historians throughout the nineteenth century were accustomed to using medical metaphors – as did Friedländer – in order to describe political, social and cultural crises.10 On the other hand, Friedländer’s article for the Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, apart from the fairy-tale-like vernacular content, makes no real reference to the national or Germanic nature of Bruegel’s work.11 These first impressions are traceable throughout the main part of his writings. Friedländer accentuates the historical chronology and the nature of Bruegel’s oeuvre, which he describes as a fertile germ for the future: the artist in fact did not belong to the Flemish Primitives but instead should be considered to be the first of the new artistic generation. The revival of interest in Bruegel after the 1902 exhibition accelerated Friedländer’s Bruegel research, which he started at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.12 In his subsequent articles his goal was two-fold. The first was to instruct his reader about Bruegel and to explain Bruegel’s significance for Netherlandish painting, for which he had to counter the concept of Bruegel as the ‘Peasant Bruegel’. The second was to explain how and why Vienna had acquired the largest Bruegel collection. To that end he allies Bruegel’s humour with the Habsburg preference for the unusual and popular as an antidote to the stringent rules of the Spanish court. He assigns Bruegel the function of court jester and doubles the popular and humoristic character by using the concept of ‘niederdeutsch’ or lesser civilized German.13 His description thus accords with the geographical classification in use in art historiography (e.g. Karel van Mander). Expanding the boundaries of the Low Countries towards the broader Germanic region had in fact been common practice in German art historiog-

raphy since the beginning of the nineteenth century (e.g. Gustav F. Waagen, Wilhelm von Bode, Ludwig Scheibler). Friedländer presents Bruegel as a genius. In order to bridge the gap between the ‘Peasant Bruegel’ and the genius, he argues that a thorough knowledge of Netherlandish art is indispensable.14 He was a genius, because, unlike many of his contemporaries who painted in the Italian style – which Friedländer considers as a decline or ‘arge Entartung’ – Bruegel remained true to nature.15 Previously, in 1862, Gustav F. Waagen, in his manual on German and Netherlandish painting, and maintained by Wilhelm von Bode, envisaged the Italian influence on history painting as a distortion of the Germanic realist and naturalistic style.16 In addition, at the time Friedländer was writing, anxiety over the loss of traditional values was growing. New demands and attitudes as a result of the industrial revolution in Germany were giving way to a cultural crisis. The crisis became the major source for pessimism and led to discontent with mass culture, capitalism and modernism.17 Pessimism became a widespread feeling, expressed by, among others, Von Bode and Thomas Mann, and one incentive for clinging on to the German national culture.18 In his memoirs, written in exile, Friedländer noted in retrospect in favour of Heinrich Mann, who other than Thomas’s aloofness, stressed the need for the artist’s unpatriotic, active political engagement against uncompromising conservatism.19 Pessimism clarified Friedländer’s description of style and technique employed by Bruegel’s contemporaries. In highlighting the discrepancies between the contemporary and ambitious artists on the one hand and Bruegel on the other, he juxtaposes the words ‘Entartung’ and ‘ausgelebt’ versus the metaphor of the freshwater well of Low German vernacular art. He regards Bruegel as the only unequivocal true and prosperous artist and thus able to counter the decline. Friedländer’s romantic concept of Bruegel as genius implies an artist who arises without a

MAX J . F RIEDLÄNDER ’ S PERCEPTION OF BRUEGEL

teacher, who is autonomous and unconventional. Given the limited knowledge art historians up to that moment had of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Friedländer finds it difficult to accept Van Mander’s statement about Coecke being Bruegel’s master, which he again augments with the lack of influence that the Italian journey had on Bruegel’s work. He opposes the painters practising the ‘hohen stils’, or history painting, to Bruegel’s amusing narrative. Furthermore, Bruegel, unlike the former ‘modern’ painters, reaches not only intellectuals but every single human being. A feature that enables Friedländer’s comparison of Bruegel with Shakespeare, since both artists used popular themes.20 In 1905, Friedländer published two articles on Bruegel. One article is the written transcript of a lecture he gave to Berlin’s Kunstgeschichtliche Gesellschaft (Art History Society).21 In this he accentuates the need for the visual study of Bruegel’s work in order to understand the historical significance of the master, thereby giving preference to visual experience at the expense of Van Mander’s written account. The second article was published in Das Museum, a cultural magazine for art lovers.22 In both these articles he examines the similarities between earlier masters and Bruegel, and singles him out as an innovator. Bruegel is typified as the one artist who was able to abandon the three-dimensional illustrative form and instead emphasized contours, making use of silhouettes and movement (with the dogs in the Hunters in the Snow given as an example). He considers this working method as a remnant of Bruegel’s graphic work. According to Friedländer, Bruegel was the first to impart genre painting with a naive and natural expression. To illustrate and to restore Bruegel’s importance and fame, he refers to the leading master of the fifteenth century, Jan van Eyck, likewise an innovative artist who achieved virtuosity in meticulous naturalism. From Van Eyck to Bruegel – the title of his successful book, published in 1916 – marks the beginning and the end of his research, to which he dedicated his whole career. This book pointed forward to his magnum opus,

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Die altniederländische Malerei (fourteen volumes, published 1924–37), which began with the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb by Jan van Eyck and ended with Summer, Bruegel’s drawing.23 Friedländer’s point of departure is the critical phase in Netherlandish art around 1540 and his assumption that Bruegel was not appreciated by his contemporaries. This conviction enables him to confront the young generation of Floris and Coxie with the older generation of Van Eyck to Massys. He argues that Bruegel was criticized by both the young artists and the older artists for not adhering to the Italian high and beautiful style on the one hand nor following traditional accuracy and precision. Friedländer values the congruity between content and form, which to his mind was in accordance with the common taste of the ordinary people, with a preference for roughness, heaps of figures and caricature. Strongly convinced of the importance of drawings and prints, he argues that Bruegel was foremost a graphic artist, with in fact this distinct quality typical of northern artists. Based on this, he deduces Bruegel’s personal qualities: incomparable decisiveness, lucidity and visual vividness – three aspects that refer to the classical rhetorical concepts of enargeia (Greek) or evidentia (Latin).24 Friedländer thereby connects Bruegel judiciously with these classical concepts with which his readers were familiar. He expands on Bruegel as an innovator, based on the impossibility to classify his work according to a formalized hierarchy of genres caused by Bruegel’s restlessly driven and ardent temperament.25 Bruegel’s innovative art deals with two aspects: landscapes and the use of genre motifs. In Bruegel’s landscapes man coincides with nature and they become one. As for the genre paintings, according to Friedländer, Bruegel is the first artist capable of imparting content and form using ingenuous natural expression. In 1916, in the midst of the First World War, Friedländer wrote his bestseller, From Van Eyck to Bruegel. In a chapter preceding that on Bruegel he gives a critique of art-historical method.26 He comments that art historians, in an analogy with

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Italian Renaissance, tend to characterize Northern Renaissance art as a new era and a rupture with tradition, mocking their preference for positivism and scientific order as ‘Zahlenaberglaube’ (superstitious adherence to dates). He argues against a rupture in Netherlandish sixteenth-century art and pleads instead for a gradually transition, marked by uncertain artists who were not really able to acquire the new Italian style. He evaluates the decline of sixteenth-century Northern art as an instinctive ambition and vanity due to artists with no respect for craftmanship, which resulted in manufactured paintings and loss of quality. The point Friedländer wanted to make is that research on Italian painting could not simply be transferred to Northern Renaissance painting. It was his conviction that too much attention was paid to the emerging influence of Italian art on Northern art, both in content and form. Following this approach, he diminished the influence of the artistic journey to Italy on Netherlandish artists in general and on Bruegel in particular. Friedländer’s rejection of a break with tradition accorded with German art history, which considered progress and development as a continuum. The idea of historical continuity inherently meant periods of growth and decline and became inextricably linked to national character, realism and Romanticism.27 The chapter on Bruegel was an extended version of Friedländer’s 1905 article for Das Museum.28 The national character he declares on the basis of Bruegel’s intended public for his paintings and especially prints, describing it as a total lack of fastidious appetite for images. He envisaged Bruegel’s imagery for ordinary people who have a profound interest in narrative content rather than abstract art forms. According to Friedländer, Bruegel’s narrative resulted from the fountainhead of Germanic folkloric fantasy. In consequence, he opposes Romanist art against artists who – belonging to the German tribe, Bruegel included – are fundamentally draughtsmen and illustrators. Graphic art, by default, is at the core of Germanic identity, with Dürer the acme of excellence.

Simultaneously he refers to the influence of German prints on Bruegel. Friedländer describes Bruegel’s style development, apparent in the collection of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, as a path in concord with Netherlandish art past and future. Essential to his interpretation of Bruegel’s narrative is that he, Bruegel, was constantly aware of the rhythm of his soul and captured this in the movement of his figures. In apprehending movement, Bruegel’s imagination was extensive – no one figure held the same posture – which leads Friedländer to remark that Bruegel was an impressionist. He concludes his argument with what he describes as the kernel of Netherlandish painting – the capturing of the essence – which Bruegel has in common with Van Eyck and Rembrandt. In 1921 Friedländer published his Pieter Bruegel monograph, which was his most elaborate study. In the preface he introduces his method, which is developed in a chapter titled ‘Die Zeit und das Volk’ (time and nation), whereby he acknowledges that he is in the cultural history tradition of Karl Schnaase and Gustav F. Waagen.29 The traditional method includes: critical reading of written sources, chronological historical development, the examination of the oeuvre via several Aufgaben (assignments), such as landscape, genre, religion and movement. In this he follows Hegel’s conception of art as the expression of Volksgeist (national spirit) and expressed in Jacob Burckhardt’s Kunstgeschichte nach Aufgaben (art history according to function).30 Friedländer does not mention Burckhardt, but when referring to the importance of historical professional knowledge he, in alignment with Burckhardt, emphasizes the delight in art.31 Friedländer considers the historical context of a given time and place, which includes the political and economic situation, religious conflict, art production and the art market. He envisages the Dutch Revolt as a democratic movement that aimed to disengage the Netherlands from Spanish Catholic rule. He refers to Friedrich Schiller’s Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande von der spanischen Regierung (1788) for a better

MAX J . F RIEDLÄNDER ’ S PERCEPTION OF BRUEGEL

understanding of the ‘Geist der Zeit’ than any scientific literature could yield. According to Rüdiger Safranski, Schiller’s approach implied a strong interrelationship between climate, geography, economy, cultural and political circumstances.32 Friedländer defines Bruegel’s context as a social struggle between the court versus the people or between the elite versus the masses. This is an obvious hint of the popular Bruegel – even more so since Friedländer illustrates his text with drawings from the Naer het Leven (after life) series. Friedländer sees these as representing Bruegel’s standpoint on the question of his religious beliefs and engagement in the revolt. Friedländer makes it clear that although documents are missing, the hidden and deeper meaning of Bruegel’s images are nonetheless sufficiently clear. Bruegel’s sense of democracy is reflected in his rendition of form, which reverberates with the pulse of time – even more than his choice of content.33 Mythological heroes make way for ordinary people and form loses symmetry and centre. As evidence for the connection between time, nation and people, Friedländer takes the Massacre of the Innocents as an example, amplifying his argument once more via a literary source, Charles De Coster’s Légende d’Ulenspiegel (1867). Referring back to his article of 1905, where he defined Bruegel’s function as court jester, he now elaborates the same idea.34 Bruegel, like Ulenspiegel, mirrors what people want, which makes his art visionary, ahead of his time, and the artist a folk hero. This preliminary chapter has an emotional ending, probably instigated by Germany’s position after the end of the First World War. Friedländer repeats three times, using emphatic typography: ‘Ein Volk’. Friedländer’s chapter on the ‘Life of Bruegel’ is in fact a historical critique of Van Mander’s view.35 On the matter of Bruegel’s apprenticeship, Van Mander proposes that his teacher was Jan van Amstel, landscape painter, follower of Bosch and relative of Coecke. Friedländer evaluates Van Mander’s text based on Bruegel’s prints and drawings dating from 1553. He analyses the verifiable

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facts: signature and date, and on the basis of topography he reconstructs the route to Italy and back. In applying a conscientious style analysis of Bruegel’s landscape drawings, Friedländer introduces a new research method, still in use today.36 Bruegel’s deep-rooted originality and imagination, combined with applying his thorough style analysis, convinced Friedländer that Bruegel was hardly subjected to any influence by Raphael, Michelangelo or classical architecture. Bruegel remained ‘blind’ – Friedländer’s pun to contrast the visual influx – and insusceptible to Italian art.37 The artist’s personality is fundamental in Friedländer’s perception of the artist’s work. His starting point was the portrait of Bruegel (fig. 19.2) in the Pictorum aliquot published by Volcxken Diericx, Hieronymus Cock’s widow, in 1572, to which he added the connotation of Bruegel as silent thinker, an idea he borrowed from Van Mander.38 In order to demonstrate the interaction between the artist’s personality and his work, he uses the term ‘Charakterbild’ (character features). He defines personality as a cask that comprises all human qualities, or personality as the essence of the artist, and therefore the constant factor determining style. Consequently, it is the art historian’s task to understand this constant factor, to recognize it and to describe it. Bruegel’s personality is in essence lively, humorous and empathetic with a touch of melancholy. In describing Bruegel’s artistic personality and stylistic development, he quotes Nietzsche’s ‘Werde, der du bist’ (Become who you are).39 He then distinguishes three phases in Bruegel’s style evolution: figures evolve from being presented in military-like rows to being more loosely placed in groups. This evolution fits with his argument and perception of Bruegel as an autonomous artist, free to expand his imagery and form. The series of Naer het Leven drawings are the stepping stones for Friedländer’s interpretation of Bruegel’s imitation and observation of nature, which makes him in Friedländer’s opinion, a naturalist.40 In order to exemplify his argument he uses

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biblical metaphors such as grain, mill and bakery to show how Bruegel processes his observations of nature differently in comparison to his Romanist contemporaries. He augments Bruegel’s loyalty to tradition by comparing the fixing of memories in wax.41 In preserving memory, Bruegel creates images that are direct, with emphasized contours, and that have specific uses of colour and variations in movement. Anticipating Hans Sedlmayr’s ‘Macchia’ essay (1934), Friedländer notices the conspicuous use of red in The Proverbs (1559) and Christ carrying the Cross (1564) and the amount of variation in movement and colour in the Battle between Carnival and Lent (1559), the profound knowledge of nature in the Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562) and movement in the Suicide of Saul (1563).42 He admires Bruegel’s illustrative manner through his use of dissimilarities, variation and liveliness. He sees an evolution in Bruegel’s work between 1559 and 1568, from caricature to a milder mood, from clear-cut images towards a greater imaginative pictorial language, culminating in the Summer drawing. Dated as late as 1568, Friedländer discerns in this drawing an exceptional quality achieved by means of plasticity and symmetry, whereby Bruegel reaches an almost Michelangelesque grandeur.43 This is Friedländer’s ultimate allusion apropos the Italian influence – a leap to the future of Netherlandish art, i.e. Rubens. Bruegel’s development is set out within the context of the history of landscape and genre painting, connecting the emergence of landscape painting in the sixteenth century with a new Weltanschauung further initiated by travelling artists. His first encounter with the Alps must have impressed him, instilling the notion of infinity. Friedländer is the first one to anticipate cosmographic studies and the effect of them on Bruegel’s imagery.44 He associates a similar world view with the paintings of Esaias van de Velde, Rembrandt and Van Gogh, which demonstrate Friedländer’s diachronic concept of historical development. In his narrative paintings Bruegel creates a dramatic effect on the spectator who becomes aware of his

mere existence as a human being.45 Whereas classical art embodies the ideal of the beautiful nude, Bruegel on the contrary is not concerned with beauty, which he substitutes with a multiplicity of the body in motion. Diminishing meaning in genre painting, Friedländer notes as its main object the psychological examination of subject. In Friedländer’s view, Bruegel’s peasant paintings represent the core of his genre paintings, in which Bruegel remains true to his race and nation, similar to humankind cultivating the soil.46 Here again, Friedländer skilfully plays with word and image. Friedländer regards Bruegel’s perception of the world view as fundamentally new. Referring to Schopenhauer’s philosophy of will, he interprets Bruegel’s world view as freed from ethical and aesthetical restrictions. Friedländer deems consciousness and will as the characteristics of Bruegel’s temperament and personality – characteristics that are in turn responsible for portraying action, such as falling figures, battles, running figures, play and dance, and figures receding to the background, all combined with a seemingly cursory painting manner. All of these features, Friedländer states, are proof that Bruegel was first and foremost a draughtsman and an illustrator, arguing that line is essentially movement. Following a publication ban, the final part of Friedländer’s major work, Die altniederländische Malerei, was published in the Netherlands in 1937.47 Friedländer discusses the artist’s biography and oeuvre consecutively, supplemented by a chronological list and short catalogue of fifty paintings. The striking difference from his 1921 monograph is the omission of the chapter ‘Die Zeit und das Volk’. An introductory chapter sets out the guiding principle of the fourteen-volume survey. He distinguishes two methods: the study of written sources; and the study, year by year, of the works of art, without any prejudice or preconceived ideas. This fourteenth volume is dedicated – far more than is the case in his monograph – to an in-depth analysis of Bruegel’s personality, which occupies the majority of the book.48 As in each previous part

MAX J . F RIEDLÄNDER ’ S PERCEPTION OF BRUEGEL

Fig. 19.2 Attributed to Johannes Wierix, Portrait of Bruegel, from Dominicus Lampsonius, Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae Inferioris effigies (published by Volcxken Diericx, widow of Hieronymus Cock, Antwerp, 1572), engraving, 203 × 125 mm, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR, Print Room

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of the ‘Early Netherlandish Painting’ series, the artist’s personality formed an integral part of the analysis and resource for distinguishing different hands, working methods and techniques of anonymous artists. Given the lack of documents, Friedländer applies the same method for his Bruegel research, in which he takes into account Bruegel’s unique talent. In an article dating from 1932, published in the periodical Charakter, he defines the significance of an artist’s personality.49 Friedländer became interested in graphology as a tool that could be used to understand the psychology reflected by the artist’s handwriting.50 In this essay, he claims, an art historian’s main concern should be to reflect the artist’s personality. In a critical note, he remarks that the task of certain connoisseurs in dealing with data attribution, as well as defining race, tribe and nationality, is far easier than determining the specific characteristics and personalities of artists. According to Friedländer, when a connoisseur classifies known data and visible facts, ultimately he is confronted with a certain unknown factor, the ineffable. The only possible answer to this problem is to formulate a hypothesis and to invoke inevitably a psychological fantasy. Writing this at the beginning of the 1930s, Friedländer seems to be conscious that Europe is on the verge of destruction: not race but the imagination of the connoisseur is the path that should be followed. The volume on Bruegel has a certain essayistic quality. It is in the completion of his critical response to Bruegel in which Friedländer opposes his view with those of other art historians. Successive art historians had discussed the matter of the national art of Bruegel and compared it with the divergent Romanist style of his contemporaries (such as Floris, Lombard, Van Heemskerck); Bruegel’s religious beliefs during the people’s revolt against foreign rule; the significance of the Italian journey. Friedländer offers his interpretation, which has the effect of an eulogy: he stresses the artist’s innovative world view that culminates in a timeless art, which includes an eye for detail,

cubic forms, the grouping of figures and movement. The enthusiastic praise functions, given its time of publication in 1937, as a celebration of art and artists in general. Friedländer’s last book, Essays über die Landschaftsmalerei und andere Bildgattungen (1947), was published in exile. Again, the essay on landscape pays attention to Bruegel and deals with the controversies in recent Bruegel research – an altercation, expressed in Friedländer’s typical aphoristic style, that reminds him of the past war, the core of the problem being the historical distance between the work of art, the artist and the art historian who is vulnerable to misinterpretation. Friedländer touches here on the historical problem of distance, a problem that becomes, only much later, part of the approach in historical method.51 To clarify the polemic debate he cites Aldous Huxley’s essay on Bruegel.52 Here Huxley discusses the so-called Kunstforscher who has the tendency to judge art solely on the matter of form at the expense of content. He criticizes the art critics following the lead of the contemporary emphasis on form to the exclusion of drama and meaning. Conversely, the author depicts Bruegel as an anthropologist and a social philosopher, which Friedländer cites.53 Friedländer, together with Huxley, concludes with the inseparability of form and content. He addresses another polemic issue – Bruegel’s characterization as an ‘impressionist’ – with which he can agree. Ultimately, he deals with Bruegel’s development within the context of the time in which he lived and worked, concluding that Bruegel was disconnected from his era due to the specific manner in which he treated content and form deviated from the norm. Friedländer’s research comprised two major concerns: the artist’s personality and tradition; continuity and innovation in Netherlandish art. He reckoned the artist’s personality or character to be fundamental for the understanding of the work of art. The connoisseur had to understand the artist in order to recognize the artist’s handwriting. Friedländer described his practice as the result of intuition – an intuition based on a thorough

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acquaintance with the artist through a combination of cultural history, psychology and expertise. In his critique of Bruegel’s oeuvre he distinguished two factors: the graphic and the picturesque. As a connoisseur he had a special interest in the artistic development of the painter and Netherlandish art in general. The language he used (i.e. race and

nationality) has an astonishing effect on today’s reader. Nonetheless, his ideas were in full accordance with nineteenth-century and early twentiethcentury romantic nationalism in Europe and in Germany in particular – a use of ideas and language that was to change in the 1930s and all the more so after the Second World War.

N OT ES 1 ‘He was very attached to the Peasant Bruegel.’ Winkler 1959, p. 167. During Friedländer’s career the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett acquired five drawings: Monastery in a Valley, Rest on the Flight into Egypt and View of the Scheldt near Baasrode from the collection of A. Beckerath in 1902; The Alchemist from the collection of Benoit Oppenheim in 1909; and The Ass at School from Fairfax Murray in 1920. Mielke 1996, cat. nos. 2, 12, 27, 42, 32. The Gemäldegalerie acquired two paintings: The Proverbs in 1914 from an English collection; Two Monkeys in 1931 bought from a Paris art dealer. 2

Beyrodt 1990.

3

Laemers 2017, pp. 21–58; Iselt 2010, p. 76.

4 Sellink 2007, pp. 196–7, cat. no. 130 (London, National Gallery, inv. NG 3556). 5 The date was established as 1566 by Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 103–4, fig. 18; Sellink 2007, pp. 230–31, cat. no. 152 (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. 3637). 6 Sellink 2007, p. 242, cat. no. 159 (Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. 8940). 7

Haskell 1995, p. 448.

8 Friedländer 1903a; Friedländer 1903b; Friedländer 1903c: the paragraph on Bruegel is the same in 1903b and 1903c. 9

Retterath 2016, pp. 33–49.

10

Tollebeek 2002.

11

Friedländer 1903b.

12 Friedländer 1904; Friedländer 1905a; Friedländer 1905b. 13 Friedländer 1904, unpaginated; Sanders 1974. 14 Köhne 2016. The cult of the genius was reawakened during the eighteenth century, and reached its culmination in the Romantic era of the nineteenth century. 15

Roh 1962, pp. 14–16, 28–48.

16 Arndt 1996, p. 64; Bickendorf 2007, pp. 50, 53; Ridderbos 2005, pp. 221–2. 17 Beiser 2016, pp. 1–12; Paret 2001, pp. 60–91; Bollenbeck 1999, pp. 165–6. 18

Boterman 2013, pp. 171–81; Boterman

2014; Schuster 1995, p. 25.

38

19 Friedländer’s memoirs were published by Heilbrunn: Heilbrunn 1967, p. 26.

39 The proverb in Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo (1888) quotes an aphorism from Friederich Hölderlin’s translation of Pindar’s Second Pythian Ode; Bauschinger 2016, pp. 178–209, 277–94; Schwitalski 2004, p. 187: from the beginning of the twentieth century this became the motto of the Reformpädagogik Odenwaldschule. The school was founded in 1910 by Paul Geheeb and Edith Geheeb (née Cassirer) and financed by Max Cassirer. Paul Cassirer and Bruno Cassirer were Friedländer’s publishers.

20 The comparison of Bruegel with Shakespeare is connected with the revival and recognition of Shakespeare in Germany, which started in the nineteenth century with Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and was reiterated by Gustav Glück and Max Dvořák. Herder/Moore 2008, pp. vii–xlii; Glück 1910, p. 155; Dvořák 1928, p. 227. 21 Friedländer 1905a. 22 Friedländer 1905b. 23 Mielke 1996, p. 69, cat. no. 67 (Hamburg, Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. 21758). 24 Wimböck, Leonhard and Friedrich 2007, pp. 9–38; Möller 2011. 25 Friedländer 1905b, p. 19: a fiery temperament – by means of his temperament in essence inclined to an impressionist style, he found a specific way to express himself that suited his nature.

Ibid., p. 173.

40 The drawings, a group of about eighty, were attributed to Roelandt Savery in the 1970s, independently of each other, by Joaneath Spicer and Frans Van Leeuwen: Spicer 1970; Van Leeuwen 1971. Five drawings are in the collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen: Sellink 2001. 41

Friedländer 1921, p. 58.

42 Sedlmayr 1934; Bruegel’s knowledge of nature in the Fall of the Rebel Angels was demonstrated by Meganck 2014.

26 Friedländer 1916, pp. 83–8.

43

27 Krul 2005, pp. 256–61.

44 Büttner 2000b, pp. 47–60; Michalsky 2011, pp. 225–48.

28 Friedländer 1916, pp. 160–70.

Friedländer 1921, p. 122.

45

Friedländer 1921, p. 146.

46

Ibid., p. 147.

30 Halbertsma 1993, pp. 55–62.

47

Friedländer 1937.

31 Locher 2007, pp. 116–18.

48 From 1928 onwards Friedländer published articles in Der Cicerone on the personality of Memling, Massys and Gossaert.

29 Prange 2007, pp. 75–85; DaCosta Kaufmann 2004, pp. 50–52.

32 Safranski 2004, pp. 14, 274. 33 Friedländer 1916, p. 166; Friedländer uses the German idiom ‘Pulsschlag der Natur’, which refers to Johann Gottfried Herder, Vom Geist der ebräischen Poesie (Herder 1805, p. 36): ‘der Pulsschlag der Natur, dies Athemholen der Empfindung’ (the pulse of life, this emotional breathing). 34 Janssens and Nachtergaele 1999, pp. 15–58, 170; Bollenbeck 1985, pp. 218–20. 35 Friedländer 1921, pp. 25–53; Miedema 1996, vol. 3, fols 233r08–234r21. 36

Büttner 2000a, Lichtert 2015.

37

Friedländer 1921, p. 42.

49

Friedländer 1932.

50 Charakter: Eine Vierteljahresschrift für psychodiagnostische Studien und verwandte Gebiete was edited by Robert Saudek (1880– 1935), a graphologist. Beforehand, Friedländer had read Robert Saudek, Wissenschaftliche Graphologie, Munich, 1926; Friedländer 1930, pp. 91–6. 51

Salber Philips 2013, pp. 1–19.

52

Huxley 1930, pp. 133–52.

53

Friedländer 1947, p. 87.

Fig. 20.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Carrying of the Cross, 1564, oil on panel, 124.2 × 170.7 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 1025)

Fig. 20.2 Detail from fig. 20.1

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Erasmus’s De Copia and Bruegel the Elder’s ‘inverted’ Carrying of the Cross (1564): An ‘abundant style’ in Rhetoric, Literature and Art? Jamie L. Edwards

A BSTRACT : This contribution sheds additional light on the significance of ‘compositional inversion’, a ‘mode’ of pictorial narration that Bruegel – as well as his Netherlandish predecessors and artistic progeny – adopted frequently and which is exemplified by his Carrying of the Cross (1564; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). It will suggest, for the first time, that inversion as a narrative stratagem was informed, at least partly, by Erasmus’s ideas about copiousness, set out in his exceptionally popular and influential textbook on rhetorical style called De Copia (first published 1512). Exposing the close analogies between Erasmus’s position on copiousness (which he actually used in his own biblical exegeses, or Paraphrases) and Bruegel’s inverted Carrying, it is argued that Erasmus provided a justification of sorts for Bruegel, his predecessors and followers, whose narrative pictures often ape Erasmian strategies of abundance in order to involve viewers in a more immersive and meaningful engagement with biblical history.

—o— Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Carrying of the Cross of 1564 provides an arresting visual spectacle (fig. 20.1). Upon casual inspection, a viewer may not even notice the panel’s biblical subject matter, told in all four of the canonical Gospels, of Christ carrying the cross to Golgotha to be crucified: for Bruegel not only made the titular motif diminutive, he also positioned the main event, Christ falling

under the weight of the cross, in the middle of a vast World Landscape, or Weltlandschaft,1 that is crammed full with people (estimated by the nineteenth-century Austrian artist and historian Eduard von Engerth to be over five hundred figures)2 and other details, which are all rendered painstakingly and divert the beholder’s eye away from sacred history. Although not usually classified as such, the Carrying of the Cross thus possesses all the characteristics of Bruegel’s Wimmelbilder, or ‘busy pictures’, such as the 1559 Battle between Carnival and Lent.3 At left in Bruegel’s Carrying, the eye plunges into the distance to Jerusalem, meticulously rendered as a quasi-Brabant town of the sixteenth century complete with rustic farmsteads outside the city walls. On the opposite side, the eye is drawn deep into the landscape to Golgotha, where a crowd of ant-like figures has already assembled to witness the execution, and where two crosses for the so-called ‘good’ and ‘bad’ thieves have been erected; in the sky above, storm clouds gather, plunging the site into darkness. At the centre of the landscape is a towering rock surmounted by a windmill. The procession to Calvary encircles this rock, leading Christ and a vast cavalcade of

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irreverent figures on their seemingly endless, but certainly inexorable, march to death. All the figures involved in the procession or beholding it from the sidelines are clearly contemporary: from the soldiers on horseback, dressed in the distinctive red sayon of the early 1500s,4 to the many peasants, all wearing typical period clothing and engaged in various profane tasks, including a group returning from market at the left that is completely oblivious to Christ’s presence (fig. 20.2). From a raised shelf in the extreme foreground other figures, including a pilgrim, gaze out at the spectacle. To the right of the pilgrim is another group of figures, consumed by grief, these being the Virgin, Saint John and three other weeping women. They stand out in the picture not only because of their size and elevated position but also because of how they are painted: their slender elongated forms, dated costumes and crisp draperies immediately call to mind the art of Bruegel’s fifteenth-century predecessors, such as Rogier van der Weyden, some of whose paintings Bruegel could have known at first hand but which were also being circulated around this time as engravings (fig. 20.3).5 Bruegel therefore distinguished this group formally, temporally and emotionally – as visitors from a bygone era displaying a paradigmatic emotional response to Christ’s Passion, and forming an intense ‘island of grief’ that is in stark contrast to the inhumanity prevailing behind them.6 A term that has come into common usage to describe the mode of pictorial narrative deployed in Bruegel’s Carrying, where the biblical element is difficult to discern, is ‘compositional inversion’.7 By Bruegel’s time, inverted representations of the Road to Calvary had become ubiquitous in Antwerp painting to the extent that they constituted a distinct local ‘type’, which traced its origins back to a now-lost painting by Jan van Eyck (fig.  20.4).8 Many artists active in and around Antwerp – from earlier on in the century, such as the Master J. Kock,9 Joachim Patinir and Herri met de Bles, right up to members of Bruegel’s immediate milieu, such as Peeter Baltens and the so-called Brunswick

Monogrammist10 – produced painted renditions of the subject that pastiche van Eyck’s prototype and engage in the principle of compositional inversion (fig. 20.5).11 This principle also gained currency in Antwerp through the circulation of works on paper, including prints, such as met de Bles’s dazzling etching showing the Carrying of the Cross (fig. 20.6),12 and model books, or Musterbücher, which provided patterns for particular subjects that artists freely copied and adapted. The so-called ‘Antwerp Sketchbook’ for instance – thought to date from the 1540s and possibly originating in the workshop of met de Bles – features several drawings of the Carrying of the Cross that are strikingly analogous to the painted versions by Patinir, met de Bles and others.13 Thus all these works, whether on panel or paper, presage Bruegel’s painting insofar as they all utilize copious detail, meticulousness, variety and the panoramic landscape in order to obscure their biblical subjects and invite the beholder to roam metaphorically through vast pictorial worlds in pursuit of sacred history. Aligned with this tradition, Bruegel’s Carrying of the Cross places considerable demands on its viewers. Eschewing clear narration with a dependence on a few large figures, the picture departs in all respects from the Italian tradition of history painting (historia), as theorized by Leon Battista Alberti in his treatise De pictura, written in 1435 but not published until 1540, and also exemplified by the art of Raphael in Italy and Frans Floris in the Netherlands (figs 20.7 and 20.8).14 For Alberti, the primary job of the painter was to narrate clearly through the careful disposition and arrangement of an optimal number of large figures; and he consequently deplored excessive variety and other details in art because these distract from the story and yield dissolutus, or narrative confusion.15 Inspired by his Antwerp predecessors – and the earlier simultaneity pictures (Simultanbilder) of Hans Memling16 – Bruegel jettisoned the Albertian approach for his Carrying to produce an image that does not clearly articulate its narrative but instead constitutes an exhortation to vision itself, seducing

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Fig. 20.3 Cornelis Cort after Rogier van der Weyden, Hieronymus Cock (publisher), Descent from the Cross, 1565, engraving, 300 × 406 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (inv. 16748)

viewers into an entropic contemplation of the painting’s surface until, slowly but surely, the diminutive figure of Christ emerges from its expansive yet dense setting. Viewers are thus enticed by the painting’s formal properties at the same time as they are urged to search for meaning that appears to lie below the threshold of perception – the moment Christ is finally discovered being therefore revelatory, a metaphorical transformation from a state of spiritual blindness to spiritual enlightenment. In short, Bruegel’s picture elicits a particular type of spectatorship that is individual, proxemic and prolonged – what Reindert Falkenburg memorably termed ‘close-reading’17 – with viewers, then as now, being compelled to get up close to the

picture and concentrate, and to wonder at the possible meanings or associations of its details while ruminating on the possible implications of Christ’s inconspicuousness in the first place. The painting is, more simply, a narrative painting in which the ‘process of discernment’ itself seems to be ‘the main point of the image’ – or even its ‘raison d’être’.18 Pictorial copiousness, abundant detail and compositional inversion in this image thus conspire to engender a hermeneutic engagement with a familiar biblical subject, implicating the beholder in a personal quest for spiritual knowledge. In this regard, Bruegel’s picture might best be described as exegetic. Recent work has emphasized the role that Netherlandish artists, including met de Bles, played

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Fig. 20.4 Anonymous after Jan van Eyck, Carrying of the Cross, c. 1530, oil on panel, 97.5 × 129.5cm, Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum (inv. 2531)

Fig. 20.5 Herri met de Bles, Carrying of the Cross, c. 1540–60, oil on panel, 56.2 × 82.5 cm, Namur, Musée de Namur

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Fig. 20.6 Herri met de Bles, Carrying of the Cross, 1530–60, etching, 348 × 440 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (inv. 102)

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Fig. 20.7 Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael, Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1512, engraving, 281 × 430 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1922 (inv. 22.67.21)

Fig. 20.8 Frans Floris, Judgement of Solomon, c. 1546, oil on panel, 123 × 208 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (inv. 1959)

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in this period as interpreters, or exegetes, of the Bible, analysing how works of art functioned not as straightforward illustrations of sacred stories but as spiritual machine, or apparatuses.19 Approached this way, the visual strategies of compositional inversion and concealment, pictorial meticulousness and variety, can all be regarded as exegetic devices, intended to encourage viewers to assume the role of interpreters of scripture, who are asked to locate divine truth by visually ‘penetrating’ images and interpreting their constituent parts in a way that is comparable to how a theologicallytrained exegete would mine the Gospels for spiritual truths. In what follows I will suggest that Bruegel’s Carrying of the Cross – and by extension the tradition from which it emerges – is an exegetic image. To do so, I will argue that the picture mobilizes an abundant style that was championed by Desiderius Erasmus in his treatise De duplici copia verborum ac rerum commentarii duo, first published in 1512, revised in 1514, 1526 and 1534.20 In this treatise, Erasmus puts ‘forward some ideas on copia, the abundant style’, providing guidance on how to rewrite pre-existing literature, including the Bible, and also systematic instruction on how to embellish, amplify and enrich texts in order to instil speech and writing with variety and ‘rich abundance’.21 Credited as being ‘the standard work of rhetorical dilation’ of its age, De Copia established the centrality of amplification and abundance in sixteenth-century rhetoric both because the treatise itself was remarkably popular (as we shall be seeing) but also because Erasmus’s own published biblical exegeses provided exemplary models of copia in practice.22 In just seven prodigious years between 1517 and 1524, following the publication of De Copia in 1512, Erasmus also managed to publish exegetic interpretations, or Paraphrases, on all the Pauline Epistles, the Catholic Epistles, the Gospels of Matthew, John, Luke and Mark, and the Acts, which were complemented, between 1515 and 1536, by expositions on no fewer than eleven Psalms.23 Ranked among the century’s bestsellers,

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Erasmus’s Paraphrases put his own theories about copia into practice, greatly enlarging, amplifying and rewriting biblical texts with a view to both increasing narrative interest and engendering prolonged engagement on the reader’s part, as well as expounding the moral-spiritual meanings that lie beneath the scripture’s ostensive content. Given the scale and popularity of Erasmus’s activities as a biblical exegete, and the success of his treatise on stylistic copiousness (considered ‘one of the most influential books Erasmus ever wrote’),24 it is scarcely surprising that Erasmus’s influence can be discerned in sixteenth-century Netherlandish art; and while several studies have situated some of Bruegel’s works and themes in Erasmian contexts, the full extent of his influence is yet to be fully realized.25 This essay therefore aims to uncover and delineate more of that influence, taking Bruegel’s Carrying of the Cross as a case study. The essay has two main parts. Firstly, I shall summarize Erasmus’s chief ideas about abundance, its uses and advantages, and suggest that Erasmus’s defence of copia chimes closely not only with the visual characteristics of Bruegel’s Carrying and its antecedents, but also with the modern scholarly consensus that maintains that the primary function of these images was to engender proxemic and prolonged viewing and, therefore, contemplation. Secondly, I will broaden the scope a little to consider the relevance of other texts, produced and published in Bruegel’s time, which, in complementing Erasmus’s approach to biblical scholarship and spiritual understanding, also seem to have influenced Bruegel’s conceptions for the 1564 Carrying. I shall conclude by suggesting that Erasmus himself recognized that copia lends itself particularly well to the visual arts, by considering – albeit briefly – a series of remarks about art contained in several of his Paraphrases that have so far eluded art historians – and were apparently unknown even to Erwin Panofsky!26 All told, the essay offers new insights about a familiar picture and the visual tradition out of which it emerged, positing new understandings about the origins of

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compositional inversion and exposing the likely significances of this mode of narrative in the context of the far-reaching spiritual and religious debates of the sixteenth century. Erasmian Abundance Erasmus’s De Copia is divided into two parts, or books, because, as he said, ‘Copia is twofold’.27 These two aspects of the abundant style are richness of expression, the focus of the first book, and richness of subject matter, which he dealt with in the second.28 The first book provides the theory of, or way of going about, copia, organized into 206 different methods and providing virtuoso practical demonstrations – in the final edition of 1534, for example, Erasmus famously indicates 150 different ways of writing ‘Your letter pleased me’ as well as 200 variations of ‘Always, so long as I live, I shall remember you’.29 The second book, however, is less concerned with practical instruction or demonstration and focuses instead on broader methods appertaining to copiousness in subject matter. Here Erasmus develops a number of key foundations, chief among which are variety and ‘vividness’. With regards to variety, Erasmus avers that this is a prerequisite to copia. Variety, he writes, will help in avoiding ταυτολογια, [that is] the repetition of a word or phrase, an ugly and offensive fault. It often happens that we have to say the same thing several times. If in these circumstances we find ourselves destitute of verbal richness [and] are unable to clothe our thought in other colours or other forms, [we shall] bore our wretched audience to death. Worse than ταυτολογια [repetition] is ὁμοιολογια [identical repetition], which, as Quintilian says, has no variety [varietatis] to relieve the tedium and is all of one monotonous colour. Who has got ears patient enough to put up even for a short time with a speech totally monotonous? Variety [varietas] is so important in every sphere that there is absolutely nothing, however brilliant, which is not dimmed if not commended by variety.

Nature above all delights in variety; in all this huge concourse of things, she has left nothing anywhere unpainted by her wonderful technique of variety [admirabili quodam varietatis]. Just as the eyes fasten themselves on some new spectacle, so the mind is always looking round for some fresh object of interest.30 Erasmus is thus clear that a lack of variety yields tedium and that anything devoid of variety will ‘bore’ an ‘audience to death’, adding that this basic dictum applies ‘in every sphere’. Rhetorical dilation on any subject should therefore follow Nature, who revels in joyful copia, so as to achieve a spectacular and compelling effect because the mind is constantly in pursuit of the new. Rhetoric should, in other words, be so copiously varied that it imitates Nature in order to transfix a reader or listener, and when marshalled in this way, variety enables a rhetorician to hold the audience’s attention in just the same way that the eyes habitually fasten themselves on the infinite plenitude found in the natural world. A particular virtue obtained from varietas, meanwhile, is ‘vividness’.31 Discussing ‘vividness’ as part of a larger discourse on the enrichment of subject matter, Erasmus invokes the metaphor of a painting: We employ [enrichment] whenever, for the sake of amplifying or decorating our passage, or giving pleasure to our readers, instead of setting out the subject in bare simplicity, we fill in the colours and set it up like a picture to look at, so that we seem to have painted the scene rather than describe it […].32 Erasmus goes on to explain how ‘vividness’ brings a subject ‘before the eyes with all the colours filled in, so that our hearer or reader is carried away and seems to be in the audience of a theatre […] because it gives the subject visual form […] [a] kind of presentation to the eyes […]’.33 Crucial to the attainment of vividness, he explains, are the ‘exposition of circumstantial details’,34 enlivening

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narrative through pleasing digressions and tangents, and the ‘description of places’, which, he says, ‘is a very common method of introducing a narrative, used by poets and historians, and by orators too’ that again calls for variety so that the reader or listener can picture, with their mind’s eye, the settings of stories: ‘so we can see […] a city, for example, a hill, a region, a river, a harbour, and country estate, gardens, a sports arena, a spring, a cave, a temple, a grove’.35 In De Copia, Erasmus therefore mounted an argument in favour of an abundant style – in which variety is central – because abundance or copia possesses an unparalleled efficacy to alleviate boredom and hold an audience’s attention. To be sure, he inveighed against the misuse of varietas, which can yield confusion, but firmly maintained that the virtues of variety outweigh its possible vices for the reasons outlined above, all of which fall under the remit of the rhetorician’s capacity to enrapture and persuade.36 Accordingly, Erasmus also contrasted meritorious abundance with the ‘laconic’ style. Named after Laconia – a region of Ancient Greece whose inhabitants, including the Spartans, had a reputation for verbal austerity and bluntness – the laconic style, Erasmus writes, completely neglects enrichment by setting its subjects out ‘in bare simplicity’, and consequently gives scant pleasure to readers.37 Placed alongside Erasmus’s theories, Bruegel’s Carrying would appear to harness copia and all of its benefits, at the same time discarding the laconic style and Albertian principles vis-à-vis history painting (the latter of which, to be sure, were grounded in Alberti’s knowledge of classical oratorical methods).38 Dispensing with these, and far from rendering its story ‘in bare simplicity’, Bruegel’s picture instead marshals abundance, enrichment and variety, as well as digressions and the exposition of circumstantial details – that is, copia – to produce a work that provides a vivid evocation of the biblical event so that viewers are able to behold Christ’s Passion as if transpiring before their very eyes and in their own time. Concealing

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the biblical story in a truly vast and varied concourse of Nature, in which ‘nothing anywhere’ remains ‘unpainted’ by a ‘wonderful technique of variety’, Bruegel thus produced a picture with a biblical theme that begets scopophilic pleasure and delight just as much as it constitutes and facilitates a pious and prolonged meditation on the Passion. Revelling in copia, Bruegel’s picture is a virtuoso demonstration of its advantages, satisfying the eye and the mind’s constant appetite for the new or unexpected. Significantly, Erasmus’s views about copia and his comparison between laconic and abundant styles anticipates Karel van Mander’s later theoretical elucidation of Netherlandish painting, and his own paragone between Netherlandish history painting and the Italian historia (figs 20.7 and 20.8).39 In his 1604 Schilder-boeck, especially the opening book ‘Den Grondt der Edel Vry Schilderconst’, Van Mander argued that Netherlandish artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – including Bruegel – developed an alternative mode of picturing history to the Albertian historia, which he termed the ‘solitary history’ (eensame historien).40 For rather than articulating narrative with an austere dependence on large figures, Netherlanders seized upon the special capacity of images to engage beholders in sustained looking and engagement by utilizing recognized local specialisms and practices, including panoramic landscapes, varieties (verscheydenheden), neatness or meticulousness (netticheyt), vast pictorial distances (verschieten), and the relegation of the main incident to the distance (Scopus […] in’t verschiet).41 In so doing, Netherlandish artists produced history images that appeal to vision, inviting beholders to undertake optical itineraries, travelling in, through and out beyond pictorial worlds (insien, doorsien and achter-uyten) and thereby entangling their ‘insatiable eyes’ and holding their attention ‘for a long time’ (lange speculerende).42 For Van Mander, in neglecting such pictorial characteristics, proponents of ‘solitary history’ run the risk of producing pictures that possess ‘little charm’ (cleyn gracy), or

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even ones that are utterly ‘disfigured’ (t’werck ontcieren), because of their inability to address vision itself.43 In a sense, Van Mander’s contrasting of the Netherlandish tradition in visual narration and the Italianate ‘solitary history’ can be read as a reverberation of Erasmus’s earlier comparison between copia and the laconic style, with both authors in agreement that abundance, variety and so on are praiseworthy since they involve the viewer or reader/listener respectively in prolonged and immersive engagement. Seen in this light, Bruegel’s Carrying, which deploys a narrative mode so at variance with Alberti’s historia and the laconic style of rhetoric, embodies according to Van Mander all the praiseworthy features of Netherlandish history painting at the same time as exemplifying commendable Erasmian copia. In addition to the picture’s formal-visual abundance, Bruegel’s Carrying is also abundant conceptually. Notions of copying, imitating and emulating, with reference to an entire storehouse of possible sources, are all bound up in the meanings of copia in antiquity and in Erasmus’s sixteenthcentury formulation, the latter of which must be read against his firm belief that Ciceronian Latin did not provide a single model for eloquence and that the best literary style was one that assimilated diverse sources through a process of inventive emulation.44 Corresponding to this position, Bruegel’s picture is the result of creative assimilation. Drawing on a rich storehouse of literary ideas and visual sources, the artist invented a composition that simultaneously exemplifies and updates the local visual tradition with which it engages (figs 20.1, 20.4–20.6), thereby testifying to the artist’s mental facility – or ‘gheest’ – and his ability to imitate, emulate and attain copia.45 The pious group in the foreground, for example, has a range of possible significances and brings immediately to mind many fifteenth-century Netherlandish artworks, some of which, such as Rogier’s Descent from the Cross (c. 1430–35), were themselves being copied, multiplied and circulated in diverse media at this time (fig. 20.3).46 The windmill, too, has a range of

possible sources and corresponding associations derived from contemporary published works. It could be regarded, for example, as recalling Johannes Sambucus’s Emblemata, published in Antwerp the same year as Bruegel’s Carrying, in which it symbolizes the vicissitudes of Fortune;47 but it could also be seen as referencing Jan van den Berghe’s Leenhof der Gilden – a text probably written in the 1530s but republished in Antwerp the same year as Bruegel’s painting – where the windmill stands as a metaphor for the faithless and fickle, who, disregarding moral constancy, turn like the mill’s sails with the wind (the presence of which in Bruegel’s picture is indicated by billowing cloaks and several flying hats).48 For a viewer familiar with either or both of these publications, therefore, Bruegel’s windmill could well have signified Fortune, presiding over a scene in which the faithless and fickle have abandoned their faith and leave their fates up to chance. Assimilating and emulating a range of ideas and visual sources in this manner, Bruegel’s Carrying exemplifies the fundamental meanings of copia. Formally, conceptually and in terms of the multivalent associative potential of its constituent parts and details, the picture epitomizes rich ‘abundance’.49 As a result, it attains the main advantages of abundance considered above, but also as Erasmus explained in his Paraphrases. Too many people, he complained, read the Bible ‘casually and carelessly’, and so his exegetic reinterpretations of scripture in the copious style sought to outmode such apathy by utilizing abundance (metaphors, proverbs, commonplaces, digressions and detailed descriptions of places and events) to heighten dramatic suspense and sustain his reader’s interest while expounding the underlying meanings of scripture.50 Accordingly, in his Sermon on Psalm 4 (In psalmum quartum concio), Erasmus defends his ‘loose’ approach to scriptural interpretation because salvation ‘is not imperilled by a slight departure from the original sense of the scripture, so long as the new reading conforms to piety and truth [and] moral improvement’.51 And elsewhere he states that his principal

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aim as an exegete is to counter the commonly held impression that ‘the biblical writings are old, cold texts’ that invite ‘no response on the reader’s part’.52 Erasmus, in other words, put exegesis in the service of spiritual enlightenment, embellishing and amplifying scripture and departing significantly from the base text as set down in the Bible, because his aim was to enrapture his readers and involve them in a pious meditation on the content and meanings, not just the words, of scripture, with a view to exposing the vita and philosophia Christi – the salvific efficacy of which he never doubted.53 Bruegel’s picture thus advances a correspondingly loose and copious reinterpretation of scripture to the same ends, transposing the biblical event into a sixteenth-century world, thereby disavowing even the possibility that this event could be summarily disregarded as belonging to the distant past, and embellishing it with innumerable figures, sideshows, plots and mini-narratives, to encourage the spectator to dwell earnestly and attentively, rather than ‘casually and carelessly’, on the painting and its biblical theme. To conclude this section, it is worth stressing that Erasmus’s biblical scholarship and his treatise De Copia in particular were remarkably – almost implausibly – popular. To take De Copia alone, this went through 168 editions between 1512 and 1580,54 and was very popular on Antwerp’s presses, being published there in: 1516; 1519 (Jean Thibault); 1524; 1525; twice in 1527 (Michaël Hillen); 1528 (Hillen); 1536 (Guilielmus Spyridipoeus); 1541 (Anthonis van der Haeghen); three times in 1545 (Hillen; Jan van der Loe); 1546 (Joannes Crinitus); 1550 (van der Loe); twice in 1553 (Joannes Gymnicus; van der Loe); in 1556 (Sibertus Roedius); 1557; 1561 and 1562 (all van der Loe); 1565 (Philippus Nutius); and twice in 1566 (van der Loe).55 It therefore seems eminently reasonable to imagine that the abundant mode of visual narration exemplified by Bruegel’s Carrying would indeed have registered a connection with Erasmus’s influential ideas about copia.

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A Copious Silenus? At this point, an obvious issue comes to mind. When Erasmus wrote De Copia he was intending to promote the use of the abundant style in Latin literature. How, then, can we account for its deployment in a painting that so clearly aligns with a local, or vernacular, tradition in art, and that wilfully disregards ‘Latinate’ approaches to history painting bound up with the historia?56 This seeming disjunction, however, between principles relating to Latin rhetoric and their application in a painting that epitomizes a vernacular mode of visual narration, is easily resolved. Quite apart from the fact that Erasmus’s intentions for De Copia in no measure prevented its principles from being adopted in vernacular literature – manifested so brilliantly, for instance, in the exuberant prose style of François Rabelais’s Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1534–64)57 – it seems, in the case of Antwerp artists including Bruegel, that they simply conflated their interest in Erasmian copiousness with other ideas being promoted in literature at the time. Primary among these ideas is the so-called ‘Silenus’. In Greek mythology, the Silenus is a figure whose coarse, lowly and inconsequential – or even ridiculous – appearance belies wisdom and grandeur, and the idea of the Silenus became remarkably well known in sixteenth-century Europe and was given Christian applications. Again, this can be put down to Erasmus, who included ‘The Sileni of Alcibiades’ in his enormously popular Adagiorum Chiliades, or Thousands of Proverbs, published as a final edition in 1536 and republished in Antwerp many times, including in 1561 when Ioannes Loeus ran Johannes Sartorius’s edition that includes translations of the adages into Dutch.58 A Silenus, Erasmus explains, is something which ‘on the surface and […] at first sight looks worthless and absurd’ but is ‘admirable on a nearer and less superficial view’.59 He tells us that in antiquity the term ‘Silenus’ referred to several things, including mythological beings but also

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small carved statues that were grotesque on the outside but could be opened to reveal something divine: ‘when closed they looked like a caricature of a hideous flute-player, when opened they suddenly displayed a deity’.60 Noting that the term then slipped into proverbial usage (to describe someone as being ‘far more hideous than the Sileni’ for example), he characterized both Christ himself and scripture as being Silenic. If, he wrote, the Gospels are judged ‘by their outward shell’ alone they would be thought ‘by everyone to be the work of an ignoramus’, for the plain and simple language of scripture conceals its brilliance.61 Christ, meanwhile, is described as being akin to a mustard seed, ‘in appearance tiny and negligible’ but ‘in power immense’, before then being explicitly compared with a Silenus: And what of Christ? Was not He too a marvellous Silenus […]? Observe the outside surface of this Silenus: to judge by ordinary standards, what could be humbler or more worthy of disdain? […] It was this aspect of him that [Isaiah] contemplated when he described him in the words ‘He had no form nor comeliness; we beheld him and there was nothing to look upon, and we desired him, despised as He was and the least of men […]’.62 For Erasmus, the upshot of characterizing both the Bible and Christ in this way is that it justified and legitimated his own aforementioned aims as an exegete: to encourage close reading of scripture, and therefore contemplation of Christ, in order to cultivate spiritual knowledge. For if the brilliance, meanings and wisdom of Christ and the Gospels are concealed by their external forms and appearances, and if it was true, as he maintained, ‘that what is excellent is least conspicuous’ and that ‘the more excellent a thing is, the more deeply it is hidden’, then it stood to reason that true spiritual insights can be gleaned through a process of careful analysis and penetrating interpretation.63 Erasmus makes this very point, declaring in his analysis of the Silenus proverb that the job of the Christian is not to be deceived by the outward appearance of

scripture but to ‘crack the nutshell’ in order to locate ‘hidden wisdom which is truly divine’; and not simply to ‘pause at the surface’ of the Gospels but to ‘pierce to the heart of the allegory’ so as to ‘venerate divine wisdom’.64 Like comparable earlier works by met de Bles (figs 20.5 and 20.6), Bruegel’s Carrying can be regarded as a Silenic picture.65 Upon casual inspection, the picture seems to contain little of substance – a vast landscape filled with various figures of diverse kinds engaged, for the most part, in profane activities. But on closer inspection – prompted by the pious mourners in the foreground – the viewer gradually locates Christ, whose Silenic nature Bruegel conveys by showing him as being ‘tiny and negligible’. His picture thus bodies forth the fundamental paradox of the Silenus, utilizing copia to obscure and conceal Christ among the banal, everyday and natural. As a result, the picture elicits careful scrutiny and the active pursuit of spiritual knowledge, which is to say a type of contemplative viewing that is exegetic in character, bringing to mind the comment made by Erasmus in the Adagiorum that ‘if one has a good fortune to have a nearer view of this Silenus […] in heaven’s name what treasure you will find, in that cheap setting what a pearl, in that lowliness what grandeur […]’.66 Importantly, Erasmus was not the only writer to recognize the usefulness of the Silenus as a means for encouraging contemplation of the true nature of Christ and scripture in this period. Citing Erasmus, Sebastian Franck also did so in his Paradoxa, published first in German in 1534 and made available in translation into Dutch by Willem Gaillaert of Emden no later than about 1560.67 His text was considerably influential in the Netherlands during Bruegel’s lifetime: it profoundly affected, for example, the spiritual outlook of Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert, who one author has been wont to describe as the Netherlands’s own Franck;68 and it was a text clearly well known to Bruegel’s close friend Abraham Ortelius (who also knew Coornhert), who deemed the Paradoxa so useful that he recommended it to members of his circle.69

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Franck’s Paradoxa – which enumerates and explains 280 biblical paradoxes, or ‘wondrous sayings’ – hinges on the idea, common to Erasmus and Franck, that true faith issues from inner enlightenment, and that the external word of scripture conceals truth: ‘the letter’, Franck observed, ‘is a true Silenus of Alcibiades’.70 Accordingly, just as Bruegel’s Carrying registers Erasmus’s influence, it also registers that of Franck.71 In fact, the picture evokes certain passages in the Paradoxa very closely, such as: […] one who does not want to go astray, must not remain outside with appearances but must dig deep in the field and travel far out of the world into himself where he will find buried treasure […]. God has hidden what is invisible and essential in what is visible and figurative. To the righteous he covered up God’s word, victory, peace, life, etc., in outward appearance, flesh and letter rather than leaving it along the way for dogs and pigs, so that no uncircumcized may stumble on it. Yes, toil and labour, selfdenial, dedicated and hatred of one’s soul and life are required if one is to find this treasure of Christ and outdo Silenus, so that whatever is contained therein might appear.72 Elsewhere Franck similarly speaks of Christ being ‘hidden from the world’, and as such continues to be crucified daily, because the ‘world is round and all things go around in an orbit […] what has been is no longer, but shall be once again. Therefore the entire Bible has to be repeated again and again […].’73 The paradox of scripture, therefore, is that it will always remain a closed book to those who cling to the letter alone without comprehending its underlying spirit, and for those people Christ is relentlessly and perpetually crucified right up to the present. By representing the event as contemporary, and arranging the procession as a series of concentric circles surrounding the central rock, Bruegel’s painting seems to be illustrating Franck’s ideas about the Silenus and Christ’s perpetual,

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cyclical Passion.74 Christ remains hidden from his sixteenth-century assailants who, in their blindness, bring about his relentless suffering – an impression that is reinforced by the conspicuous use of circles elsewhere in the picture, from the prominent torturer’s wheel in the foreground to the dense circular crowd assembled at Calvary itself, as well as the many cart tracks that furrow the earth, indicating that this is not the first or last time that this procession has or will take place. The beholder, conversely, is encouraged by the picture’s formal properties to exercise faith and apply a spiritual eye, to open this painted Silenus and discover what is contained within. Seen in these terms, Bruegel’s painting aligns in form and function with Franck’s stated intentions for the Paradoxa: I must now conclude in the hope to have given others cause to philosophize and to look upon and think on [God and God’s Word] more thoroughly, since all things must be looked upon as a Silenus of Alcibiades – much different in their true basis from what they appear to be externally.75 Conclusions: ‘Holy Scripture is like some wonderful painting’ Bruegel’s Carrying of the Cross, like its antecedents in Antwerp painting, therefore mobilizes an abundant style of pictorial narration in order to produce an exegetic image that simultaneously supplies and engenders a pious meditation on its biblical theme. Deploying copia, the painting commands proxemic and prolonged spectatorship and implicates the beholder in a personal quest for knowledge and understanding that at first glance is hidden. Bruegel’s picture, therefore, manifests pressing concerns from the time about spiritual knowledge and its acquisition, both of which had been brought into sharp focus by the diverse, and increasingly violent and proselytizing, confessional disputes of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The lesson the picture promotes mirrors the irenical evangelism of Erasmus: promoting faith alone and

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a return to scripture as the surest means of knowing and understanding Christ’s true nature. To conclude, it is worth pointing out that Erasmus himself seems to have recognized that his ideas about copia lent themselves well to the visual arts. As we saw earlier, Erasmus invoked a painterly analogy to elucidate the pleasing effect that arises when varietas is used to lend vividness to a rhetorical disquisition. This is a metaphor he uses several times. In his Exposition of Psalm 33 (Enarratio psalmi 33; 1531), for instance, the pious interrogation of scripture is again compared to viewing a wonderful painting: Holy Scripture is like some wonderful painting; if you look at it for a good length of time something new and delightful to contemplate is always coming into view.76 There are other such instances as these but the fullest, and perhaps most revealing by way of conclusion to this essay, appears in the Paraphrase on Mark (1524). While expounding – copiously – the meanings and significance of Christ’s healing of the paralytic (Mark 2:10–12), Erasmus remarked that […] sometimes, when we step back from the works of sculptors and painters, contemplating the several parts of their work, we keep noticing

new points that escaped our eyes before; thus I think that it will certainly be appropriate to pause a while at this remarkable sight, examining its individual aspects with pious curiosity. Indeed, everything the Lord wrought on earth he did so that we might meditate upon it and choose for ourselves whatever is conducive to a pious life. This will be done with even greater benefit if we consider first of all what was displayed externally before the corporeal eyes, then what this image indicates must happen in our hearts.77 Here Erasmus seems to equate the pious contemplation and interpretation of scripture, in order to contemplate God, to viewing a good picture that is full of many details. Just like scripture and Nature, he explains, good works of art arouse ‘pious curiosity’ and provide sites for contemplation, during which we keep ‘noticing new points that escaped our eyes before’, and averring that the faithful should ‘pause a while at this remarkable sight’. Erasmus himself, therefore, likened the delight and edification that arises from scrutinizing scripture with that which flows from piously contemplating a good picture. It is precisely this combination of delight and edification that arises from contemplating Bruegel’s 1564 Carrying of the Cross.

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N OT ES I would like to thank Jürgen Müller, Elizabeth Honig, Edward Wouk and David Hemsoll, whose questions and insightful comments about ideas presented in this essay are reflected in what follows. Thanks also to David for carefully proofreading the manuscript. 1 Bodenhausen 1905, p. 209; Baldass 1918; Gibson 1989; Muller, Rosasco and Marrow 1998.

22 Erasmus 1988a, p. xi; Sowards 1958, esp. p. 123; Mack 2011, p. 76. 23 Mynors 1984; Erasmus 1997, pp. xiii– xliv; Pabel and Vessey 2002. 24

Sowards 1958, p. 128.

25 For example, Sullivan’s studies of 1991, 1992, 1994; Meadow 2002.

52

Roussel 2002, p. 64.

53 Erasmus 1991, p. xi; Erasmus 2003, p. xii. 54 Rix 1946; Mack 2011, table 2:2 (p. 31), pp. 76–104. 55 Pettegree and Walsby 2010, vol. 1, nos. 11249, 11288, 11373, 11398, 11429, 11432, 11533, 11589, 11640–41, 11650, 11668, 11686–7, 11706, 11711, 11732, 11733, 11747, 11754, 11757.

26

Panofsky 1969; Giese 1935.

27

Erasmus 1978b, p. 301.

28

Ibid., p. 301.

3 Vienna 2018, cat. nos. 48, 67, pp. 123–8, 194–201.

29

Erasmus 1988b, pp. 76–90.

56 Meadow 1996; Gregory 1996; Koerner 2016, p. 289.

4 New York 2011, pp. 286–7; Terlinden 1942, p. 250.

30

Erasmus 1978b, p. 302.

57

31

Ibid., p. 577.

32

Ibid., p. 577.

58 Erasmus 1992, pp. 262–82; Sartorius 1561; Meadow 2003, pp. 32–3.

33

Ibid., p. 577.

59

Erasmus 1992, p. 262.

Ibid., p. 579.

60

Ibid., p. 262.

35

Ibid., p. 587.

61

Ibid., p. 267.

7 See Marlier 1939–41, esp. p. 94. See also Emmens 1973; Falkenburg 1988; Falkenburg 1993; Falkenburg 1995b; Falkenburg 2001; Craig 1983.

36

Ibid., p. 574.

62

Ibid., p. 264.

37

Ibid., esp. pp. 301, 577.

63

Ibid., pp. 266–7.

Spencer 1957.

64

Ibid., p. 267.

8 Gregory 1996; Silver 2011, pp. 15–34, 168–74, 241, 265–74; Koerner 2016, pp. 287–8. On the lost van Eyck, see Panofsky 1953, vol. 1, pp. 233, 237, 242, 350; Urbach 2006–8.

39

Wouk 2018, pp. 126, 267–71, 568–9.

65 Müller 1999, pp. 90–125; Weemans 2009.

2

Engerth 1884, p. 61.

5 Falkenburg 1995a; Meadow 1996; Gibson 1977a, pp. 123–33; Powell 2006; Müller and Schauerte 2018, pp. 72–3. 6

Meadow 1996, p. 189.

9 Gibson 1977b, pp. 185–93; Vogelaar, Filedt Kok, Leeflang and Veldman 2011, pp. 110–18, 229; Filedt Kok and Gibson 2014, pp. 3–9.

34

38

40 Van Mander 1973, vol. 1, pp. 136–7; Melion 1991. 41 Van Mander 1973, vol. 1, pp. 43–7, 135, 258–9; Miedema 1994–9, vol. 1, pp. 330–57, esp. pp. 344–5. More broadly on the differences between Netherlandish visual descriptiveness and the Italian historia, see Alpers 1983, esp. pp. xvii–xxvii.

10 Genaille 1950; Bergmans 1955; Schubert 1970, pp. 44–60; Wallen 1983, pp. 89–95; Ubl 2014.

42 Van Mander 1973, vol. 1, pp. 131, 258–9; Melion 1991, esp. p. 8.

11 On the met de Bles illustrated here, see Currie and Serck 2007.

44 See Erasmus’s 1528 Dialogus Ciceronianus, in Erasmus 1986; Boon 2010, pp. 41–9.

12

Serck 1998, esp. p. 53.

43 Van Mander 1973, vol. 1, pp. 130–31.

15

Alberti 2013, esp. pp. 59–60.

16

Smeyers 1997; Hull 2005.

45 Early authorities draw attention to Bruegel’s ingenuity and skills in creative emulation: see Lampsonius and Cock 1572, pl. 19; Miedema 1994–9, vol. 1, pp. 190–93 (Van Mander explicitly praises the artist’s ‘gheestighen’ at fol. 233r). On the etymology and meanings of ‘gheest’, see Marr, Garrod, Marcaida and Oosterhoff 2018, pp. 153–92.

17

Falkenburg 1993.

46 Meadow 1996; Powell 2006.

18

Silver 2011, pp. 241, 433.

47 Sambucus 1564, p. 107.

13 Bevers 1998; Meuwissen 2017, esp. pp. 15–16. 14 Grafton 1999; Alberti 2013, pp. 3–13; Wouk 2018, pp. 126, 267–71, 568–9.

19 Melion 2009; Melion, Brusati and Enenkel 2012; Melion 2014; Weemans 2009; Weemans 2012; Weemans 2014. 20

Rix 1946; Mack 2011, pp. 31, 76–104.

21

Erasmus 1978b, p. 295.

48 Van den Berghe 1564, p. 25; Pleij 2009, p. 117. 49 Boon 2010, pp. 45–7. 50 Erasmus 1991, p. 226. 51 Erasmus 1997, pp. 212, 228–9.

66

Erasmus 1978a, pp. xl–xliii; Ong 1965.

Erasmus 1992, p. 267.

67 On the early dissemination and translation of Franck’s writings in the Netherlands, see Becker 1928, esp. pp. 154–5; Kaczerowsky 1976, pp. 84, 87; Augustijn and Parmentier 1993. 68 Bonger and Gelderblom 1996; Kühler 1932, p. 359. 69 Hessels 1887, nos. 212, 214; Popham 1931. 70

Franck 1986, p. 8.

71 Müller and Schauerte 2018, esp. pp. 35–6, 72–5; Müller 1999. 72

Franck 1986, p. 14.

73

Ibid., pp. 8, 190–91.

74 See also Müller and Schauerte 2018, pp. 72–5. 75

Franck 1986, p. 480.

76

Erasmus 2003, p. 328.

77

Erasmus 1988a, p. 34.

Fig. 21.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Invidia, 1558, engraving, 226 × 296 mm, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France

21

Pieter Bruegel the Elder and France Patrick Le Chanu

A BSTRACT : This contribution examines the evolution of the Bruegel dynasty’s renown and reputation in France. The earliest known example of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s influence there is an anonymous series of bound prints published in Paris in 1565. The title of this print album, Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel (The Burlesque Dreams of Pantagruel), was inspired by a character created by the French writer François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553). After the appearance of this Rabelaisian book however, examples of Bruegel’s influence seem to disappear. Was the art of the Bruegels ignored in France during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries and, if so, why? How was their art considered by historians at the end of the nineteenth century and during the twentieth century? How is the Bruegel dynasty regarded in France today?

—o— In France, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s fame has never been so widespread as it is now. Yet if we examine his influence, from his time of activity up to the present, we see that French acceptance of Bruegel’s genius was long in coming. It was only in 1892 that The Beggars, the sole painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder held in a public collection in France, entered the Louvre as a generous gift from Paul Mantz.1 However, Bruegel’s art was known earlier, particularly thanks to his prints and perhaps also through copies painted by his sons or by followers. An early example is a series of prints published in 1565 in a book edited by Richard Breton, a Parisian editor, four years before Pieter Bruegel’s death. The title of the book, Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel, refers to a well-known hero of

Rabelais, the giant Pantagruel, son of Gargantua.2 In the book’s foreword, the editor mentions that he himself knew the French writer François Rabelais (c  1494–1553) very well, that Rabelais was the inventor of these prints and that, for these reasons, he felt almost compelled to publish them. The foreword also notes that the book could be used for the amusement of the young, but also some lively wits might use its images ‘tant pour faire crotestes, que pour establir mascarades’.3 By that he means that they could serve as models for costumes or ephemeral decorations for feasts or royal entries, an important part of the livelihood of painters at the time. There are 120 woodcut prints in this book, depicting quite a range of comical figures. Some of them are women. Most of them are obviously men, even though it is sometimes difficult to determine. Subjects illustrated by these images include eating and drinking, but male sexuality is the most prominent theme. It is in fact very tempting to draw a parallel between the art of Rabelais as a writer and that of Bruegel the draughtsman and painter. They were both humanists and learned men; Rabelais was himself a medical doctor. They both appreciated ‘popular culture’ – meaning its spontaneity, people’s habits, traditions and language. Above all, they both had an eccentric sense of humour and inventiveness. Neither was bound by frustrating and limiting social conventions in their observation of the society around them and their willingness to appreciate, understand and depict it through

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representation. In fact, Amy Orrock has established that ‘evidence contained in archives in Antwerp confirms that Rabelais’s books were circulating in Bruegel’s home city by the middle of the sixteenth century’.4 Rabelais listed proverbs to describe Gargantua’s adolescence; Bruegel would later depict them in painting. Rabelais enumerated games played by Gargantua; Bruegel would later paint them also.5 We can see here, almost at its inception, the burgeoning idea that each nation develops its own genius: that is, France excels in literature, the Low Countries in painting. Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel 6 In the images included in Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel we can trace several motifs copied from Bruegel’s prints, which confirms that they were widely available by 1565. A very clever article published by Champfleury in 1870 points out several of these borrowings.7 They come notably from the prints Invidia (fig. 21.1) and Avaritia (fig. 21.2), both from 1558. In the top right background of the print Avaritia, we see a monster machine whose hat, cut in two by a sword, is on fire. This fire is fanned by a bellows attached to the monster’s body. We find the same monster in reverse in Les Songes Drolatiques (fig. 21.3). The engraver of the French book added a scallop shell to the coat, a swarm of insects flying around the head, and what looks like an ornament for an ecclesiastical garment. Another figure of the book is less faithful to Bruegel’s monster machine but was obviously inspired by it.8 From the same Avaritia print, a crossbowman shooting at a suspended purse is also reproduced in reverse in Les Songes Drolatiques (fig. 21.4). Here too, one notices the decorative additions added to Bruegel’s motifs: the crossbowman has feathers in his hat. His quiver seems attached to some plants at his feet. Several long thin blades of grass sprout on his left. At least two motifs were borrowed from the print Invidia. The first one is a sort of scarecrow, seen at the top left (fig. 21.5). Here again, there are some additions: feathers in the hat, a knife attached

to the coat, a festoon hung from a stick protruding from the mouth, the extremity of a sword dangling beneath his coat and finely decorated shoes, as well as the frequently seen thin blades of grass growing on the ground. To the right of the print Invidia, the boot with a spur on the left leg of an upside-down figure is transformed into a hat adorning one of the figures of the French book (fig. 21.6). Beyond demonstrating Bruegel’s influence, these examples are proof of the considerable role of prints in the early construction of an international, boundary-less style. Artistic creation can thus be seen as the crossroads of international exchanges, especially in France at that time. Invention and creativity occur here in the margins, and what artists receive and borrow seems at least as important as – and, in any case inseparable from – what they invent on their own. Other figures in Les Songes Drolatiques although not direct quotes at first sight, seem to share or at least resemble Bruegel’s prints. For example, one of these figures illustrates the theme of the big fish eating the small, but in a totally different way from the print after the drawing signed by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.9 One could say that, in addition to the Bruegel quotes, many prints in Les Songes Drolatiques share the style of Early Netherlandish invention of sarcastic and comical images, particularly those by Jan Verbeeck or Cornelis Massys. Other images seem far from Bruegel’s universe (fig. 21.7).10 Their slenderness, as well as the very thin and ‘aerial’ lines of plants and ribbons added to the figures borrowed from Bruegel, are much closer to decorative prints from the grottesca repertory. Examples of this are seen in works by artists such as Cornelis Bos (1506/10–1564) or the Frenchman Étienne Delaune (1518–1583). This synthesis between styles of the North and the South is more evidence of France being at the crossroads of artistic exchange. Authorship of the Images A plausible hypothesis about who created the images in Les Songes Drolatiques has long been

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Fig. 21.2 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Avaritia, 1558, engraving, 231 × 297 mm, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France

suggested.11 The author of the prints could be François Desprez, who had a bookstore in Paris’s rue Montorgueil, the district of the imagiers en papier.12 Before publishing Les Songes Drolatiques, the same editor, Richard Breton, had issued in 1562 the Recueil de la diversité des habits.13 The foreword of this book was almost certainly written by François Desprez. He admits to being the author of the images, but does not specify whether he drew or engraved them. Several images of the Recueil de la diversité des habits share stylistic and graphic characteristics with those of the Songes Drolatiques: the slender grasses surrounding the figures, and a particular predilection for the depiction of monsters. To add

further doubt regarding Rabelais’s authorship of the images of Les Songes Drolatiques, it seems indeed strange that Breton waited twelve years after Rabelais’s death to publish them. On the other hand, the editor was well aware that attributing them to Rabelais would greatly increase chances of the book’s success. All this evidence leads us to think that François Rabelais was probably not the inventor of the images adorning Les Songes Drolatiques.14 After the publication of Les Songes Drolatiques, Bruegel’s art presence in France seems to vanish, although examples of his prints’ influence exist and more could still be discovered.15

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Fig. 21.3 François Desprez (attributed to), Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel, 1565, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France

Why Did Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Art Spread So Little in France? First of all, because there were not that many paintings available on the market in general. Secondly, because one has to take into consideration the roots of the French elite’s taste in painting. As France became more and more centralized, its elite class placed a particular importance on observing and imitating the king’s taste. As brilliantly demonstrated recently by Frédéric Barbier in the context of the history of libraries, the king, in order to unify the country by imposing his authority on the aristocracy, had to build an image of himself as a man of taste and refinement. He had to surpass the high nobility in the magnificence of his

Fig. 21.4 François Desprez (attributed to), Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel, 1565, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France

lifestyle.16 In order to do so, he had to amplify aristocratic values and bring them to an apotheosis. Hence the impossibility for him to appreciate what he deemed, rightly or wrongly, to be bourgeois art. The bourgeoisie and merchants were obliged to work, and work was an unthinkable activity for the aristocracy. As early as 1499 we have proof of the rejection of Flemish art by the King of France on these grounds: Et oultre le receveur Briçonnet donna au feu Roy que Dieu pardoinct! une table de Flandres paincte, lequel après qu’il eut veue me dist que c’estoit pour ung marchant, et qu’il n’en voulloit poinst, et qui la me donnoit; et de fait la me donna.

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER AND F RANCE

Fig. 21.5 François Desprez (attributed to), Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel, 1565, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France

Fait (à) Amboise, le XXIIJe jour de septembre mil IIII c IIIIxx XIX. Signé: R. de Dezest.17 That being said, one understands how much the partisan aspect of Giorgio Vasari’s Vite would perfectly fit the careful process of fabricating the king’s artistic taste. It has to be admitted that Vasari’s ‘grand œuvre’ is both one of the most precious monuments of art history literature and a very partial view of pictorial styles. Its underlying goal is to demonstrate the Italian, more specifically Florentine, superiority in the art of painting and to impose his own definition of art. Vasari’s claim of the superiority of invention over execution, and his

389

Fig. 21.6 François Desprez (attributed to), Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel, 1565, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France

opinion of Early Netherlandish art as mere execution, comparable to following a recipe, was a way to relegate it to an inferior position. At the same time, Vasari and his followers praised the excellence of Early Netherlandish landscape painting – at best a backhanded compliment, as they proclaimed the superiority of history painting over all other genres. The power of this partisan position was very strong, and it spread rapidly all over Europe. Thus, Early Netherlandish art was equated with bourgeois taste, and this reinforced the French king’s agenda. As a consequence, French kings were almost naturally more inclined to appreciate Italian art over Early Netherlandish art. This longstanding ignorance and underestimation of the importance of

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It is interesting to note that Rabelais suffered, more or less, the same fate as Bruegel. Mikhail Bakhtin quotes the French Enlightenment writer Voltaire (1694–1778), who expresses scepticism for the very value of sixteenth-century literature, comparing it quite revealingly to children: On admire Marot, Amyot, Rabelais, comme on loue les enfants quand ils disent par hasard quelque chose de bon. On les approuve parce qu’on méprise leur siècle, et les enfants parce qu’on attend rien de leur âge.19 A look at the major French art-historical reference books of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reveals the level of knowledge and appreciation of Bruegel’s art at that time. Probably one of the earliest examples to mention his name is Noms des peintres les plus celebres … (1679) by André Félibien. The mention there is rather laconic: ‘Le vieux Brugle étoit disciple de Koek’.20 In 1715, Roger de Piles, in his Abregé de la vie des peintres … gives a more detailed survey of Bruegel’s art and career: Fig. 21.7 François Desprez (attributed to), Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel, 1565, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France

Bruegel’s art was not limited to France. The scarcity of Bruegel’s paintings, and the fact that they were quickly concentrated in a few collections, fuelled this phenomenon. Of course, engravings, being multiples, did compensate, but they could never compete with prestigious and refined paintings, especially in most courts – the highest circles of European society. This situation lasted so long that museums were very late in acquiring Bruegel’s paintings. According to Édouard Michel: En résumé, nous pouvons dire, preuves en mains, qu’à voir les choses dans leur ensemble, la fin du XVIe siècle, le XVIIe, le XVIIIe et la plus grande partie du XIXe siècle, n’ont vu en Bruegel qu’un petit maître drôle, un simple amuseur.18

PIERRE BRUGLE,

appellé LE VIEUX BRUGLE

A pris son nom du Village de sa naissance appellé Brugle, auprès de Breda. Il étoit fils d’un Païsan & disciple de Pierre Kouc, dont il épousa la fille. Il travailla ensuite chez Jerôme Kouc, dans la manière duquel il a fait beaucoup de choses; passa en France & de-là en Italie, qu’il a toute parcourue. Quoiqu’il ait traité toutes sortes de sujets, ceux néanmoins qui lui plaisoient davantage étoient des Jeux, des Danses des Noces, ou d’autres Assemblées de Païsans, parmi lesquels il se mêloit souvent pour remarquer précisement leurs actions, & ce qui se passoit parmi eux dans ces rencontres; aussi, personne n’a rien fait de mieux en ce genre-là. Il a étudié le Païsage dans les montagnes du Frioul; il étoit fort studieux & fort particulier, n’occupant son esprit que dans ce qui pouvoit contribuer à l’avancer dans sa profession, où il s’est rendu très-célebre: il y a beaucoup de

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER AND F RANCE

ses Tableaux dans le Cabinet de l’Empereur, & le reste de ses ouvrages est dispersé en plusieurs autres lieux, principalement dans les Païs-bas. On voit qu’il s’est fait agréger dans l’Académie des Peintres d’Anvers en 1551.21 Another text bears testimony of the early appreciation of Bruegel’s art in France. This is the Abecedario of Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774), which consists of notes compiled over decades by this great scholar.22 It should be noted that Mariette could not have had access to many of Bruegel’s paintings. Thus his knowledge of Bruegel’s art must have been founded mostly on drawings and prints, both of which he was a great connoisseur. Mariette notes that ‘Il étoit disciple de Jerosme Bos, et non pas de Jerosme Cock, comme le dit Sandrart.’23 Karel van Mander’s Schilder-boeck not having yet been translated into French (nor would it be for a long time), Joachim von Sandrart’s Teutsche Academie must have been a major source of information for late seventeenth and eighteenth-century French art historians writing about Early Netherlandish artists. Mariette praises Bruegel’s art of drawing. He says that he himself owned two Alpine drawings dated 1553 that were initially the property of the great French collector Pierre Crozat: Ce sont des veues de montagnes des Alpes; ils portent la date 1553, et pour les détails, ils sont supérieurement beaux. Je possède actuellement l’un et l’autre de ces desseins.24 As Mariette knew Bruegel’s art mainly through his drawings and prints, his highest praise was for his landscapes: Pierre Breughel, qu’on nomme ordinairement le vieux Breughel, pour le distinguer de son fils, s’est rendu célèbre dans le milieu du seizième siècle, non-seulement par ses compositions burlesques et fantasques, mais encore par ses paysages qui sont de très grande manière. Lorsqu’il avoit fait le voyage d’Italie, il s’étoit arrêté dans les Alpes, et y avoit dessiné des vues qui ordinairement embrassent de grandes

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étendues de pays; on voit de ces païsages dessinés à la plume qui ne seroient pas désavoués par Titien.25 At least one eighteenth-century French art historian knew Karel van Mander’s biography of Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Jean-Baptiste Descamps (1714– 1791). The chapter devoted to Pieter Bruegel in his Vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandois is very much inspired by Van Mander, whom Descamps even quotes.26 His appreciation of Bruegel’s art relies mostly on paintings that one cannot be sure that he had seen, given his dependence on and quasi-copying of Van Mander’s text. One has to note, however, an interesting parallel that Descamps draws between the art of Bruegel and that of the French playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known as Molière (1622–1673), based on their common observation of peasant life. But Descamps does not see the universal grandeur of Bruegel’s art; he merely perceives the amusing side of it. That is why, limiting Bruegel’s oeuvre to a narrow view of genre painting, he places David Teniers above him. Another line of enquiry into Bruegel’s fame in France would be based on estate inventories, with all the qualities and details but also the limitations of the information provided by these documents. In a country like France, which, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and even beyond, was not a painting collector’s country in comparison to the Low Countries and Italy, we can still find some interesting information in these documents. However, they provide just hypothetical traces of Bruegel’s influence through the dissemination of his follower’s works. Mentions of paintings in French inventories, unless they concern the very highest aristocratic collections, are concerned only with their subject and almost never the name of the author. Nevertheless, a considerable survey of Parisian estate inventories dated between 1550 and 1610 gives us some indications.27 Some highly educated people, very often men of law, owned landscapes depicting the four seasons, the twelve months,

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‘Drolleryes’ (sometimes called ‘Drollerye de Flandre’) or, more rarely, proverbs. On can only guess that these paintings bore the artistic inheritance of Bruegel’s art. Bruegel’s Rehabilitation, for Better or Worse Édouard Michel has stressed the major role of Belgian art historians in the rehabilitation of the art of Pieter Bruegel the Elder on an international scale.28 He mentions especially articles by Henri Hymans published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1890–91 and above all the major monograph published in 1907 by René van Bastelaer and Georges Hulin de Loo.29 There is nevertheless a drawback to this great rehabilitation project. This is – as, once again, so wisely noted by Michel – its narrow populist and nationalistic aspect, understandable at the time of publication of Van Bastelaer’s and Hulin de Loo’s great book but unacceptable on a scientific basis today. Thus, the art of Bruegel is: la vraie floraison de ce même réalisme, fécondé de l’esprit plébéien du terroir, en dehors de toute influence étrangère.30 In a way, this sort of statement drags Bruegel’s art back down to its derogatory status of a plebeian comical artist. It does so precisely by negating his assimilation of European culture and its Latin heritage, by refusing to see how much he absorbed and, as a consequence, represents, even though it is expressed with such subtlety in a local ‘idiom’. There is no need for an elaborate demonstration of the erroneous character of such ‘nationalistic’ statements. Thanks to the wide international circulation of prints – especially in a city such as Antwerp, which housed the ‘multinational’ enterprise of Hieronymus Cock, where Bruegel worked – no artist could avoid being exposed to and therefore influenced by foreign and especially Italian art. So many Early Netherlandish prints were exported throughout Europe that influence in the opposite direction was of course also true. As for France, a major artistic melting pot in the sixteenth century,

there is probably no better proof of these truly international exchanges than what we have seen in Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel.31 The Persistence of Social Prejudice against Bruegel’s Art in France Several reasons explain the persistence of scepticism concerning the universal value of Bruegel’s art in France. The strength and therefore the endurance of royal and aristocratic tastes and their Italianate predilections, inherited by museums, was still powerful throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, one should not oversimplify this prejudice to include all northern painters. Jan Brueghel the Elder’s more ‘refined’ themes and style had long been appreciated in France at the highest social level.32 In the mid-1960s the major exhibition Le Seizième siècle Européen dans les collections publiques françaises contributed to the appreciation of sixteenth-century art in France.33 It presented a selection of paintings and drawings from public collections all over France, except that of the Louvre. The catalogue includes an insightful and enthusiastic biography of Pieter Bruegel the Elder by a young curator, Jacques Foucart, who calls Bruegel ‘avec Metsys, la figure dominante de la peinture flamande du XVIe’.34 Nevertheless, the exhibition contained only three drawings by the artist, loaned by the Besançon Musée des beauxarts et d’archéologie.35 There were no paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Younger or Jan Brueghel the Elder after their father’s oeuvre. Given the fact that Bruegel’s original paintings in France are, to our knowledge, limited to one – The Beggars held in the Louvre – this conjunction of scarcity and prejudice against copies could only lead to Bruegel’s dismissal to oblivion. However, some twentieth-century artists recognized his genius and copied his works, as they would the great Italian masters (fig. 21.8). Bruegel’s Fame in France Today Thanks to scholars such as Henri Hymans, René van Bastelaer, Georges Hulin de Loo and, in France,

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Fig. 21.8 André Derain (1880–1954), The Massacre of the Innocents, copy after the painting formerly attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Oil on canvas, 97 × 147 cm, Troyes, Musée d’Art moderne (inv. MNPL 87)

Pierre Francastel and Jacques Foucart, Bruegel’s fame has continued to grow through rigorous studies at the turn of the twentieth century.36 Their work has been passed on and amplified by the well researched writings of art critics and journalists. It would be difficult to underestimate the pride that art lovers all over the country now take in the presence of even a copy after Pieter Bruegel in their local museum collection. One has only to think of the Wedding Dance and its numerous versions, most of which must have been inspired by the 1558 print. Painted examples can be seen in the art museums of Bordeaux, Quimper and Narbonne. There is no doubt that in these towns, people take pride in saying: ‘Nous avons un Bruegel.’ Although connoisseurs know that the very fine painting held in Bordeaux is not by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

but by his younger son Jan the Elder, the work is presented as one of the must-sees of that collection.37 Conclusion The fame of Pieter Bruegel the Elder in France, now at its height, is an important sign of the persistence of humanistic values. Thanks to the universality of his art, he is – along with a very few old masters, the Impressionists and Picasso – one of the rare figures of the painting tradition able to attract a wide and enthusiastic public anywhere in the world. The rising recognition of his work in France, which little by little won out against historical and social prejudices, is a celebration of an art and civilization without borders or boundaries, as it was during his own lifetime.

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N OT ES 1 The painting in the Louvre is painted on wood (18.5 × 21.5 cm), and is signed and dated ‘Bruegel M.D. LVIII’ (inv. R.F. 730). Paul Mantz (Bordeaux 1821–Paris 1895) was a journalist, art critic and administrator; he contributed largely to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 2 Desprez (?) 1565. The title could be translated as ‘The Burlesque Dreams of Pantagruel’. 3 ‘as much for creating grotesques as for organizing masquerades’. 4 This topic is developed in the chapter ‘Comparing Bruegel and Rabelais’: Orrock 2010, pp. 118–29. 5 For the proverbs, see Rabelais 1994, pp. 33–5. For children’s games, see ibid., pp. 58–63. 6

Desprez (?) 1565.

7 Champfleury 1870. Champfleury questions Rabelais’s authorship of these images. 8 Amy Orrock has identified other borrowings, notably from the print Superbia, belonging to the same Seven Deadly Sins series, engraved by Pieter van der Heyden and published by Hieronymus Cock in 1558. She discusses them extensively in her chapter ‘Comparing Bruegel and Rabelais’, in Orrock 2010. 9 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la photographie, shelfmark: /12148/btv1b845240432012, 2012, fol. 49r. 10 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la photographie, shelfmark: /12148/btv1b845240432012, 2012, fol. 13r, fol. 50v. 11 Porcher 1936, Elsig and Jeanneret 2004, Orrock 2010. 12

Print illustrators.

13 Desprez (?) 1567. This book was first published in 1562 and again in 1564. 14

Champfleury 1870, p. 260.

15 I am thankful to Daan van Heesch for pointing out the presence of a Bruegelian painted decor in a house in Pouilly-lès-Feurs, west of Lyon, France. This decor was painted in the second half of the sixteenth century by an anonymous artist, partly after the print by Pieter Bruegel, The Sleeping Pedlar robbed by Monkeys. 16

Barbier 2013, p. 93.

17 Leroux de Lincy 1847–8, p. 422. Translation: ‘And further, the collector Briçonnet gave to the late King, may God forgive him! a painted table from Flanders, and the King, after seeing it, told me that it was for a merchant, and that he did not want it, and that he would give it to me, and in

fact he did. Done in Amboise, the 23rd of September 1499. Signed, R. de Dezest.’ The king to whom this text refers is Charles VIII (Amboise 1470–Amboise 1498). I am thankful to Professor Bertrand Jestaz for introducing me to this text in his Art History classes taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. 18 Michel 1938, p. 32. Translation: ‘To summarize, one can say, proof in hand, that overall, the end of the sixteenth century, the seventeenth and eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries, saw Bruegel as no more than a little comic master, a mere jester.’ 19 Bakhtin 1970, quoting Voltaire (Le Sottisier de Voltaire, Paris, 1880, T. 32, p. 556). Translation: ‘One admires Marot, Amyot, Rabelais, as we praise children when they randomly say something good. One approves of them because one looks down on their century, and children because one does not expect anything from them.’ 20 Félibien 1679, p. 29. This is probably a reference to Pieter Coecke van Aelst, mentioned by Félibien on the previous line. On the same page a reference is made to ‘Matthias Cock d’Anvers’, thus with the correct spelling for this other artist family, meaning that Félibien could not have been referring to Hieronymus Cock when he speaks about Bruegel’s master. 21 De Piles 1715, pp. 362–3. Translation: ‘Pieter Brugle, called the old Brugle / Took his name from the village where he was born called Brugle, close to Breda. He was the son of a peasant & disciple of Pieter Kouc, whose daughter he married. He then worked at Jerôme Kouc’s, whose style he emulated in many of his works; went to France & from there to Italy, where he travelled extensively. / Although he painted all sorts of subjects, those he liked most were games, wedding dances, or other gatherings of peasants, with whom he would often mingle to observe precisely their actions, and what happened among them during these gatherings; also, nobody surpassed him in this particular genre. He studied landscape in the Frioul mountains; he was very studious and very singular, occupying his mind only with what could contribute to the advancement of his profession, in which he became very famous: there are many of his paintings in the Emperor’s collection, and the rest of his work is scattered in several other places, mostly in the Southern and Northern Netherlands. We see that he became a member of the Antwerp Academy of Painters in 1551.’ 22 Mariette 1851–3, pp. 188–92. 23 Ibid., p. 188. Translation: ‘He was a disciple of Jerosme Bos and not Jerosme Cock, contrary to what Sandrart says.’

24 Ibid., p. 188. Translation: ‘These are two views of the Alps mountains; they bear the date 1553 and as to the details they are of the utmost beauty. I now own both these drawings.’ Both drawings are now in Musée du Louvre (invs 19.728 and 19.727; Lugt 1968, nos. 329 and 330, p. 82 and plates 121–2). Inv. 19.727 is now considered a copy after Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Frits Lugt lists eleven drawings in the Louvre collection that he considers to be by Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s hand. 25 Mariette 1851–3, p. 188. Translation: ‘Pieter Bruegel, whom we usually call the old Bruegel, in order to distinguish him from his son, became famous in the middle of the sixteenth century, not only through his burlesque and eccentric compositions, but also through his landscapes which are of the highest quality. When he travelled to Italy, he stopped in the Alps, and drew views that usually embrace huge vistas; one can see some of these landscapes drawn with the pen that would not be disavowed by Titian.’ 26

Descamps 1753, pp. 101–4.

27 Wildenstein 1951. Other surveys concerning the taste for painting in the Parisian bourgeoisie, also published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, concern inventories dating from 1610 onwards and around 1700. 28

Michel 1938, pp. 32–3.

29

Van Bastelaer and Hulin de Loo 1907.

30 Ibid., p. 3. Translation: ‘the true flourishing of this very realism, fed by the plebeian spirit of the land, outside of any foreign influence’. 31 Amy Orrock (Orrock 2010, p. 128) notes that Christopher Plantin sent four sets of the complete Bruegel Sins to the Parisian dealer Martin Le Jeune in 1558. 32 An example is the wonderful Battle of Issus, given in 1693 by ‘gardener’ André Le Nôtre (1613–1700) to King Louis XIV and now held in the Louvre. Signed and dated bottom left ‘Brueghel. 1602’, oil on panel, 87 × 136 cm, inv. 1094. 33

Paris 1965–6.

34 Ibid., p. 41. Translation: ‘With Metsys, the dominating figure of sixteenth-century Flemish painting.’ 35 Ibid., pp. 41–2. These three drawings, two of them depicting Amsterdam’s Fortifications and the third one a Mountainous landscape with a castle (invs D. 2613; D. 2614; D. 2615) are now attributed to Jacob Savery: Mielke 1996, A38, A43, A44, pp. 82–3, figs pp. 218 and 221. 36

Francastel 1995.

37 Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, .

Fig. 22.1 Memorial tablet on the facade of Den Bock in Arenbergstraat, Antwerp

22

In Search of the Bruegel Family’s Homes and Studios in Antwerp Petra Maclot

A BSTRACT : New biographical data on the Bruegel dynasty includes the particular material circumstances of the artists’ habitat. The search failed again to find out more on Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s exact whereabouts, but showed that most of his descendants did not own a house either, and moved around from one rental property to another, mostly average merchant houses. Of all the traceable places, four can be more or less visualized. Of the two surviving, only one is still fairly authentic and an inventory of 1678 allows reconstruction of the studio in which Jan Brueghel the Younger died. Only Jan Brueghel the Elder’s dwellings were elite houses, and although not exactly designed as artists’ houses, they were landmarks, inhabited by other artists afterwards. Archival documents and material evidence fail to deliver clear answers, but nevertheless shed a light on the different lifestyles of three Antwerp-based generations of painters, mirroring the heterogeneous society of artists as a whole.

—o— The Artist’s Habitat When in 1882 the journal L’Escaut d’Anvers published a list of twenty houses, on the facades of which the Antwerp municipality had decided to place memorial tablets in remembrance of famous painters, the choice was criticized: David Teniers the Elder, Jan Brueghel the Elder and Cornelis Schut were most talented, but so many more of that same status deserved a plaque, worth a cartload of stones.1 Today only a few stones still remain in remembrance of the vast and heterogeneous collection of artists that once produced the works

for which Antwerp is so famous. Of the Bruegel dynasty, two tablets remember Jan Brueghel (fig. 22.1) but the houses of other Antwerp-based painters of that illustrious family have fallen into complete oblivion.2 For a better understanding of the world of artists and their production, a solid knowledge of the political-economic background and the families’ social network is indispensable. The specific material circumstances in which artists lived and worked may add relevant information, and to that end, dynasties such as that of the Bruegels are interesting cases to explore. Therefore, research on new biographical data on its members should include their habitats. Where exactly and in what type of property did they live and work? To what extent did they adapt these places to their changing needs and rising status? Were these properties similar to or different from those of Antwerp colleagues, and what may these dwellings, studios and their infrastructure have looked like? Were they considered as landmarks at the time and what has become of them after the artist left? Have any of the buildings survived and to what extent are they still recognizable as such? These questions are tackled from a building-historical approach, combining data from different kinds of archival documents with material evidence.3 It would indeed be exciting to discover Bruegel houses with distinct features, yet not many artists

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left an architectural statement. Of those who possessed the means to do so, only few showed the ambition to mark their presence by creating what can be called an ‘artist’s house’. Examples like Rubens’s or Mantegna’s were exceptions; Dürer’s and Rembrandt’s are more likely what is to be expected. Indeed, explicit ‘artists’ houses’ – with facades that self-consciously displayed their learning – were as rare in Antwerp as they were in other cities. However, that does not make the many far less glamorous places uninteresting. So far, the analysis of six buildings, treating five members from three generations of painter Bruegels, has yielded information on Pieter Bruegel the Elder, on his sons Pieter the Younger and Jan the Elder, and on the latter’s sons Jan the Younger and Ambrosius. Six out of the seven other painters of the third generation emigrated to Italy, leaving no trace in their town of birth, while Jan  III as yet seems untraceable.4 Pieter Bruegel the Elder All over the world, art historians hope to find new data about Pieter Bruegel the Elder (b. near Breda?, c. 1520/30 – d. Brussels, 5/9 September 1569), the first of the Bruegels who may have arrived in Antwerp well before 1545. As he never had a property of his own,5 he must have used rented accommodation or places offered to him, which makes it hard to find out where he lived and worked, and only leaves a few hypotheses that can be put forward, based on Karel van Mander’s rather anecdotal writing. Assuming that he trained at Pieter Coecke van Aelst’s workshop in the late 1540s, Bruegel may have lived in at his master’s – as Van Mander suggests by the image of the young apprentice often cradling his future wife as a baby – and may even have stayed on for a while after Coecke’s death in 1550. At the time, at least from 1549 onwards, the Coecke’s were active in In de Schiltpadde, on the south side of Lombardenvest,6 a property owned by the White Nuns of the adjoining cloister.7 From there, Coecke’s widow, Mayken Verhulst, would in

1553 publish her husband’s Dutch translation of Sebastiano Serlio’s famous treatise on architecture.8 As this shopkeepers’ house clearly offered no space for a sizeable workshop with boarding apprentices, the courtyard with outhouses behind it may have served the purpose. During the Second World War, however, a bomb destroyed the lot9 and only iconographical data can give an impression of the premises.10 After having entered the Guild of St Luke and his travels in Italy from 1552 to 1554, Bruegel may have returned to the workshop until Coecke’s widow left.11 According to Van Mander, after his time with Coecke van Aelst, he moved on to work with Hieronymus Cock,12 whose workshop Vier Winden or Aux Quatre Vents was established on the western corner of Sint-Katelijnevest with Lange Nieuwstraat. This, as well, was a rented house with outhouses at the back,13 which Cock left shortly after 1562.14 At the time of the engagement to his master’s daughter Mayken, before leaving for Brussels in August 1563, Bruegel apparently lived somewhere in the Cathedral parish.15 Although Van Mander’s story may be truthful, there is no solid indication as to exactly where in Antwerp Pieter lived and worked from about 1545 to 1551 and from 1555 to 1563. Unless some entirely ‘new’ documents turn up,16 this will remain a mystery. It has been wrongly believed that from his marriage in 156317 until his death in September 1569, the artist and his family lived in the commercially vibrant Hoogstraat, in what would seem to be a traditional merchant house. However, recent research points to a no longer existing house of an as yet unidentified type, situated across from the cloister at Bogaardestraat, near the ‘manneken pis’, in the parish of the Church of Our Lady.18 Only the funerary monument at that parish church witnesses Bruegel’s status as a famous artist: the stone epitaph bore an elaborate Latin inscription and was later adorned by a painting by Rubens.19 This last ‘house’ of the great painter, whose qualities were thought to exemplify an artist at the time, clearly bears witness to the reverence

IN SEARCH OF THE BRUEGEL FAMILY ’ S HOMES AND STUDIOS IN ANTWERP

of those who succeeded him, directly as well as by association, by blood as well as by art. Fully conscious of his monumental fame, he himself had never cared for owning a house or other statusrelated material goods. Bruegel’s sons Pieter and Jan were still young when their father died, and after their mother’s death in 1578 they were brought up by their maternal aunts until January 1583, while Coecke’s widow, Mayken Verhulst-Bessemeers, herself a renowned miniaturist, probably guided the artistic education of her grandchildren.20 Early in 1583, Pieter – and in his wake also his grandmother and his brother Jan – moved to Antwerp, where the boys were properly trained as painters.21 Their grandmother must have rented a place, but perhaps the boys lived in at their masters’ houses. Pieter Brueghel the Younger According to Van Mander, Pieter Brueghel the Younger (b. Brussels, 1564 – d. Antwerp, 1637/8) entered Gillis van Coninxloo’s studio. Van Coninxloo occupied rented houses on the north side of Israëlstraat: in 1584 Roosennobel22 and in 1585 Zabulon.23 After Van Coninxloo’s sudden flight from Antwerp in 1585, young Pieter listed as a free master, but it is not known when he set up business as an independent painter. Despite his prolific production of copies of his father’s work, he would never own a house either. He may have taken over his master’s studio, a house by then owned by the de Jode family. Despite his successful business, Pieter the Younger often met with financial difficulties – possibly due to a drinking problem – and ‘never possessed a stone of his own’.24 Once married,25 from 1589 to at least 1609 he was established in a rented house at Bogaardestraat, in a poorer part of town.26 Most probably this was owned by alderman Andries van Breusegem,27 to whom around 1597 he regularly failed to pay the rent, paying off his debts with advances on his inheritance.28 As far as can be traced, this property was situated at the west side, next to the corner with Sint-Antoniusstraat,

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and was a merchant house, among mainly small shopkeepers’ houses, all built in around 1553. It consisted of a front and a rear building, suitable for a family with two children and a decent sized studio. Soon the family extended and the scale of production increased. Pieter the Younger’s vast and well-organized workshop had a large output, producing mainly inexpensive copies of his father’s work for both local and export markets, contributing to the international spread of Pieter the Elder’s imagery. This supposes quite ample storage for materials and finished products, but also enough room for assistants, helpers and pupils – nine between 1588 and 1626. The workshop remained at Bogaardestraat until at least May 1609,29 but after that there is a gap in Brueghel’s curriculum vitae. At least from 1626 until his death in 1637 or 1638, he and his wife inhabited a rented house somewhere on Brabantse Korenmarkt30 behind the Tapestry Hall, a good neighbourhood and an upgrading of their social status. Many of their children had died at a young age, and the only surviving son who succeeded his father as a painter was Pieter Brueghel III, who left no trace of his whereabouts, and seems not to have cared for dedicating a proper funerary monument to his father. Jan Brueghel the Elder Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s younger brother, Jan Brueghel the Elder (b. Brussels, baptized 20 August 1568 – d. Antwerp, 12/13 January 1625), would lead quite a different life, seizing every opportunity to better himself.31 According to Van Mander, he was trained by Pieter Goetkindt the Elder, who was also an important dealer in art and pigments, with a large collection in his shop, established in a rented building next to the west corner of Pruynenstraat.32 After Goetkindt’s death in 1583, Jan may have stayed on with his master’s widow, Catharina Palerme, who continued the business.33 From 1589 to 1596, Jan passed most successful years in Germany and Italy, moving in the best circles. On his return, having become a master’s

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son in 1597, he probably lived and worked in a rented place until his marriage, in early 1599, to Isabella, daughter of the well-known engraver and art dealer Gerard de Jode.34 Having become a most sought-after painter, Jan must have set up his own workshop in an appropriate rented building, most probably situated in the parish of the Church of St George, as his first son was baptized there in 1601.35 Widowed in 1603, the successful artist came into money and, after returning from a journey to Prague, on 20 December 1604 bought Meerminne, a fairly large property on Lange Nieuwstraat. In April 1605 he married a lady of wealth and distinction, Catharina, daughter of Ambrosius van Mariënburg, secretary of the city treasury.36 The following year he was appointed by the Archduke and Archduchess Albert and Isabella, governors of the Southern Netherlands, and thus from then onwards he was able to maintain the lifestyle of a prosperous and highly respected citizen. For successful painters, staying at court could hardly be considered a marker of importance and so Brueghel insisted on remaining in Antwerp instead of moving house to Brussels, although spending quite some time at court by making the journey almost daily. The property Meerminne consisted of two houses and their garden, joined and transformed into an elite dwelling behind a six-bay long facade, possibly still with two gables. In 1627 it was described as ‘a dwelling […] with gate, courtyard, reception hall, kitchen, downstairs room, garden, diverse rooms upstairs, cellar, pump, rainwater tank’, at the back stretching onto a neighbouring garden.37 However, no document mentions the embellishments of the building or garden, or the shape and situation of a studio. As the surface was not that large, and there were no outhouses, the studio may have been installed in the attic, lighted by dormers from the north, as was the case in several other artists’ houses. In 1642, Anna Brueghel and her husband David Teniers the Younger inhabited the house.38 Teniers’s

depiction of ‘The artist’s studio’, however,39 is in fact only a genre painting, showing a stereotypical ‘art room’, and does not render the actual workshop. From 1663 to 1709 their daughter and the painter Jan Erasmus Quellinus were the last to live there.40 The house was nearly totally destroyed during the Second World War41 and replaced in 1981,42 while the nineteenth-century commemorative tablet remembering three generations of painters was renewed.43 For reasons unknown, after fifteen years, Jan the Elder left Meerminne for an equally large elite dwelling on the north side of Arenbergstraat, directly opposite the magnificent artist’s house built for Frans Floris, the erudite painter par excellence. On 9 March 1619 ‘meesteren Jannen Breugel constschilder van hare hoocheden’ bought ‘a beautiful large dwelling, formerly two houses, with different rooms, courtyards, garden, well, rainwater tank, called Den Bock’, with in one courtyard a pump against the wall and at the back a large kitchen with a window high in the wall.44 This house had a long facade in traditional style, with only one upper floor and a great many crosswindows. On the left, a lower part with gate opened onto a courtyard with portico, to the reception rooms at the front and to a large kitchen at the back. The family is believed to have moved in that same summer, after having decorated the interiors in the most magnificent way, including hanging its collection of paintings of prominent masters, and planting the garden.45 However, a separate studio is not mentioned, and may have been installed in the large attic, lighted by dormers at the north side. When in 1628, a year after Brueghel’s widow died,46 Den Bock including its furniture was sold, it was a house ‘with stone parapet and bench at the street’:47 a leaning table and a bench both made of stone, at that time still reserved for dwellings of citizens of distinction or buildings of institutions, such as the town hall and some cloisters, was significant regarding status.48 Floris’s magnificent house across the street had a bench, and Rubens’s dwelling had one too. Apart from the presence of

IN SEARCH OF THE BRUEGEL FAMILY ’ S HOMES AND STUDIOS IN ANTWERP

a studio, some of the artists’ houses must have enjoyed a certain status: the idea of possessing or inhabiting the former dwelling of an illustrious artist must have been quite attractive, especially to art collectors or art dealers, as well as the next generation of artists. Maybe one of the reasons for choosing this property was its position, right opposite Floris’s depiction of Sculptura et Pictura on the facade of his own house. In 1625, Jan Brueghel the Elder and three of his children died of cholera and were buried in the Church of St George. Across the altar of the Holy Cross, a black marble monument by Robrecht de Nole, enriched by gilded decorations and incorporating Brueghel’s portrait by Peter Paul Rubens, celebrated the successful artist as a painter connected to the court, but also his forefathers and royal patrons.49 For a short time, Den Bock remained a landmark and in 1650 it was bought by another painter of fame, Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert, who lived and worked there until his death four years later.50 Since 1883, Brueghel’s name has figured on a memorial tablet over the door.51 The house underwent several modernizations,52 but old surveys show the two joint houses and courtyards. In 1923 it was ‘restored’ in a frivolous neo-Flemish renaissance style with the addition of the baroque gate frame from another house (fig. 22.2). The authentic midsixteenth-century vaulted cellars as well as the roof truss and beam structure with dormer windows still exist, the memorial tablet was replaced, and today this building is a listed monument.53 Ambrosius Brueghel Ambrosius Brueghel (b. Antwerp, baptized 10 August 1617 – d. 9 February 1675), who had barely known his father, was educated by his guardian, the successful Hendrick van Balen the Elder, Jan Brueghel’s friend and colleague. Den Wildeman at the south side of Lange Nieuwstraat was a magnificent house54 with an art collection and a studio, where after the master’s death in 1632, Brueghel’s training was continued under Jan van Balen the Younger.55

401

Fig. 22.2 Den Bock, Arenbergstraat, in 1924, after ‘restoration’

Ambrosius is believed to have travelled to Italy in late 1639, returning to become a free master in 1645.56 By marrying a merchant’s daughter in 1649 he became owner of Fonteyne, a valuable property on Hoogstraat (no. 11).57 Despite it having undergone centuries of alterations, research established a rather well-preserved main structure, with a recognizable typology. This traditional, fair-sized merchant house contained a front and a back building, divided by a courtyard, and had a second courtyard and side aisle at the back.58 At the time, it was a traditional merchant house, showing a threebay broad brick and stone facade with (stepped) gable and cross-windows at the street, possibly with an ornamented shopfront in blue stone.59 The couple still inhabited the house in 1655 and probably continued to do so60 until 1675, when Ambrosius was buried in Jan the Elder’s grave in the Church of St George.61 He had been a man of distinction, a member of the Violieren (chamber of

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PETRA MACLOT

rhetoric), an elected representative of a district and twice dean of his guild,62 and he had led a steady life, yet did not stand out as a Brueghel. Jan Brueghel the Younger Ambrosius’s older brother, Jan the Younger (b. Antwerp, 13 September 1601– d. 1 September 1678) was a man of yet another profile. Raised in both the beautiful dwellings, after training at his father’s studio he made his journey to Italy. Upon his return in 1625 he is believed to have taken over his father’s prosperous workshop,63 and became a member of the Violieren,64 assuming his place in society. Most probably he remained working at Arenbergstraat until the property was sold in 1628. Two years earlier, he had married the daughter of the painter Abraham Janssens, Anna Maria, with whom he would soon have a large family. The couple frequently changed houses and inhabited three different parishes, because, unlike his father and younger brother, Jan Junior would never possess a house of his own.65 Despite having started in very advantageous circumstances, developing a very successful career and collaborating with the most eminent painters of his time, he seems to have squandered his inheritance and earnings.66 As yet, it is unknown where the couple lived from 1628 to 1637, when Jan the Younger – dean of the guild since 1629 – is known to have rented a house owned by the Church of St James, and which abutted the church’s choir, at the west side of Parochiaanstraat.67 The rather small shopkeeper’s house may have served only as a studio and only for a few years, as part of it had to make place for the construction of the central radial chapel in which Peter Paul Rubens’s grave was planned.68 Indeed, on 28 September 1640, Jan rented the house Ramshooft at the south side of Schuttershofstraat for at least three months,69 a contract that may have been prolonged. Consisting of two houses with garden and the use of a well, and situated next to a caetsspele (bowling area),70 it was large and light enough to live and work in.71 The next decade again remains undocumented, and between 1650

and 1657 Jan was mostly working abroad, while his wife and the younger children may have lived at her parents, in the parish of the Cathedral. After his return from commissions at the French and Austrian court in 1657, Jan the Younger rented a place called Voghelsanck, situated behind three houses at the east side of Kolveniersstraat. This consisted of a large backhouse with a vast garden and separate access to an alley off Hopland,72 since 1619 next to the cloister of the English Carmelite nuns. There the couple settled with the youngest children, having sent out the two older sons, Philips and Ambrosius, as apprentices and assistants with board and lodging at their uncle’s in Paris.73 In 1668 the reciprocal will states that ‘the pieces of furniture standing in the small room next to the werkhuis’ belonged to their daughters Clara and Sara Brueghel,74 which indicates that Brueghel actually used part of the building as his studio. In 1784 this property was still described as ‘a backhouse […] with alley, kitchen, three rooms downstairs, a shed, large garden, cellar, rooms upstairs, with an exit at Hopland’.75 In 1883, behind Kolveniersstraat 3, the backhouse with garden and painters’ studio still existed, and had been used by renowned painters.76 The small outhouse (4.5 by 5 m) had been restored, but with its brick and limestone facade, cross-windows, attic shutter and stepped gable with high pinnacles, still evoked its original appearance. Downstairs, in the room with a fireplace against the back wall, a straight flight of stairs led to the upper room. In the attic, the original curved principals had been replaced by a simple truss; the vault of the cellar had also been modernized. The surface area of approximately 3.5 by 4  m and the rather low ceilings of both floors (3.06 m and 3.16 m) and the attic (4.5 m up to the ridge) allowed only the production of paintings of rather restricted size. It is not certain whether the exceptionally large and wide four-bay windows – completely filled with glass panes and facing west, thus providing abundant daylight – were restored according to the original. Restored again in 1926 and extended by a columned portico in

IN SEARCH OF THE BRUEGEL FAMILY ’ S HOMES AND STUDIOS IN ANTWERP

1958, this still most picturesque building was demolished only ten years ago, in order to increase the size of the Meir shopping centre (fig. 22.3).77 After his wife had died, the ageing painter changed houses – perhaps following an incident on Saturday 8 October 1672, when he was struck in the eye during a brawl at the offices of the guild, after which he claimed indemnity for not being able to paint any more.78 The rented houses – Sint Christophel and Sinte Hendrick at Pruynenstraat 23 and 27 – built in the 1560s, had once been part of the Goetkindt family’s patrimony.79 Of all the Bruegel houses traced so far, this is the only case that calls for further building archaeological research, as it is still typologically ‘readable’ as

403

a

b Fig. 22.3 Remnant of Voghelsanck behind Kolveniersstraat, before demolition c. 2006 (a). Restoration project for Voghelsanck in 1926 (b)

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PETRA MACLOT

Fig. 22.4 The houses at Pruynenstraat. Sinte Hendrick (left) and Sint Christophel on the corner of Korte Klarenstraat, today divided into three properties

a compact merchant house,80 and old building permits allow reconstructing an accurate image. Sint Christophel, three bays wide and situated on a corner, had its backhouse alongside Korte Klarenstraat.81 The limestone shopfront partly survives, but the stepped gable and cross-windows of its typically traditional brick and limestone facade have gone (fig. 22.4).82 The reconstruction of the interior distribution of rooms (fig.  22.5) shows that the front part consisted of a room three bays deep (c. 5.5 by 6.5 m), accessed by a door at front left, opposite a wooden spiral staircase.83 Between the door and the stairs, a corridor with wooden planks kept out the cold and allowed some privacy. Against the back wall, a fireplace heated the commercial space, of which the double height allowed the installation of a wooden ‘hanging

room’, suspended over the back part of the volume, which served as an office overlooking the shop. This was accessible via the spiral staircase, which led further up to the first floor – which was well-lit and heated, possibly subdivided by wooden walls – and to the attic, while the cellars were accessed from the street, as was traditional. A back door opened onto a small courtyard84 behind the neighbouring house Sinte Hendrick that was originally used for storage (fig.  22.6). The backhouse, only two bays deep, served domestic activities and had its own access at Korte Klarenstraat, opposite its own spiral staircase, again including a corridor. This ‘kitchen’ with its fireplace back to back with that of the front part, was lighted from the street as well as from the courtyard, and probably had a ‘hanging room’ as well. The spiral

IN SEARCH OF THE BRUEGEL FAMILY ’ S HOMES AND STUDIOS IN ANTWERP

a

405

b

Fig. 22.5 Reconstruction of the original Sint Christophel: plan of the commercial front house at Pruynenstraat and the domestic back house at Korte Klarenstraat, ground floor (a) and first floor (b)

stairs half hung over the courtyard, and very probably over the toilet (fig. 22.7). Jan Brueghel the Younger had continued painting until his last hour and was perhaps at work when the light faded from his eyes. The room in which the seventy-seven-year-old painter was found dead on 1  September 1678 clearly was his studio. Two inventories allow to imagine the master’s work space: a great mass of drawings and prints were stored in the front; the actual painting was done in the back, in the upper room alongside Korte Klarenstraat, which received light from both the south and the north and was easily heated. It was not a very large space (c. 5.5 by 5 m, and 4 m high), traditionally decorated, with a tiled floor and painted beams, walls, staircase and shutters. A first inventory of 6 September 1678 yields an extensive list, which mentions a paintbox, three palettes, three easels, a single window frame serving as a shutter, sketches with animals, birds, fruits, fish and faces, all his and that of his sons; one work said to be by Van Dyck, and five of flowers. There were

also a remnant of paint and brushes, two deadcoloured canvases, one of which measured three ells (c.  2  m), thirty-seven small prints, a drawing book of the master containing two drawings, another drawing and two sets of drawings and prints. Elsewhere in the house was stored a great mass of drawings and prints.85 Two weeks later, a second, rather scant inventory was drawn up at Brueghel’s studio at Pruynenstraat, where he had actually died. The furniture consisted of a bedstead with gilded tops, curtains and flounces, a ramshackle table with a worn leather cover, a wardrobe, four Spanish leather chairs and two rush chairs. Apart from some clothes, his silver spoon and fork, and three copper candlesticks, there were an easel with paintbox, a grinding bench with its grinding stone, a pigment roller, some frames for single and double canvases, one double and one single dead-coloured canvas, and also a number of sketches, drawings and prints of animals, flowers, etcetera, half of which had been promised to his son Ferdinandus.86 This room,

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PETRA MACLOT

Fig. 22.6 Reconstruction of the original Sint Christophel: facade and cross-section of the commercial front house at Pruynenstraat

IN SEARCH OF THE BRUEGEL FAMILY ’ S HOMES AND STUDIOS IN ANTWERP

407

Fig. 22.7 Reconstruction of the original Sint Christophel: longitudinal section and cross-section of the domestic back house at Korte Klarenstraat

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PETRA MACLOT

crammed with his bare necessities and a range of typical objects, draws a vivid picture of the old artist’s last days as a painter. Same Origins, Different Lifestyles This short overview shows that investigating the buildings in which the Bruegels lived and worked while creating the many works of art that are admired today, may help to complete the everevolving views of their ‘success story’ by revealing their different social profiles and lifestyles. Despite a common background and profiting from their forefather’s great fame, not all the Antwerp-based Bruegels succeeded in developing financially fulfilling careers, and did not enjoy the same artistic and social status. Only two owned a property, thanks mostly, in fact, to the financial help of their in-laws. The others frequently moved from one rented house to another, but may have also been renting a professional studio and warehouses elsewhere in town (fig. 22.8). As building types reflect the social status of their inhabitants, typological analysis illustrates their movements up or down the social ladder. Even before being appointed by the archdukes, Jan Brueghel the Elder had bought an elite house, characterized by the absence of any commercial function, even if it in fact contained a ‘factory’ for painting. Thus, he distinguished himself from citizens and artists such as his son Ambrosius, who inhabited a merchant house, and were of lower status. The other Brueghels merely rented small merchant houses characterized by a shop at the front, a step lower in the social hierarchy. A lack of documents and of archaeological research means that it is impossible to draw a certain picture of the interior decoration of these houses, but there is no reason to think that the Brueghels’ interiors were any different from those of other citizens of their social group, but for the obvious presence of works of art. Two Bruegels were commemorated by an elaborate funerary monument, but most of the places they lived and worked in never became real landmarks – apart from the houses of Jan Brueghel the

Elder, which were remembered by a commemorative stone in the 1880s. Although he had been conscious of his position and an artist in royal service, his grand elite houses were no ‘artists’ houses’ and did not differ from the dwellings of other citizens of similar standing. Like Floris and Rubens, he had a stone leaning table and bench at the front of his house, but despite his status he did not belong to that select group of famous Antwerp artists who expressed their excellence through magnificent facades, as was the case during the sixteenth century for Frans and Cornelis Floris, Cornelis van Dalem and Guillelmus Paludanus,87 and during the seventeenth century for Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens, of course, but also Gerard Seghers and the architect Peter Hannecart.88 Walking through the Antwerp streets today, one would never think that behind the old or remodelled, often dull facades many high-quality works of art came into being. Indeed, the chance of finding any building that can be presented as a locus memoriae of any artist becomes less every day. Of the houses and studios that figured in the background of the Bruegel ‘success story’, only one case appears substantial enough for further investigation in situ. It is astonishing that a city such as Antwerp, that once contained such a rich number and variety of visual artists, cannot show anything more authentic than the romantic evocation of the Rubens House – not to mention the so-called ‘restored’ house of Frans Snyders. While huge budgets are spent on events – such as the celebration of the Antwerp Baroque in 2018 – no serious efforts have been made to acquire the only surviving artist’s studio: Jordaens’s house, a monumental cluster of genuine baroque architecture, offers an exceptional opportunity for building archaeological investigation, considerably adding to our knowledge about the artist’s habitat, and would make a splendid historic landmark to visit. Ongoing research about Antwerp artists’ houses and studios – including less splendid examples – hopes to convince the reader of the public importance of this undervalued aspect of Antwerp’s heritage.

409

IN SEARCH OF THE BRUEGEL FAMILY ’ S HOMES AND STUDIOS IN ANTWERP

Schiltpadde

Fonteyne

Vier Winden

Vier Winden

Sint Christophel Ramshooft

Den Bock

Voghelsanck

Fig. 22.8 Positions of the Bruegel houses

Meerminne

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PETRA MACLOT

N OT ES 1 Thys 1882. Stadsarchief Antwerpen (SAA), MA#6384, Letter 12.12.1883.

lived in the vicinity in the summer of 1563. Roberts-Jones 2012, p. 19; Bastiaensen 2013.

2 The dynasty’s branches stretched as far back as 1771. Wauters 1883, pp. 321–2.

18 Hoogstraat 132, proposed by Martiny 1964, p. 9, was never inhabited by Bruegel. Bastiaensen 2016, pp. 23–4.

3 This is part of a larger research project in progress (2017–20) on the habitat of Antwerp visual artists, carried out by the author as a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), hosted by the KU Leuven, and on which a brief chapter was dedicated in Maclot 2014, vol. 1, pp. 137–46. 4 With sincere thanks to Jean Bastiaensen for his accurate and detailed remarks. 5 As verified by Jan Van der Stock in a personal communication, during our inspiring Bruegel talks in 2018. 6 Van der Stock 1998, p. 66; see Marlier 1966, p. 49. 7

Maclot 2017b, p. 22.

8 Van der Stock 1998, p. 66; see Rouzet 1975, p. 43. 9 De Lattin 1949 and 1950, vol. 6, pp. 134 and 137. 10 ARAB, Kaarten en Plannen in handschrift, 1ste reeks, 3176_1866: a survey of 1784 documents the three small rental houses in the street, Schiltpadde in the middle, each with access at the back onto a courtyard surrounded by outbuildings, where the studio of Coecke’s substantial business must have been installed. Still, it seems unlikely that a successful artist with a household would have lived there. Perhaps Schiltpadde and its outhouses only lodged living-in apprentices and collaborators, while the family inhabited a house elsewhere. FOF, KAA, Primitief Plan, Antwerpen 3e Wijk, 16de Blad (SAA, 12#3921): the earliest cadastral map of 1823–4 still shows the complex. 11 At least from 1558 onwards it was rented by another printmaker. Van der Stock 1998, p. 66; see Denucé 1912–13, vol. 1, pp. 48–9; SAA, R#2223, fol. 29v; Rouzet 1975, p. 42. Bruegel is believed to have been living with a servant or young girl. Van Mander 1604, fol. 233. 12 Van Mander 1604, fol. 233. 13 Maclot 2015, pp. 5–6. 14 Cock moved to a newly built property of his own, likewise called Vier Winden, on the corner of Leopoldstraat and Arenbergstraat. Maclot 2017a. 15 Bastiaensen 2013, p. 27. 16 See Jan Van der Stock’s new and very plausible hypotheses: Van der Stock 2019. 17 The marriage being registered at the Church of Our Lady, his betrothed must have

19

Roberts-Jones 2012, p. 10.

20 Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, p. 37 and note 5: referring to the communication by Joost Vander Auwera on his new findings (personal communication of Joost Vander Auwera on 9 March 2019, for which we owe him our thanks). 21 The short stay at the house ’t Vliegende Peert in Mechelen, suggested by Op de Beeck and De Bruyn 2006, p. 22, would thus have concerned only Jan and his grandmother. 22 SAA, PK#2931, p. 56. Degueldre 2011, vol. 2, p. 28. 23 Van den Branden 1883, p. 309. The houses no longer exist. 24 Ibid., p. 443. 25 On 5 November 1588, at the Church of Our Lady, he married Elisabeth Goddelet, with whom he would raise eight children. Siret 1872b, col. 25. The existence of an eighth child will be published shortly by Jean Bastiaensen, whom we thank for communicating this discovery on 10 March 2019. 26 Van den Branden 1883, pp. 440–44. Probably the same house at Bogaardestraat they inhabited in 1601. SAA, PK#3572.

38 Anna, Jan Brueghel’s daughter, married to David Teniers the Younger in 1637, bought out the inheritors in 1642. 39 David Teniers’s studio by David Teniers the Younger, Ringwood, Somerley, Collection Earl of Normanton. 40

Van den Branden 1883, pp. 944–5.

41 De Lattin 1949 and 1950, vol. 5, pp. 146–7. 42 SAA, 18#60693 (1981) and 18#61568 (1981). 43 . 44 Built between 1561 and 1566. SAA, SR#535, fol. 83, 9 March 1619. 45 Romantic supposition by Van den Branden 1883, p. 451. 46

Died Namur, 15 July 1627. Ibid., p. 454.

47 Ibid., p. 451. The document of 17 August 1628 no longer exists. SAA, PK#3572. 48 Maclot 2005; Maclot 2014, vol. 1, pp. 223–4. 49

Génard 1863, p. 451.

50

Van den Branden 1883, pp. 920–21.

51 After the ‘restoration’ of the facade in 1922, the tablet was not put back over the entrance, but placed on the actual spot, in the right part. 52

SAA, 1842#283; SAA, 1854#627.

27 His wife Anna was one of the inheritors of owner Jan de Haze. Degueldre 2011, vol. 8, p. 54, no. 813a, b.

53 SAA, 1922#13237; 1923#15192; 1924#17727; 1926#24973; 18#29972. Maclot 1993.

28 Van den Branden 1883, p. 443.

54 Demolished in January 2019, apart from the cellar.

29 As can be inferred from a disagreement about the rent for part of that same house. SAA, PK#696, fol. 194. 30 A testimony made by notary Hendrik Van Cantelbeeck states that he and his wife, aged 72 and 74, lived there on 10 October 1636, and probably they died there in 1637/8. Van den Branden 1883, pp. 443–4. 31 For the date of Jan Brueghel’s baptism, see Bastiaensen 2016, p. 24. 32 Degueldre 2011, vol. 11, p. 17, no. 244a. SAA, PK#2271, fol. 572. 33 Van den Branden 1883, pp. 444. Whether he finished his training with another master was never mentioned. Siret 1872a, col. 26. 34 Van den Branden 1883, pp. 444–5. 35 That same year Jan obtained citizenship and in 1602 was elected dean. Van den Branden 1883, pp. 445–6. 36 Ibid., p. 446. 37 SAA, SR#581, fol. 20v, 23.6.1627.

55

Van den Branden 1883, pp. 459–60.

56

Ibid., p. 460.

57 At his marriage on 21 February 1649 with Anna Clara, daughter of merchant Michiel van Triest, his in-laws donated the property. SAA, N#1314: 27 July 1644. 58 Maclot 2000, pp. 1–31, 45–51. Containing two dwellings, and much larger at the back than the facade suggested, in all 362 square metres, it offered enough space for two courtyards, two ovens, four cesspits, two wells and rainwater tanks, and a large shop at the front. Maclot 2000, p. 3; SAA, SR#358, fol. 177: 17 April 1579. In 1994, on the first floor, the aisle at the back was found entirely decorated with mural paintings, which may still have been part of the Brueghel family’s interior. Maclot 2003. 59 The front building was modernized in 1846. SAA, 1846#845. 60 SAA, PK#2932; see Borchtochtboek 1650–55.

IN SEARCH OF THE BRUEGEL FAMILY ’ S HOMES AND STUDIOS IN ANTWERP

Van den Branden 1883, p. 460.

71 Drastically modernized in 1874. SAA, 1874#841.

81 Now no. 5, a separate, modernized house.

Ibid., pp. 456–7.

72 SAA, PK#2294 and PK#2320, fol. 420.

82

73 SAA, PK#3572; Van den Branden 1883, p. 457, note 3.

83 Removed in 1950. SAA, 18#27433 (1950).

74 SAA, PK#3572; see SAA, N#3861: 11 March 1668. Bruegel’s wife was ill and died a few days later.

84

61

Génard 1863, p. 448.

62 63 64

Siret 1872c, col. 34.

65 From the marriage in 1626 eleven children were born; of the seven sons, Jan Pieter, Abraham, Philips, Ferdinand and Jan Baptist became painters. Van den Branden 1883, pp. 457–8. 66

SAA, N#1893, fol. 281.

67 Today corresponding with no. 4, modernized in 1855. SAA, 1855#720. 68 Van Herck 1927, p. 21, note 3; see Archief Sint-Jacobskerk Antwerpen (ASJ), Van Lerius, ms., fol. 364 in margin. 69

411

SAA, PK#3572, fol. 364.

70 As described in 1659. SAA, SR#754, fol. 360v: 16 October 1659; Degueldre 2011, vol. 9, p. 15, no. 204.

75 SAA, SR#1284, fol. 122: 4 September 1784. 76 Van den Branden 1883, p. 458, note 3. 77 SAA, 1926#24580; SAA, 18#38600 (1958); . 78 Van den Branden 1883, p. 458. 79 Denucé 1931, pp. 39–42; see SAA, SR#579, fol. 198: 14 June 1632. 80 On this type, see Maclot 2014, vol. 1, p. 113.

SAA, 1911#1888.

Built over in 1930. SAA, 1930#37505.

85 Duverger 1999, pp. 281–2, no. 3279: SAA, N#274, fols 448v, 492v: 6 September 1678. This inventory was produced by notary Hendrick Boonen, Brueghel’s son-in-law, in whose house he is said to have died. 86 SAA, N#4200: 20 September 1678. Partly published by Duverger 1999, pp. 288– 9, no. 3285. 87

Maclot 2018.

88

Maclot 1982.

Fig. 23.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562, oil on panel, 117 × 162 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 584)

Fig. 23.2 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Bird Trap, 1565, oil on panel, 37 × 55.5 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 8724)

23

Bruegel’s Patrons: How ‘Close Viewing’ May Reveal Original Ownership Tine Luk Meganck

A BSTRACT : Most of Bruegel’s precious paintings were painted on commission rather than for the open market, but only a few of Bruegel’s patrons are documented. Based on our study of Bruegel’s Fall of the Rebel Angels and the Census at Bethlehem, this contribution formulates a method that may reveal original ownership in the absence of documentary evidence. ‘Close viewing’ and ‘reverse engineering’ yield not only insights into his creative process, but also into the commission or ownership. Bruegel composed his idiosyncratic paintings from devotional and artistic traditions as well as topographically and temporally specific citations. By unwrapping these citations, we gain insight into how Bruegel addressed the original viewer; as such, they may enable us to identify the patron, and this identification in turn generates new meaning. New insights show that Bruegel worked for a closely knit network of patrons, mainly newly rich Antwerp merchants and Brussels administrators. For them, he painted a society in transition: between old and new, tradition and innovation, feudal and capitalist.

—o— Some early owners of paintings by Bruegel have long been known. The cosmographer and antiquarian Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) exhibited the Death of the Virgin in his house by 1568–75, if not before.1 The 1572 inventory of the Brabant mint master Jean Noirot lists several versions of a Peasant Kermis and Peasant Wedding by Bruegel, both on canvas and on panel (the latter probably the work

now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna) as well as a Winter Scene on canvas (all presently known winter scenes by the master are on panel).2 A 1607 inventory of the Granvelle family mentions a Flight into Egypt by Bruegel, suggesting the painting now in the Courtauld Institute of Art in London once belonged to Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517–1586).3 Bruegel’s most fervent supporter was no doubt the Antwerp merchant and tax administrator Nicolaes Jonghelinck (1517– 1570), who in 1565 possessed no less than sixteen paintings by the artist, among them a Tower of Babel and Christ carrying the Cross (both Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) as well as the so-called series of Months or Seasons.4 Manfred Sellink has already noted that this nucleus indicates that Bruegel was ‘essentially dependent on patronage of the administrative and financial elite’.5 Even so, we no longer know who commissioned the majority of Bruegel’s paintings. Because of this lack of documentary evidence about the original reception and ownership, Bruegel scholarship has focused largely on the intention and the genius of the maker. The reasons for the historical losses may be various: Bruegel produced his paintings during a time span of only eleven years, a period of great social and political upheaval that culminated in the Eighty Years’ War; later,

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damages incurred while in the Brussels archives may also be accountable. These lacunae are unfortunate, because the world of Bruegel’s patrons impacted, I believe, his creations. That Bruegel made his paintings, particularly his monumental panels, on commission rather than for the open market is suggested by their rarity (today about forty remain) and especially their idiosyncrasy – they often depict unexpected and unique adaptations of traditional themes. Even when making timeless masterpieces, Bruegel addressed his patrons on a more personal level, with unusual and particular elements. Knowing the individual commissioner, and his social and professional background, helps us understand the work of art that Bruegel conceived. In this contribution I will expose an approach that may reveal original ownership in the absence of documentary evidence. This method of what I call ‘close viewing’ gauges original ownership by unwrapping the artistic process followed by Bruegel, who like no other anticipates and implicates the viewer in his creative act. My methodology has developed gradually, resulting from carrying out academic research within a museum context. Confronted with the lack of historical evidence on the original context of Bruegel’s masterpieces in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, I reconsidered the paintings themselves as historical sources. This resulted in 2014 in the study of the Fall of the Rebel Angels (fig. 23.1), in which I analyse these paintings in four consecutive levels of reading, which also constitute the building blocks of my interpretation.6 First, I situated the devotional narrative and the Boschian idiom, the two most immediate levels of meaning as they had thus far been discussed in the existing literature. Then, in a first stage of close and repeated viewing, I discerned elements that looked very different from Bosch and conveyed a very different moment in history. The exotic naturalia and artificialia that constitute the hybrid falling angels suggest a viewing public informed about overseas discoveries and new knowledge, as collected in the

first cabinets of curiosities. In the last stage, I excavated this historical context for the creation year 1562 – the little piece of information that Bruegel, who often dated his works, has left us. That year Bruegel was about to leave the mercantile city of Antwerp for the court city of Brussels. There Cardinal Perrenot de Granvelle, one of the greatest collectors of that time, was engaged in a mounting competition with William of Orange (1533–1584), owner of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, a work that Bruegel pays tribute to, and even attempted to surpass. ‘Close viewing’ of the Fall of the Rebel Angels revealed previously unnoted and distinctive elements – among them animals and humans of the New World – that likely addressed the sphere and interests of the man who commissioned the painting, who was maybe, as I suggested, Granvelle. In the wake of these findings, and in close concertation with curator Sabine van Sprang, we initiated a project to investigate the two other Bruegel paintings in the Brussels collection – Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Bird Trap (fig.  23.2) and Census at Bethlehem (fig.  23.3) – following the same ‘close viewing’ method. It soon became clear that the interpretation of several defining themes of these winter scenes, such as climate and taxation, required in-depth historical expertise. Thankfully we could rely on specialist historians with whom we had been collaborating for the ‘City and Society in the Low Countries (ca.  1200–ca. 1850)’ Inter University Attraction Pool project. They supplied focused essays on selected components that nourished new arthistorical interpretations of the Winter Landscape by Sabine van Sprang and of the Census by myself. Our findings are revealed in Bruegel’s Winter Scenes: Historians and Art Historians in Dialogue.7 The present contribution will not reiterate the step-bystep investigation presented in the book, but develop the methodology that led to these insights, and present some further implications for Bruegel’s creative process and network, potentially opening up the path to further explorations of other Bruegel works.

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What is ‘Close Viewing’? The notion of ‘close viewing’ echoes the method of ‘close reading’ in literary studies. The Harvard College Writing Center advises: When you close read, you observe facts and details about the text. You may focus on a particular passage, or on the text as a whole. Your aim may be to notice all striking features of the text, including rhetorical features, structural elements, cultural references; or, your aim may be to notice only selected features of the text – for instance, oppositions and correspondences, or particular historical references. Either way, making these observations constitutes the first step in the process of close reading. // The second step is interpreting your observations. What we’re basically talking about here is inductive reasoning: moving from the observation of particular facts and details to a conclusion, or interpretation, based on those observations. And, as with inductive reasoning, close reading requires careful gathering of data (your observations) and careful thinking about what these data add up to.8 To emphasize the importance of visual analysis in the study of Bruegel’s paintings, I prefer the term ‘close viewing’.9 ‘Close viewing’ implies looking thoroughly, repeatedly and slowly, and as such adheres to the concept of slow science. As in the case of ‘close reading’, we may distinguish two stages. First, during an extensive course of meticulous visual scanning, we determined the essential constitutive elements of the Census at Bethlehem. This mapping could be compared with the methodology of ‘reverse engineering’.10 Not unlike a mechanic who learns to understand the operations of a machine by taking apart its pieces, this deconstructing of constituent parts of Bruegel’s composition reverses, as it were, the artist’s creative process. The second step is interpreting these observations in a process of inductive reasoning that anchors these elements precisely in time and space. As Bruegel geared these visual, artistic and cultural

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references to the discerning eye of his patrons, this temporal and spatial imbedding may lead us to the original viewing experience. While studies of patronage mostly rely on documentary evidence to explain the social-cultural context of artworks, ‘close viewing’ first untangles the internal logic of the work itself – Bruegel’s creative work – and only then situates these key components into their historical context. It is hoped that this object-oriented and inductive method allows for a less predisposed view on Bruegel’s art, which is notoriously burdened by layers of historiography. With regard to the Census at Bethlehem, for instance, almost all readings thus far considered this painting a critique of Habsburg taxation policies.11 ‘Close viewing’ suggested we should review this longstanding assertion, but we only reached this conclusion progressively. Who Commissioned the Census at Bethlehem? Proceeding inductively, we determined the key constituent elements of the Census at Bethlehem (fig.  23.3) using a process of visual scanning. Among other elements, we excerpted: the holy family; the collection of money and produce at the counter of the inn; the coat of arms; wintertime; outcasts and foreigners; Brabant inns and farmhouses; and the date ‘1566’ inscribed on a frozen rock in the lower right corner.12 In a second phase, and with the help of historians, we performed, as it were, deep drilling of these themes. How is the census at Bethlehem narrated in the Gospels and in the devotional tradition, and represented in the visual tradition? How precisely were taxes collected in Bruegel’s time? Whose coat of arms is represented? What do we know about the harsh winters of the mid-sixteenth century? Were mercenaries and gypsies present in the Low Countries around that time and where did lepers live? Was the inn a centre of social life and what was the relationship of city dwellers to the countryside? And, finally – Was all this affected by the iconoclast riots and the ‘wonder year’ of 1566 (so-called because events erupted so rapidly that contemporaries described it as an annus mirabilis), during which Bruegel painted

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Fig. 23.3 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Census at Bethlehem, 1566, oil on panel, 115.3 × 164.5 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 3637)

Fig. 23.4 Anonymous, Farm at Wijnegem, late 16th century, pen and red chalk on paper, 130 × 187 mm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques (inv. 21003, recto)

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the Census? The answers to these questions came gradually, and not in a predictable order. Among other answers, it turned out that the payment of tribute, as shown in the Census, is not mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, but described as a sign of religious commitment in popular devotional tracts by Jacobus de Voragine and by Ludolph of Saxony.13 The sign with the double-crested eagle is complemented below on the moneybag with the Pillars of Hercules, which together constitute the coat of arms of Emperor Charles  V (1500–1558), Lord of the Netherlands from 1506 to 1555. The holy family, often explained as a pretext in Bruegel’s supposedly ‘slice of life’, turns out to be a careful emulation of Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of the Flight into Egypt (1511). Unlike Dürer, however, Bruegel rendered the Virgin as a local devotional icon, a mantled Madonna as widely revered in Brabant, and particularly under assault in 1566, year of the Beeldenstorm (Great Iconoclasm). At some point, all these layers of interpretation started to add up: if devotional tracts cite the payment at the census in positive terms, Bruegel’s representation of the imperial coat of arms further questions the standing interpretation that he critiqued Philip  II’s taxation policies, while the iconic rendering of the Virgin makes it unlikely that Bruegel or his patron sympathized with Protestant iconoclasts. Then, quite late in the process, a new element surfaced that provided the key to the original owner. A late sixteenth-century drawing (fig. 23.4) of the same farmhouse that Bruegel painted in the upper centre of the composition localizes this dwelling as being in Wijnegem, a rural hamlet northeast of Antwerp. A rudimentary search on this topography soon yielded another lucky find: in 2014 local historians published an in-depth study of the first Lord of Wijnegem, Jan Vleminck.14 They too had retrieved the drawing with the farmhouse in Wijnegem and noticed its correspondence to the one in Bruegel’s Census. But as they did not look very closely at Bruegel’s painting, they left many implications unexplored. For instance, they did not note that the date given

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by Bruegel in his Census is 1566 – precisely the year that Vleminck first applied for the rights to levy manorial dues in Wijnegem (he was finally granted the seigniory in 1567). Although the historians documented the professional activity of Vleminck in great detail, they did not relate these to Bruegel’s unusual depiction of payment in the Census. As it turns out, money and finances were the core business of Vleminck. He was the business partner and son-in-law of Gaspar Schetz (1513–1580), who according to Thomas Gresham (1519–1579), the later founder of the Royal Exchange in the City of London, dominated the entire financial market in the Low Countries. In 1561, when Schetz became Steward-General, Vleminck became factor of Philip II, which means that he traded on behalf of the king.15 As a merchant banker, he provided financial loans to the central government, including those for the payment of troops. In return, Philip II made him the first Lord of Wijnegem, with the right to collect manorial dues in cash or kind. As further reimbursement of these loans, Vleminck was also allowed to levy state taxes in selected provinces. Thus, unwrapping Bruegel’s creative process has led us to the likely original owner; his identity in turn generates new meaning. Jan Vleminck probably commissioned the painting from Bruegel to celebrate and commemorate his acquisition of the seigniory of Wijnegem. From Vleminck’s perspective, it is highly unlikely that Bruegel represented payments at the Census as a veiled criticism of Habsburg taxation policies. Instead, Bruegel addresses Vleminck as a new overlord, financier of the king and devoted Catholic. This positive interpretation of taxation accords with popular devotional texts that cite the payment of tribute at the Census as a sign of Christian commitment. Bruegel’s Network of Patrons The re-emergence of Vleminck not only sheds light on the original ownership and meaning of the Census, but also on Bruegel’s wider network of patrons. Vleminck, it turns out, maintained close relations

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with several of the artist’s other patrons. The money loaned by Vleminck to Regent Margaret of Parma in 1565–7 was received by the ‘tresorier der oorloghe’ or ‘tresorier van den Koning’ Aert Molckeman, a name familiar to Bruegel scholars. Describing the life of Hans Vredeman de Vries, Karel van Mander relates that the latter painted a ‘summer house in perspectief’, to which Bruegel, without the knowledge of the master of the house, added a peasant couple. Molckeman so much enjoyed the witty intervention that he refused to have it removed.16 While this two-handed painting has not survived, Van Mander’s account affirms that Bruegel’s patrons were urbanites who shared professional ties, and just around that time acquired countryside retreats. Vleminck also loaned money to Nicolaes Jonghelinck, who exhibited sixteen Bruegel paintings in the so-called Goed ter Beke, his suburban villa south of Antwerp’s city walls. Like Vleminck, Jonghelinck combined various trades with royal leases (concessions), including the Zealand toll innings. On 20  November 1564 (1565 N.S.) the Antwerp amman (the highest juridical official) judged that Jonghelinck was to settle the 8,000 guilders he had borrowed from Vleminck in four parts every two years (1566, 1568, 1570, 1572). The contract specified that if Jonghelinck died before the full loan was reimbursed, Vleminck would become owner of ‘alle syne andere goeden ruerende ende unruerende’ (all his movable and immovable assets).17 As we know from the juridical documents that produced the inventory of his art collection, Jonghelinck offered his collection also as security for outstanding tax payments of his business partner Daniel de Bruyne to the city in 1566, only a year after Bruegel had painted the Months or Seasons.18 Jonghelinck died in 1570, before the end of the loan repayment. The contract of 1564 stipulated that in this case all Jonghelinck’s assets would have gone to Jan Vleminck, but as the latter had died without children in 1568, these may have gone to Jan’s brother and heir, Aert (Arnold) Vleminck (d. 1589). This may explain why already by 1570/71 many of the Bruegel paintings were no

longer in the Jonghelinckxhof.19 On 7 June 1570 it was agreed that the bronze statues of Bacchus and the Planets that the sculptor Jacques Jonghelinck (1530–1606) had made for his brother’s villa were to be transferred to Aert Vleminck.20 In 1578, Aert Vleminck obtained Jonghelinck’s city’s residence house, Sphera Mundi.21 As for Bacchus and the Planets, further claimants to ownership came to the fore, and in 1577 Gaspar Schetz, Jan Vleminck’s father-in-law, brought them to safety in Brussels, where they were subsequently confiscated in 1580 by the Brussels (Calvinist) War Council under the control of the Prince of Orange.22 In 1585 the Antwerp city magistrates gave them as a present to incoming governor, Alexander Farnese (1545– 1592).23 It may be that Schetz also claimed other possessions from the inheritance of his son-in-law, including the Census at Bethlehem, or some of Jonghelinck’s paintings, such as the Months or Seasons. We know that the relationship between Schetz and Aert Vleminck was tense.24 The next we know about some of the paintings that originally decorated the Jonghelinckxhof is that on 5 July 1594 the ‘oudkleerkoper’ Hans van Wijck sold the Months or Seasons to the Antwerp city magistrates, who presented the series to Archduke Ernest at the occasion of his Joyous Entry in 1594.25 How precisely they ended up with Van Wijck we do not know, but the Vleminck brothers and possibly Gaspar Schetz may provide at least some missing links between 1566 and 1594 in the provenance history of the Months/Seasons series.26 The business ties between Vleminck and Jonghelinck reveal that Bruegel’s patronage network was very closely knit. Indeed, the relatively small circle of art connoisseurs for whom Bruegel worked may in part explain the absence of payments or commission contracts. It would not be surprising if Gaspar Schetz had also commissioned work from Bruegel. His villa Ter Beke was situated not far from that of Jonghelinck.27 As Lord of Grobbendonk he also owned a manorial estate in the rural area surrounding Antwerp, comparable to that owned by Vleminck in Wijnegem.28 In 1559 his

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brother Balthasar Schetz became Lord of Hoboken. It has been noted that the print Kermis in Hoboken, dated that same year, may reference this acquisition.29 Furthermore, Vleminck shared friends with Ortelius30 and was familiar with Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, who possibly owed Bruegel’s Flight into Egypt and the Fall of the Rebel Angels (fig. 23.1). When Jan Vleminck died in 1568, Granvelle sent his brother his condolences.31 The social profiles of Granvelle and Vleminck may seem different, but the professional activities of Vleminck and Jonghelinck illustrate that the business interests of these Antwerp merchant bankers were closely intertwined with the administration of the central government in Brussels. Granvelle and Vleminck (as well as Jonghelinck, Molckeman, Ortelius and Noirot) belonged to a nouveau riche whose influence was not grafted onto aristocratic descent but gained by personal merit and commercial success. For this ‘newly rich’ social class, art patronage was the ideal instrument to showcase their recently acquired status. Noblemen of old lineage, such as the Egmont, Horne or Nassau families, have thus far not emerged among Bruegel’s patrons. Rather, Bruegel painted for local urban merchants and administrators who thrived in the Habsburg global empire. Just about the time they commissioned work from Bruegel, they acquired countryside estates – for prestige but also for profit. These villae suburbanae of, for instance, Vleminck in Wijnegem or Schetz in Grobbendonk, fulfilled a function comparable to that of contemporary Palladian villas in Italy – leisure after work, otium after negotium – but they often were restored moated castles rather than completely new architectural designs.32 The interest in renovating existing castles may have been related to the aristocratic aspirations of these newly rich men, but it is also in tune with Bruegel’s visualization of local mores, customs and landscapes. From about 1540 until the outbreak of war in 1568 – the years of Bruegel’s working career – an increasingly affluent group of local merchants rose to the fore and competed with Italian and German bankers in trade

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and government finance.33 They counterbalanced their risky long-distance ventures with investments in local terrains. Like others, Schetz and Vleminck also financed the first sugar mill in Cabo de São Vicente, today São Paolo, Brazil.34 The distinct art of Bruegel, who always universalized his observations of local phenomena, struck a chord with these local internationalists. For them, Bruegel painted an age in transition, between local and global, old and new, feudal and capitalist. Bruegel’s Creative Process These insights into Bruegel’s network of patrons bring into perspective some long-observed aspects of his creative process. As Ortelius already noted, Bruegel’s paintings seem natural but are artificial. ‘Close viewing’ unwraps the variegated components of Bruegel’s deceptively naturalist scenes. For several of his paintings, including the Census, Bruegel sourced material from calendar miniatures and, less studied, from Brussels tapestry design, a world with which he was connected through the heritage of his father-in-law, Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502–1550). Bruegel transposed these aristocratic art forms to new dimensions and new media, giving form to the aspirations of merchants and administrators eager to surpass the magnificence of the old nobility. His monumental renderings of seasonal activities literally exceed aristocratic miniatures, and better fit the spatial arrangement of country houses than tapestries that had traditionally decorated princely residences.35 The frequent cross-references that exist within his relatively limited oeuvre also presume that his patrons could recognize and discuss them.36 For instance, the pilgrims couple in the lower right of the Census (fig.  23.3) paraphrases the pilgrims couple in the centre of the Battle between Carnival and Lent (fig.  23.5), painted seven years earlier. Oddly, the man carries the child and the woman the sword – not unlike Dulle Griet, if less ferocious. The gypsies with striped pelerines and widebrimmed hats that populate the Census recur in the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist (fig. 23.6). Bruegel

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Fig. 23.5 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Battle between Carnival and Lent, 1559, oil on panel, 118 × 164.2 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 1016)

painted them in the same year, casting these chiromancers as but one type of many false prophets then preaching their truth. He introduced these cross-references to surprise his commissioner; today they help us retrace meaning.37 In the Sermon he makes this participatory dimension even more explicit. Here, an urban dweller recognizable by his black outfit has entered the picture plane. Intriguingly, the bearded urbanite at the far right in the Vienna Peasant Wedding (c. 1567; fig. 23.7) is similarly engaged in a one-to-one conversation – now not with a gypsy, but with a monk. The last word is yet to be said about these enigmatic figures, and it remains unclear whether these citizens dressed in black are portraits or typify a social class.38 This brings us to a concluding reflection.

How to reconcile these findings about Bruegel’s individual commissioners with the universal appeal of his work? Bruegel’s Humanity Bruegel worked for individual patrons, but his art always transcends the particular. Bruegel introduces time- and place-specific elements to make a timeless and universal message recognizable and immediate. The urgency of this message must have been particularly palpable during the tumultuous times in which Bruegel lived; in 1566, known as the ‘wonder year’, he made at least three paintings, including the Census.39 The Census commemorated Vleminck’s newly acquired seigniory of Wijnegem, but soon led his patron’s eye to more general and

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Fig. 23.6 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, 1566, oil on panel, 95.2 × 161.7 cm, Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum (inv. L.3.788)

Fig. 23.7 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peasant Wedding, c. 1567, oil on panel, 113.1 × 164.1 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 1027)

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pressing issues. In this idyllic village reminiscent of Wijnegem, nothing is what it seems. As frozen rivers and snow interrupt regular working activities, villagers engage in winter games, throwing snowballs, sledging and skating. It was an enforced idleness, as there was little else one could do in such weather conditions. Bruegel’s beautifully painted snow belies the harsh reality of winter, a time of hunger and deprivation. Other elements also point at the precariousness of life: the hole in the ice, the wheels of fortune, the ominous atmosphere of danger evoked by the sinful inn in the hollow tree, the leper, the gypsies, and the pikes in the background. In these times of great political, religious and social changes, every man had to seek

out the right path, like the pilgrims walking on the ice but with heart and mind fixed on the coming of Christ. If prosperity incited commissions from Bruegel, the most innovative painter of his age, Bruegel always pressured his patrons to look further. He paints nature as a sacred experience, and depicts villagers as part of this encompassing nature that cyclically fulfils the history of salvation. As in a philosophical world turned upside down, Bruegel’s peasant paintings solicited his urban viewers to experience a shared humanity, nature and sacred history. His patrons may have been merchant bankers, but rather than execute portraits of these Renaissance individuals, Bruegel painted for them images of common humanity.

N OT ES 1 Ortelius may have commissioned the Death of the Virgin around the time Bruegel painted it, c. 1565, and certainly owned it between 1568 and 1575, when Benito Arias Montano recalled seeing it at his house. In 1574 he had a print made after the painting that he offered as a gift to several friends; see most recently Meganck 2017, pp. 163–71. 2 Smolderen 1995, pp. 38–9, who first transcribed the inventory of 1572; Goldstein 2013, pp. 37–64. For an overview of the winter scenes, see Meganck and Van Sprang 2018. 3 A posthumous family inventory drawn up in 1607 suggests that Granvelle possessed the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1563); Meganck 2014, p. 146. Sellink 2007, p. 486, notes that other seventeenth-century documents refer to landscapes with a scene of the Flight into Egypt in the collections of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and the Antwerp collector Peeter Stevens (1590–1668), and that it is impossible to say which of these might be the London painting. It is not to be excluded that the same panel circulated from collection to collection. 4 Buchanan 1990b. Most recently, Vienna 2018, pp. 174–81 (Tower of Babel); pp. 194– 201 (Christ carrying the Cross) and pp. 214–41 (Seasons). For new perspectives on the hanging of the ‘Cycle of the Seasons’, see Meganck 2019. 5

Sellink 2007, p. 35.

6

Meganck 2014.

7

Meganck and Van Sprang 2018.

8 ‘How to Do a Close Reading’, Harvard College Writing Center, Harvard University .

rather than it being a later invention or intentional revision. Further historical evidence, as will be shown, also pleads for the date 1566. 13

Meganck 2018, pp. 90–91.

14

Correns, Rau and Van de Cruys 2014.

9 Reindert Falkenburg already proposed a ‘close-reading’ of Bruegel’s Christ carrying the Cross; see Falkenburg 1993.

15 In 1561, Schetz was appointed Rentmeester-Generaal; in 1564 he became Treasurer-General. Ibid., pp. 72–3.

10 The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘reverse engineer’ as ‘to disassemble and examine or analyze in detail (a product or device) to discover the concepts involved in manufacture usually in order to produce something similar’ . Here we intend to understand rather than reproduce the creation process, but reproducing entails understanding.

16 Van Mander 1604, fols 266r–v (Life of Hans Vredeman de Vries).

11 I too, in Meganck 2014, p. 159, wrote, if conditionally, ‘Paintings such as the Massacre of the Innocents and the Census at Bethlehem […] were maybe interpreted by some contemporaries as critical of Habsburg repression.’ 12 The last digit is overpainted and missing in the original paint layer (see Currie and Allart 2012, vol. 1, pp. 103–4, fig. 18). Bruegel dated the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, also in 1566, in a similar way, in the lower right corner, here on a piece of wood overgrown with weeds. I believe it more likely that the overpaint repeats the original date

17 ARAB, Fonds d’Ursel, L. 211, 20 November 1564, already cited by Buchanan 1990a, p. 104, without any link to Vleminck’s commissioning of the Census at Bethlehem; Correns, Rau and Van de Cruys 2014, pp. 119–21. Transcript of the contract of 20 November 1564 in Correns 1998. 18

Buchanan 1990b.

19 Buchanan 1990a, p. 104, with reference to a letter of Montano of 1571; and Buchanan 1990b, p. 548, for the account of Van Mander, who mentions the series of the Labours of Hercules by Frans Floris, but not the Months/Seasons by Bruegel. 20

Buchanan 1990a, appendix 1.

21 Ibid., p. 104; Correns, Rau and Van de Cruys 2014, p. 120. 22 Buchanan 1990a, p. 107; Correns, Rau and Van de Cruys 2014, p. 120. On this and on possible Bruegel paintings in the

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collection of Gaspar Schetz, see also Muylle, Chapter 24 in the present volume. 23

Buchanan 1990a.

Vleminck de Jonge (d. Antwerp, 1640), also wrote in Ortelius’s album: fol. 119v (Arnold Vleminck). See Ortelius 1969.

24 Ibid., p. 108; Correns, Rau and Van de Cruys 2014, pp. 116–17.

31 Correns, Rau and Van de Cruys 2014, p. 104.

25 Buchanan 1990b, p. 543, note 11. I thank Jan Muylle for informing me that the long held ‘Hane van Wijck’ is in fact ‘oudkleerkoper’ Hans (Jan) van Wijck.

32 Baetens 2013, De Jonge 2017a, Muylle 2018.

26

Hoppe-Harnoncourt 2018, p. 336.

27 As can be seen on the map Bescriivinge van de Paelen der Vriiheiit van Antwerpen (published by Christopher Plantin, 1582). See De Rock and Limberger 2018, pp. 158–9; Soly 1977, pp. 186–91. 28 De Rock and Limberger 2018, pp. 156–7. 29 Sellink 2007, pp. 126–7. Melchior Schetz (brother of the above-mentioned Gaspar and Balthasar) was Prince of the Antwerp Landjuweel of 1561, which evoked the dialogue between city and countryside and the qualities of merchants; Onuf 2018, pp. 79–85. 30 Among them, Johannes Goropius Becanus, who featured in Ortelius’s Album amicorum. Jan Vleminck’s nephew, Arnold

33 Puttevils 2015, pp. 9, 73–5, 169–70. 34 Correns, Rau and Van de Cruys 2014, pp. 135–9; Puttevils 2015, p. 74. 35 See similar observations on Jonghelinck’s commission of paintings by Floris: Wouk 2018, p. 333. 36 On this ‘referential viewing’ that required prior knowledge, see Richardson 2011, p. 106; Kaschek 2012, p. 105. None of these authors however attempts to retrace the particular patron or original viewer on the basis of particular references. 37 Similar observations in other Bruegel works bring us closer to their original viewing experience. The apostle in the front left of the Death of the Virgin (c. 1565), probably Saint John, rests in the same pose as the Virgin in the Crucifixion (1564), indicating that they both calmly face the departure of

423 a beloved, assured of salvation. See Meganck 2017, pp. 165–6. The scholar in the Land of Cockaigne (1567) reclines on his back with legs spread wide and his arms folded behind his head, almost the same position as the peasant with flail in the Harvester (1565), although the latter has his eyes closed, while the scholar stares at the sky reflectively, his eyes wide open. The old, unhinged door is used as a bird trap in the Winter Landscape, as a handbarrow to carry plates of pudding or porridge in the Vienna Peasant Wedding, as fuel for heating during the winter or maybe as a stretcher for transporting the dead pig in the Census. 38 See the essay by Jan Van der Stock for a convincing identification of the urbanite in the Peasant Wedding as Hans Franckaert: Jan Van der Stock 2019. 39 Also dated 1566 is the Wedding Dance (Detroit), the Sermon of Saint John the Baptist (Budapest) and the print of the Wild Man; see Sellink 2007, pp. 228–9, 232–3, 238.

Fig. 24.1 Anonymous, Netherlandish, Country Road with Peasants and Wagons – The Heath, 17th century, pen in brown ink on paper, with colour wash, 210 × 325 mm, Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung (inv. 1909:30 Z)

Fig. 24.2 Anonymous, Netherlandish (David Teniers the Younger?), Country Road with Peasants and Wagons – The Heath, 17th century, black chalk on paper, 215 × 330 mm, whereabouts unknown

24

Pieter Bruegel’s The Heath: Collectors and Connoisseurs Jan Muylle

A BSTRACT : Nicolaes van den Branden, councillor of the Council of Brabant, owned three paintings by Pieter Bruegel (1622). The Heath was sold for an impressive sum. It was admired by Constantijn Huygens the Younger in the collection of Leonel Stevens (1676). This painting is most likely identical with ‘the famous “Heyde”’ that once belonged to Peeter Stevens (d. 1668), father of Leonel. A small version of The Heath was once the property of Abraham Ortelius. Maybe the first owner of The Heath was Gaspar Schetz, treasurer-general (d. 1580). Philip Prats the Younger, secretary of the Council of State and the Privy Council, bought another Bruegel painting from Van den Branden. His father, Philip the Elder, once bought a Peasant Wedding on behalf of Archduke Ernest of Austria from a cousin (1594), presumably a member of the Noirot and Van Eeckeren families.

—o— Forty years ago, Jan Briels published an ample study about the famous collection of Peeter Stevens, cloth merchant and almoner of Antwerp, an office with important financial obligations. The first source that helps to sketch an image of Stevens’s collection are his notes in his copy of Karel van Mander’s Schilder-boeck, a copy he had owned since 1625 (1618 edition; Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana). Stevens wrote these notes mainly between c. 1648 and 1654. The second source is the auction catalogue of his ‘Raretez tres renomées’. This auction took place in the mortuary house of Stevens on 13 August 1668 and the days following.1

In 1658 the kunstkamer of Peeter Stevens counted ten pieces by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, according to Alexander van Fornenbergh in his dedication to Den Antwerpschen Protheus, the eulogy of Quinten Massys: ‘Waer heeft-men ooyt ghesien (by-een) 10. Stucken van den Ouden P. Breughel, ende alle van sijn Beste Wercken? Voor-waer, ’t is Seld-saem!’2 This number corresponds with the number of paintings that Stevens mentions in his possession. We may assume that these were acquired by Stevens before 1658. The auction catalogue counts eleven paintings by the master. According to Briels, Stevens bought two other paintings between 1658 and 1668: ‘Une tres-renommée Bruyere, la ou des paysans & Paysanes vont au marché avec un chariot & un porché, & autres’ and ‘L’idée de l’Automne’. Briels identified ‘une tres-renommée Bruyere […]’ with ‘een Heyke dat Abraham Ortelius heeft toebehoort’ mentioned by Stevens in one of his notes.3 According to Briels, a painting included by Stevens in his notes, labelled as his property, was not included in the sale: ‘For the time being still a riddle is the work he describes as “de vermaerde Heyde, by liefhebbers wel bekent”. The iconographic theme is unclear. It is no longer mentioned in the auction catalogue of 1668.’4 Our goal is to solve this enigma. What was this famous ‘Heyde’? A second riddle is prompted by another note: ‘Ditto cleyn Toren van Babilonien [van Bruegel]

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heb [ik] gesien tot Brussel toebehoort hebbende de Raetsheer vanden Branden.’5 About Van den Branden, Stevens wrote in Van Mander’s biography of Albrecht Dürer: ‘Item hebbe gesien van ditto Albert Durer een conterfaicsel van een man met bonten tabbaert met dato 1521, tot Bruessel, toebehoort hebbende Menheer van Branden.’6 Who was this man? Nicolaes van den Branden The answer to this second question helps us to reach our goal. Van den Branden is magister Nicolaes van den Branden, councillor of the Council of Brabant in Brussels. On 2 December 1582 he was appointed extraordinary councillor and on 20 February 1585 ordinary councillor.7 He was a lover of flower bulbs. Jean de Maes, a nephew of the famous botanist Carolus Clusius, wrote to his uncle in Leiden in 1602 that Van den Branden and Jean du May, alderman and treasurer of Brussels, had seen a remarkable narcissus in the garden of Lamoral de Tassis, the son of Leonard the postmaster-general. Van den Branden corresponded with Clusius himself. Three letters have been preserved (April and August 1603; Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek).8 Van den Branden bought books at the Plantin press in Antwerp.9 He was also a lover of paintings, as suggested by the notes of Stevens. This is confirmed by a list of the paintings of his estate that were auctioned in 1622. This list enumerates seventeen paintings, among which ‘Het conterfetsel van alber deur’ sold for 600 pounds and three pieces ascribed to ‘Breugel’: ‘Een waterverwe stuck van Breugel vande blau huyck by S[ecreta]ris Praets gecocht’ for 96 pounds; ‘De hey van Breugel’ sold for the impressive sum of 1,000 pounds and 5 shillings; ‘Item een cleyn stuckh van swert ende wit van Breugel’ auctioned for 36 pounds. The price of De Hei, 1,000 pounds, was more than a third of the total yield of the auction (see Appendix).10 The portrait painted by Albrecht Dürer is of the man with the tabard in fur dated 1521 that is mentioned by Stevens in his note. The subject is Bernhard von Reesen, who Dürer painted during

his fourth stay in Antwerp in March 1521 (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister).11 In October 1521 this merchant from Gdansk died of the plague. Apparently, his portrait was kept in collections in Antwerp and Brussels until the eighteenth century, when it came into the possession of the elector of Saxony. And now about the Bruegel paintings. The small version of the Tower of Babel, which according to Stevens was once owned by Van den Branden, cannot be found in the list of the sold paintings. Maybe this piece had already disappeared earlier or it remained unsold.12 De Blauwe Huik (The Blue Cloak) in tempera (on canvas) cannot be the Netherlandish Proverbs panel (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie), which is believed to be the painting in Stevens’s collection. This canvas was maybe a copy after the original.13 Secretary Praets, the buyer of the canvas, can be identified as Knight Philip Prats the Younger, Seigneur of Sint-Albert, secretary of the Council of State and of the Privy Council.14 The grisaille cannot be identified. One might think of the Death of the Virgin (Banbury, National Trust, Upton House) or a copy after the print commissioned by Ortelius. A copy after a print of Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery (London, Courtauld Gallery) cannot be excluded. Some other grisailles by Bruegel also deserve attention.15 ‘De hey van Breugel’, De Hei, must have been a very important and original work by Bruegel. This is made clear by the impressive sum and by its pedigree, which I describe here.16 Peeter Stevens In the journal of Constantijn Huygens the Younger, secretary to stadholder-king William III, Prince of Orange, De Hei is mentioned a second time. On 10 June 1676, when Huygens visited the collection of Leonel Stevens, the son of Peeter, he admired De Blauwe Huik and De Hei: ‘Le jour d’auparavant [note of 11 June 1676] j’avois veu chez le sr Stevens, fils de celuy qui autrefois a eu une belle collection de tableaux, la piece du vieux Breugel qu’ils

PIETER BRUEGEL ’ S THE HEATH

appellent “de blaeuwe Heuijck” qui represente le sens literal de plusieurs proverbes et sans doubte est tres belle. Celle qu’ils appellent “de Hey” y estoit aussi, mais a mon avis est de beaucoup moins bonne que l’autre.’17 This testimony is important. Huygens was a talented draughtsman and connoisseur. On 10 and 11 June he admired other paintings by Bruegel in the collections of Gonzales Coques and Diego Duarte.18 Two days after his departure from Antwerp he asked Johan Philip Happaert, canon of the Cathedral of Our Lady, for information about the drawing ‘la raccolte’ (The Harvest) of Bruegel.19 On 23 June he urged the canon to buy this drawing for the sum of 72 pounds.20 Huygens succeeded in collecting drawings by Bruegel. He admired these drawings in the company of his friend and connoisseur, Johan van der Does, Seigneur of Bergestein (28 March 1692), and of his brother-in-law, Philip Doublet III, Seigneur of Sint-Annaland (9 October 1693).21 The testimony of Huygens confirms that after the sale of Nicolaes van den Branden, De Hei, in one way or another, entered the collection of Peeter Stevens. After Stevens’s death it remained a family heirloom. Indeed, when on 3 December 1669 the estate of Stevens was divided among his heirs, some paintings remained undistributed: ‘Alnoch onverscheyden ende onverdeylt eenige obligatien midtsgaders eenige schilderyen van weerde ende andere conste, om die oock tsynder tyt tusschen hen geliquideert te worden.’22 De Hei, once owned by Nicolaes van den Branden, is the same painting as ‘de vermaerde Heyde, by liefhebbers wel bekent’ owned by Stevens and mentioned as such in his copy of the Schilder-boeck. It is not ‘een Heyke dat Abraham Ortelius heeft toebehoort’, which according to Briels was bought by Stevens after 1658, but indeed the painting by Bruegel described in Stevens’s auction catalogue as ‘une tres-renommée Bruyere, la ou les paysans & Paysanes vont au marché avec un chariot & un porché, & autres’.23 A painting that somewhat corresponds with this description can be seen in The ‘Kunstkamer’ of Cornelis van der

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Geest (1628) painted by Willem van Haecht. An anonymous drawing is a copy of this painting (Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung; fig. 24.1).24 A second drawing after this painting is ascribed to David Teniers the Younger (whereabouts unknown; fig. 24.2).25 On 6 December 1669, three days after the division of Stevens’s estate, art dealer Guilliam Forchondt reported on De Blauwe Huik and ‘een haey’, a heath where peasants go to the market: ‘Hebbe weder eenighe fraey stucken gecocht soo dat daer ghelt moet aen gheven, ende comen alle daghen vele fraeyicheit te coop als tegenwoordich is een ockasie van twee stucken van den ouden Brughel, het eene is de Blauwe huyck, het ander is een haey daer de boeren naer de merdt gaen dat fraeyder noeyt hebbe gesien ende derf niet coopen by manckement van contant.’26 As already mentioned, Huygens saw De Blauwe Huik and De Hei in the collection of Leonel Stevens in 1676. Meaningful is the use of the words ‘de hey’ and ‘de heyde’ for ‘hei(de)’.27 In seventeenth-century texts, painted heaths are usually called ‘een heike(n)’, ‘een heijke(n)’or ‘een heyke(n)’, meaning a small heath or a small painting with a heath as subject. For instance, Stevens himself saw ‘een Heyke dat Abraham Ortelius heeft toebehoort’. Antwerp inventories indicate, in the same way, landscapes with a heath, sometimes even with additional embellishment, as, for example, those by Jan Brueghel the Elder and by Joos de Momper. Remarkable in this context is the frequent use of the indefinite article and the diminutive.28 The diminutive is not used in connection with De Hei, not even in Stevens’s catalogue, which speaks about ‘une bruyère’, nor in Forchondt’s letter where he writes about ‘een haey’.29 This strengthens the conviction that Bruegel painted two versions of this kind of landscape – a large version, De Hei, and a small version, ‘een heyken’, once owned by Ortelius. Both versions are lost. The existence of both a large and a small version of The Heath reminds one of the large and the small versions of the Tower of Babel.

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Gaspar Schetz, Philip Prats the Elder and the Court of Brabant The status quaestionis was twofold. We identified Van den Branden as Nicolaes van den Branden, councillor of the Council of Brabant. He was een liefhebber of bulbs and a member of a network with Carolus Clusius in Leiden at its centre. By the time of his death in 1622 he was the owner of the portrait of Bernhard von Reesen by Albrecht Dürer and of at least three paintings by or ascribed to Bruegel. The most important, The Heath, was auctioned for the impressive sum of 1,000 pounds. In 1676 it was admired by the Bruegel connoisseur Constantijn Huygens the Younger in the collection of Leonel Stevens, the son of Peeter Stevens. All the documentary evidence, the two drawings after the painting in Cornelis van der Geest’s kunstkamer, the notes of Peeter Stevens and his auction catalogue, the letter of Guilliam Forchondt and the testimony of Huygens suggest that De Hei was another painting than Ortelius’s small ‘heyke’. This research reveals some more facts. Philip Prats the Younger, secretary of the Council of State and of the Privy Council, bought De Blauwe Huik in tempera. A certain Noveliers was the buyer of another Van den Branden painting. Maybe this is Pieter Noveliers, court painter to the Archdukes Albrecht and Isabella, jeweller and dealer of paintings. He sold paintings to Lamoral de Tassis, who belonged to the network of Van den Branden.30 Some questions remain. New questions arise. What happened to The Heath after it entered the collection of Leonel Stevens – thus after the account of Huygens in 1676? Also intriguing is the question of how and when The Heath entered the collection of Nicolaes van den Branden. C. 1577, Gaspar Schetz, Seigneur of Grobbendonk and treasurer-general until 1577–8, brought to safety the eight bronze sculptures Bacchus and the Seven Planets of Jacques Jonghelinck. He gave them together with ‘sommighe syne andere particuliere ende eenighe schilderyen’ to the garde des joyaux and bibliothecary François Damant in the Court of Brabant on the Coudenberg. On 27 July 1580 the

Orangist Council of War of Brussels led by Olivier van den Tempel seized the sculptures ‘met sekere schoone stucken schilderien gemaeckt by Brueghel’ all the property of the royalist Schetz, according to the testimony of former forester Sybrecht van Berlicom.31 The fate of the sculptures is well known. The fate of the Bruegel paintings remains unknown. Did The Heath once belong to Schetz? Was it kept for safety in the ducal palace for some years? Was it once part of the famous collection of Nicolaes Jonghelinck? Was the small Tower of Babel that according to Stevens once belonged to Van den Branden, the painting in the collection of Nicolaes Jonghelinck? Anyway, when in 1585–6 Schetz’s widow, Catherine d’Ursel, and his heirs wanted to recover the sculptures of Jacques Jonghelinck, commissioners of the Council of Brabant questioned the witnesses – among others Sybrecht van Berlicom.32 During these years Van den Branden was already a councillor. A final remark. Philip Prats the Elder, father of Philip the Younger, bought on 16 July 1594 a Peasant Wedding by Bruegel from a nephew on behalf of Archduke Ernest of Austria residing in the ducal palace on the Coudenberg: ‘It[em] dem secretario Prats für seinen vettern durch den camerfurier geschickt umb ain gmäl der baurn hochzeit des Brüegls 100 cro[nen], sindt 160fl.’33 This Peasant Wedding is considered to be the Peasant Wedding now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. This nephew was presumably related to the Noirot and Van Eeckeren families. The wife of Philip, Maria van Eeckeren, was the daughter of the MasterGeneral of the Mint Robert van Eeckeren and Anna (Tanneken) della Faille. Maria van Eeckeren was a niece of Hester van Eeckeren, wife of Master of the Mint Jan Noirot, the owner of five Bruegel paintings, among them ‘Item een groot tafereel van eender boeren bruyloft van p. Bruegel olie verve in lyste gestoffeert […] LXXX g.’ These paintings were sold in Antwerp on 15 September 1572 after the notorious flight of Noirot.34 Most likely Philip Prats bought this Peasant Wedding that was once owned and maybe even commissioned by Noirot.

PIETER BRUEGEL ’ S THE HEATH

This study confirms that Pieter Bruegel’s The Heath must have been a painting that was highly appreciated. Moreover, our research made it possible to identify some prominent collectors and connoisseurs of Bruegel’s paintings in Brussels between 1594 and 1622. Nicolaes van den Branden, Philip Prats the Elder and Philip Prats the Younger were members of important councils. Philip Prats the Elder was related to the notorious Jan Noirot and other representatives of the Mint in Antwerp. Finally, we discovered that also the extremely rich

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merchant Gaspar Schetz owned some Bruegel paintings. C. 1577 he took them to safety in the Court of Brabant on the Coudenberg, together with sculptures by Jacques Jonghelinck. On 27 July 1580 they were seized by the Orangist Council of War led by Olivier van den Tempel. It is possible that these paintings, maybe including The Heath, were once part of the collection of Nicolaes Jonghelinck, which he kept in his villa suburbana near Antwerp.

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APPENDIX Nicolaes van den Branden: Inventory of the Sold Paintings (1622) Vercochte Schilderyen [prices in pounds] De Besnydenisse van Bassan

242

Den man int vier by Novvelliers gecocht

112

Een waterverwe stuck van Breugel vande blau huyck by S[ecreta]ris Praets gecocht valet

96

De hey van Breugel valet

1000 – 5

Het conterfetsel van alber deur

600

Het stuck van zyn hoocheyt gecomen vanden keyser

184

Het anemael [?] dat myn heer heeft gecocht voor 25 £ is vercocht voor

50

Het stuch van Octavio Venus

40

Item een stuch van swert ende wit wesende een Batailly gecocht tot Mechelen valet

7 – 16

Item een groot wit cruys gemaect op eenen doeck aen eenen rol hangende by Nicolais Cornelis gecocht valet

36

}

Item een naecte vrou metten gulden regen

162

}

Item een oorlosie met een ebben cruys

126

}

Item de groote lange lief vrouwe

95

Item den grooten sinte Lucas in de sale hangende

26 – 10

Den Hibbecuc [Habakuk?]

19 – 10

Item de Maria Magdalena gemaect by Meester Quinten

40

Item een cleyn stuch van swert ende wit van Breugel

36

324

2874 – 1 Extract (fol. 424) from the testament of councillor Nicolaes van den Branden with inventories of the gold- and silverware and of the sold paintings. Brussels, Rijksarchief (formerly Rijksarchief Anderlecht), Oud Archief van de kapittelkerk van St.-Michiel en St.-Goedele te Brussel, inv. 286, fols 412–424.

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N OT ES 1 Briels 1980, pp. 164–70. The unique specimen of the catalogue preserved in The National Archives, Kew, Richmond (SP 121/56) was among others published by ibid., pp. 223–6. 2 ‘Where one has ever seen together 10 pieces of the Elder P. Breughel, and all of his best works? Indeed, this is exceptional!’ Van Fornenbergh 1658. 3 ‘A very famous Heath, where peasants & peasant women go to the market with a wagon & a swineherd & others’; ‘The concept of the autumn’; ‘a small Heath that once belonged to Abraham Ortelius’. Briels 1980, pp. 196–9. The small Heath of Ortelius is mentioned by Freedberg 1983, p. 247, note 19; it is not mentioned by Büttner 1998b. 4 ‘the famous Heyde, well known by connoisseurs’. De facto, Briels transcribed this passage as follows: ‘de vermaerde Heyden, by de liefhebbers wel bekent’. ‘Heiden’ means pagan or heathen, which may help explain his confusion. Briels 1980, pp. 199, 206, 223–4; Duverger 1984–2009, vol. 9, p. 145. Van Hout 2013, p. 81, passes by this enigma in silence. Regarding the notion ‘tres-renommée’, Stevens writes that Bruegel’s Mountain Gotthard is ‘vande liefhebbers wel bekent’ (well known by connoisseurs). The catalogue starts with the heading ‘Des Raretez tres renomées’ and signals further ‘Le Bain tres-renomé’ of Jan van Eyck and three paintings by Quinten Massys: respectively, ‘tres-celebre’, ‘tres-renomé’ and ‘tres fameux’. 5 ‘I have seen in Brussels also a small tower of Babel [by Bruegel] that once belonged to Councillor vanden Branden.’ Van Mander 1618, fol. 153v; Briels 1980, pp. 197, 206. 6 ‘I have seen of the same Albert Dürer a portrait of a man with a tabard in fur with the date 1521, in Brussels, it once belonged to Mr Van Branden.’ Van Mander 1618, fol. 132; Briels 1980, p. 210. 7

De Ridder-Symons 1981, p. 276.

8 Egmond, Hoftijzer and Visser 2007, p. 33; Goldgar 2007, pp. 51–2; (also entries 299 and 300). Nicolaes van den Branden is also mentioned in a letter of Lamoral de Tassis to Clusius (1602), . About Jean du May, see Thomas 2005, p. 79. 9 Denucé 1925, no. 127: Le grand livre du soleil, p. 71. See . 10 ‘The portrait of alber deur’; ‘A piece in tempera by Breugel “De Blauwe Huik” bought by secretary Praets’; ‘“De hey” by Breugel’; ‘Item a small piece in black and white by Breugel’. Brussels, Rijksarchief (formerly

Rijksarchief Anderlecht), Oud Archief van de kapittelkerk van St.-Michiel en St.-Goedele te Brussel, inv. 286, fol. 424. Roobaert 2010, p. 80, describes De Blauwe Huik as a drawing in watercolour. He reads ‘De Hey’ erroneously as ‘De Hen’; hence his careful suggestion that it was a painting with the iconographic theme De Hennentaster (The Unmanly Husband). About the small piece ‘swert ende wit’, Roobaert writes that it was probably an etching. The testament of Doctor Jan Mytens mentions a Saint Jerome of Albrecht Dürer, a Madonna of Quinten Massys and ‘eenen Dedalus van Breughel’ (Brussels, 23 October 1595). Ibid., pp. 79–80, 86.

watercolour (tempera) on canvas, still without the name of the painter. Duverger 1984–2009, vol. 2, p. 66; vol. 3, pp. 3, 223; vol. 4, p. 442; vol. 5, p. 330; vol. 11, p. 415. See Mieder 2004.

11 Von Reesen was a merchant from Gdansk, active in Antwerp. On 16 March 1521, Dürer wrote in his diary that he had portrayed Von Reesen in oil. Brand 1970–71; Unverfehrt 2007, p. 148. Other painters mentioned in the auction of paintings of Van den Branden’s estate are Jacopo Bassano (The Circumcision), Octaaf van Veen and Meester Quinten or Quinten Massys (Maria Magdalena, cf. paintings in Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, and Paris, Musée du Louvre).

16 Recent research, published after completing our study, reveals that after the death of Nicolaes van den Branden in the autumn of 1622, his valuable possessions where sold by his heirs. About one hundred paintings and drawings were inventoried. The value of Bruegel’s The Heath, ‘een costelycke schilderye wesende de heyde’ (a precious painting being the heath), was estimated at 580 guilders, the highest price of the collection. Jan Vanden Leenen, brother-in-law of Nicolaes, indeed bought the painting for 1,000 pounds. De Wilde 2019, pp. 413–14.

12 Briels 1980, pp. 196–7, supposes that the small version of the Tower of Babel that in 1604 according to Van Mander belonged to Emperor Rudolf II, maybe came on the market in Antwerp in 1656 after Queen Christina of Sweden sold a part of her collection. In this way, Stevens could have seen it in Brussels. This hypothesis now becomes unlikely. Was Van den Branden already before his death in 1622 in the possession of the small version of the Tower of Babel? It is remarkable that Van den Branden indeed seems to have been the owner of another painting that came from the imperial collection: ‘Het stuck van zyn hoocheyt gecomen vanden keyser.’ (The piece of his highness that came from the emperor.) Or did Stevens see another small version of Bruegel’s the Tower of Babel besides the version in 1604 in Prague (usually considered to be the panel in Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen). The inventory of Jan Baptista Borrekens (22 June 1668) mentions: ‘Een stuck van de Ouden Breugel gecomen uyt het cabinet van Rudolph.’ (A piece by Breugel the Elder that came from the cabinet of Rudolph.) Duverger 1984–2009, vol. 9, p. 129. 13 In 1614 the collection of Philip van Valckenisse counted two pieces of ‘De Blauwe Huik’ painted by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. The technique is not mentioned. Duverger 1984–2009, vol. 1, pp. 306, 308. Later mentions of paintings with the title ‘De Blauwe Huik’ signal just one version in

14 About Secretary Philip Prats the Younger, see Thomas 2005, pp. 112–13. See note 33. 15 Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery was donated by Jan Brueghel the Elder on his deathbed on 12 January 1625 to Federico Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan. He gave the panel back to Jan Brueghel the Younger. See London 2016, p. 37.

17 ‘Yesterday I have seen with Sir Stevens, the son of the one who once had a beautiful collection, the piece of Breugel the Elder they call “de blaeuwe Heuijck” which represents the literal meaning of many proverbs and which is without doubt very beautiful. The piece they call “de Hey” was there too, but it is in my opinion less good than the other one.’ Huygens 1881, p. 102. Gessler 1933, p. 104, thought erroneously ‘De Hey’ to be ‘Die Keye’ or a Stone Operation in the tradition of Hieronymus Bosch; Briels 1980, p. 199, note 185, refers erroneously to ‘een Heyke’ that once belonged to Ortelius. 18 Huygens visited Gonzales Coques on 10 June 1676 ‘pour voir le tableau du viel Breugel dont m’avoit parlé mon pere, mais je trouvay que c’estoit peu de chose’. A day later he admired in the collection of Diego Duarte, ‘ou il y avoit de bonnes choses’, a Peasant Wedding, a Peasant robbed by Soldiers, a Kermis and a Landscape ascribed to ‘de ouden Breugel’ and to ‘Breugel’. Huygens 1881, p. 101. Huygens noted on 12 September 1676: ‘Le matin j’avois esté chez Duarte quelque temps à voir ses tableaux.’ Huygens 1881, p. 142. It is not certain whether Coques and Duarte acquired Bruegel paintings from Stevens’s collection. Dogaer 1971, Samuel 1976. About Huygens as draughtsman and connoisseur, see Amsterdam/Ghent 1982, pp. 26–35; Dekker 2013, pp. 76–94.

432 19 Huygens 1881, pp. 102–3: ‘J’escrivis […] en mesme temps a mr Happaert, le priant de vouloir s’informer du dessein de la raccolte du vieil Bruegel, qu’on disoit estre a Anvers.’ Maybe it is the drawing The Summer (Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle); Berlin 1975, pp. 90–91, cat. no. 106. 20 Huygens 1881, p. 106: ‘J’escrivis a Happaert […] qu’il m’acheptast le dessein de Breugel quand il devroit couster 72 livres.’ Maybe it is a drawing from the estate of Hendrik van Halmale, bishop of Ypres, who died on 19 April 1673. See ibid., pp. 107–8, 142, 165, 174. Hendrik van Halmale obtained the grisaille Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery from Stevens’s collection; Grossmann 1952, p. 226. The rich collection of Canon Happaert counted in 1686 two drawings ascribed to Pieter Bruegel; Duverger 1984–2009, vol. 11, pp. 377 (no. 154), 379 (no. 255). 21 Huygens 1877, p. 34: ‘Naermiddag was Bergesteyn bij mij, en sagen mijn boeck van Breugel noch eens over.’ (In the afternoon Bergesteyn was with me, and we surveyed my book of Breugel.) Ibid., p. 273: ‘Naermiddach was St Annelt bij mij, ende saghen mijn teeckeningen vanden ouden Breugel over.’ (In the afternoon St Annelt was with me, and we surveyed my drawings by Breugel the Elder.) 22 ‘Also undistributed some bonds and some valuable paintings and other art, which will be liquidated in due time.’ Antwerp, FelixArchief, SR#817, fol. 182v. Leonel Stevens and his sisters are mentioned in the distribution of Peeter’s estate; Antwerp, FelixArchief, SR#817, fol. 180. Leonel Stevens, master in civil and ecclesiastical law, and Jan Augustijn de Lannoy were in 1690 mayors of Antwerp. Leonel was the grandson of Lionel Wake, an English merchant and art dealer in Antwerp. 23

Van Hout 2013, p. 81.

24 Pen in brown ink on paper, with colour wash, 21 × 32.5 cm. Tolnay 1935, p. 93, cat. no. 44; Wegner 1973, vol. 1, cat. no. 1478 (inv. 1909:30 Z); Briels 1980, p. 199; Held 1982, p. 60, note 26. 25 Black chalk on paper, 21.5 × 33 cm. London 1963, cat. no. 57, fig. 30.

JAN MUYLLE

26 ‘Again I have bought some valuable pieces, so I had to spend money. Every day a lot of beautiful things are on the market, at present there is a bargain of two pieces of Bruegel the Elder, the first is De Blauwe Huik, the other is “een haey” where peasants go to the market. I have never seen a more beautiful thing and I don’t dare to buy it by a lack of cash.’ Denucé 1931, p. 103. Already on 13 December 1668 Forchondt noted that he had bought at the auction of Stevens’s collection ‘eenen notenkraker met een conterfijssel van den ouwen Brugel’; Denucé 1931, p. 80. This was the portrait of Mayken Verhulst Bessemeers, the mother-in-law of Bruegel; Briels 1980, p. 199. 27 Verwijs and Verdam 1885–1952, vol. 6, cols 442–5. 28 Duverger 1984–2009, vols 1, 4, 8, 9, 11, passim. 29 The post-mortem inventory of Anna Verpoorten (Antwerp, 6 February 1618) does mention ‘Een schilderye van een Heyde’; Duverger 1984–2009, vol. 2, p. 7. 30

De Maeyer 1955, pp. 221–2.

31 ‘some of his other particular and unique paintings’, ‘with some beautiful pieces paintings made by Brueghel’. Antwerp, FelixArchief, 16#160 and 16#161 (old inv. nos. Vierschaar 339 B and Vierschaar 339 C). Smolderen 1996, pp. 483–5, docs 5 and 6. Gaspar Schetz was maybe an important patron of Bruegel. About Gaspar Schetz’s relation with the brothers Jan Sebastiaensz. and Aert Vleminck, seigneurs of Wijnegem, see Meganck 2018, pp. 100–07, 120, who identified Jan Vleminck, son-in-law of Gaspar Schetz, as the patron of the Census at Bethlehem (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium). See Meganck, Chapter 23 in the present volume. 32 Antwerp, FelixArchief, 16#160 and 16#161 (old inv. nos. Vierschaar 339 B and Vierschaar 339 C). Smolderen 1996, pp. 483–5, docs 5 and 6. 33 ‘Item secretary Prats for his nephew sent by the chamberlain a painting the peasant wedding of Bruegel 100 crowns, or 160 guilders.’ Brussels, Algemeen Rijksarchief,

Manuscrits Divers, no. 2924, fol. 148v. See Haupt and Wied 2010, p. 227; see also Coremans 1847, p. 102. Philip Prats the Elder followed in his father’s footsteps when in 1585 he was appointed secretary of the Council of State and of the Privy Council. In 1588 he carried out a diplomatic mission to the Holy See in Rome. In 1598 he accompanied Archduke Albrecht on his voyage to Spain. He became Seigneur of Sint-Albert, a polder north of Sas van Gent (created in 1610–12). Philip Prats died on 10 January 1617 in Brussels. See Thomas 2005, pp. 112–13. (Campbell 2014, p. 189, and Hoppe-Harnoncourt 2018, p. 336, refer to an outdated article in Biographie nationale, vol. 18, cols 202–3, in which Philip Prats the Elder and the Younger are confounded.) Prats the Elder also maintained contacts with the Plantin-Moretus printing office and publishing house. Denucé 1925, no. 127: Le grand livre du soleil, p. 12. On 28 January 1595, Hütter bought a painting by Hieronymus Bosch: ‘Den 28. Jackhes GRAMAYR per ain gmäl von JERONIMO BOSCH SICUT ERAT IN DIEBUS NOE, 53 fl. 20kr.’ Haupt and Wied 2010, p. 237 (without identification); see also Coremans 1847, p. 119 (without identification); Allart 2006, p. 245 (without identification). ‘Jackhes GRAMAYR’ is Jacob Gramaye, treasurer of the States of Holland, treasurer-general of Flanders and Brabant and in 1591 onderschout (sheriff) of Antwerp. He was an uncle of the Jonghelinck brothers. See Denucé 1928, pp. 86–7 (genealogical tree). The painting by Bosch is sometimes identified with two panels in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. 34 ‘Item a large picture of a Peasant Wedding by P. Bruegel oil paint in frame with staffage […] LXXX guilders.’ Smolderen 1995, pp. 38–9. About Jan della Faille the Elder and the Van Eeckeren family, see Schmitz 1965, pp. 43–124, 231–40; Jongbloet-Van Houtte 1986, pp. CXX–CXXIII (genealogical tree of Jan della Faille the Elder and of Robert van Eeckeren).

Fig. 25.1 The painted room of the Palacio de los Villafañe-Miramontes in Segovia

Fig. 25.2 Anonymous, Hercules defeating the Lion of Nemea and The Sleeping Pedlar robbed by Monkeys, c. 1563–80, mural painting, 118 × 45 cm and 118 × 157 cm, Segovia, Palacio de los Villafañe-Miramontes (Centro de Estudios Hispánicos de Segovia)

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Bruegel across Modes and Materials: Notes on a Painted Palace in Sixteenth-Century Segovia Daan van Heesch

A BSTRACT : A residential dwelling in the Castilian city of Segovia is home to a little-studied cycle of grisaille murals that contrast glorious heroes from classical antiquity to contemporary paupers and vagrants. These late sixteenth-century paintings stem in large part from Netherlandish prints (or paintings based on prints) and among their surprising sources are engravings after Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The pictorial programme appears incongruous at first sight but is argued to follow a binary logic of ethical oppositions. The murals, in essence, cultivate a moral code of self-control, temperance and fortitude. This unusual case sheds new light on how Bruegel’s prints were adapted and understood beyond the confines of the Low Countries. It also offers a unique glimpse into the original display and viewing conditions of his imagery in a domestic space of the sixteenth century.

—o— Much has been written about Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s designs for etchings and engravings, but only few scholars have addressed the artistic translations of his prints to other media. Fragmented studies have shown how these widely disseminated images were adapted in often unexpected ways and places. Among the examples of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, one can point to French book illustrations,1 German broadsheets,2 Spanish calligraphy,3 Brussels tapestries,4 Elizabethan portraiture,5 and even to a massive English

chimneypiece in alabaster.6 Art historians, for obvious reasons, tend to discard such derivations in favour of the autographs produced by Bruegel and his progeny.7 As a result, most of these cross-craft copies remain essentially unknown to scholarship today, even though they too helped to construct and perpetuate the image and fame of the painter in early modern Europe. They also testify that Bruegel’s imagery already circulated far beyond the Low Countries during his own lifetime. By the turn of the sixteenth century, in fact, prints after Bruegel were found as far afield as Southeast Asia, when a Dutch trading company brought several thousand Netherlandish prints to the multicultural marketplace of Patani on the Malay Peninsula.8 These examples are little addressed in Bruegel historiography, precisely because they cut across media and narratives of cultural geography that are usually kept separate. This essay explores one particular instance of cross-media adaptation from late sixteenthcentury Spain, a territory that has received only scant attention in terms of Bruegel’s early reception. While the intersections between distinctive media form the basic principle of this case study, the contribution truly is about an original, sitespecific context in which Bruegel’s imagery was displayed and viewed. The iconography of the

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Fig. 25.3 Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Sleeping Pedlar robbed by Monkeys, 1562, engraving, 227 × 291 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-P-OB-75.239

ensemble will also lead to an issue that has been much debated over the last few years: the interplay between classical and ‘local’ visual traditions in early modern Europe. In 1957 a monumental cycle of secular mural paintings was uncovered in a Renaissance palacio in the Castilian city of Segovia, about 100 kilometres northwest of Madrid (fig. 25.1). The six murals are executed in grisaille on dry plaster and located in a large room on the piano nobile of the private palace. They have received only minor attention ever since their discovery.9 Five grisailles with painted frames are found on the room’s north wall. Some of them are separated by painted columns with Corinthian capitals and shafts covered in arabesques.

The narrative set-up of the ensemble is confusing at first sight. The cycle starts with Hercules’s defeat of the Nemean Lion and is directly followed by a monumental black and white painting after Bruegel’s Sleeping Pedlar robbed by Monkeys, published by Hieronymus Cock in 1562 (figs 25.2 and 25.3).10 Subsequently follows a brutal image of a disordered inn where blind men ineffectively try to club a swine to death (fig. 25.4). This forms another striking contrast to the succeeding scene, which represents Orpheus enchanting the animals with his fiddle (fig. 25.5). The north wall ends with Hercules defeating the river god Achelous, who has taken the form of a bull (fig. 25.6). The series might have continued on the opposite side of the room,

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Fig. 25.4 Anonymous, The Blind beating the Swine, c. 1563–80, mural painting, 118 × 159 cm, Segovia, Palacio de los Villafañe-Miramontes (Centro de Estudios Hispánicos de Segovia)

Fig. 25.5 Anonymous, Orpheus enchanting the Animals, c. 1563–80, mural painting, 118 × 160 cm, Segovia, Palacio de los Villafañe-Miramontes (Centro de Estudios Hispánicos de Segovia)

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where only one grisaille has survived. This is a painting after another well-known Bruegel print, the Thin Kitchen (1563), a shabby interior scene with underfed down-and-outs (figs 25.7 and 25.8).11 The glutton trying to sneak away alludes to the print’s counterpart, the Fat Kitchen, which may originally have been represented on that same wall. The anonymous painter followed these printed prototypes quite closely in terms of composition, but he took some licence in the spatial arrangement and in the modelling of the figures, especially with regard to their clothing and physiognomies. German, French or Italian prints from the early sixteenth century have been proposed as the sources of the mythological paintings, but no correspondences proved truly satisfactory; their specific prototypes remain to be identified.12 What is surprising is the origin of the mural representing the Blind beating the Swine: it is a close variant of a drawing attributed to the Mechelen painter Jan Verbeeck, now in Paris (fig. 25.9). The sheet is undated, but probably contemporary to the other densely hatched drawings Verbeeck executed in the period 1548–60.13 It might originally have served as a model for a now-lost or never-executed print but it is even more likely that the image originated as a design for waterverfdoeken (watercolour paintings on linen), the specialty of the Verbeeck workshop.14 Jan Verbeeck’s Christ as the Light of the World (1555) in Munich, for instance, probably served as a preparatory sketch for (or ricordo of) a lost watercolour canvas of the same subject, which was in the collection of the Antwerp merchant Philips Bol (d. 1642).15 Similarly, a cloth painting of the Temptation of Saint Anthony in Vienna is closely related to Verbeeck’s Bosch-like drawings of the same theme in Oxford.16 It should therefore not be ruled out that the anonymous muralist in Segovia was actually copying from paintings on canvas rather than directly from prints or drawings.17 The fact is that the Segovian grisailles correspond to the standard size, rapid technique and often monochromatic palette that characterized many inexpensive waterverfdoeken that were made

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in Mechelen around the middle of the sixteenth century.18 Some old photographs in the Friedländer Archive (RKD, The Hague) of similarly sized watercolour paintings (c. 105 × 150 cm), seemingly of the same provenance, even indicate that designs of the Verbeeck workshop were actually jointly produced, and maybe also conceived as a series, with straightforward copies after Bruegel’s popular prints (fig. 25.10). The Verbeeck painting represents a Satire on Bossy Housewives while the three others follow Bruegel’s Thin Kitchen (as in Segovia), Fat Kitchen and Alchemist;19 their pictorial execution and physical format conform to the series of Grotesque Peasant Weddings attributed to the Verbeeck studio in Nuremberg.20 Only few other examples of these fragile paintings have survived, but once they were produced by the dozen and exported to Spain in vast quantities. King Philip II, for example, owned several sketchlike grisailles on cloth that must have been someway akin to the murals in terms of both source material and execution. Among them were images of both popular and mythological subject matter, and it can hardly be a coincidence that some of them also correspond to prints that Cock published, notably those credited to Hieronymus Bosch. They are being referred to as lienzos de borrones, often executed in ‘blanco y negro’.21 The designation borrón was typically used to denote broad brushstrokes, blotches or rough-hewn finishing.22 That a sketch-like quality was inherent to such paintings is further accentuated by the fact that the term in the royal inventories only recurs in descriptions of drawings on paper.23 Similar print-based grisailles on canvas may have been owned by Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, whose posthumous inventories list four black and white paintings in watercolour on canvas ‘by Hieronymus Bosch, representing several subjects and fantasies’. The fact that they were ‘completely aged and nearly perished’ by 1607 emphasizes the fragile nature of waterverfdoeken and their utmost rarity today.24 Another instance of interest from the royal house of Spain is a Bosch pastiche, documented in 1636,

OPPOSITE

Fig. 25.6 Anonymous, Hercules defeating Achelous, c. 1563–80, mural painting, 118 × 71 cm, Segovia, Palacio de los Villafañe-Miramontes (Centro de Estudios Hispánicos de Segovia)

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Fig. 25.7 Anonymous, The Thin Kitchen, c. 1563–80, mural painting, 134 × 180 cm, Segovia, Palacio de los Villafañe-Miramontes (Centro de Estudios Hispánicos de Segovia)

Fig. 25.8 Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Thin Kitchen, 1563, engraving, 221 × 293 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-P-1885-A-9290

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Fig. 25.9 Jan Verbeeck, The Blind beating the Swine, c. 1540–60, pen and brown ink, 195 × 281 mm, Paris, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, inv. Mas.610

Fig. 25.10 Attributed to the Verbeeck workshop, A Satire on Bossy Housewives; The Alchemist; The Thin Kitchen; The Fat Kitchen, c. 1563–80, watercolour painting on canvas, each c. 105 × 150 cm, Mechelen, Museum Het Zotte Kunstkabinet and whereabouts unknown

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in which the central figure may well have been modelled after the dominant knife-biting giant in Bruegel’s Ira (1558): ‘a canvas […], in watercolour, by the hand of Hieronymus Bosch, with the Seven Deadly Sins and their punishment. In the middle there is a large head with a knife coming out of its mouth and on the tip of the knife hangs a banderole with [the word] ira, just as the other sins have a banderole with a text.’25 This final example hints at the fact that the artistic personality of Bruegel frequently conflated with Bosch from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards, a well-known issue that will be further addressed later in this essay.26 Circumstantial evidence suggests that the anonymous murals in Segovia were produced sometime between the mid-1560s and the late 1570s. The grisailles may therefore be considered among the earliest documented examples of Bruegel’s artistic reception beyond the Low Countries. A terminus post quem of 1563 is provided by the engraving of the Thin Kitchen and there are reasons to believe the pictorial cycle was executed relatively shortly afterwards. Formally, the secular paintings adhere to the style of other monochromatic murals found in or near Segovia and produced by Spanish masters of the third quarter of the sixteenth century. An example that might have been executed by the same workshop is the Lamentation in the Iglesia de San Miguel at Segovia, a mural made for the tomb of the humanist physician Andrés Fernández de Laguna and his father Diego (fig.  25.11); it was probably executed shortly after the former’s demise in 1559. It shows striking resemblances in the ways the figures are modelled and the design, importantly, also derived from an engraving, in this case after Raphael.27 The parish church of Valverde del Majano, near Segovia, also has murals representing saints, angels and donors that have been attributed to the same hand as the grisailles here under examination.28 These examples, crucially, conform to a wider trend for black and white painting following prints and print aesthetics in Spain and in the Spanish Americas (notably New Spain) in the period 1550–90 (fig. 25.12).29

The scant evidence on the construction history of the building also points in this direction. The main facade of the little-documented palace includes a coat of arms of the middle of the sixteenth century that belonged to the wealthy Villafañe-Miramontes family.30 The escutcheon marked the marriage of Jerónimo de Villafañe (before 1547–1568/71), a courtier of Philip II, with the Segovian noblewoman Ana de Miramontes y Zuazola (before 1547–c. 1577).31 Villafañe was not of noble birth but had inherited a mayorazgo from his father by grace of the king.32 He is documented as a teniente de alcaide (deputy castellan) of the royal Alcázar in Segovia between 1547 and 1568. The city of Segovia, located northwest of Madrid, was a royal base during the reign of Philip II and his household frequently resided in the Alcázar. As teniente de alcaide, Villafañe was principally a military and administrative officer who had to guard the royal fortress, supervise its construction works, take care of (high-ranking) prisoners and command the military men.33 Villafañe and Miramontes owned multiple houses in Segovia and the archives reveal that the building of interest, located on the Plaza San Facundo, was probably not their main residence; an undated clause in a testament of Miramontes stresses that their ‘casas principales’ were instead located in the adjoining parish of La Trinidad.34 The question also remains whether the house of San Facundo was still in their possession at that time, as their testaments make clear that they had sold parts of their properties.35 Whether the grisailles should be considered part of their patronage therefore requires further investigation, but at present it can be viewed as the most plausible hypothesis. The original disposition of rooms in the muchrenovated building has been lost, but the large frescoed space on the piano nobile might initially have served as a reception hall or dining room where important guests were received. It has been argued widely that paintings of ‘lowlife’ banquets, such as those of Verbeeck and Bruegel, were primarily intended to decorate the dining

OPPOSITE

Fig. 25.11 Anonymous, The Lamentation (tomb of Diego and Andrés Fernández de Laguna), after 1559, mural painting, c. 150 × 200 cm, Segovia, Iglesia de San Miguel

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Fig. 25.12 Anonymous, Scenes from the Passion of Christ, c. 1560–90, mural painting, Mexico, Acolman de Nezahualcóyotl, Ex-convento de San Agustín

halls of the urban bourgeoisie.36 The coarse inn with eating and drinking peasants in the Blind beating the Swine and the Thin Kitchen would indeed have been particularly apt within a setting of convivial entertainment. Financial considerations likely stimulated the choice of affordable mural painting,37 but whether the use of grisaille also reflects such economic concerns is unclear. The absence of colour, first and foremost, connects the paintings to the aesthetics and techniques of their black and white prototypes. It has also been suggested that the popularity of grisaille in the Spanish empire ran parallel with the Habsburg vogue for black clothing. The Spanish preference for this ‘dark manner’, a desire for

sobriety in art and in fashion, has been explained as ‘a gesture of moral self-control’, and the use of blacks and greys, more generally, was widely believed to expound virtues such as austerity and temperance.38 Whether or not this was truly the case in Segovia is difficult to ascertain, but it is significant that these same moral principles motivate the visual programme of the pictorial cycle. The metaphorical key to the five scenes on the north wall of the room is to be found in the Stoic ideal of controlling the self and the situation. The murals exemplify this virtue of selfcommand by imagining the universal theme of man’s control over nature (in this case the mastery of wild animals). This is achieved by juxtaposing

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exempla from classical mythology with moral antitypes from Netherlandish popular culture. Both extremes, however, communicate one and the same message: they call for an equilibrium between reason and passion.39 This plea for keeping an appropriate balance between unbridled pleasure and restrained refinement was particularly suited to the convivial culture of the dining room where intelligent talk and light-hearted amusement were both important concerns.40 The cycle starts with Hercules’s heroic defeat of the Nemean Lion and is directly followed by Bruegel’s sleeping pedlar whose wares are plundered by a frolicking band of monkeys. The visual play reminds one of Erasmus’s adage Hercules et simia (Hercules and an ape): ‘Said of those who are completely incompatible. The ape’s power lies in deceit, Hercules excels in strength.’41 As a strong and noble animal, the lion, too, was often opposed to this ‘ridiculous’ creature of wild impulses and sneaky tricks.42 The pedlar, from another angle, was widely considered to be a trickster or salesman of questionable standing in a vein similar to the monkey,43 whereas Hercules – the Renaissance hero and god who personified virtue and selfcommand – embodied contrasting attributes, leonine strength and Christian fortitude.44 The theme of the pedlar-robbed-by-monkeys drew upon a long tradition, but the engraving after Bruegel became the authoritative image of the topos well into the seventeenth century.45 A French equivalent of the Spanish grisaille, for instance, can be found in a sixteenth-century pavilion – possibly a hunting lodge – in Pouilly-lès-Feurs, near Lyon.46 Here, Bruegel’s print also served as a model for a mural cycle exploring the passions of human nature through a highly comparable blend of Northern and Italianate elements. The sleeping merchant likewise enters into dialogue with figures from classical mythology: one of the murals, for instance, represents the carnal desires of Mars and Venus after a design by Baldassare Peruzzi,47 while an adjacent painting mocks at the sin of Vanity by showing a naked man bending over to see his

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buttocks reflected in a mirror.48 Perhaps their common denominator also rests in the lazy, lustful and beastly impulses of man and his struggle to control them. Related ideas motivate the next two scenes of the painted room at Segovia. The Blind beating the Swine and Orpheus enchanting the Animals juxtapose many men’s failure to control a single animal with a single man’s command over many animals. Orpheus’s ability to keep the wild animals under his spell with magnificent music contrasts sharply to the rude game of swine-clubbing in which blind vagabonds are staged to strike down a swine but end up hitting one another more than their animal opponent.49 Bagpipes, roars, clattering sticks and other noises of revelry dominate the brutal play and constitute the extreme reverse of the solemn and sonically harmonious scene from classical mythology. Viewers of the wall painting might have known that blind swine-clubbing was, in fact, once a widespread custom of urban entertainment outside the Iberian Peninsula.50 The cruel game gradually disappeared in the sixteenth century, but Paul Vandenbroeck has demonstrated how the ritual was still widely remembered as a moral example that warned against the dangers of disorder, unbridled passion and morally ‘blind’ behaviour.51 There are reasons to believe that the Segovian grisaille of the Blind beating the Swine was associated with the fashionable Bosch at that time, whose works were avidly collected by the Spanish elite.52 The courtier Felipe de Guevara, for instance, was in the possession of an alleged Bosch canvas that represented ‘several blind men chasing a wild boar’, a painting that King Philip II bought from his widow in 1570.53 An arena with blind or blindfolded swine-clubbers, moreover, appears as a background scene in one of the famous ‘Bosch’ tapestries.54 These works, as well as tapestries portraying Hercules, were much sought-after by the circle of Philip II in the 1550s and 1560s; this was the entourage of courtiers to which the admittedly lower-ranking Villafañe belonged and it is thus not unreasonable to assume that the castle warden and

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Fig. 25.13 Frans Schavaert, Hercules and the Horses of Diomedes, c. 1560, silk and wool, 425 × 590 cm, Brussels, Art & History Museum, inv. 8870-cat. 37

his family were following the artistic example of the royal household, as was very common in the period.55 It is also significant in this context that the painter adorned the armoured figure of Orpheus with a double-headed eagle, the dynastic emblem of the Habsburgs. The hero of a distant past was thus transformed into an exemplary serviceman of the Spanish empire – an image that would have been most appropriate in the courtly context of our hypothetical patron, the military castellan Jerónimo de Villafañe. The north wall ends with Hercules’s victory over the shape-shifting river god Achelous, here in the guise of a bull, through which the painter once again accentuates the triumph of Virtue over Vice. In the end, the educated viewer is advised to cope with human passion – to tame the animal within

– by means of culture and refinement (the musician Orpheus) as well as through physical strength and fortitude (the warrior Hercules). It remains unknown whether the grisailles on the other side of the room also opposed legendary heroes to contemporary ‘lowlifes’ by shifting between classical and popular idioms. Only one painting of the south wall survives and it seems most likely that this image after Bruegel’s Thin Kitchen was placed next to a Fat Kitchen, its original counterpart. The kitchen scenes, as suggested above, would have been particularly fitting as conversation pieces in a room where communal meals were consumed. A grotesque confrontation between shiftless paupers and greedy gluttons, these amusing images encouraged balance and moderation in a fashion similar to that of the

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Fig. 25.14 Detail from fig. 25.13

murals on the opposite wall.56 Beyond their obvious function to delight and entertain the viewer, the Segovian grisailles therefore seem to cultivate essential features of courtly etiquette and Christian moral doctrine – chief among them the cardinal virtues of temperance (self-control), fortitude (endurance) and prudence (wisdom). An interesting parallel to the overall programme can be found in a Brussels tapestry series of the same period, in which the grand exploits of Hercules are equally contrasted with some ridiculous anti-heroes from Bruegel’s prints.57 The copious borders of this History of Hercules series, dated to about 1560,58 enclose monochrome medallions and cartouches after pre-existing models (notably after Bosch and Bruegel) that allude to the dangers and corruptions of earthly life. These textile ‘marginalia’ show pictures of monsters, drunkards, quacks, beggars, tramps, thieves, whimsical women

and other outcasts of society. The manufacturer clearly had access to cartoons of the ‘Bosch’ tapestries mentioned above, but most motifs hark back to less conspicuous media, such as prints, waterverfdoeken and painted trenchers (teljoren). This concise contribution cannot provide a comprehensive account of this unusual series, but it can be summarized that the scrollwork images probably functioned as moral counterparts or amusing subtexts to the glorious history of Hercules. The tapestry of Hercules and the Horses of Diomedes (Brussels, Art & History Museum), for instance, recycles Bruegel’s Temptation of Saint Anthony (1556) in its central cartouche (figs 25.13 and 25.14), while four caprices after his Patientia (1557) appear in the right-hand medallion.59 The designer obviously took advantage of the vogue for Bosch among the contemporary elite, but it is probably not a coincidence that both Saint Anthony and

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Hercules were celebrated victors of passion and vice. The viewer in this reading is presented with an alternative road to virtue: the vita activa of the powerful demigod, who conquered vice by physical force, is complemented with the vita contemplativa of a restraint saint, who came to resist his inner demons solely by passive means of prayer and meditation. Several motifs from Patientia reappear in the right-hand medallion of the Struggle of Hercules and Antaeus (Brussels, Art & History Museum). Among them is a pseudo-aristocratic woman with oldfashioned horned headdress who bites her own hand. She is an appropriate counterpart to the lanky woman with twisted Burgundian hennin (foolishly topped by a whirligig) at the opposite side of the tapestry.60 Another image of female folly features below, in the central cartouche, where an indecent nun makes advances to a monk while another clergyman gluts himself with food from the cupboard.61 Their dialectic relationship to the central field is less distinct, but it should be remembered that Hercules’s fight with Antaeus was often allegorized as a mental struggle between earthly and spiritual desires. Indeed, some learned viewers may have known that Antaeus, as a halfgiant born from earth, was commonly associated with the vices of the flesh, fitting the image of lust and gluttony in the central cartouche of the corresponding tapestry remarkably well.62 The margins of Hercules liberating Hesione (whereabouts unknown),63 to give a final example, cite from Bruegel’s Ass at School (1557),64 Alart du Hameel’s Last Judgement (inscribed ‘Bosche’)65 and the anonymous Bellows-Maker (a widely circulated composition that was dubiously attributed to Bosch).66 They may have supported the central

narrative of Hercules as moral glosses but it cannot be argued that they were envisioned to be read in some sort of integrated way. This reminds us that these vernacular marginalia may also have been appreciated merely for their origins in popular compositions, notably those related to the avidly collected Bosch. Bruegel, in fact, would only be dubbed a ‘secondo Girolamo Bosco’ several years after these textiles came into being.67 The History of Hercules tapestries should therefore also be classed among the earliest favourable responses to Bruegel and his practices in the Boschian mode. In recent years, scholars have started to question the notion of an artistic divide between so-called classicizing and popular traditions in early modern art.68 This contribution, too, has tried to stress that these two modes of representation, irrespective of their divergent sources and forms, were inextricably bound up with one another. The History of Hercules tapestries enforce the idea that this mixed mode of representation, as exemplified in Segovia and Pouilly-lès-Feurs, was exemplary of how these two different manners, the popular and the classical, were ought to be seen or arranged in early modern times. The painted rooms also confront us with a poorly documented yet once ubiquitous tradition of domestic decoration in sixteenthcentury Europe. They make one wonder about the hundreds of lost secular murals that must once have adorned the walls of the wealthy and whether other ‘Bruegel’ paintings of this kind might still be extant behind the closed doors or whitewashed walls of private dwellings today. The case study of Segovia, at any rate, offers a rare glimpse into the original disposition and display of Bruegel’s imagery in a residential space of the sixteenth century.

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N OT ES This research was supported by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art (KU Leuven). I am most grateful to Rafael Ruiz Alonso (Fundación Caja Segovia) for allowing me to study the mural paintings under consideration and to Richard Crescenzo D’Augusta (Centro de Estudios Hispánicos de Segovia) for kindly facilitating my research in Segovia. My thanks are also due to Elena Vázquez Dueñas (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and Werner Thomas (KU Leuven) for their generous help and advice, especially with regard to the archival sources. 1 See Le Chanu, Chapter 21 in the present volume. 2 In 1590, for instance, the Nuremberg printmaker Hans Clemens Coler illustrated a ‘Wunderbarliche Zeitung vnd Gedicht deß Gelts’ with a woodcut after Bruegel’s Battle of the Money Bags and Strong Boxes (c. 1570). Ries 1987, pp. 250–51. 3 A calligraphic drawing after Bruegel’s Ass at School (1557) can be found in a Spanish translation of Lodovico Guicciardini’s Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi, dated 1636 (Madrid, Real Biblioteca del Palacio Real, Ms. 2948). It was made by the Spanish court calligrapher Pedro Díaz Morante. For an illustration, see Santiago Páez 1994, p. 329. 4

See note 57 below.

5 See Wells-Cole 2012, pp. 837–8, figs 13–18, who explores how Bruegel’s prints of ships were repurposed in a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I (c. 1588), now in the Woburn Abbey Collection. 6 The carver used Bruegel’s Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (c. 1560–63) as his model. Wells-Cole 1997, pp. 182–4, figs 302–3. 7 An exception is Van der Stock 1989, pp. 95–102. 8 I am preparing a separate study on the reception of Netherlandish prints in Patani. See IJzerman 1926, pp. 99, 101, nos. 81, 139: ‘2 blaren van Brugel à 4 st. bladt […] 2 blaren van Bruggels à 1 st. bladt’. 9 Lozoya 1958; López Torrijos 1985, pp. 124–5; Collar de Cáceres 1989, pp. 198–9, 657–60; Santamaría López and Sánchez Díez 2006, pp. 26–7. The building is located at Plaza San Facundo 3. It now houses the Centro de Estudios Hispánicos de Segovia but previously accommodated the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Segovia. 10 Rotterdam/New York 2001, pp. 219–21, no. 95; Sellink 2011, p. 180, no. 117. 11 See Sellink 2011, pp. 184–5, nos. 121– 2, with references to earlier literature.

12 López Torrijos 1985, p. 125; Collar de Cáceres 1989, p. 199; Santamaría López and Sánchez Díez 2006, p. 27. 13 Faggin 1969, pp. 57–8; Vandenbroeck 1981a, p. 40, no. 16; Boon et al. 1985, pp. 116–17, no. 57. 14 With ‘waterverfdoek’ (literally ‘water-paint canvas’), I refer to the old Dutch term for glue or egg tempera paintings on linen. Marijnissen 1985, pp. 71–4. The sixteenth-century corpus of Netherlandish cloth paintings is under-exploited, but some important studies have addressed latemedieval examples. Vandenbroeck 1982; Wolfthal 1989; Reynolds 2000. 15 For the drawing, see Vandenbroeck 1981a, p. 37, no. 8, and Bevers 1989, pp. 91–2, no. 72, fig. 23. For the probate inventory, see Duverger 1984–2009, vol. 5, p. 46: ‘een groote schilderye van waterverve gemaeckt by den schilder Hans [= Jan] Verbeeck van d’Licht comende in de weerelt in een gestoffeerde lyste’. 16 Vandenbroeck 1981a, pp. 37 (no. 10), 41 (no. 7), 43–51 (nos. 6–9). 17 Similar arguments are made in Steppe 1968, p. 763, who suggests that the tapestry-like grisaille murals in the contemporary Palacio de Óriz near Pamplona were fashioned after canvas paintings instead of tapestries. 18 De Marchi and Van Miegroet 2006a, pp. 80–83; De Marchi and Van Miegroet 2006b. 19 RKDimages, nos. 54296, 54298–300; the unpublished copies after Bruegel are of unknown location but the Verbeeck painting was rediscovered and discussed in Vandenbroeck 1981a, pp. 52–3, no. 11, and Vandenbroeck 1991a. This painting is now in the Museum Het Zotte Kunstkabinet at Mechelen. 20

Vandenbroeck 1984, pp. 80–81, figs 1–3.

21 Checa Cremades 2018, p. 487: ‘Un lienco de pintura en borron de blanco y negro del juicio de Paris […] Otro lienco de borron en que ay un elefante y otros disparates de Hieronimo Bosco […] Un lienço de borron de San(ct) Martin con muchos pobres y otros disparates de Hieronimo Bosco […] Otro lienco de borron blanco y negro de San(ct) Martin con muchos pobres y disparates de Hieronimo Bosco’. The 1636 inventory of the Madrid Alcázar makes clear that the latter was executed in watercolour: ‘Un lienço pintura al temple, de blanco y negro, de S(an) Martin que ba passando una barca y el cavallo en otra de mano de Gerónimo Bosq(ue)’. Vandenbroeck 2001, p. 58. Two of these ‘Bosch’ paintings correspond to Cock’s

engraving of Saint Martin among Beggars. The other canvas might have stemmed from either Alart du Hameel’s or Cock’s print of the Besieged Elephant. While it cannot be ruled out that these paintings were forerunners of the engravings, their rough-hewn execution and low appraisal in the postmortem inventory suggests that they were derivatives rather than originals. 22 Socrate 1966; Covarrubias Orozco 1994, pp. 200–01; Manning 2009, pp. 246–7. 23 Beer 1898, pp. cxxi–cxxiii, cxxx, nos. 1173, 1365. 24 The inventory (1607) makes mention of ‘quatre vieilles peinctures a destrampe sur toille de Hierome Vos, representant diverses choses et fantasies’. These are to be identified with ‘quattre pieces peintes de blanc et noir sur toille avec leurs chassis et molure de sapin, toutes caduques et pouries’. Vandenbroeck 1981b, p. 132. 25 The 1636 inventory, mentioned in note 21, lists a ‘lienço del mismo tamaño [= about 155 cm wide], al temple, de mano de Ger(oni)mo Bosque, en que están los siete pecados mortales y las penas de ellos y en medio una gran cabeça que le sale un cuchillo por la boca y en al cabo de(é)l un retulo que dize la yra con rétulos en los demas pecados’. Vandenbroeck 2001, p. 59. 26 See, among the most recent studies, Silver 1999; Ilsink 2009; Martens 2012b; Barrett 2013; and Saint Louis/Cambridge 2015–16. 27

Collar de Cáceres 1989, p. 198.

28 Ibid., p. 199 (proposing a slightly later date of about 1585). 29 Lozoya 1958, pp. 104–5; Edgerton 2001, pp. 124–34, 313, note 49. Similar black and white murals in domestic dwellings of the late sixteenth century include the recently discovered decorations (with a Return of the Prodigal Son after a print by Sebald Beham) in the Casa de Abdón in Toledo (Gutiérrez Arias 2018) and the tapestry substitutes in the Palacio de Óriz mentioned above (see note 17; see also Sánchez Cantón 1944). The global vogue for grisaille painting in the sixteenth century was recently explored in a conference session entitled Seeing in Black and White: Grisaille Painting and Black and White Color Theory, organized by Barbara E. Mundy and held at the College Art Association Conference in New York, 16 February 2017. 30 Lozoya 1958, p. 101; Vera 1974, pp. 250–52. 31 Jerónimo de Villafañe died between 1568 (the year of his testament) and 1571 (when his spouse is called a widow). See Segovia, Archivo Histórico (AHS),

450 Ante Francisco Martínez, Legajo J.-3585 (testament copy of Jerónimo de Villafañe, 28 December 1568), and Ruiz Hernando 1982, vol. 2, p. 257. Ana de Miramontes y Zuazola probably deceased shortly after her testament of 1577 was written. See AHS, Ante Juan de Junguito, Prot. 225, fol. 874 (testament of Ana de Miramontes y Zuazola, 30 September 1577). 32 Ceballos-Escalera y Gila 1995, p. 97, note 298. 33

Ibid., pp. 26, 64, 97, 101.

34 Simancas, Archivo General (AGS), CME, 293,44 (undated clause of the testament and division of the estate of Ana de Miramontes y Zuazola). The residence of La Trinidad might be identical to the houses Miramontes acquired from a certain Isabel de Guzmán in 1571. It was described as being near to ‘the orchard that overlooks the square of San Facundo’ (‘la huerta que afrenta con la plazuela de Señor San Fagund’). Ruiz Hernando 1982, vol. 2, p. 257. 35 Villafañe, for example, sold ‘unas casas a san Bar(tolo)me’ to a certain Gabriel de Errera; AGS, CME, 293,44. According to Lozoya 1958, p. 101, the house of San Facundo was in the possession of the El Espinar family in the seventeenth century, but I have not been able to retrieve this information in the archives. 36 Vandenbroeck 1984, pp. 118–19; Richardson 2011, pp. 63–82; Goldstein 2013. 37 On mural cycles as inexpensive substitutes for tapestries and easel paintings, see Steppe 1968, p. 763; Belozerskaya 2002, p. 255; and Eisler 2007. 38 Quoted from Edgerton 2001, p. 127. See also Luis Colomer 2014; Pastoureau 2008, pp. 95–104; and, for the religious context, Teasdale Smith 1959.

DAAN VAN HEESCH

are Brumble 1998, pp. 154–66; Bull 2005; and Grafton, Most and Settis 2010, pp. 426–9. 45 Friedman 2008. 46 Schepers 2016, p. 110. Many thanks to Bert Schepers for drawing my attention to these murals; illustrations can be found in the online database Mérimée (Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine), no. PA00117550. 47 The mural is thought to derive from a drawing after one of Peruzzi’s lost frescos in the Villa Farnesina in Rome. Several drawings of this composition appear to have circulated. It is less likely that the muralist used Cock’s engraving of the same design (1553), which is represented in reverse. Ziefer 2010, pp. 226, 722–3, note 56, figs 139–41. 48 On this pictorial tradition, see Richardson 2011, pp. 191–3; and Koerner 1993, pp. 351–2. 49 A moralizing text on the drawing by Jan Verbeeck noted above clarifies that ‘seven blind men, as one sees here, [try] to strike the swine the most in order to carry off the prize / But whatever they strike, it’s all pig, for they hit each other so, that they sometimes cry out. One blind should not reproach the other’ (‘Seven blinden, wildt hier aenmercken / om ’t swijn meest te raken zy om den prijs hier smijten / maker wat sy slain, tis al vant vercken / want sij malckanderen raken, Datsij zom crijten / De eene(n) blinde(n) en derf den andere(n) niet verwijten’). Vandenbroeck 1987c, p. 311. 50 Bax 1944. 51 Vandenbroeck 1987c, pp. 310–12. See also Kavaler 1999, pp. 127–9; Richard 2015; and Koerner 2016, pp. 233–5. 52 See, among other studies, Steppe 1967; Silva Maroto 1998; Checa Cremades 2016; and Vázquez Dueñas 2016.

39 The historical circumstances and sociocultural mechanisms that underpin this mentality are thoroughly explored in Vandenbroeck 1987a, esp. pp. 141–51.

53 Vandenbroeck 2001, pp. 49–50.

40

See note 36 above.

41

Drysdall 2005, vol. 6, p. 71, no. 9.

42

Coffman McDermott 1938, p. 116.

56 See, among other studies, Sullivan 2009, p. 188, and Sellink 2011, pp. 184–5, nos. 121–2.

43

Young 1968, p. 443.

44 Among the most comprehensive surveys of Hercules’s reception in Renaissance Europe

54 Vandenbroeck 2011, pp. 219–20. 55 Falomir 2006, pp. 146–7.

57 Nine tapestries and several fragments of at least two sets survive. They are now preserved in Brussels (Art & History Museum), Seville (Palacio de las Dueñas)

and several private collections. Their history is thoroughly discussed in my dissertation (Van Heesch 2019). See also Crick-Kuntziger 1957, pp. 51–3, plates 44–9; Asselberghs 1973; Dumont-Fillon 1984; Duverger 1986; Laruelle 2011, esp. pp. 59–67; Redín Michaus 2015; and Laruelle 2017. A fragment of a related set is illustrated in Delmarcel et al. 2010, pp. 34–5, no. 4. 58 Edmond Roobaert recently identified their weaver’s mark as belonging to the manufacturer Frans Schavaert (c. 1510/13– c. 1576). In October 1560, Schavaert sold two History of Hercules tapestry series to his professional partner, Cornelis de Ronde. The archival document makes clear that one of the sets was sold unfinished, so it is quite possible that some of the borders still had to be woven in 1560. Roobaert 2010, pp. 11–41. 59

Crick-Kuntziger 1957, p. 51.

60 This tondo is strikingly similar to a painted trencher of the early sixteenth century in Berlin (Schloss Köpenick). See Redín Michaus 2015, p. 362, and Vandenbroeck 1991b. 61 This corresponds to the engraving Friars in a Nunnery (Crick-Kuntziger 1957, p. 5; Redín Michaus 2015, p. 360, note 41) and several paintings of that same composition which were circulating at the time (Campbell 1985, pp. 3–5, no. 1). 62

Brumble 1998, pp. 26–7.

63 Dumont-Fillon 1984, pp. 85–6, fig. 2 (with no remarks on the borders). 64 Rotterdam/New York 2001, pp. 142–4, no. 40; Sellink 2011, p. 91, no. 45. 65 Saint Louis/Cambridge 2015–16, pp. 130–35, no. 12. 66 Vandenbroeck 2002, pp. 87–92; Saint Louis/Cambridge 2015–16, pp. 192–7, no. 26. 67 Guicciardini 1567, p. 100: ‘Pietro Brueghel di Breda grande imitatore della scienza, & fantasie di Girolamo Bosco, onde n’ha anche acquistato il sopranome di secondo Girolamo Bosco’. See also note 26 above. 68 See, for instance, Ramakers 2011; Richardson 2011; Porras 2016; Kavaler 2017, esp. p. 81; and De Jonge 2017b, pp. 123–4.

a Fig. 26.1 GA’s mark (175 × 110 mm) on Joachim Beuckelaer, A Market Scene with Ecce Homo, signed and dated 1565, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, inv. NM 322. Shown in VIS (a); in UV (b)

b

26

An Enigmatic Panel-Maker from Antwerp and his Supply to the Bruegels Ingrid Moortgat and Jørgen Wadum

A BSTRACT : An enigmatic panel-maker’s mark has been associated with a certain Guilliam Aertssen (GA). The GA monogram seems to appear on panel paintings from as early as 1565, and throughout the first decades of the seventeenth century. This contribution describes the occurrence of the mark on panels by the Bruegels, their contemporaries and followers, and provides a new chronology of its design and manifestation. New biographical research about Aertssen, combined with the chronology of the GA marks, assists in clarifying his complex activities from the late sixteenth century and into the third decade of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, Aertssen’s relationship with art dealer Gaspar Antheunis provides new insights into the panelmaking business and the trade in panels in the first decades of the seventeenth century.

—o— Introduction The Bruegel family was successfully active over a large period in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most of the family members used rigid supports such as panels or copper plates for their paintings. Although panel-makers’ marks on panels employed by Pieter Bruegel the Elder are currently not known, both his sons and their artistic descendants have used panels marked or branded in one way or another. The focus of this essay is particularly one panel-maker’s mark associated with a certain Guilliam Aertssen (GA). The combination of a chronology of the GA marks with new biographical evidence reveals a complex web of

Antwerp craftspeople and dealers involved in supplying the Bruegels and their colleagues with panels for painting. The Antwerp Liggeren, with its listing of guild members and apprentices and their obligations to the organization, is of immense value for our understanding of the huge production of a variety of crafts and their interrelations.1 From this source, we may deduce that the city of Antwerp in 1573– 1658 housed an impressive number of panelmakers, witters (who applied the first ground layers on the naked panel) and frame-makers.2 During the twentieth century, descriptions of Flemish marks became more frequently mentioned in articles, exhibition or collection catalogues, and with the publication Merken opmerken3 the recording of these kinds of stamps, monograms and brands on a variety of artefacts from the Southern Netherlands became more widespread. However, it was with Jan Van Damme’s article about the panel-makers in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke and their marks – and including biographies of Antwerp panel-makers – that the identification and understanding of the practice of marking panels became significantly clarified.4 The Antwerp panel-makers petitioned a set of regulations on 13 November 1617, demanding that, from then onwards, panels should be marked with the individual mark of the panel-maker and subsequently – as proof of good quality – also branded

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with the Antwerp coat of arms: two hands above a castle. These regulations were sanctioned and the regulations were given to the joiners and to the panel-makers alike to be implemented under the auspices of the Guild of St Luke. This new practice makes it possible to give an approximate date to panels bearing personal panelmakers’ marks, although the 1617 regulations would not become the desired terminus post quem of the production of marked and/or branded Antwerp panels.5 Examples of this are a series of panels cut from the same tree, one of which is signed Abraham Govaerts (1589–1626) and dated 1612. On the back, a monogram consisting of a large ‘R’ with a smaller ‘B’ between the legs is clearly detectable.6 As none of the currently known panels displaying the ‘R/B’ monogram in museum collections, with dealers or auction houses, shows any sign of the Antwerp brand, one could speculate that ‘R/B’ was a joiner and therefore not a member of the Guild of St Luke.7 However, simultaneously, the fully registered panel-maker Guilliam Gabron (active 1609–c. 1662) already in 1614 used his mark with the monogram ‘G+G’ on a pair of landscapes by Abraham Govaerts. Gabron’s mark was stamped into the back of the panels, none of which shows any sign of the Antwerp brand.8 Meetings concerning the new regulations seem to have taken place already during the summer of 1616, when the panel-makers’ deans and representatives from the Guild of St Luke met at the Robijn (The Ruby).9 The ruling is referred to as ‘het stuck der tafereelmakers’ (the act of the panel-makers), which indicates a request that had already been on the agenda for some time. We have therefore come to accept that the marking of Antwerp panels was based on an already existing practice, the date of initiation of which is still obscure. However, we also know that paintings that could be attributed stylistically to sixteenth century artists have been found to be painted on panels issued with marks of well-known panel-makers from the seventeenth century. These paintings can thus be rejected as ‘old masters’ and instead labelled

as copies produced in the first quarter of the seventeenth century in Antwerp.10 One example is a painting attributed to the circle of Ambrosius Benson (d.  1550), which, between the battens of a cradle, showed two marks: the brand of the Antwerp Guild and the personal mark of the panel-maker GA stamped into the wood.11 Several examples of imitations or emulations of sixteenthcentury masters are found in seventeenth-century inventories, such as that of Frans Francken the Elder, who allegedly possessed copies after Pieter Aertsen, Jan Gossaert and Quinten Massys.12 Using panel marks as a dating tool was employed for the first time in the 1980s for the dating of the many Flemish panel paintings and the interior of the Winter Room in Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen.13 Seventy-five panel paintings, mounted in the still original wainscoting on all four walls of the king’s private chamber, were thought to have been installed before 1615. As a large number of the panels and their frames on the reverse are marked with one or another panel-maker’s mark, this could indicate that they were instead produced after the acceptance of the petition in 1617.14 It so happened that panel paintings in the Winter Room revealed for the first time that a panel-maker’s mark was not always stamped or punched into the wood (as mentioned in the petition; see below), but could also appear written in red chalk.15 In the Winter Room we find not only red chalk monograms by GA on thirteen panels and on fourteen frames, but also four monograms in red by Hans van Beemen, alias van Herentals (1598–1624).16 The identification of the seventeen panels with written marks by two panel-makers, as well as of another twelve panels with stamped or punched marks by another four panel-makers, informs us that at least six panel-makers’ workshops were engaged in completing the Winter Room panels – subsequently painted by about fifteen individual painters.17 The main bulk of the Winter Room paintings were probably created during the transition phase of an increased wish to mark panels and the decree of 1617, a period that appears to be much longer

AN ENIGMATIC PANEL - MAKER F ROM ANTWERP AND HIS SUPPLY TO THE BRUEGELS

than current knowledge allows us to consider, as underscored by a Cavalry Battle with Assault on a Convoy by Pieter Snayers (1592–1667). Also mounted in the Winter Room, the back of this painting’s oak panelling carries the cloverleaf or trefoil used by Michiel Claessens, the dean of the panel-makers in 1617, and the Antwerp brand no. 3, in use 1618–26.18 Part One: Empirical Evidence of the Appearance of the GA Mark 1565–1638 The reoccurring appearance of GA’s red chalk mark, written on panels and on frames of the Winter Room, was first thought to be a phenomenon unique to this site.19 An extensive investigation of panel paintings in various museum collections and art dealers’ stocks of paintings has revealed a more complex picture. The marks were issued more frequently than first encountered, and as they are difficult to discern on dusty or abraded backsides of old panels, many may still have passed unnoticed. At first, the hypothesis was that the red chalk marks by GA and his contemporaries would have been a first attempt to comply with the new regulations of 1617 about marking panels, and before actual iron-carved punches had been fabricated to facilitate marking on a larger scale. However, we have recorded written master-marks or house-marks by Hans van Haecht (1589–1621),20 his apprentice Hans van Herentals21 and GA, many of which have been found on panels produced (long) before 1617. GA’s and Hans van Haecht’s marks may be unique cases, as we know of their monograms not only on seventeenth-century panels but we have recorded a written monogram by each of the two on the backs of panels from as early as the middle of the sixteenth century. GA’s mark is found on the back of a large painting by Joachim Beuckelaer (c. 1533– c.  1570/74) depicting a Market Scene with Ecce Homo, signed and dated 1565.22 On the back of a Kitchen Scene with Two Women by Pieter Aertsen, signed 1562, Van Haecht’s mark is also traceable.23 Van Haecht spent most of his career as an art dealer,

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while also frequently supplying artists with panels,24 and archival sources inform us that Van Haecht had a business relationship with Guilliam Aertssen, which is discussed below. The above information could lead to the interesting interpretation that these special marks may have been written on the reverse of paintings traded by the respective panel-makers/art dealers – just as, today, stickers or inscriptions from auction houses are found on the reverse of auctioned objects. If this is a sound assumption, it may indicate that GA acted as a contractor or even as an art dealer.25 Reviewing the substantial amount of current data relating to GA’s marking of panels and frames in red chalk, incisions made with a burin, or with one of his two successive stamps – or combinations of written marks and stamps in conjunction and/or with the Antwerp brand – offers new insights into the chronology of the development of his activities, something that is important for providing a context for his business. Later in this essay, archival information is combined with our chronology of his marks as we know them today. A Chronology of GA’s Marks The earliest GA mark currently recorded is written in red chalk on the back of the aforementioned Market Scene with Ecce Homo, signed and dated 1565 by Joachim Beuckelaer. The panel consists of five planks joined vertically, on the reverse of which are visible a variety of inscriptions, inventory numbers and the ‘J/B’ monogram. On the second plank from the right (seen from the front), we notice a large monogram in red chalk by GA (fig. 26.1). The inscription measures approximately 175 × 110 mm and is so far the largest written mark from GA’s hand to be documented. The Beuckelaer painting allegedly came into Swedish possession in Prague in 1648.26 The following GA mark recorded is from 1598 and is much smaller. It has been hammered into the panel by means of a metal punch and measures only 15 × 9 mm. The GA monogram is inscribed in

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INGRID MOO RTGAT AND JØ RGEN WADUM

Fig. 26.3 GA’s marks (130 × 50 mm) on Otto van Veen, Amazons and Scythians, c. 1600, not signed, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 2667

Fig. 26.2 GA’s mark (15 × 9 mm) on Jan Brueghel the Elder, Sea Landscape with the preaching of Christ, signed ‘BRVEGHEL · 1598’, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. 187

a rhomboid shield or escutcheon (fig.  26.2). Through close scrutiny, one observes that the escutcheon has been formed by a punch with a circular base or handle.27 This type of small and delicately crafted punch mark is found on a series of panel paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568– 1625). Paintings displaying this punch mark consist of a corpus of three paintings in Munich, two signed and dated 1598,28 and one panel in Dresden from around 1600.29 Additionally, two paintings by Rubens’s teacher Otto van Veen (c.  1556–1629), active in Antwerp 1593–1629, carry an identical punch mark by GA.30 However, apart from the small punch mark with GA’s monogram, each of the aforementioned Vienna panels, dated around 1600, also display an additional large monogram written in red chalk (fig.  26.3).

The appearance of both the written red chalk mark and the stamp on both paintings is not fully understood. Furthermore, we have recorded a painting attributed to Tobias Verhaecht (active Antwerp 1590/91–1631) depicting the Good Samaritan with GA’s small mark on the reverse.31 Such a mark was also recorded on a Balthasar’s Feast, dated to the last quarter of the sixteenth century and attributed to the atelier of Frans Francken the Elder (active in Antwerp 1567– 1616).32 The latter is the only panel out of the seven currently known panels, previously mentioned, to carry both GA’s framed small punch mark and an Antwerp brand. An alternative and exceptional way that GA marked his panels was with a fairly large (37 × 22 mm) incision, made with a burin. This type of mark was recorded in French collections three times, on individual panels dated late in the sixteenth century. One of the paintings depicts a Calvary and is on display in Auxerre Cathedral, Yonne.33 Another almost identical carved mark has recently been recorded on a panel in Paris,34 and a third one is in an anonymous collection.

AN ENIGMATIC PANEL - MAKER F ROM ANTWERP AND HIS SUPPLY TO THE BRUEGELS

Apart from the early red chalk marks, the small, delicate punch marks and the three carved examples mentioned above, all of which date from between 1565 and around 1600, we register a period of approximately fifteen to eighteen years when only the written red chalk monograms appeared. They are found on a substantial number of panel paintings, such as Sebastian Vrancx’s Landscape with Wagons from 1603,35 and a painting by Clara Peeters depicting a Still Life with Fish, Candle, Artichokes, Crabs and Shrimp, signed and dated 1611.36 The collaborative work by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder featuring Flora and Zephyr (tentatively dated 1615–16), in Schloss Mosigkau, equally depicts a red chalk mark on the reverse,37 as does a large panel by Rubens, The Death of the Consul Decius, now in the Prado.38 Finally, on the back of two paintings by Louis de Caullery (c. 1580– 1621), Spring and Summer, we found not only the GA monogram written in red chalk, but also, it seems, the painted numbers representing the Antwerp art dealer Guilliam Forchondt (1608–1678).39 Within the GA chronology, these early examples are followed by a considerable number of panels in the Copenhagen Winter Room, dating from around 1613–20.40 The ensemble provides thirteen panels with the GA monogram, as well as fourteen frames also marked with his monogram. Of importance for our understanding of the versatility of GA’s activities are not only panels and frames made/marked by him: we also find his frames mounted around panels produced by his colleagues Michiel Claessens (one), Hans van Herentals (two) and an unknown maker with a number ‘4’ above two St Andrew’s Crosses.41 A painting by Pieter Snayers depicting one of his popular subjects – Cavalry Battle with Assault on a Convoy – displays, in addition to the trefoil mark by Michiel Claessens, the Antwerp brand issued by the assay master of the Guild of St Luke. The brand has been classified as no. 7, a brand that was in use around 1620–38.42 A panel painting depicting a Mountain Landscape with Peasants by Joos de Momper the Younger (1564–

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1635) appears to be significant in depicting on the back, for the first time, a new design for a punch mark by GA, here in combination with the Antwerp brand no. 3, in use around 1618–26 (fig.  26.4). Additionally, we find GA’s well-known red-chalk inscription.43 This new punch mark, slightly larger than the first punch mark from the final years of the sixteenth century, seems to have been introduced between 1618 and 1620, after which it reoccurs frequently on panels painted by a wide variety of Antwerp artists. Interestingly, we know of at least four panels with the new monogram also branded by an Antwerp brand, as well as with the branded letter ‘A’. The interpretation of the letter ‘A’ as a yearletter (also known from silverware and pewterware) has been established to date from the Guild of St Luke’s year of 18  October 1621 to 18 October 1622.44 A Portrait of Arnold Van Elsrack (1573–1637), painted by Thomas Morren (1580–1661), has the inscription ‘AEtat. 50 / Anno 1623’ next to the portrait, and on the back we find GA’s punch mark, the Antwerp brand no. 1 (c.  1617–26) and the branded letter ‘A’ (fig.  26.5).45 However, without the letter ‘A’, but branded with iron no. 3 as the previously mentioned De Momper painting (fig. 26.4), is a panel by Sebastian Vrancx (signed ‘SV’ in ligature), dated to 1622, showing an elegant horseman on a rearing horse in a palace courtyard.46 Determining the latest occurrence of a GA mark on an Antwerp panel proves difficult. Many of GA’s panels have paintings on the front that are merely stylistically, but not firmly, dated. Antwerp brands found in combination with his punch mark point to a range of activity from 1617/18 through to 1638, determined by iron no. 1 (1617–27) and iron no. 7 (1620–38) (fig. 26.6), the latter also recorded on an anonymous Flemish School Crucifixion.47 The establishment of an online database with panel-makers’ marks will, over time, be able to answer this type of question with much more accuracy.48 For the time being, the analogue documentation of marks, combined with the following results of recent archival research, offers the best understanding of GA’s activities.

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Fig. 26.4 GA’s mark (20 × 10 mm) and the Antwerp brand no. 3 (c. 1618–26) on Joos de Momper the Younger, Mountain Landscape with Peasants, Paris, Galerie Jean-Max Tassel (photographed 1989)

Fig. 26.5 GA’s mark, the Antwerp brand no. 1 (c. 1617–26) and the year-letter ‘A’ (1621–2) on Thomas Morren, Portrait of Arnold Van Elsrack, inscribed ‘AEtat. 50 / Anno 1623’, Hasselt, Stadsmuseum

Fig. 26.6 Antwerp brand no. 7 (c. 1620–38) and the GA mark on Sebastian Vrancx, Lagoon Landscape, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

AN ENIGMATIC PANEL - MAKER F ROM ANTWERP AND HIS SUPPLY TO THE BRUEGELS

Part Two: New Biographical Research into the Life of Guilliam Aertssen The first and most obvious place to start looking for the appearance of a panel-maker is the archive of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke. Guilliam Aertssen49 registered as a master frame-maker in the Guild in 1612. In the Guild’s books of the same year, he is also mentioned as a panel-maker.50 However, to single out the year 1612 as the start of Aertssen’s active period would be problematic within the context of the timeline of his marks mentioned above: the first GA mark appears in red chalk on a Beuckelaer signed and dated 1565; carved monograms and punch marks were found on various dated paintings from the last quarter of the sixteenth century,51 among them those by Jan Brueghel the Elder in Munich52 and Dresden.53 Although Aertssen registered as a master in 1612, there is no earlier registration for him as an apprentice detected in the Guild’s records. He could have moved to Antwerp after completing his apprenticeship elsewhere, but, in the archival records concerning immigrating burghers, there is no indication that Aertssen moved to Antwerp from outside the city.54 Furthermore, there are no baptismal certificates for a Guilliam Aertssen found in the Antwerp parish records in the last decade of the sixteenth century. Assuming that he would have started his career as a master at the age of between eighteen and twenty in 1612, that gives a clue as to the period in which to search for the date of his baptism. Considering the facts mentioned above, a plausible conclusion would be that Aertssen was born before 1590, that he started working before 1612 and that he served his apprenticeship with a master in the guild of another trade. Panel-maker was a rather ‘new’ profession in the late sixteenth century. Following the decrease in demand for the Antwerp carved altarpieces, the bakmakers who supplied the cases and the panels for the painted wings of the carved altarpieces continued to make the wooden panels as painting supports for painters.55 The records of the Guild of St Luke also demonstrate this shift: members of

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the Guild previously registered as bakmaker were mentioned as panel-maker and/or frame-maker from the 1540s onwards. Joiners also produced the wooden supports for the altarpieces, a privilege already granted to their trade in an ordinance of 1477.56 After the approval of the panel-makers’ petition of 13 November 1617, the joiners trade had the same ordinance ratified by the Antwerp city council for their own guild.57 It is quite possible that Aertssen started out as a joiner and registered in the Guild of St Luke as a frame and panel-maker only later in his career. Keeping this in mind, two possible dates of baptism were found in the Antwerp parish records: 22 February 1579 and 3 December 1579. Without knowing the name of Guilliam Aertssen’s father with certainty, it is impossible to exclude either one of these dates. It is very plausible, however, that Guilliam Aertssen, the panel-maker, was the son of Cornelis Artsen58 and his wife Maeijken. Guilliam Van Dijck attended the baptism on 3  December 1579 as godfather.59 Godfather Van Dijck and father Aertssen appeared together as witnesses in a document of 1582, where Cornelis Aertssen is said to be a forty-two-year-old joiner.60 He is probably the same Cornelis Aertssen who manufactured a pulpit for the Antwerp Church of St Jacob in 1585.61 All things considered, it is plausible that Guilliam Aertssen, the panel and frame-maker, was born in 1579 as the son of a joiner who started his career in the late 1590s. Since joiners were permitted to make frames and panels, Guilliam could have learned the trade from his father. The ongoing quarrels between the joiner’s guild and the panel-makers in the Guild of St Luke could have imposed a registration in the Guild of St Luke to avoid disputes. This hypothesis, however, gives no explanation for the GA mark written in red chalk on the Beuckelaer painting from 1565. Nonetheless, the letter ‘G’ in the GA mark could possibly be interpreted as a letter ‘C’, the first letter of Cornelis. In that case, the mark started out as the joiner’s mark of his

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INGRID MOO RTGAT AND JØ RGEN WADUM

father Cornelis, and could well have become a family mark. However, currently there is no archival evidence to support this assumption. Since Guilliam Aertssen cooperated with art dealer Gaspar Antheunis, another assumption would be that the GA mark was a workshop logo put on the back of the paintings and frames sold by Antheunis.62 The written or painted marks of other art dealers such as Guilliam Forchondt and panelmaker Hans van Haecht, who operated as an art dealer for most of his career, have been referred to earlier in this essay. Guilliam Aertssen Left Traces of his Activities In a notarial deed of 1627 a reference is found to a transaction on 16 January 1612. At that time, Aertssen was not yet a master in the Guild of St Luke.63 In the inventory of the widow of Jan van Haecht,64 merchant in paintings and art dealer, it is written that Guilliam Aertssen and Jan van Haecht settled their accounts and that Aertssen signed a credit note for 238 guilders and 17½ stivers. Considering the amount of this transaction, one could expect Guilliam Aertssen to be in business already.65 On 20 November 1614 the panel-maker Michiel Claessens had an inventory of his possessions made before his marriage to his third wife.66 He asked the panel-makers Guilliam Aertssen and Jacques Luytsens to undertake an assessment of the wood and tools in his workshop. The fact that Aertssen was appointed as assessor probably means that he was already an experienced panel-maker in 1614. Guilliam Aertssen was one of the twenty-two signatories of the panel-makers’ petition in 1617.67 The copy of this petition displays corrections and deletions, showing that the matter was being analysed and reconsidered thoroughly. It provides information on the process of the making of a panel and the requirements to be met. From 1617 onwards, every panel-maker was bound to strike his own mark in each panel he made. In the sentence of the ordinance referring to this obligation, a correction was made: the word ‘slaen’ (strike) was

deliberately added afterwards. This could perhaps indicate that written marks from then on were no longer a valid proof. The chronology of marks makes clear that a new – punched or stamped – GA mark seems to have been introduced between 1618 and 1620, directly after the approval of the panel-makers’ petition by the Antwerp city council (fig. 26.7). In 1627, Aertssen worked as a panel-maker in his shop in his own residence. This is mentioned in a lawsuit of the Guild of St Luke and the panelmakers against Aertssen.68 These files also contain documents on the cooperation between Aertssen and the art dealer Gaspar Antheunis. Aertssen was accused of working for Antheunis, of keeping Antheunis’s shop open and of ordering his own employee to work for Antheunis. In one of the trial documents, it is written that the verdict of the trial was brought to the house of Aertssen and his son.69 This could indicate that Aertssen’s son also worked as a panel-maker. The last reference to a Guilliam Aertssen in the Antwerp City Archives is in the Vierschaarboek on 26 March 1638: ‘Guillam Aertssen vs Adriaen de Brouwer’.70 The Vierschaar was a court that dealt with criminal cases and various disputes between individuals. Although, unfortunately the contents of this trial could not be traced, this date corresponds to the Antwerp brands of iron no. 7 (1620– 38) found together with the GA mark.71 The name ‘Aertssen’ was furthermore mentioned by Erik Duverger in his inventory of archival documents for the years 166072 and 1680,73 but since no first names were recorded it is unclear to whom these records refer. Further research on the Aertssen family could provide more information about the cooperation between Guilliam Aertssen and his descendants.74 Discussion and Conclusion Extensive research on the occurrence of the GA  marks on panels and frames has resulted in a new chronology of the marks that elucidates the changes in design. By combining this new

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Fig. 26.7 Detail of the panel-makers’ petition of 13 November 1617 and the new GA mark introduced between 1618 and 1620. FelixArchief/Antwerp City Archives, Gilden en Ambachten, inv. GA 4346, 13-11-1617

A chronology of GA’s marks on panels 1565

15??

1598

1618

1623

GA related events based on archival research 1579 Baptism of Guilhelmus, son of Cornelis Artsen and Maeijken.

1590s Start active period.

1612 In business with Jan Verhaecht.

1614 Aertssen as assessor.

1627 Aertssen worked in own shop and for art dealer Gaspar Antheunis.

1612 Guilliam Aertssen, Master in the Guild of St Luke.

1617 Petition of the panelmakers.

1638 Last occurrence: Guilliam Aertssen vs Adriaen de Brouwer.

Fig. 26.8 A chronology of GA’s marks combined with archival evidence

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INGRID MOO RTGAT AND JØ RGEN WADUM

chronological information with the results of archival research on the panel-maker Guilliam Aertssen, the beginning of his active period has been moved back, from 1612 to the late 1590s, and continues up to 1638. However, there is so far no sound explanation for the appearance of the GA mark written in red chalk on the Beuckelaer painting from 1565. As for Guilliam Aertssen’s activities: he was a master panel- and frame-maker, who traded with painters and art dealers, acted as an assessor for wood and tools, was active in the Guild of St Luke as a signatory of the panel-makers’ petition, cooperated closely with the art dealer Gaspar Antheunis, and ran a shop in his own residence in which his son was also involved.

The panel-maker’s ordinance and various lawsuits provide insights into the panel-making business. In 1617 the making of panels was regulated and from then onwards their production was controlled. Panel-makers were required to strike their own mark in each panel, and were obligated to have their panels inspected and branded with the Antwerp coat of arms by the elder of the Guild of St Luke. Violation of the agreement was cause for legal proceedings. This interdisciplinary approach has provided new insights into the activities of the Aertssen family and the timeline of the CA/GA marks on Flemish panels, possibly made as early as 1565 by Cornelis Aertssen, and from 1598 and through to the third decade of the seventeenth century by his son Guilliam Aertssen.

N OT ES 1

Rombouts and Van Lerius 1872.

19

2

Wadum 1993.

3

Van Vlierden and Smeyers 1990.

4

Van Damme 1990.

5

Wadum 1993.

6

Broos and Wadum 1993.

7

Van Damme 1990, pp. 194–5.

20 Van Haecht’s mark in red chalk on Vincent Sellaer (style of), Caritas, 99 × 68 cm, signed with monogram ‘VB’, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, inv. KMSst382. A punch mark composed of three crossing bars forming a cross, like the written mark by Van Haecht, has been recorded on a series of paintings, among them Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564/5–1637/8), Christ on the Road to Calvary (SMK, inv. KMS1645) and Maerten de Vos (1532–1603), The Calumny of Apelles (private collection ); see Neerman et al. 2019.

8 Abraham Govaerts, Woodlandscape with Huntsmen and Panoramic Landscape with Fishermen, both on panel, each 35.5 × 51 cm; the latter signed ‘A. Govaerts. 1614’. Œuvres de Pierre Brueghel le Jeune, cat. 7, nos. 29 and 30, Paris, Galerie De Jonckheere. 9

Roses 1878, pp. 73, 83.

10 Cardon 1987. 11 Sale, Phillips, London; Sarah Lidsey, correspondence, 15 October 1992. 12 Duverger 1984–2009. 13 Wadum 1988. 14 However, one painting by a follower of Louis de Caullery is dated 1613; Copenhagen, Rosenborg Castle, Room 2, inv. W12. See also Wadum 1987. 15 Wadum 1990. 16 Van Damme 1990, pp. 215–16; Wadum 1990. Apart from the red chalk marks, an unidentified panel-maker also wrote his monogram ‘4/XX’ in lead. Additionally, an unidentified square stamp with the monogram ‘MP’ (‘NP?’) is recorded. 17 Wadum 2015. 18 Wadum 1998a, p. 185, fig. 7.

Wadum 1990.

21 Van Herentals’s marks on panels in the Winter Room, Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen, invs E/17, S/1 and W/17. 22 Joachim Beuckelaer, Ecce Homo, 146 × 148 cm, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, inv. NM 322. We wish to express our gratitude to Görel Cavalli-Björkman and John Rothlind for permission to inspect the panel paintings at the Nationalmuseum in 1990, and to Kriste Sibul and Cecilia Heisser for new high-resolution images of the back and mark in VIS and UV. 23 Pieter Aertsen, Kitchen Scene with Two Women, oil on panel, 85 × 128 cm, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, inv. NM 325. The inscription is found on the central plank. Cavalli-Björkman 1986, p. 34, writes that the painting was in Prague in 1621. 24 Van Roey 1968. 25 Wadum 1988. Here, for the first time, the thesis was proposed that Aertssen may have been the commissioner of the more

than fifty paintings for the Winter Room, 1618–20. 26

Cavalli-Björkman 1986, p. 34.

27 This circular base of the mark is only observed when the punch was tilted slightly while hammered into the wood, thus leaving the faint trace of a semicircular impression on one side of the mark. This faint trace indicates a diameter of approximately 18 mm for the handle of the punch. 28 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Sea Landscape with the preaching of Christ, signed ‘BRVEGHEL · 1598’, oil on panel, 79.3 × 118.6 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. 187; Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Sermon of Saint John, signed ‘BRVEGHEL · 1598’, oil on panel, 40.9 × 59.2 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. 834; Jan Brueghel the Elder, Jona escaping the Whale, c. 1600 (not signed), oil on panel, 38 × 55.6 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv. 1887. We are grateful to Jan Schmidt, Head of Conservation, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, for obtaining high-resolution documentation for the GA marks of the above paintings. 29 Jan Brueghel the Elder, workshop of (?), Siege of a Fortress with the Continence of Scipio, c. 1600 (not signed), oil on panel, 80 × 118.6 cm, Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gallery no. 917. We are grateful to Dr Uta Neidhardt, Senior Curator, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, for information on this mark and fruitful discussion about its interpretation. See Neidhardt, Chapter 12 in the present volume.

AN ENIGMATIC PANEL - MAKER F ROM ANTWERP AND HIS SUPPLY TO THE BRUEGELS

30 Otto van Veen, Amazons and Scythians, c. 1600 (not signed), oil on panel, 135.7 × 193.6 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 2667, and Otto van Veen, Persian Women, c. 1600 (not signed), oil on panel, 132 × 195.2 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. GG 2668. Thanks to Dr Gerlinde Gruber, Curator, Gemäldegalerie, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. See also note 51. 31 Tobias Verhaecht, The Good Samaritan (erroneously as The Flight into Egypt), oil on panel, 47 × 69.5 cm. Sale, Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 22 May 1990, lot 81. 32 Oil on panel, 63 × 86 cm. Inscribed ‘MANE THEKEL PARES (H.G.)’. Douai, Musée de la Chartreuse, inv. 142. 33 Thanks to Micheline Durand, Director, Musées d’Auxerre, for granting access to examine the collection in 1991. 34 Flemish school of the last quarter of the 16th century, Nativity, oil on panel, 62 × 81.5 cm, private collection, Paris. Information kindly provided by Janina Kubicki, Atelier de Drouot®, Paris, 2018. 35 Jover de Celis 2016, p. 220; oil on panel, 33 × 43 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. P01433. 36 Ibid., p. 223; oil on panel, 50 × 72 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. P01621. 37 Los Angeles/The Hague 2006, pp. 78–81, 241–2. Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, Flora and Zephyr, oil on panel, 136 × 109 cm, Schloss Mosigkau, inv. Mos-129. 38 Jover de Celis 2016, p. 225; oil on panel, 100 × 140.5 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. P02456. 39 Both oil on panel, 47.5 × 71.5 cm, examined at Galerie De Jonckheere, 47e Expositions Automne–Hiver 2000, nos. 30 and 31. See further, Van Ginhoven 2016. 40 Wadum 2015. 41 The GA-framed panels in the Winter Room are invs E/16 (‘4/XX’), E/17 (Hans van Herentals), E/23 (Michiel Claessens) and S/03 (Hans van Herentals). 42 Wadum 1998a. 43 Examined at Galerie Jean-Max Tassel, 15 Quai Voltaire, Paris, 1989. Oil on panel, 49 × 80.5 cm. 44 Wadum 1998a, p. 198. 45 Hasselt, City Hall, inv. 2003.0233.00. See . 46 Oil on panel, 70.8 × 87.6 cm, Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, inv. GK 1483. Thanks to communication from Heidrun Ludwig.

47 Sale, Phillips, London, 29 October 1991. Flemish School, Crucifixion, oil on panel, 54 × 37 cm. Kindly informed by Sarah Lidsey on 19 August 1991. 48 As a joint venture between researchers and institutions, a ‘Marks on Art’ database is currently under construction at the RKD, The Hague . 49 The name ‘Aertssen’ is spelled in various ways in the seventeenth-century archival documents that were examined. Here Guilliam’s family name is spelled ‘Aertssen’, matching the spelling in the panel-makers’ petition of 13 November 1617: ACA, Gilden en Ambachten, GA 4346, 13-11-1617. 50 KASKA, Oud Archief Sint-Lucasgilde, 70 3. Published by Rombouts and Van Lerius 1872, vol. 1, pp. 484, 488. The basis for this archival research is Van Damme 1990. We are grateful to Jan Van Damme for sharing his research results with us. Further research on the Antwerp panel-makers was funded by the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project from April 2017 until April 2018. Moortgat would like to express her gratitude to Dr Joost Vander Auwera and Justin Davies for their approval to present the results of her archival research on Guilliam Aertssen during the Bruegel Success Story Colloquium in September 2018. The research results can be consulted on the website of the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project: see Moortgat 2018. 51 See also Gerlinde Gruber’s suggestions for the dating of Amazons and Persians by Otto van Veen in Gruber et al. 2017, pp. 11, 12, 30, 32, 41, 44. 52 See note 28. 53 See note 29. 54 ACA, Vierschaarboeken, V 166, V 176, V 178, V 179; and ACA, Privilegekamer, PK 1502.

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60 ACA, Certificatieboeken, CERT 43, fols 300–301, 9-11-1582. 61 ACA, Privilegekamer, PK 3202, Archief St Jacobskerk 1379–1891, archiefvormer Emiel Dilis, p. 199. 62 At this point, we have no archival proof that Guilliam Aertssen acted as an art dealer himself, but there is evidence of his cooperation with Gaspar Antheunis. KASKA, Oud Archief Sint-Lucasgilde, 103 81. 63 The guild year of the Guild of St Luke began sometime around 18 October, the feast day of St Luke. KASKA, Oud Archief Sint-Lucasgilde, 70 3. 64

See Van Roey 1968.

65 ACA, Notariaat, Notaris Hendrick van Cantelbeck, N 3381, 5/7-07-1627. Published by Duverger 1984–2009, vol. 3, p. 56. 66 ACA, Notariaat, Notaris Bartholomeus Van den Berghe, N 3492, 20-11-1614. 67 This petition is written in one hand, including the names of all the panel-makers and the drawn marks, so the GA mark found on the panels differs from the mark drawn in this petition. ACA, Gilden en Ambachten, GA 4346, 13-11-1617. 68 KASKA, Oud Archief Sint-Lucasgilde, 103 81. 69 The document was dated 6 March 1627. KASKA, Oud Archief Sint-Lucasgilde, 103 81, 99 83; ACA, Processen Schepenbank, 7 538, 1623–1628. 70 This person could be Adriaen Brouwer, the painter, who was buried on 1 February 1638. See ‘RKDartists&’ database, abstract for Adriaen Brouwer ; ACA, Vierschaarboeken, V 156, 26-03-1638. 71

See note 47.

55 Van Damme 1990, pp. 193–6; Wadum 1998b, pp. 149–50.

72 ‘Aertsens’ owed 73 guilders and ½ stiver to Jacques Raets. Duverger 1984–2009, vol. 8, p. 140.

56 Van Damme 1990, pp. 193–6; Antwerpsch archievenblad, 30-1-1477, 1r, 20, pp. 51–2; 15-6-1478 and 23-7-1478, 1r, 21, pp. 75–6, 80–81.

73 ‘Aertssens’ owed Erasmus Quellinus 24 guilders, but had already paid 16 guilders. Ibid., vol. 11, p. 21.

57 ACA, Gilden en Ambachten, GA 4335, fols 78v–81r, 11-12-1617. A copy of the approved ordinance for the Guild of St Luke, though referred to many times, has not so far been found in the Antwerp archives. Other copies of the joiners’ ordinance are kept in the ACA, Gilden en Ambachten: GA 4003, fols 88v–91r; GA 4334, fols 60v–62v; GA 4575, no. 6. See also Van Damme 1990, p. 196. 58 See note 49. 59 State Archives Belgium/Rijksarchief België, Onze-Lieve-Vrouw, parochieregisters doopakten, 1576–1580.

74 Research on the art dealers Gaspar Antheunis and Lucas Floquet, and the part the art dealer plays in general in the production and trade of panels as painting supports is currently being conducted, as well as research on the Aertssen family and on the possible relationship of Guilliam Aertssen with the art dealer Joris Aertssen and the panel-maker Hans Aertssen. Further research on the biographies of other panel-makers and their social and economic networks is planned and will provide more insights into the panel-making business and the trade in panels in the seventeenth century.

Fig. 27.1 Circle of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, View of the Strait of Messina, pen on paper, 153 × 523 mm, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR, Print Room (inv. KBR F-2011-138)

Fig. 27.2 Detail from fig. 27.1

27

View of the Strait of Messina, by Circle of Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawing Techniques and Materials Examined Lieve Watteeuw, Marina Van Bos, Joris Van Grieken, Maarten Bassens, Bruno Vandermeulen and Hendrik Hameeuw

A BSTRACT : The View of the Strait of Messina (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR, Print Room), attributed to the circle of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, was studied in detail in 2018 in the context of the Fingerprint Project. The drawing was examined with analytical and imaging techniques, combined with visual, microscopic and conservation assessment. Non-destructive macro X-ray fluorescence mapping analyses (MA-XRF) and multispectral imaging revealed the use of at least two different inks to create the drawing: iron gall and carbon ink. The iron gall ink shows various degradation characteristics, such as fading, darkening and brittleness, which change the appearance of the drawing. On the verso of the drawing – composed of two sheets of paper – figures and ornaments are sketched in charcoal and red chalk.

—o— Introduction In 2011 the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) acquired from a Brussels antique dealer a drawing with a view of the Strait of Messina in the style of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (figs 27.1 and 27.2).1 Its previous history is still unknown. At the time of acquisition the sheet had been discussed only briefly in Hans Mielke’s 1996 catalogue raisonné of Bruegel’s drawings.2 His opinion – formed on the basis of a photograph – was that the drawing was a copy, probably after a lost drawing by Bruegel made in situ.3 It was also Mielke who linked this sheet to

a print published in 1618 in the last volume of Georg Braun’s and Nicolas Hogenberg’s Civitates Orbis Terrarum (fig.  27.3).4 Apart from striking similarities in the overall composition and in several topographical details, an inscription on this print claims that it was made after an original drawing by Bruegel once in the possession of Joris Hoefnagel.5 In his 2011 article on the drawing, Joris Van Grieken largely confirmed Mielke’s observations: ‘the quality of the draughtsmanship is not sufficient to support an attribution to Bruegel himself, but the links with his style and oeuvre suggest that it is a direct copy either after a drawing by Bruegel made from life or after an autograph drawing created in the studio’.6 This contribution adds new analytical and imaging information to Van Grieken’s findings, published in 2011 in In Monte Artium, an essay that is available online.7 In 2018 the drawing was examined more closely in the context of the Fingerprint Project.8 This study discusses the new results of this art-technical research and puts them in the context of traditional drawing practice. Short Description of the Messina Drawing The oblong drawing shows a broad panoramic view of the Strait of Messina. On the right bank of the

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Fig. 27.3 Recto of engraved view of the Strait of Messina, published 1618, in Georg Braun and Nicolas Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1572–1618, part IV, fol. 58 (inv. KBR S.I 1666 [NHD48])

Strait we see the city of Messina with Mount Etna in the background. The right shoreline runs from the city walls to the foreground where a chapel, a bank of trees and vaguely drawn figures and pack animals are represented. The waters of the Strait of Messina occupy most of the central part of the drawing. The sea is dotted with numerous smaller and larger ships, both sailing vessels and galleys. On the left shore the city of Reggio di Calabria can be seen in the distance with steep wooded hills beyond it. Various topographical features are indicated by capital letters, as is also the case in the printed version of 1618, where each letter refers to an identifying caption. Above the mountains of Calabria at the left of the drawing we see the letter ‘A’, while the port of Reggio is marked with ‘B’. The Strait of Messina in the middle is indicated by ‘C’, the mountain range on the Sicilian side with ‘D’, the harbour of Messina with ‘E’ and, finally, Mount Etna bears the letter ‘F’. In the lower right corner of the sheet is the signature ‘BRVEGEL’.

Assessment of the Condition of the Paper Support The condition of the drawing was assessed using visual and microscopic observation. The paper support for the View of the Strait of Messina measures 153 × 523 mm and consists of two trimmed sheets of reused paper mounted together.9 The good-quality, laid paper is of medium thickness and has a fibrous surface, showing lighter and darker fibres. The chain lines are clearly visible in the vertical direction and no watermark is present. The two leaves show minor stains and smudges from drops of liquid, as well as some rust stains and small perforations caused by iron gall ink corrosion. Three vertical folds are visible in each sheet, probably because the paper was folded when purchased from the paper dealer. Moreover, if the drawing travelled, it must have been folded into a smaller oblong format for transport (figs 27.4a–b).10 The paper shows signs of wear: apart from the numerous stains that cover its surface, there are

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b Fig. 27.4 Recto (a) and verso (b) of View of the Strait of Messina (fig. 27.1) , both with raking light from the right. Seven vertical folding lines, valley and peak direction

several weak spots and traces of old folds. Along the smudged edges are several tiny tears, some of which have been repaired at the back in the last decades. The two pieces of paper are joined with a strip of Japanese paper of recent date.11 During an early mounting, the sheet was trimmed on all four sides and the hinge joining the two sheets was re-glued, causing a gap of a few millimetres. There has been a small loss to the composition. Mounting the two sides on the hinge has been done rather clumsily. The right part is mounted around 0.5 mm higher than the left part, causing a slight shift in the composition, which is especially visible in the ship in the middle. Fragile areas are visible within the laid paper, caused by the removal of former hinges (visible with transmitted light). In 2011 the KBR added hinges (Japanese paper) for the actual mounting, but no treatment has been done since.

Analysis and Imaging of the Drawing Media Experimental Protocol and Equipment The focus of the laboratory research was to discover more about the creative process of this copy after a Bruegel drawing. Mielke rightly pointed to elements that resemble Bruegel’s way of drawing, such as the typical dotted way in which the trees in the foreground are represented. Similar to Bruegel’s and contemporaries’ practice is the use of two colours of ink, found in some of Bruegel’s early drawings that were made during, or directly following, his trip to Italy, as pointed out by Sellink 2018b and Michel 2018.12 Watteeuw et al. 2019 recently demonstrated the intentional use of multiple and combined inks in four Bruegel drawings, kept in two Brussels collections: Angler near the river (1554), Luxuria (1557), Justitia (1559), KBR, Print Room; Prudentia (1559), Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.13

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Technical photography (Phase One IQ180), standard multispectral photography (Converted NIKON D610) complementary with filters (MidOpt, across 13 spectral bands), was done by the imaging team of the Fingerprint Project of KU Leuven at KBR. After this first documentation, the drawing was transported to the laboratory at KIK-IRPA for X-ray fluorescence mapping (MAXRF). MA-XRF maps were registered using the M6 Jetstream (Bruker AXS, Berlin, Germany) with a Rh X-ray tube operated at 50  kV and 600  μA current. The drawing was scanned using an X-ray beam size of 150 μm, in steps of 125 μm, and a dwell time per step of 10 ms. Details were scanned using an X-ray beam size of 50 μm, in steps of 40 μm, and a dwell time per step of 15  ms. The spectra were collected, deconvoluted and examined with the Bruker M6 Jetstream software. Chemical elements were identified in the scan by examining the sum spectrum and maximum pixel spectra. The data of the imaging and analyses were brought together to obtain a comprehensive view of the material characteristics of the drawing. Ink Identification in the Messina Drawing Combination of Imaging and Analytical Visualization As is clearly visible, the drawing of the Strait of Messina is executed in two different types of ink. MA-XRF revealed that most of the drawing is done

et al.

in iron gall ink, evidenced by the presence of iron in the MA-XRF map (fig. 27.7).14 The ink of the small boats on the right – applied with a thick pen – contains a substantial amount of manganese as well.15 This iron gall ink is chemically unstable and is degraded, darkened or faded to a lighter shade. At concentrated points of ink, the paper is degraded by ink corrosion, creating small perforations in the laid paper in the areas where the lines criss-crossed and the ink layer was dense (for example, in the central sailing boats). Short thin black lines (hatching and shading) were added to the drawing for shaping contours, adding detail to boats and for creating the effect of the mountain slopes. These lines were drawn with a very fine quill and were executed in carbon ink.16 This black carbon ink becomes more visible both on the IRR and multispectral photographs with IR bandpass filters (fig. 27.8b). Discussion The combination of two or even more inks is not unusual in sixteenth-century drawings. Stylistically we can determine that the iron gall ink drawing lines in the Messina panorama and the small touches or lines executed in carbon ink are complementary and applied at the same drawing moment since they match each other (fig. 27.8).17 The carbon lines are clearly reinforcing the brownish iron gall lines. But the iron gall ink faded over time and

Fig. 27.5 Verso of View of the Strait of Messina (fig. 27.1). Sketches in different types of ink (faded), charcoal and red earth. Some iron gall ink corrosion stains from the recto side and a modern vertical strip of Japanese paper in the centre

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Fig. 27.6 Left section (a) and right section (b) of the verso of the paper (View of the Strait of Messina, fig. 27.1), with slight overlap of verso, UV fluorescence image. Sketch with a ship and two standing figures and two architectural profiles (a); several armed and male and female naked figures and a skeleton; sketch with male and female figures; study of a bust and a leg and studies of male heads (b)

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Fig. 27.7 Recto of View of the Strait of Messina (fig. 27.1). MA-XRF image. Fe-Kα distribution map, visualizing the iron component in the iron gall ink

took on different hues, so that the view has become so faded that it is hard to distinguish them clearly, as is especially evident in the lines made for the mountains at the horizon. The black carbon lines scattered over the drawing stayed stable so that the contrast between the two media has increased. This changes the current perception and reading of the drawing. Later additions are present. As mentioned earlier, the drawing has several capital letters written above the horizon line, labelling the topographical features. These capital letters, written in iron gall ink, gave only a very weak sign in the MA-XRF. Also the ‘BRVEGEL’ signature in the right corner gave a very weak signal due to its faded iron gall ink. The fact that both the letters and the signature have a far weaker ink signal than the measured signal for the drawing lines suggests that they were applied at a different stage. They are most likely later additions, supplied by a different hand. The letters, although not an exact repetition, indicate a direct relationship with the engraving by Braun and Hogenberg – most obviously that the drawing served as the model for the print. Earlier Sketches on the Drawing’s Verso The verso side of the View of the Strait of Messina is fascinating, as it was used for loose sketches in different media and with different drawing tools, before the large panorama of Messina was drawn on the recto side. Some of the drawings are almost

invisible to the naked eye as the ink is thin and much faded, but the IRR and multispectral imaging show clearly at least eleven different trials or sketches, executed in different directions on the paper and in different media (figs 27.5 and 27.6). Their style is completely different from the drawing of the View of the Strait of Messina on the other side. Most prominent is a large sketch on the right sheet of paper of an interior with several armed or naked male and female figures with a skeleton. This could possibly be interpreted as a Totentanz or an allegorical scene on the theme of vanitas. We have not yet been able to identify this scene. It might be a copy of a wall painting or a print. Several other sketches of smaller figures on the sheets of paper were done earlier: two sets of standing male and female figures, two male heads (partially cut), and two half-length figures reaching out to each other with their hands. A sailing boat is worked out in detail in the left corner, but partially cut. Two small sketches of architectural profiles – in a brown medium – are less visible (and might be copies from an architectural treatise?). Two undefined rough sketches in charcoal are of a completely different type of doodle and dominate the verso side. A small half-profile in red earth on the top of the left sheet is almost invisible. After these sketches were made, the two sheets were cut and some sketches at the edges became incomplete. But this was the format the artist needed for drawing the View of the Strait of Messina.18

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Fig. 27.8 Detail of a sailing ship in View of the Strait of Messina (fig. 27.1). . Combination of imaging and analytical visualization. Standard colour RGB (a); multispectral image with 940nm bandpass filter, showing the carbon-based ink lines (b); Fe-Kα distribution map, showing the iron gall-based ink lines (c)

Conclusions After technical examination, we can conclude that nothing contradicts Mielke and Van Grieken attributing a late sixteenth or early seventeenthcentury date, based on stylistic characteristics of the View of the Strait of Messina by a follower/copyist of Pieter Bruegel. The drawing has been executed on reused paper, as the draughtsman probably had no other paper available at the moment he needed it. The drawing of Messina seems to be made in haste. The draughtsman might have had only very temporary access to the material/model he was copying after. It is executed in a combination of lines and shapes using overall iron gall ink of two different compositions, with touches, lines and hatching in carbon ink, which was not an unusual drawing practice in the sixteenth century. We can only guess how the original Bruegel material the copyist had in front of him might have looked. In Van Grieken’s 2011 article, it was suggested that the original probably had the same ‘finished’ form and might have been a direct study after life by Bruegel’s hand. After this research we are more hesitant about drawing this same conclusion. We would even call into question the idea that the copyist of the Messina vista had a single

finished drawing before his eyes. Instead he might have reconstructed the view based on several partial sketches by Bruegel and helped by knowledge of the site or of other topographical material. The draughtsman could have been Joris Hoefnagel, but no final attribution can be made. On the quest to improve laboratory methodology in drawing research, the use of the combination of detailed spectral imaging and analytical data through MA-XRF to examine a drawing was experimental, and helped pinpoint the different inks and drawing mediums used by the draughtsman of the view and by the later hand of the added lettering and signature. The evaluation of condition showed that the fading of the iron gall ink is considerable and has substantially changed the visual perception of the drawing. The eleven sketches in a variety of media on the verso side remain a mystery. They predate the copy of the Messina panorama. Further research on the sketches on the reverse has to be done, but nothing indicates that the artists of the recto and verso are linked to each other. The authors hope that, prompted by the images reproduced here, scholars of drawing may shed light on their identification and meaning.

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N OT ES 1 Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, KBR, Print Room, View of the Strait of Messina, pen on paper, 153 × 523 mm, inv. KBR F-2011-138. See Mielke 1996, p. 40; Van Grieken 2011. See also Leuven/Paris 2013, p. 376; Sellink 2013, specifically p. 294 and note 21; Bassens and Van Grieken 2019, pp. 102–5. 2

Mielke 1996, p. 40.

3 In Mielke 1996, p. 40 (no. 15), Hans Mielke hesitatingly adds a question mark after the word ‘Kopie’. In his introductory essay (p. 12) he seems to be more convinced: ‘Dass die auf Bruegel hinweisende Aufschrift im Städtebuch [Braun and Hogenberg 1572–1618] vertrauenswürdig war, bewies der glückliche Fund einer Kopie (Kat. 15).’ And further: ‘Somit sind Bruegels topographischen Aufnahmen aus Italien […] nur als Reflexe auf uns gekommen: die Gesamtansicht der Meerenge, die das Städtebuch gedruckt hat, als mässige Kopie von unbekannter Hand.’ 4 See Braun and Hogenberg 1572–1618, part IV, fol. 58. 5 Inscription: Repertum inter studia aytographa / Petri Bruegelij Pictoris nostri / seculi eximij Ab ipsomet deline: / atum Communicavit Georgius / Houfnaglius. Anno 1607. (Found among the studies of Pieter Bruegel, most eminent painter of our age. Reproduced after the same. Communicated by Joris Hoefnagel. Anno 1607.) 6 Van Grieken 2011, quoting Mielke (Mielke 1996, p. 40; quotation translated from German to English). 7 . 8 Watteeuw et al. 2017. The Fingerprint Project is an interdisciplinary collection and data management project, involving art

history, art technical research, digital imaging, image processing and conservation science. The aim is to monitor and evaluate with advanced digital imaging, statistical processing and laboratory analyses, the phases of the genesis of a print, from the unique preparatory drawings to later states and editions. The four-year project (2016–20) is a collaboration between the Print Room of the Royal Library of Belgium and three KU Leuven teams: the Imaging Lab, ESAT and the Book Heritage Lab, and Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art. The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) is an external partner. The research project is funded by Belspo BRAIN-be (Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks). For this project all the drawings and prints of Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the Print Room of the Royal Library in Belgium were digitized in 2017–18 by KU Leuven using a Phase One IQ180 camera, Schneider APO-DIGITAR 80/4.0 SES, exposure condition for Metamorfoze standard. 9 The two sheets of paper measure respectively 152 × 259 mm (left) and 153 × 254 mm (right). 10 Image on the recto and verso sides with raking light. Phase One IQ180, Schneider APO-DIGITAR 80/4.0 SES. 11 The Japanese paper strip was added before the acquisition by the KBR in 2011. A new mounting in a passepartout was done in the conservation studio of the Print Room at the KBR. 12 For the use of drawing media and drawing techniques by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, see Mielke 1996; Royalton-Kisch 2001; Sellink 2018b; Michel 2018, p. 18. 13 See Watteeuw et al. 2019.

14 The varying components of iron gall ink, made from gallnuts, iron sulfate, water and a binder, resulted in inks of diverse tones and hues, from light brown to black. For historical recipes for inks and combined inks, see Zerdoun Bat-Yehouda 1983, p. 206. See also Watteeuw and Van Bos 2014; Watteeuw and Van Bos 2018. 15 MA-XRF, M6 Jetstream (KIK-IRPA, Brussels, 2018) shows a clear Fe-K distribution map. For the identification of iron gall ink with traces of manganese, see also Watteeuw and Van Bos 2018. 16 Carbon ink (soot soaked in water or other liquid) is not detectable with MA-XRF, but is made visible with the multispectral image with 940nm bandpass filter. See fig. 27.8b. 17 For image (a) is made with the Phase One IQ180 camera; image (b) is made with a Converted NIKON D610, CoastalOpt 60mm 1:4 UV-VIS-IR Apo Macro + MidOpt BN940 filter; image (c) is a visualization of the iron components with MA-XRF. 18 The drawing lines on the verso side are weak. No MA-XRF analyses have been carried out from the verso side and no signal was obtained through the paper layers while scanning the recto side, so that no information about the elements of the media are (yet) available. The very faded brown drawing lines are most probably made in iron gall ink, becoming visible in UV fluorescence. Two rough sketches on the left sheet of paper are executed in charcoal.

ADDENDUM

Foreword

On 30 April 1996, as part of a seminar organized at the KU  Leuven by the late Maurits Smeyers (1937–1999), Gaston Vandendriessche presented a group of art-history students with an overview of his ongoing research on a painting that had long fascinated him: Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Dulle Griet. An Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the KU Leuven, Gaston Vandendriessche (1924–2002) had acquired an international reputation for a pioneering study on a case of demonic possession, that of the Austrian painter Christoph Haizmann. From Haizmann, Vandendriessche was led to work on another painter linked to the infernal world, Hieronymus Bosch, and Bosch brought him quite naturally to Bruegel.1 In 1996 I was working at the Studiecentrum Vlaamse Miniaturisten in Leuven. One of my colleagues, Rita Van Dooren, would later, as a curator at the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, be responsible for the Dulle Griet. Every Friday, at 10  o’clock in the morning, Gaston would come and join us for a cup of coffee, telling us about his

latest findings on the painting. It was a moment we looked forward to, because he was a great storyteller and his account of his scholarly adventures enthralled us. At the end of March 1996 I defended my doctoral dissertation and took a few well-deserved weeks off. I was away when Gaston gave his Leuven seminar. This missed opportunity is probably what saved the essence of his long and thrilling research, since, to console me for not being able to attend his lecture, Gaston generously offered me a copy of his notes. Obviously, these notes were not intended for publication – Gaston had prepared them as course material on his research in progress. But given their interest and the originality of their ideas, we have decided to present them here dans leur jus, with a minimal number of additions (notes, subheadings, illustrations). We offer this transcription, made possible thanks to Gaston’s son Yuri, as a tribute to a passionate and most creative scholar, who was unfortunately unable to complete a project that was very close to his heart. Dominique Vanwijnsberghe

1 The results of Gaston’s long research on Bosch, entitled De vergeten taal der vier elementen en temperamenten, were presented in 1996 on an interactive CD (CD-i, a digital format created by Philips and abandoned the same year).

Fig. 1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Dulle Griet, 1563, 116.4 × 162.1 cm, oil on panel, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh (inv. 788)

The Dulle Griet: A Thematic and Synthetic Analysis

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Gaston Vandendriessche Translated and edited by Christina Currie, Cyriel Stroo and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe

Introduction Bruegel died in 1569. Still saddened by the death of his good friend Pieter Bruegel, Abraham Ortelius, the famous cartographer, declared around 1573: ‘In omnibus eius operibus intelligitur plus semper quam pingitur’ (In all his works Bruegel strives to make us understand more than he gives us to see).2 Although it is not completely clear what Ortelius meant by this, it is safe to assume that he considered his friend Bruegel from two viewpoints: Bruegel as a painter and Bruegel as provider of a discerning message. What is more, he makes it clear that what Bruegel conveys as an insightful message is richer than what can be grasped at first sight from the painting. Ortelius may or may not have known that similar distinctions are evoked to a certain extent by the oldest Greek statements about deciphering works of art, statements that were handed down to us under the name of Philostratus. ‘Look,’ says Philostratus, ‘look carefully at what is represented. Now look again. And ask yourself: what does it actually mean?’ (Ἰδοὺ. Βλέπε πρὸς τὴν γραφὴν ἤδη. Τίς οὖν ἡ σοφία).3 We will use Philostratus’s and Ortelius’s approach to examine Bruegel’s Dulle Griet, one of the Flemish jewels of Antwerp’s Museum Mayer van den Bergh (fig. 1; see also pages 502–9). But first, we should keep in mind the question of why it is possible that after four hundred years the meaning of this

magnificent work of art is largely inaccessible. I am pleased to be able to share with you my own quest for the meaning of Bruegel’s Dulle Griet.4 Our discussion consists of two parts. In the first part the approach is thematic; in the second part it is synthetic. In the first part we will select a few themes that throw light on the content of specific parts of the painting. In the second part, we will discuss global content that encompasses the painting as a whole. Part 1: Thematic Approach Among the many possible themes, we have chosen the elements, the temperaments, piracy, the Reformation, the Antichrist, and diseases. Given the limited space, these themes will be treated only briefly, which reduces the room for nuance in interpretation. In fact, some interpretations presented here might at first sight seem far-fetched or fantastic. 1.1 The Elements First of all, the theme of the elements. You will be well aware that, following ancient concepts, a distinction was made between the four main elements of the world around us: air, fire, earth and water. On a pictorial level, a whole iconographic tradition developed that tried to give form to the individuality of these four elements, as illustrated in calendars from Heidelberg. It appears that

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Figs 2a–d Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Battle between Carnival and Lent, 1559, oil on panel, 118 × 164.2 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 1016) (a); Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, c. 1562–3, oil on oak panel, 116.1 × 162 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado (inv. P001393) (b); Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562, oil on panel, 117 × 162 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 584) (c); Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Dulle Griet (d)

Bruegel’s Dulle Griet refers to this classification principle in two respects. Firstly, the entire painting is part of a series of famous paintings that were created at about the same time and have roughly the same dimensions (figs  2a–d). The Fall of the Rebel Angels has iconographic features that refer to the element air. The Battle between Carnival and Lent, with its depiction of mud and dead fish, evokes the element earth. The Triumph of Death has various links with the element water. And the Dulle Griet is clearly the painting of the element fire, if only by the fact that a central figure wears a garment that has the yellow-red colour of flames. The Dulle Griet is therefore part of a wider project that touches on the four separate elements in four

separate paintings. However, we must bear in mind that if these four paintings have unmistakable links to the individual elements, at least three of them are intertwined with themes of their own that follow their own path: the theme of the Fall of the Angels, the theme of Carnival and Lent, and the theme of the Dance of Death. As far as the Dulle Griet is concerned, the theme is not so straightforward. In any case, this painting of the fire also depicts the other three elements. Although completely dominated by the element fire, which is seen at the top and from left to right, there is the element air with a kind of birdcage and with a flying fish, and then the element earth with the rocks, and the element water with the boats.

THE DULLE GRIET : A THEMATIC AND SYNTHETIC ANALYSIS

The four elements also function as a kind of universal organizing principle, which means that they were thought of in correlation with cosmic data such as the winds, the points of the compass, the seasons, the continents and so on. All this can be found in the Dulle Griet. We will limit ourselves to three examples related to the element air, three examples that introduce us at the same time to the strange language used by Bruegel. The cosmic organization of the painting as a whole obliges us to assume that the element air correlates with the South. We see how Bruegel has depicted an egg that changes, as it were, into red earth, i.e. into red land (fig. 3). Bruegel uses a rebus language here and what is represented as an egg (ei in Dutch) is metamorphosed into an island (ei-land). Now it is true that in those days the term ‘island in the south’ usually stood for Ceylon, today’s Sri Lanka. According to old beliefs, earthly paradise lay there. And we indeed see that Bruegel had that connection in mind because at the bottom of this island he draws a naked man and woman who, as was traditionally assumed in connection with the earthly paradise, live in peace with the animals. And one also sees a basilisk, here as a representation of the serpent of earthly paradise. All this may seem strange for the time being but the use of rebus language and the connection with the earthly paradise will be confirmed later on. The second example comes from the correlate of the winds. At the bottom of the representation of the element air there is a woman with a bare behind. From iconographic parallels – among others, in Hieronymus Bosch’s works – we can deduce that this is a witch who breaks wind and thus causes storms. Indeed, we can see how Bruegel takes this theme further, depicting a sandstorm against which one can only protect oneself by switching from a vertical to a horizontal position (fig. 4). Finally, we find an example of what has been called the transition of the elements. In the ancient doctrine of the elements, attention was paid to the fact that they were connected and merged into each other, as it were, holding each other as if in

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a dance: the dance of the elements. For example, fire, being warm, had connections with air, an element that was also thought of as warm. We already know that on the left side of the composition the element fire is evoked and that the element air can be found next to it (see pages 502–3). The transition from fire to air is now shown, again in rebus language, by a large jug on the left, the contents of which extinguish the fire and thus convert it into smoke, i.e. into air (fig. 5). There are many other motifs that indicate that Bruegel used the concept of the transition of the elements: a Fata Morgana water jug in the hot desert air, offering a transition from air to water; the mast of a ship that grows out of a tree, as it were, and thus represents the transition from earth to water; a fish jumping from the water to the earth, and so on. 1.2 The Temperaments Unfortunately, we cannot elaborate on all these examples and we will now switch to a discussion of the correlates of the elements. An important correlate was, as some of you will know, the four temperaments.5 Air was connected to the sanguine temperament, fire to the choleric temperament, earth to the melancholic temperament, and water to the phlegmatic temperament. Bruegel beautifully depicted this temperament correlate in a boat carried around by a rough-looking figure in the middle of the painting (fig. 6). In this boat, from left to right, we recognize the sanguine temperament; the argumentative choleric temperament; the melancholy man with a globe, a traditional symbol of this temperament referring to the element earth; and finally the phlegmatic man who is sunk, as it were, in a trance, indeed a characteristic that one often finds in phlegmatics. 1.3 Threats to the Holy Roman Empire of Charles V: Piracy Moving on to a different theme, but concentrating further on the figure with the boat, we will open up an entirely new perspective on the Dulle Griet painting. Up until now, bar a few exceptions, attention

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Fig. 3 Detail from the Dulle Griet. Island

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THE DULLE GRIET : A THEMATIC AND SYNTHETIC ANALYSIS

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Fig. 4 Detail from the Dulle Griet. Sandstorm

has focused almost exclusively on the armed female figure of Dulle Griet in the foreground. This now appears to be a one-sided approach. As we have seen, in the middle of the painting there is an equally important figure that can be interpreted as a pirate on the basis of compelling converging evidence. With a boat filled with suspect companions, the pirate sails the seas with the intention of acquiring a purse full of money and thus making a good profit. Just before, an important ship, possibly an admiral’s vessel, has been hijacked and robbed. The fact that this large ship is connected by a chain or rope to a ship with a pirate flag on the one hand and to the small pirate boat on the other hand, proves that our interpretation holds up (fig. 7 and see fig. 3.10 in Currie et al., Chapter 3 in the present volume).6 The main pirate is wearing a

burnous, which indicates that these are not pirates from the seas of the New World but pirates from North Africa. These pirates made the Mediterranean Sea unsafe in their attempts to defeat the Christian fleet and recapture Spain after the humiliating defeat of the Muhammadans in the Battle of Granada in 1492. More than once the Muhammadans then attempted to invade Spain again, and importantly, to recapture the fortified port of Cádiz, the great port of southern Spain where the treasure-laden fleet from the New World docked. There were two legendary pirates in this offensive, notorious for their extreme cruelty: the Barbarossa brothers, one of whom, as will be shown later, had features reminiscent of Bruegel’s central pirate. Our assumption is therefore that the Dulle Griet evokes a siege of Cádiz. The pirates, one of whom is clearly

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Fig. 5 Detail from the Dulle Griet. Jug

wearing Muhammadan clothes, come ashore, set fire to large parts of the city centre, plunder the population and carry off booty and food. By showing all this, the Dulle Griet painting is eminently topical. Bruegel shows us one of the great threats to Christianity at the time: the invasion by pirates from North Africa, so feared by Emperor Charles V, and thus the imminent threat of Islam. At the same

time, the main pirate presents us with a riddle. His face shows a characteristic of the Habsburgs: the pronounced lower lip. Should we therefore revise our interpretation of piracy, or is it possible that Bruegel overdetermines the painting by bringing together two (possible) contradictory interpretations? We leave that question unanswered.

OPPOSITE

Fig. 6 Detail from the Dulle Griet. Pirate carrying boat with the four temperaments

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1.4 Threats to the Holy Roman Empire of Charles V: The Reformation In the meantime, our attention is drawn to another ominous reality with which the empire of Charles V, or the dream of Charles V, had to contend: the Reformation. If piracy was the Islamic threat from the outside, the Reformation was a threat that attacked Charles V’s empire from within. The Reformation took various forms and had different degrees of intensity. For example, there was the Lutheran Reformation, which was strongly religious and ideological; there was the more populist Great Peasants’ Revolt, which even rebelled against Lutheranism; and there was, partly as a prolongation of the Peasants’ Revolt, the extreme form of the Anabaptists, whose vision had a strong eschatological slant. In the Dulle Griet there are traces of these three strands, although we will probably never be able to establish their limits and know

Fig. 7 Detail from the Dulle Griet. Two ships and small boat

exactly which group of reformers Bruegel had in mind in the various parts of the painting. Probably, however, in the vicinity of the pirate’s egg (see also below) there are indications referring to the three types. First there is a trace of Lutheranism and of the beginning of the Wars of Religion in the married monk, who catches cannon powder from the pirate’s egg (see fig. 6).7 Probably there is even an indication referring to bloodshed, because on the pirate’s egg there are two stripes of blood. Possibly there is even a cryptic allusion to the Inquisition: a heretic, we assume, is presented as a rat and dressed in the fur of a fox whose mouth is held open with a noose.8 The rat was sometimes killed by fire in the Low Countries. The fox was sometimes the symbol of heresy. And death by fire was sometimes preceded by strangulation or hanging. Secondly, and possibly above all, there is the rebellion of the peasants, whether or not

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symbolically linked to the fortified port of Cádiz. We see how the inhabitants of Cádiz put farmers to death by fire. We also see how the nobility resists against the peasants, and even how a noble lady, according to literary sources,9 probably hides a crossbow under her upper garment as a weapon against the peasants.10 We also see how a rebellious clergyman is imprisoned in the context of a peasant revolt by a member of the Vierschaar (tribunal).11 Finally, there are the Anabaptists. It seems to us that they are alluded to by a baptismal shirt12 that can be seen near the reformist monk. 1.5 The Antichrist Given the spirit of the times, the great threats to the world view of Charles V were likely perceived as the impending end of the world. This imminent end of the world became fairly commonly associated with the belief in the coming of the Antichrist. Luther, by the way, expected the arrival of the Antichrist during his own lifetime. On the other hand, there was also a strong tendency to link the danger of Islam with a belief in the coming of the Antichrist. Muhammad and the Antichrist were often seen as synonymous. No wonder then that Bruegel, in his Dulle Griet – a painting which, as we already know, attributes such a major role to the disasters that threatened to destroy Charles V’s dream – gives an important place to the fantasy of the Antichrist. How did he do that? The Antichrist was sometimes represented with characteristics that gave form to his delusion of replacing Christ or God: he was an anti-Christ, even an anti-God. In the famous northern French Liber Floridus, for example, he was presented as a king, with a reference to Christ in the form of a small cruciform flower – a crucifer – on the crown.13 He was sometimes even drawn with three faces, as if he were a reflection of the Trinity. But Bruegel would not be Bruegel if he had not invented his own iconography here too, although there do seem to be representations of the Antichrist as a jester. The Antichrist, we assume, was represented by Bruegel in the guise of the court jester, who

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imitates the king but is also a symbol of folly. The Antichrist is ostensibly represented here as a psalm jester, the one who embodies the beginning of Psalm 52: Dixit insipiens in corde suo: Non est Deus. – ‘The fool says in his heart: There is no God.’ And that this really is about the Antichrist appears, in addition to further information described below, from the fact that here, as in the Liber Floridus, the Antichrist is depicted as the Leviathan, a water monster that stands for the devil. In Bruegel’s case the Leviathan takes the form of the infernal monstrosity at the left side of the scene (fig. 8). Assuming that the left-hand side of the Dulle Griet is dominated by the image of the Antichrist, the meaning of several other motifs from this part of the painting immediately become intelligible. There is an allusion to one of the wonders of the Antichrist, the blossoming of a barren tree. There is also a depiction of the fall of the Antichrist. But we will limit ourselves here to one single example, namely the one relating to the eccentric little boat at the bottom (fig. 9). The person to the right, considering the clothes, can be identified as an elderly Jew, the younger female figure to the left as a false converted Jewess controlled by a demon. And between the two there is a child with a big head, apparently an allusion to the exceptional giftedness of the Antichrist. Moreover, the whole of that representation, which cannot be discussed here, is seen as an expression of the sin of unchastity or lust in the series of seven deadly sins shown in the vicinity. The whole picture puzzle is solved when we know that, according to ancient beliefs, the Antichrist was born of the incest of a Jewish father with his daughter. 1.6. Disease We end our thematic approach with a brief remark on the diseases depicted by Bruegel in the Dulle Griet. I will limit myself to two examples. Our main pirate suffers from tabes dorsalis, a disease now identified as being caused by syphilis and recognizable in the painting by its various symptoms. On the leg of the pirate there are two glass balls (fig. 10).

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Fig. 9 Detail from the Dulle Griet. Boat with figures representing the sin of lust

Fig. 10 Detail from the Dulle Griet. Glass suction cups to relieve the pain of syphilis

OPPOSITE

Fig. 8 Detail from the Dulle Griet. The Antichrist

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Fig. 11 Detail from the Dulle Griet. Symptoms of diabetes

These are ‘ventouses’ or suction cups that were used, among other things, to relieve pain. Bruegel has evoked the tabes dorsalis by placing the two glass spheres at exactly the place where the pain is unbearably severe with this disease. This is just one example. Indeed, we can go further and argue that Bruegel’s Dulle Griet is unique in terms of the depiction of diseases. For example, this painting contains the only comprehensive painted depiction of diabetes, i.e. sugar sickness, which was known in earlier times. Bruegel depicts at least twelve symptoms, such as the unbearable thirst, the diabetic

coma, the red protruding ear of mastoiditis (fig. 11), the gangrene of the legs and abdomen, etc. Bruegel often uses his own symbolic forms, also known as the rebus language. The eye ‘cataract’ (staar in Dutch), for example, so frequently present in diabetes, is evoked by Bruegel by a reference to starlings (star in Middle Dutch; fig. 11). At that time, diabetes was a terrible disease for which no real cure was known. Only morphine was used, and Bruegel alluded to this as well. If Bruegel, in his Dulle Griet, had restricted himself to the depiction of diabetes, this alone would

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Fig. 12 Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Gluttony (Gula) from The Seven Deadly Sins, 1558, engraving, 223 × 293 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1928 (inv. 28.4 (34))

be enough to consider the painting as a timeless masterpiece. Up until now this link was unknown. There are also two drawings by Bruegel that deal with diabetes, which have likewise remained unexplained. There is an important illustration of it in the print about gluttony, the Gula (fig. 12). What is paramount is the enigmatic depiction of a sea monster emerging from the water and which can be identified as the Leviathan. The print may serve as a kind of design that relates to the content of the Dulle Griet. Leviathan is also shown. There is also an enumeration of many symptoms of diabetes, to such an extent that my doctor considered that the print could serve as a reminder for medical students when they are faced with such symptoms.

Part 2: Synthetic Approach The second part of this contribution will be more synthetic than thematic. We will also be necessarily selective, both in the number of aspects we cover and the comprehensiveness of the arguments. We will concentrate on five synthetic images, leaving aside many other interesting ones. 2.1 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor: the Dulle Griet as Homage We already know that the painting deals with the two major threats that shook Western Christianity at the time: the Islamic pirates from North Africa and the various forms of Reformation on the European continent. And we have sometimes referred

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to Emperor Charles V. But are we right to do this? Is this a link that we have made on our own or was this connection actually intended by Bruegel? Charles V was born in Ghent in 1500. The Dulle Griet was painted in 1563.14 By that time, however, Charles  V was already dead. He suffered greatly from gout, but it is reported that he died of a severe cold on 21 September 1558. Bruegel’s Dulle Griet therefore dates from about five years later,15 so we may safely assume that at the time of its creation there was still a close connection with the period of mourning after the death of Emperor Charles  V. But did Bruegel also take part in this mourning? It seems clear that this was indeed the case. At that time, it was customary to erect a tombstone at the grave of illustrious deceased individuals, and such a tombstone often depicted the four cardinal virtues, namely strength (fortitudo), justice (justitia), prudence (prudentia) and moderation (temperantia). It is striking that Bruegel does indeed depict the four

cardinal virtues in Dulle Griet, and that he does so in a context of mourning. There are unmistakable references to Charles  V and his role in fighting pirates and the Reformation. Bruegel places these in a context of water, which refers to phlegm and thus in all probability to the phlegmatic cause of death, i.e. a severe cold. In terms of representations, we shall limit ourselves to prudentia. This is shown as a rare king eider duck with its beautiful golden-yellow head (fig. 13). The gold-yellow is a reference to royalty, the royal yellow or auripigmentum. There are several birds with yellow heads, of course, but Bruegel has apparently deliberately chosen a water bird here, probably also to refer to the phlegmatic cause of death attributed to Charles V. This becomes all the more likely when one notices that the king eider, as shown here, is wearing a black robe as a sign of mourning. The bird is leaning on a stick, which suggests someone suffering from gout.16 This

Fig. 13 Detail from the Dulle Griet.. Water bird

THE DULLE GRIET : A THEMATIC AND SYNTHETIC ANALYSIS

was indeed very much the case with Charles V and may have played a part in his wise abdication, which is probably thought here as an example of temperantia. Moreover, this is a female king eider, which is entirely in line with the traditional depiction of cardinal virtues as women. Charles  V, in other words, is presented after his death as an example of temperantia. Bruegel’s pictorial language is thus once again rebus-like. But with the help of these cryptic signs, Bruegel erects a monument in memory of the beloved and admired Charles V and thus unites the entire field of meaning of the Dulle Griet. 2.2 The Four Cockerel’s Eggs The second unifying image is, if possible, even more mysterious. We already know how the whole painting is dominated by the structure of the four elements. This turns out to be much more the case now than was suspected up until now. In fact, certain fundamental contents of this painting are arranged around four eggs: the egg of the air, the egg of the fire, the egg of the earth, and the egg of the water (figs 14a–d). However, these are not simply eggs, but cockerel’s eggs. According to an ancient myth, the basilisk, the king of the devils, originated from the egg of a cockerel, a representation that Bruegel clearly depicts in his painting of the Fall of the Rebel Angels where the egg inquestion is shown with a cockerel’s spur. In the Dulle Griet, therefore, there are four cockerel’s eggs and from each of these eggs four disasters occur, resulting in a total of sixteen disasters. Let us take a few striking examples. We will start with the egg of the air (fig. 14a). According to ancient beliefs, air was strongly associated with male sexuality: air led to erection, air also led to ejaculation. No wonder then, one could say, that the egg of the air in Bruegel’s painting takes the form of the egg from which the Phallus impudicus mushroom rises, a mushroom notorious for its rotten stench, which very much appeals to the imagination, and is indeed sometimes associated with witchcraft and eroticism. The egg-shaped part of

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the mushroom bears the name ‘devil’s egg’ and can indeed be seen as the prototype of what Bruegel depicts here. But does Bruegel confine himself to the egg-shaped part of the mushroom and does he leave the phallus-like part untouched? No, especially when we know that the basilisk was seen or understood as the devil of lust. And in fact, at the top of the devil’s egg there are a couple of dancing figures accompanied by a bagpipe player.17 In earlier times, the bagpipe was an important symbol of the male sexual organ: we can assume this was the case in a scene of Hell in Bosch’s work, but we also see this in Bruegel’s procession in the print of Luxuria. We can therefore assume that Bruegel has carried through his fantasy of the Phallus impudicus from devil’s egg to phallus. From this cockerel’s egg of the air four disasters arise, which we can only touch on here: the witches’ Sabbath; the unequal love between an older woman and a very young boy; the plague – think of the pestilential stench of the Phallus impudicus – plague caused by the spell of a whore; and the abovementioned desert storm which arises when a witch breaks wind. Equally surprising is Bruegel’s fantasy about the egg of the fire (fig. 14b). The red figure on the burning roof is masculine, and yet he lays an egg which, in the given context, should be seen as a cockerel’s egg. At the same time, this brings to mind the well-known saying ‘De rode haan zit op het dak’ (The red cock is sitting on the roof), which refers to fire, even now. What comes out of the egg are not coins, as is often claimed, but guncotton (schietkatoen in Dutch), i.e. a cheaper substitute for gunpowder.18 So the devil figure shoots (shits) cotton out of his backside, a saying that is another play on words (schiet-katoen). The guncotton falls in the direction of the powder tower, with the attendant risk of explosion and fire. But part of this guncotton is caught in the bowl of a monk,19 which in the given circumstances, as we already know, refers to religious wars and peasant uprisings. From what we have said above, we already know three of the four disasters that result from the egg of the

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Fig. 14b Detail from the Dulle Griet. Cockerel’s egg of the fire

Fig. 14c Detail from the Dulle Griet. Cockerel’s egg of the earth

OPPOSITE

Fig. 14a Detail from the Dulle Griet. Cockerel’s egg of the air

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Fig. 14d Detail from the Dulle Griet. Cockerel’s egg of the water

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fire: the fires set by pirates, the peasant uprising, and the Inquisition pyres. We could also add the use of fire to dry opium, an addictive substance, but further research on this is required. We cannot go any further into the cockerel’s egg of the earth here (fig. 14c). The earth is a symbol of fertility, for it gives us food. However, if the earth does not fulfil that function, there will be famine. Bruegel presented the seven deadly sins in the orbit of the element earth, at the gate of the entrance to Hell. In this context, however, he has repeatedly referred to situations that indicate hunger and food. And, therefore, the egg of the earth is depicted as a nest of hungry chicks who get nothing to eat but a dead fish, a known symbol of the earth. However, in addition to hunger and famine, there are three other disasters of the earth, which we can only mention in passing here: the desert wolf, quicksand, and forced labour in the mines. We finish with the cockerel’s egg of the water (fig. 14d). Here the cockerel’s egg is symbolized by the overall shape and the curvature of the jester’s hat. Indeed, as so often in the Dulle Griet, we are dealing here with overdetermination, i.e. with double or even multiple meanings: the jester’s hat is at the same time a hint of the cockerel. In any case, the cockerel’s egg of the water in turn leads to four disasters: the Antichrist, who appears in connection with the Leviathan water monster; diabetes, i.e. the disease of great thirst; the invasion of pirates from the sea; and the death of Charles V as a result of a phlegmatic disease. And so it turns out that the whole of the Dulle Griet’s fantasy is arranged around a fantasy of four cockerel’s eggs divided into four groups: the egg of the air, the egg of the fire, the egg of the earth, and egg of the water. The devil, in other words, has corrupted the four elements, which also corresponds to an ancient theme and is linked to the end of time. But is there no salvation for all this? Indeed there is, but to gain insight into this, we have to turn to the next synthetic image.

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2.3 Magic Square Strangely enough, we spot the next synthetic image in a motif we find inside the city gate of the besieged and fire-ravaged city (fig. 15a–b). In this motif we recognize what has been referred to as a magic square, as seen in Dürer’s engraving of melancholy (fig. 15c). Magic squares were recognizable by the fact that they contained words or numbers that could be read or added together vertically and horizontally in the same way. As a whole the sign on the city gate shows a square of eight, but the arrangement of the parts is such that there are sixteen squares of four and at the same time four groups of sixteen. Magic squares were considered to be particularly strong talismans that could stave off threats and doom like no other apotropaic sign. Because of the positive role assigned to the cipher eight – in a square – the magic square here refers to its power as opposed to the role of the cipher eight in connection with the number of the Antichrist, a connection which cannot be explained in the limited framework of the present paper as it needs to be clarified via Pythagorean mathematics. But from what was said in relation to the cockerels’ eggs we immediately understand that the magic square on the city gate, through its reference to the number sixteen, was thought to be related to the sixteen disasters. We can point to three other possible influences of the number sixteen. First of all there is the fact, which is not discussed further here, that in the Dulle Griet there are four groups of four devils, sixteen devils who, as Elementargeister (Spirits of the Elements) and divided into groups of four per element, have corrupted the four elements. Secondly, we see how the number of pirates who invade the city wall is sixteen. Finally, we notice that there may be exactly sixteen vices, set against sixteen virtues, although further research is needed on this correlation. We also need to determine whether the four groups of sixteen in the magic square indeed refer to four groups of sixteen nega-

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a

Fig. 15 Details from the Dulle Griet showing magic square (a and b); Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia I, 1514, engraving, 240 × 185 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1943 (inv. no. 43.106.1), with magic square indicated (c)

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b

c

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tive connotations in the painting. In other words, whether the magic square with its four times sixteen or sixty-four points is meaningful for all the parts of the painting. Whatever the case, there is more. In many magic squares, the middle part is occupied by a cruciform arrangement of the contents. This is also the case in the magic square on the city gate. The cross is a sign of salvation, of course, but in Bruegel’s time this was especially the case if the cross contained a reference to the five wounds of Christ, a widespread sign of the Passion. Indeed, the cross in the painting carries the number five.20 Is this just a sign of the Passion, or is there a more specific connection with certain themes in the painting? The latter is by far the most likely. In the Dulle Griet, as well as the effect of quaternity and of the multiples of four, there is also the influence of the number five, the mysterious quinta essentia. Traces of this can be found around every cockerel’s egg in Bruegel’s Dulle Griet. The notion of quinta essentia is laden with a kind of synthetic force as it refers to the bundling of the four elements into one superior whole. This does not mean that the fifth element must be interpreted positively; it depends on the content of the other four elements. If the force is positive then the quinta essentia eventually becomes an equivalent of the divine concept, and thus of God. If the force is negative, the quinta essentia eventually becomes the equivalent of Satan. In the Dulle Griet all the cockerel’s eggs are negative, and therefore so are the quinta essentia depictions to which they are linked. It thus becomes probable that the particularly powerful five wounds of Christ on the Cross represent the healing mechanism against all the negativity and evil evoked by the four quinta essentiae of the four cockerel’s eggs. However, there is also one positive quinta essentia in the painting, namely in the depiction of the cardinal virtue fortitudo in its reference to Charles V and his glorious struggle against the pirates of North Africa, i.e. against Islam, that must be defeated in the name of the Cross. The healing

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cross on the city gate, with its reference to the quinta essentia concept, thus has a positive role both through its defence against all negative quinta essentiae and through its reference to the positive quinta essentia in the context of Charles  V’s role. It may be interesting to note that Bruegel, one or two years later, also depicts a positive quinta essentia in the Adoration of the Magi, and that he applies this connotation of positive quinta essentia to a person who also excels by his strength, and who, incidentally, shows the sign of the cross. 2.4 Heavenly Paradise Our fourth synthetic image is related to so many threads of meaning that it can be only mentioned here. We already know that the zone of the air is dominated by a representation of the earthly paradise, with Adam and Eve and the Fall following Satan’s temptation in the form of a basilisk. It now appears that Bruegel, on the same image level, has built in a wonderful opposition by suggesting the heavenly paradise, as described in Saint John’s Apocalypse, just after the fantasy of heavenly Jerusalem: a vision in which there is now plentiful light and healing water, resulting in a barn overflowing with its abundant harvest on the right side of the image.21 2.5 Dulle Griet as Cannon The last synthetic image contains the answer to an almost self-evident question. Dulle Griet is also the name of a very large cannon of which several examples existed; one is still to be seen in Ghent (fig. 16a). Dulle Griet is also a major figure in Bruegel’s painting and she clearly embodies features from the legend of Saint Margaret, who vanquished the dragon. Dulle Griet is indeed seen heading towards the hellish dragon with a drawn sword. But the question remains as to whether there is a connection between Bruegel’s Dulle Griet and Dulle Griet as a cannon, and, if so, is it a symbolic connection or another type of connection? Once again, the answer comes from a completely unexpected angle. There is indeed a link, but, surprisingly enough, it is primarily a rebus connection.

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Fig. 16a ‘Dulle Griet’, Bombard cannon, Ghent, first half 15th century

Fig. 16b Diagrams by Gaston Vandendriessche showing how the cannon appears in rebus form in the Dulle Griet painting

In the middle of the painting, on the axis occupied by both Dulle Griet and the main pirate, we find, in rebus form, the Dulle Griet cannon (fig. 16b). To begin with, this concerns the main parts of the cannon, the barrel and the gunpowder chamber. However, it is important to know that two names for the Dulle Griet were known during the period, as mentioned in a historical source.22 The barrel of the cannon, where the fire ignited,

was called the Red Devil, the powder room of the cannon, where the deafening and frightening noise of the explosion arose, the Dulle Griet in the narrow sense. We now see how the red pirate, from all the connections present, can be interpreted as the Red Devil, who incidentally wears a robe that has the yellow-red colour of fire. Dulle Griet, for her part, wears a robe that has the yellow-grey colour of some kind of gunpowder.23 But not only the main

THE DULLE GRIET : A THEMATIC AND SYNTHETIC ANALYSIS

components of the cannon – the barrel and the powder chamber – are depicted in rebus form. At the same time, Dulle Griet contains a symbolic reference to the ignition of the powder, a pan with the handle in the mouth of a jug and a burned egg in the pan itself,24 as if Bruegel had wanted to illustrate the saying ‘het vuur slaat in de pan’ (‘the fire strikes in the pan’). Furthermore, the sleeve of Dulle Griet’s dress suggests burnt red. The whole combination between Dulle Griet and the Red Devil then ends in a sphere, the aardkloot (earth globe), which we find in the hands of the melancholy man and which can be seen here, in rebus language, as a cannonball, which, in ancient texts, is also referred to as a kloot. There are other connections, but they are not always certain and can be left out since there is sufficient certainty about the fundamental rebus meaning of the relevant part of the painting. Bruegel, it may now be said in answer to our question, referred in rebus language in his Dulle Griet to the cannon of Dulle Griet, and thus immediately to the symbol of the power of Western Christianity in general and of Charles V in particular. The Dulle Griet, in other words, was like the atomic bomb now. Whoever possessed such a weapon actually had the power to ward off their main enemies: the pirates of North Africa and the rebellious Reformation. Conclusion I have omitted many interesting things from my lecture: the division of the elements into good and evil (the good and evil fire, for example), the four continents, the seasons, the details of the sixteen spirits of the elements, or Elementargeister, the punishments classified according to the elements, the classification of pagan religions according to the points of the compass, the seven capital sins, the battle between virtues and vices, i.e. the

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Psychomachia with the traditional ladder as in the case of Herrad of Landsberg, the representation of the end of time, the quinta essentia in the representations of the four cockerel’s eggs, the triangular number of Pythagoras as opposed to the quadrate, in both cases as mentioned above connected to the number eight and referring to the number of the Antichrist, i.e. 666, etc. The programme of Bruegel’s Dulle Griet is so incredibly rich and varied. Finally much of the sophia25 of this masterpiece has become accessible. After more than four hundred years, Dulle Griet has revealed her secret. But why did Dulle Griet keep this secret for so long? How is that possible, we wondered at the beginning. The answer may now be clear. We have forgotten Bruegel’s language: the forgotten language. And that is true on two levels. On the one hand, we are no longer familiar with the world view that Bruegel took for granted. Think, for example, about the language of the four elements; think of the peculiar notion of the transition of the elements; think about the myth of the cockerel’s egg; think of the quinta essentia. Not only are we alienated from Bruegel’s language in terms of content, but also in terms of language. We do not suspect that Bruegel uses a rebus language, that an egg surrounded by land can refer to an island, that the Dulle Griet cannon is depicted in rebus language, or, not further clarified here, that a harp can stand for a child-devouring harpy. Nor do we expect that a single motif can have two independent meanings at the same time, that overdetermination can therefore take place as with the jester’s hat, which at the same time functions as a cockerel’s spur. So we have forgotten Bruegel’s language. I hope that my work will help us learn that language again, so as not to lose or, if necessary, to reestablish contact with one of the greatest artists Flanders has ever had.

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N OT ES 1 The editors have taken the liberty of attributing this title. The original manuscript is entitled ‘Voordracht DG Dinsdag 30 april 1996, bijgewerkte tekst’ (‘Lecture DG Tuesday 30 April 1996, reworked text’). 2 Marijnissen 1988 (edn 2003), p. 13 (translation by the editors).

appearance, would originally have been greenish, since it appears to be discoloured copper resinate, a pigment that turns brown on ageing (for a detail of this motif and scientific analysis of the pigment, see Currie et al., Chapter 2 in the present volume, fig. 2.18). 9 Unidentified sources.

3 From Philostratus the Elder, Εἰκόνες (Imagines), book 1, chapters 9 and 12 .

10 Editors’ note: We cannot identify this detail.

4 Editors’ note: In his oral presentation, Vandendriessche thanked Professor Smeyers and his colleagues for making his lecture possible in a teaching context, and for having supplied the necessary transparencies and slides.

13 Editors’ note: This crucifer is not clearly visible in the Liber Floridus manuscripts that we have consulted (Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Hs. 92, fol. 62v; The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, ms. 72 A 23, fol. 49; Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 1 Gud. Lat., fol. 42).

5 Vandendriessche 1993, Vandendriessche 1995, Vandendriessche 1996. 6 Editors’ note: It seems likely that the author made out the black fer-de-moline or millrind through the overpaint on the flag and interpreted it as an allusion to a pirate flag. 7 Editors’ note: We cannot identify this figure. We think that the author may have misread as a monk the figure of a woman holding up a container to the detritus coming out of the ‘pirate’s’ rear end. 8 Editors’ note: We think this figure must be the small creature in the lower right. However, the ‘fox’ coat, now brown in

11 Ibid. 12 Ibid.

14 Editors’ note: Vandendriessche wrote here ‘1562 or 1563’. Given the recent cleaning of the painting by KIK-IRPA, revealing the inscription as ‘1563’, we have dropped ‘1562’ (see Currie et al., Chapter 2 in the present volume, and figs 2.12). 15 Editors’ note: Vandendriessche wrote this as ‘four’, but given the recent finding on the date, we have changed it to ‘five’. 16 Editors’ note: The ‘stick’ referred to by Vandendriessche may in fact be a beak. If this is the case, the bird is closer in appearance to a Eurasian spoonbill, an elegant large wading bird seen in Belgian wetlands. Eider ducks

are also extremely rare in the region where Bruegel lived and are usually seen much further north. We thank Baudouin Van den Abeele (UCLouvain) for these observations. 17 Editors’ note: At the top of this egg, we see four dancing creatures accompanied by a creature with white headgear playing a sort of horn. 18 Editors’ note: Since guncotton (nitrocellulose) was not invented until the nineteenth century, this line of argument would seem to be erroneous. 19

See note 7 above.

20 Editors’ note: We think that the five painted dots on each part of the cross, including the one in the centre, represent the ‘number five’ that Vandendriessche is referring to. 21 Editors’ note: We cannot identify this barn in the composition. 22 Editors’ note: We are unaware of Vandendriessche’s source. 23 Editors’ note: Vandendriessche would not have known that the pigment used for Dulle Griet’s garment was smalt, which would originally have been a fairly intense blue (see Currie et al., Chapter 2 in the present volume, pp. 34–5). 24 Editors’ note: We cannot see the egg in the pan. 25

Editors’ note: sophia (Greek) = wisdom.

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Wadum 1998b Jørgen Wadum, ‘Historical Overview of Panel-Making Techniques in the Northern Countries’, in Kathleen Dardes and Andrea Rothe (eds), The Structural Conservation of Panel Paintings: Proceedings of a Symposium at the J. Paul Getty Museum, 24–28 April 1995, Los Angeles, 1998, pp. 149–77. Wadum 1999 Jørgen Wadum, ‘Antwerp Copper Plates’, in Phoenix/Kansas City/The Hague 1999, pp. 93–116. Wadum 2015 Jørgen Wadum, ‘Christian IV’s Winter Room and Studiolo at Rosenborg Castle’, in Rieke van Leuwen, Juliette Roding and Brian Capstick (eds), Gerson Digital: Denmark (Dutch and Flemish art in European perspective 1500–1900, Part II), The Hague, 2015, § 5–5.8 . Walker 1964 D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment, Chicago, 1964. Wallen 1983 Burr Wallen, Jan van Hemessen: An Antwerp Painter between Reform and Counter-Reform, Michigan, 1983. Watteeuw and Van Bos 2014 Lieve Watteeuw and Marina Van Bos, ‘Composition of Iron Gall Inks in Illuminated Manuscripts (11th–16th Century): The Use by Scribes and Illuminators’, in Gillian Fellows-Jensen and Peter Springborg (eds), Care and Conservation of Manuscripts: Proceedings of the 14th International Seminar held in the Royal Library Copenhagen 2012, 14, 2014, pp. 177–93. Watteeuw and Van Bos 2018 Lieve Watteeuw and Marina Van Bos, ‘Black as Ink: Materials and Techniques in Fifteenth-Century Flemish Grisaille Illuminations by Jan De Tavernier, Willem Vrelant and Dreux Jehan’, in Watteeuw, Jan Van der Stock, Bernard Bousmanne and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe (eds), New Perspectives on Flemish Illumination (Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts, 22, Low Countries Series, 16), Leuven, 2018, pp. 249–67. Watteeuw et al. 2017 Lieve Watteeuw, Joris Van Grieken, Bruno Vandermeulen, Marc Proesmans and Maarten Bassens, ‘The Fingerprint Project: From Drawing to Printed Line. The Art-Technical Genesis of Pieter Bruegel’s Graphic Oeuvre’, in Blocks Plates Stones Conference: Matrices/ Printing Surfaces in Research and Collections, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 21 September 2017, London, 2017. Watteeuw et al. 2019 Lieve Watteeuw, Marina Van Bos, Maarten Bassens, Joris Van Grieken, Christina Currie, Bruno Vandermeulen, Hendrik Hameeuw and Maximiliaan Martens, ‘Four Drawings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Art Technical Research’, in Vienna – Symposium 2018, pp. 52–9. Wauters 1883 Alphonse-Jules Wauters, La peinture flamande, Paris, 1883. Weemans 2009 Michel Weemans, ‘Herri met de Bles’s Way to Calvary: A Silenic Landscape’, in Art History, 32, 2009, pp. 307–31. Weemans 2012 Michel Weemans, ‘The Earthly Paradise: Herri met de Bles’s Visual

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Wegner 1973 Wolfgang Wegner (ed.), Die niederländischen Handzeichnungen des 15.–18. Jahrhunderts (Kataloge der Staatlichen Graphischen Sammlung München, 1), 2 vols, Berlin, 1973. Weigel 1577 Hans Weigel, Habitus precipuorum populorum, tam virorum quam foeminarum Singulari arte depicti: Trachtenbuch, Nuremberg, 1577. Wells-Cole 1997 Anthony Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Influence of Continental Prints, 1558–1625, New Haven, 1997. Wells-Cole 2012 Anthony Wells-Cole, ‘Scissors-and-Paste in Two Paintings of Elizabeth I’, in The Burlington Magazine, 154, 2012, pp. 834–8. Werche 2004 Bettina Werche, Hendrick van Balen (1575–1632): Ein Antwerpener Kabinettmaler der Rubenszeit (Pictura nova, 7), 2 vols, Turnhout, 2004. Wied 1980 Alexander Wied, Bruegel, London, 1980. Wied 1989–90 Alexander Wied, ‘Neues zu Lucas und Marten van Valckenborch’, in Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, 85–6, 1989–90, pp. 9–13. Wied 1990 Alexander Wied, Lucas und Marten van Valckenborch, 1535–1597 und 1534–1612: Das Gesamtwerk mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Freren, 1990. Wied 1997 Alexander Wied, ‘Die dulle Griet (Düsseldorf)’ (cat. entry), in Wilfried Seipel (ed.), Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. Beiheft: ergänzende Leihgaben zur Ausstellung im Kunsthistorischen Museum Wien, exh. cat., Vienna (Kunsthistorische Museum), 1997, pp. 16–18. Wildenstein 1951 Georges Wildenstein (ed.), ‘Le goût pour la peinture dans la bourgeoisie parisienne entre 1550 et 1610’, in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 38bis, July–December 1951 (printed May 1962), pp. 5–343. Wimböck, Leonhard and Friedrich 2007 Gabriele Wimböck, Karin Leonhard and Markus Friedrich (eds), Evidentia: Reichweiten visueller Wahrnehmung in der Frühen Neuzeit (Pluralisierung & Autorität, 9), Berlin, 2007. Winkler 1933 Friedrich Horst Winkler, ‘Gustav Glück, Bruegels Gemälde: Wien, Verlag Schroll’ (review), in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 2, 1933, pp. 306–7.

Winternitz 1979 Emmanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments and their Symbolism in Western Art, New Haven, 1979. Woermann 1887 Karl Woermann, Katalog der Königlichen Gemäldegalerie zu Dresden, Große Ausgabe, Dresden, 1887. Wolfthal 1989 Diane Wolfthal, The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting: 1400–1530, Cambridge, 1989. Wolters 2011 Margaretha J. G. Wolters, ‘Met kool en crijt’: De functie van de ondertekening in de schilderijen van Joachim Beuckelaer, PhD thesis, University of Groningen, 2011. Wouk 2018 Edward H. Wouk, Frans Floris (1519/20–1570): Imagining a Northern Renaissance, Leiden/Boston, 2018. Wouters and Verhecken 1989 Jan Wouters and André Verhecken, ‘The Coccid Insect Dyes: HPLC and Computerized Diode-Array Analysis of Dyed Yarns’, in Studies in Conservation, 34(4), 1989, pp. 189–200. Wuyts 1975 Leo Wuyts, ‘Lucas van Leydens Melkmeid: Een proeve tot ikonologische interpretatie’, in De Gulden Passer, 53, 1975, pp. 441–53. Yin, Monson, Honig, Daubechies and Maggioni 2016 Rujie Yin, Eric Monson, Elizabeth Honig, Ingrid Daubechies and Mauro Maggioni, ‘Object Recognition in Art Drawings: Transfer of a Neural Network’, in Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing . You 2004/5 Yao-Fen You, ‘Antwerp Mannerism and the Fabricating of Fashion’, in Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 2004/5, pp. 141–57. Young 1968 Bonnie Young, ‘The Monkeys & the Peddler’, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 26, 1968, pp. 441–54. Zerdoun Bat-Yehouda 1983 Monique Zerdoun Bat-Yehouda, Les encres noires au Moyen Âge (jusqu’à 1600), Paris, 1983. Ziefer 2010 Anka Ziefer, ‘Marte e Venere sorpresi da Vulcano: la fortuna iconografica di un affresco perduto di Baldassarre Peruzzi per la Villa Farnesina a Roma’, in Maria Beltramini and Caroline Elam (eds), Some Degree of Happiness: Studi di storia dell’architettura in onore di Howard Burns, Pisa, 2010, pp. 207–31, 722–5.

Contributors

Dominique Allart is Professor at the University of Liège, where she heads the Department of Art History and Technology of Fine Arts (Modern Times). Her research addresses the arts of the sixteenth century in the former Low Countries and the Principality of Liège. As well as the works of the Liège artist and antiquarian Lambert Lombard, she specializes in the study of paintings by the first two generations of the Bruegel dynasty, including the technical aspects of paintings by Bruegel the Elder and Pieter the Younger. She has co-authored, with Christina Currie, The Brueg[H]el Phenomenon: Paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Younger with a Special Focus on Technique and Copying Practice (2012). Maarten Bassens is a historian, archivist and art historian. In the past he researched the life and work of Frans Crabbe van Espleghem (c. 1480–1553), a peintre-graveur active in Mechelen in the first half of the sixteenth century. He is completing a PhD on the edition history of the Bruegel prints. By combining technical examination of Bruegel’s engravings and etchings with archival research on their different publishers, he is shedding new light on the life and use of the printing plates. Christina Bisulca holds a BA in Chemistry and Art History (Rutgers University, 1999), an MS in Objects Conservation (Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, 2005) and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering as part of the programme in Heritage Conservation Science (University of Arizona, 2014). She is currently Head of the Analytical Science Laboratory and Andrew W. Mellon Conservation Scientist at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Annick Born, Doctor in History of Art, is a specialist in Netherlandish art (fifteenth to sixteenth centuries) and technological studies. Her scholarly interests also include the Renaissance artist’s sociocultural status, the legacy of antiquity and Italian influence in the North. She is currently focusing on the diplomatic ties and the artistic outputs of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, on travellers’ accounts in the (Middle) East and on the artist’s mobility in enemy countries. In 2017 she was a fellow at Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), Istanbul. She is titular member of the Royal Academy of Archaeology of Belgium. Sonja Brink studied History of Art at the University of Cologne, where she received her PhD. Further training followed at three museums of the Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin. In 1994 she published a selection of Italian drawings from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries in the collection of the Kunsthalle Bremen. Since 1996 she has been a curator in the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf’s Department of Prints and Drawings, with special responsibility for the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf’s collection, which is on permanent loan to the Kunstpalast. A specialist in Italian art, particularly drawings and prints, she has published widely on the Roman baroque painters and recently presented a two-volume book on the fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italian drawings in the Kunstpalast’s collection.

Véronique Bücken holds a doctorate in Art History. She started her career as Director of the Château de Seneffe. In 2009 she joined the staff of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, where she is currently head of Old Master Painting and curator of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century Flemish Painting. She has supervised several research projects on Early Netherlandish painting and on Bernard van Orley. In collaboration with the Getty Foundation’s Panel Paintings Initiative, she coordinated a five-year technical study of Flemish and German panels in the RMFAB. She has co-curated, among others, the exhibitions The Heritage of Rogier van der Weyden: Painting in Brussels 1450–1520 and Bernard van Orley: Bruxelles et la Renaissance, held in Brussels in 2013 and 2019 respectively. David Buti has a PhD in Conservation Science at the University of Florence, in collaboration with the CNR-ISTM and the Centre SMAArt of the University of Perugia. In 2014 he became a researcher at the Centre for Art Technological Studies and Conservation (CATS) at the Statens Museum for Kunst. He is a specialist in manuscripts, with practical experience in using different spectroscopic techniques aimed at identifying their constituent materials. After having joined CATS, he had the opportunity to investigate different categories of artworks (old masters, modern and contemporary), extending his expertise to sculpture, easel and mural paintings. In May 2020, Buti returned to the University of Perugia. Lorne Campbell, formerly Reader at the Courtauld Institute of Art, was George Beaumont Senior Research Curator at the National Gallery, London. He is author of numerous articles and contributions to exhibition catalogues and conference proceedings. His published books include: (with Colin Thompson) Hugo van der Goes and the Trinity Panels in Edinburgh (1974); Van der Weyden (1979); The Early Flemish Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen (1985); Renaissance Portraits (1990); National Gallery Catalogues, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools (1998); (with Jan Van der Stock and others) Rogier van der Weyden. 1400–1464. Master of Passions (Museum M, Leuven, 2009); National Gallery Catalogues, The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings with French Paintings before 1600 (2014); (with Carmen García-Frías Checa and others) Rogier van der Weyden and the Kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2015). Alexia Coudray obtained her master’s degree in Science–Chemistry at Lens University in 2011 and started working as research assistant in the Laboratory Department of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels the same year. Her expertise is focused on paintings, both classic and modern, as well as textiles. Coudray is currently involved in researching the Ghent Altarpiece, which is a KIK-IRPA conservation-restoration project. Christina Currie is head of Documentation and Scientific Imagery at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels, specializing in the technical examination of paintings. Her main field of research is the Bruegel family, notably Pieter Bruegel the Elder and

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Pieter Brueghel the Younger, but also copies by Jan Brueghel the Elder. She has also published studies on paintings by Melchior Broederlam, Jan van Eyck, Herri met de Bles, Tintoretto, Marten de Vos, Artemisia Gentileschi, Thomas Eakins and the Spanish Forger. From 2014 to 2020, Currie managed the scientific imagery for the Van Eyck Research in OpeN Access (VERONA) project. Hilde Cuvelier carried out her master’s thesis, The Life of Rubens in Joachim von Sandrart’s Teutsche Academie, at VUB, Brussels, in 1994. She is currently working on her PhD thesis, titled Bruegel Research in the 20th Century, at Ghent University, and is involved in the ‘I.A.P. City & Society’ project, led by Sabine van Sprang at the Archive F. Grossmann. Cuvelier’s publications include ‘Karel van Manders Buffonsche ghecken in Eensame historien’, in Arnout Balis (ed.), Florissant (Brussels, 2005); ‘Empathy and deep understanding: Fritz Grossmann and his Bruegel Archive’, in Lieneke Nijkamp (ed.), Picturing Ludwig Burchard, 1886–1960 (London, 2015); and ‘The Changing Image of Bruegel and His Winters’, in Sabine van Sprang and Tine Luk Meganck (eds), Bruegel’s Winter Scenes (Brussels, 2018). Aoife Daly is a dendro-archaeologist. She studies the historic remains of timber, particularly through analysis of the tree-rings, to examine the chronology and geography of humans’ exploitation of this resource in the past. She has worked on numerous international research projects and has developed, with collaborators, non-destructive dendrochronology, by CT scanning of wood objects and through tree-ring measurement from exposed surfaces. Daly is leading the ‘Northern Europe’s timber resource – chronology, origin and exploitation (TIMBER)’ project, funded by the European Research Council, for which a multidisciplinary team is analysing the material and written evidence for timber usage c. 1100–1700. Eva de la Fuente Pedersen has been senior research curator at Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK) since 2003, with responsibility for European painting and sculpture from before 1800. She previously worked at the Nationalmuseet (1992–2003) and lectured on Art History at the University of Copenhagen (1998–2003). She obtained her master’s degree in 1991 and her PhD on Danish baroque wood-carved sculpture in 1998. She has curated exhibitions on Rembrandt (2006), Jacob Jordaens (2008) and Dutch and Flemish floral still lives (2013), and published research on The Royal Danish Kunstkammer (2005), Dieric Bouts (2012), Salvator Rosa and Girolamo Troppa (both 2017). Livia Depuydt-Elbaum has been Head of Painting Conservation at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels since 1998, where she specializes in the restoration of paintings from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. She has worked on paintings by Melchior Broederlam, Andrea da Bologna, Jan van Eyck, Dirk Bouts, Albrecht Bouts, Juan de Flandes, the Master of Flémalle, the Master of the Mansi Magdalen, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Everard van Orley, Lambert Lombard, Anthony van Dyck and Artemisia Gentileschi. She was project leader for the first phase of the conservation-restoration treatment of the Ghent Altarpiece by the Van Eyck brothers. In 2017, Jamie L. Edwards gained an AHRC-funded PhD in History of Art from the University of Birmingham for a thesis that examined narrative painting in sixteenth-century Netherlandish art, with a focus on the religious paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. He taught at Oxford Brookes University and the University of Birmingham, before taking up his current post as Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Exeter. Edwards is currently working on a monograph provisionally entitled ‘Scripture Reanimated’: Netherlandish Artists and Biblical Exegesis on the Eve of the Eighty Years’ War.

Pascale Fraiture has been Head of the Dendrochronology Laboratory at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels since 2003. She studied Archaeology and Art History at the U-Liège (1998) and holds a PhD in Dendroarchaeology and Dendroprovenancing applied to Southern Netherlandish Panel Paintings (2007). She has continued to develop her expertise in these areas through interdisciplinary international research projects and scientific service in Belgium and abroad.  Fraiture is regularly represented at international conferences and lectures, in the field of dendrochronology as well as in art history/archaeology, and instigated two international conferences:  Tree Rings, Art, Archaeology  (KIK-IRPA, 2010) and From Carpentry to Joinery (KIK-IRPA, 2013). Jean-Albert Glatigny is a conservator-restorer and a specialist in the treatment of wooden objects. Having first studied art, he went on to learn cabinetmaking, and continued his training at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels. He currently works at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), the KIK-IRPA and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. He teaches in several restoration schools, takes part in the study and evaluation of works of art, and carries out research on historic techniques of woodworking. Glatigny is responsible for the conservation treatment of the support of the Ghent Altarpiece. Anne Haack Christensen graduated as a paintings conservator from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Design and Conservation in 2008. She has been a paintings conservator at the Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK) in Copenhagen since 2008 and successfully defended her PhD dissertation in 2017 on the Colour Chamber of King Christian IV and the trade in painting materials in Denmark in the early seventeenth century. Her main areas of research are technical art history, material studies, studies of the sales of pigments and materials to artists, trade routes, historical treatises and material terminology. Hendrik Hameeuw is a specialist in advanced imaging at the Imaging Lab, KU Leuven Libraries, after having obtained MA degrees in Assyriology and Archaeology at KU Leuven. He has been involved in the development of the multi-light reflectance Portable Light Dome system from the start. He applies this system, multispectral imaging and other photographic techniques to the digitization and non-invasive art-technical study of heritage objects. He is currently working on a number of imaging and research projects, including the BRAIN-be Fingerprint and ArtGarden. Ellen Hanspach-Bernal is a 2006 graduate of the art conservation programme at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Dresden. From 2006 to 2009 she was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in painting conservation at the Menil Collection. She has worked for Whitten and Proctor Fine Art Conservation in Houston and for the Conservation Centre for the Museums of the City of Erfurt, Thüringen, in Germany. In 2015 she returned to the United States to work as Conservator of Paintings at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Elizabeth Alice Honig is Professor of Northern European Art at the University of Maryland. She is the author of Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp, Jan Brueghel and the Senses of Scale and Pieter Bruegel and the Idea of Human Nature, and she edits the websites janbrueghel.net and pieterbruegel.net. Leen Huet obtained her master’s degrees in art history and philosophy at the KU Leuven. In 1990–91 she studied in Florence with scholarship grants given by the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Fondazione Roberto Longhi. Huet has been an independent writer and researcher since 1996. She has published books on Belgian museums,

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on female artists of the Ancien Régime, on the letters of Rubens and on Nicolaas Rockox. In 2016 she published her biography of Pieter Bruegel. In 2020 she collaborated with acclaimed translator Paul Claes to publish the first Dutch translation of Lampsonius’s Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae Inferioris effigies (1572) to appear since the seventeenth century. Ethan Matt Kavaler is Director of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto, where he is a fellow of Victoria College. He has authored Renaissance Gothic: Architecture and the Arts in Northern Europe 1470– 1540 and Pieter Bruegel: Parables of Order and Enterprise. He has edited several volumes of essays and written articles on political agency, ornament and secular painting in the Low Countries. He is presently writing a study of Netherlandish sculpture of the sixteenth century. Kavaler is a member of the Royal Academy of Archaeology of Belgium and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège. Patrick Le Chanu is a Conservateur Général du Patrimoine. He studied at the École du Louvre, Université Paris-IV Sorbonne and Collège de France, and was a Pensionnaire at the Villa Medici, Rome. Having worked in the Musées des Beaux-Arts in Dijon and Lyon, and afterwards at the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France, in 2004 he became Regional Advisor, Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles Grand Est, where his principal role is to provide advice and support to museums of the Grand Est region of France. Petra Maclot obtained a PhD in Engineering Sciences/Architecture (KU Leuven) with a dissertation on ‘The Status of Stone: Urban Identity and the Typological Discourse of Private Houses in Antwerp during the long Sixteenth Century’. For over twenty-five years she has been working full time as an independent building historian with a multidisciplinary approach, combining different types of training (Interior Architecture, Monuments & Sites, History) and field experience in archaeology. As a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), hosted by the KU Leuven, she is now focusing on her project about Antwerp’s visual artists’ homes and studios before 1800. Tine Luk Meganck (PhD, Princeton University, 2003) is Assistant Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). From 2004 to 2019 she was researcher at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. She studies art and cultural history of the early modern Netherlands within a global perspective. Her publications include, among others, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Fall of the Rebel Angels: Art, Knowledge and Politics on the Eve of the Dutch Revolt (2014), Erudite Eyes: Friendship, Art and Erudition in the Network of Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) (2017) and, with Sabine van Sprang, Bruegel’s Winter Scenes: Historians and Art Historians in Dialogue (2018). Ingrid Moortgat is an independent art researcher with a socioeconomic view of art production and trade, and a passion for seventeenth-century archives. After an extensive career in banking, she graduated from the University of Leuven’s Art History Department. In her master’s thesis she assimilated her financial knowledge with newly gained insights in art production and trade by developing a different research method based on the analysis of financial documents registered in the inventory of a seventeenth-century art dealer. In 2017–18, Moortgat was engaged in the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project as archival research fellow. Yoko Mori is Professor Emerita of Art History at Meiji University, Tokyo, and Foreign Associate of the Royal Academy of Archaeology of Belgium. After publishing Pieter Bruegel, Spreekwoorden en Volksleven, she specialized in researching the moral message, literature

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and folklore behind sixteenth-century Flemish proverbs. Her published articles on this topic include ‘She Hangs the Blue Cloak Over Her Husband: The World of Human Follies in Proverbial Art’ and ‘Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs and Similar Proverbs in Traditional Japanese Art’. Mori co-curated the exhibition The World of Bruegel in Black and White in Japan, writing the main catalogue commentaries and chapters including ‘The Iconography of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Temperance’ (with English translation). For her complete bibliography, see . Jan Muylle (PhD in Art History, KU Leuven, 1986) is Emeritus Professor at Ghent University. He has written on Pieter Bruegel with a focus on biographies of genre-painters and the reception of their work in literature and theory. He has examined so-called tronies and also published articles about the relationship between country houses and topographic landscape drawings around Antwerp, c. 1545–1650. Recently, the inventory of Count Antoine of Arenberg, alias ‘père Charles de Bruxelles’ (1617), offered the opportunity to study art and science in the collections of princely Count Charles of Arenberg (De Gulden Passer, 94, 2016, pp. 7–86). Uta Neidhardt studied History of Art and Art of Classical Antiquity and Archaeology at Leipzig University, which she completed in 1989 with a dissertation titled ‘Gotthardt Kuehl and Dresden Painting from 1895 to 1915’. She started her professional career as Scientific Assistant at Dresden State Art Collections, Collection of Prints and Drawings. From 1991 onwards she was Curator of Dutch and Flemish Paintings at Dresden State Art Collections, Old Masters Picture Gallery, and held teaching positions at Technical University Dresden and Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1996–9 and 2008–9. In 2009 she was Acting Director of the Dresden Old Masters Picture Gallery and since 2010 she has been Senior Curator at the Old Masters Picture Gallery. In the period 2013–16 she was responsible for the Dresden panel paintings project as part of the Getty’s Panel Paintings Initiative. Neidhardt has curated exhibitions on Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan van Eyck and the fifteenth century, Dutch fijnschilders and Flemish landscape painting. She has published on Early Netherlandish, Dutch and Flemish painting of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, Dresden painting of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and contemporary art of Saxony, provenance research and war art losses. Mirjam Neumeister studied Art History, German Studies and Urban Design at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. The subject of her doctorate, awarded in 1999, was ‘Nocturnal scenes with artificial light in 16th and 17th-century Netherlandish paintings and prints. Iconographic and colouristic aspects’. From 1999 to 2007 she was a curatorial fellow, a research fellow and a curatorial assistant at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, where she worked on the scholarly catalogue of Dutch Baroque paintings from 1550 to 1800 (author of volumes 1 and 3) as well as various exhibition projects. Since November 2007, Neumeister has been Head of Flemish Baroque Painting at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen/Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Major projects related to the Bruegel family and Anthony van Dyck, as well as several collection catalogues. Amy Orrock is Senior Curator at Compton Verney Art Gallery & Park (UK). She has published and lectured widely on Northern European art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and has contributed to projects at the Royal Collection Trust and the National Portrait Gallery, London. She completed her BA Hons at University College London and received her Masters and PhD from the University of Edinburgh, with a dissertation on Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Children’s Games. In 2017 she co-curated the exhibition Bruegel: Defining A Dynasty at The Holburne Museum in Bath.

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Eva Ortner was apprenticed as a frame gilder and was awarded distinction for her final examination in 1988. She studied Art History, Art Education, Business and Organization Psychology at the LudwigMaximilians-Universität Munich, graduating with a master’s degree in 1995. In 2002 she graduated in Conservation-Restoration, Art Technology and Conservation Science at the Technische Universität Munich. From 2002 until 2005, Ortner worked as a freelance paintings conservator and was employed as research assistant at the Chair of Conservation-Restoration, Art Technology and Conservation Science at the Technische Universität Munich. Since November 2005, she has been Paintings Conservator at the Doerner Institut, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, where she has been the Head of the Conservation Department since 2010. Since 2019 she has been Director of the Doerner Institut. Gianluca Pastorelli received a PhD in Conservation Science from the University of Bologna after completing a project on the degradation of archaeological Baltic amber. Before joining the scientific staff at the Statens Museum for Kunst – Centre for Art Technological Studies and Conservation (SMK-CATS) in 2018, he held a research assistant position at the Institute for Sustainable Heritage of University College London, where he focused his research on the characterization of polymer materials, and worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts in Chicago, where he gained experience in investigating materials related to artefacts. Marie Postec is a conservator-restorer of paintings. In 1991 she obtained a master’s degree in History of Art and Museology at the École du Louvre, Paris, and in 1996 a master’s degree in Painting Conservation and Restoration at ENSAV La Cambre, Brussels. Since 1997 she has worked as a restorer of paintings at the Royal Institute of Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels, at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), and for other museums. Since 2010 she has been part of the KIK-IRPA Ghent Altarpiece research and restoration project. Between 2012 and 2017 she was involved in the restoration treatment of Memling’s Christ between singing and music making angels (KMSKA). Since 1999 she has taught old master painting techniques at the Institut National du Patrimoine, Paris, and at ENSAV La Cambre, Brussels. Her research and teaching focuses on historical painting techniques and materials. In September 2017 she became Head of the Conservation-Restoration Department at ENSAV La Cambre. Steven Saverwyns obtained his PhD degree in Science–Chemistry at Ghent University in 2000. The same year he started working in the Laboratory Department of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels. He is now Head of the Painting Laboratory and responsible for analytical support and research on paintings. His studies focus on both old master paintings and modern works. Saverwyns also has a wide expertise in the material-technical study of paintings within the framework of authenticity studies. Jan Schmidt finished his professional training as a conservator of paintings in 1989 at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, having followed the Conservation and Restoration of Paintings and Polychrome Wooden Sculptures programme. Beforehand he carried out internships in the paintings conservation departments of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Doerner Institut, Munich, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In 1989, Schmidt joined the Doerner Institut, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, as Associate Conservator for the Alte Pinakothek’s collection, becoming its Head of Conservation in 2009. Major projects related to conservation and technical studies on Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Jacopo Tintoretto, Peter Paul Rubens, the Bruegel family and Anthony van Dyck.

Larry Silver is the Farquhar Professor, emeritus, of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania. He previously taught at Berkeley and Northwestern and served as President of the College Art Association and the Historians of Netherlandish Art. His publications include studies of Pieter Bruegel (2011) as well as Rubens and Velázquez (2014), Dürer (2010), Rembrandt’s Faith (2009), Emperor Maximilian  I (2008), Hieronymus Bosch (2006) and Peasant Scenes and Landscapes (2006). He has organized print exhibitions on oversized prints (2008) and professional engravers in Antwerp and Haarlem (1993). Aaron Steele has been the Imaging Specialist/Photographer for the Conservation Department at the Detroit Institute of Arts since 2014. He has more than fifteen years of experience in cultural heritage, museum and art conservation imaging. His undergraduate and graduate education was at Indiana University where he focused on Art History, Art Librarianship and Art Education. Prior to his current position at the DIA, he worked as Associate Photographer at the Northeast Document Conservation Center, as Conservation Department Photographer and Imaging Specialist at Indianapolis Museum of Art and as Photographer for the Lilly Rare Books Library at Indiana University. He has also worked at the Indiana University Art Museum in the curatorial, registrar and education departments. Marina Van Bos is a senior scientist, specialized in the study of painting techniques and materials. She studied Chemistry at the University of Ghent, where she obtained her MA and PhD (1990). She has worked in the Laboratory Department of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels since 1991. Her research activities are split between analysing painted finishing layers of murals, monumental decoration (interior and exterior) and wallpaper, and the identification of the various components in pictorial layers and/or inks of manuscripts or paint on paper and leather, mostly using noninvasive techniques. She is currently also involved in the BRAIN-be ArtGarden research project. Bruno Vandermeulen is head of the Digitization and Document Delivery Department of KU Leuven Libraries. He obtained an MFA in Photography at Sint-Lukas, Brussels. He has wide experience in digitization and imaging projects in the field of cultural heritage at local, national and international levels. The Imaging Lab, a centre of expertise on digitization and art-technical imaging of documentary heritage, is involved in the development of imaging methodologies and strategies. Joris Van Grieken is an art historian and active as Keeper at the Print Room at KBR (Royal Library of Belgium), the largest graphic collection in the country. He specializes in the history of sixteenth-century printmaking and drawing, focusing on Antwerp as a production centre and a hub for international print distribution. He has done extensive research on print publishing and print consumption, focusing on the figure of Hieronymus Cock, the publisher of Bruegel. Daan van Heesch is a Postdoctoral Fellow at KU Leuven and affiliated with Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art. He received his PhD in Art History from KU Leuven in 2019 with a dissertation on the cross-cultural receptions of Hieronymus Bosch in the Habsburg world (1500–1700). His work on Bosch, Antwerp art and the global reach of prints has appeared in journals such as Master Drawings, Oud Holland, Print Quarterly and Simiolus. He is the co-editor (with Robrecht Janssen and Jan Van der Stock) of the volume Netherlandish Art and Luxury Goods in Renaissance Spain (Harvey Miller Publishers, London/Turnhout, 2018). Jørgen Wadum was Director of the Centre for Art Technological Studies and Conservation (CATS), a research infrastructure between Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK), The National Museum of Den-

CONTRIBUTO RS

mark, and the School of Conservation (KADK), Copenhagen (2011– 2020). He was full Professor in Conservation & Restoration at the University of Amsterdam (2012–16). From 2005 to 2017 he was Director of Conservation at SMK and from 1990 to 2004 he was Chief Conservator at the Mauritshuis, The Hague. He has published and lectured extensively internationally on a multitude of subjects related to technical art history and other issues of importance for the understanding and preservation of our cultural heritage. In April 2020 he initiated his own private practice, Wadum Art Technological Studies (WATS). Lieve Watteeuw is head of the Book Heritage Lab – KU Leuven and a senior staff member of Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art. Her academic activity since 1989 has concentrated on medieval manuscript illumination, book production, prints and drawings, art-technical research and conservation-preservation of graphic

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materials. Watteeuw lectures in the Faculty of Arts and is a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Research Unit of History of the Church. She coordinates the research on the Codex Eyckensis, the BRAIN-be ArtGarden and Fingerprint Projects, and the 3Pi Project (FWO, Diagnosis of Papyrus – Parchment – Paper Manuscripts through Advanced Imaging, 2018–2022). Yao-Fen You is Senior Curator and Head of Product Design and Decorative Arts at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. She was previously Associate Curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where she worked for over ten years. You holds a PhD and master’s degree in the history of art from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of California, Berkeley. As of May 2020, she (also) assumed the position of Acting Deputy Director of Curatorial.

Photographic Credits

Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of the illustrations in this volume. Copyright holders whom we have been unable to reach or to whom inaccurate acknowledgement has been made are invited to contact the KIK-IRPA. If you believe any material has been included in this publication improperly, despite all due care taken, please contact us.

Brussels, © Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels: figs 8.4; 8.5; 8.14; 8.15; 8.18; 8.19; 19.2; 27.3 Brussels, © Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels: figs 1.13; 4.1; 4.4a; 4.5; 4.6; 4.7a; 4.8a; 4.9a; 4.10a; 4.11a; 5.12; 11.15; 16.17; 18.13; 23.1; 23.2; 23.3; Addendum, fig. 2b Cambridge, MA, President and Fellows of Harvard College: figs 5.9a; 5.9b

Acolman, Mexico, © Museo Virreinal de Acolman: fig. 25.12

Cleveland, OH, © The Cleveland Museum of Art: fig. 16.6

Amsterdam, © Rijksmuseum: figs 7.10; 20.3; 20.6; 25.3; 25.8

Copenhagen, © Statens Museum for Kunst: figs 7.1; 7.2; 7.3a–b; 7.4a– b; 7.5; 7.7a–b; 7.9

Antwerp, © Erfgoedbibliotheek Hendrik Conscience, Antwerp: fig. 1.7 Antwerp, © MAS, Antwerp: fig. 1.6 Antwerp, © Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp: figs 1.3; 7.11 Antwerp, © Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp – photo Rik Klein Gotink: figs 9.4; 9.5b; 9.6b; 9.8b; 10.1; 10.2; 10.9; 10.13b; photo Marie Postec: figs 10.8a–c; 10.10a–c; 10.12b Antwerp, © Rubenshuis, Antwerp: fig. 11.6 Antwerp, © Standaard Uitgeverij, by permission of T. Horsten: fig. 1.2 Berlin, © Berlin, Gemäldegalerie: fig. 18.1 Berlin, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie – photo Christoph Schmidt: figs 9.12b; 9.12d

Detroit, © 2015, Detroit Institute of Arts Conservation Department, all rights reserved: figs 5.13a–c; 9.2; 9.3; 9.5a; 9.6a; 9.7a; 9.8a; 9.9; 9.10a–c; 9.11; 9.12a; 9.12c; 10.11a; 10.12a; 10.13a Detroit, © 2018, Detroit Institute of Arts, all rights reserved: figs 5.13c; 9.1; 16.8; 16.9 Dresden, © Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, SKD, photo: Elke Estel/ Hans-Peter Klut: figs 12.1; 12.9 Dresden, © Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, SKD, photo: Christoph Schölzel: figs 12.2; 12.3a–b; 12.4; 12.6a; 12.7a; 12.8a; 12.11 Dresden, © Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, SKD, photo: Christoph Schölzel/Konstanze Krüger: figs 12.10a–c Florence, © Josse/Scala, Florence: figs 15.5, 18.11; 20.1; 20.2

Berlin, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett: fig. 8.12

Ghent, © Ghent University Library: figs 17.4; 17.5; 17.6; 17.7

Brussels, © Art & History Museum: figs 25.12; 25.13

Glasgow, © Hunterian Art Gallery: fig. 18.3

Brussels, © infographics: van der Sloot E. for Fraiture P., 2007: fig. 10.4

© Glatigny, Jean-Albert, diagram: fig. 2.2c

Brussels, © KIK-IRPA, Brussels: cover; figs 1.4; 1.5; 1.11; 2.1; 2.2a–b; 2.4b; 2.5a–b; 2.6a–c; 2.7a–b; 2.8a–b; 2.9a–c; 2.10a–b; 2.11; 2.12a–b; 2.12d–e; 2.16; 2.18a; 3.1a–b; 3.2a–b; 3.3a; 3.4a–b; 3.5a–b; 3.6; 3.7a–d, 3.9a–d; 3.10a–d; 4.2; 4.3a; 4.4b; 4.7b; 4.8b; 5.2b; 5.2e; 5.3b; 5.3e; 5.4b–c; 5.8a–b; 6.2; 6.3; 6.4; 6.5a–b; 6.6c; 6.6d; 6.7c–d; 6.8b–c; 6.9b–c; 6.10d–e; 6.11e; 6.12; 6.13b–c; 6.14b–c; 6.15b–c; 6.16b; 6.16d; 6.17a– b; 10.11b; 15.3; 15.4; 18.8; 18.9; 20.4; 20.5; 20.8; 23.6; Addendum, figs 1, 2d, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15a–b, 16a–b (Dulle Griet images); pp. 502–9

Hasselt, © Slegers, Bilzen: fig. 26.5

Brussels © KIK-IRPA, Brussels, Dendrochronology Laboratory (Pascale Fraiture): figs 2.3; 10.3; 10.5; 10.6 Brussels, © KIK-IRPA, Brussels, Imagery (Sophie De Potter): fig. 2.19 Brussels, © KIK-IRPA, Brussels, Painting Analysis Laboratory (Steven Saverwyns): figs 2.4a; 2.4c–d; 2.12c; 2.13a–d; 2.14a–b; 2.15a–d; 2.16a–b; 2.17a–b; 2.18b–e; 3.3b; 3.6 Brussels, © KIK-IRPA, Brussels, Paper, Leather and Parchment Laboratory (Marina Van Bos): figs 27.8; 27.9c

© Honig, Elizabeth: fig. 11.12 © Kavaler, Ethan M.: figs 16.1; 16.2; 16.3; 16.4; 16.5, 16.7; 16.14; 16.16; 16.19; 16.20 Leuven, © KU  Leuven: figs 27.1; 27.2; 27.4; 27.5; 27.6; 27.7a–b; 27.9a–b Linz, © Linz, Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum: fig. 16.18 London, © Christie’s, December 2012: fig. 14.11 London © Sotheby’s: figs 5.1b; 5.2c; 5.3c; 5.4d; 5.5c; 5.6c; 5.7b; 5.14a(c); 5.14b(b) London, © The National Gallery, London: figs 4.11b; 18.4; 18.5; 18.6; 18.7 London, © The Trustees of the British Museum: figs 8.8; 8.9; 8.11; 8.17

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PHOTOGRAPHIC CREDITS

London, © Victoria and Albert Museum, London: fig. 3.8

The Hague, © Mauritshuis, The Hague: figs 11.2; 11.9; 14.9; 14.10

Los Angeles, © The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles: figs 1.8; 14.6; 14.7; 14.16; 18.10

The Hague, © RKD, The Hague: fig. 25.10

Lyon, © Lyon MBA – Photo Gilles Alonso: fig. 14.3

The Hague, © The Hague, RKD, Max J. Friedländer collection, inv. no. 2: fig. 19.1

Lyon, © Lyon MBA – Photo Alain Basset: figs 14.2; 14.3

The Hague, © The Hague, Royal Library: fig. 8.10

© Maclot, Petra: figs 22.1; 22.4; 22.5; 22.6; 22.7; 22.8

Tokyo, © Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art: fig. 18.12

Madrid, © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado: figs 1.14; 4.9b; 4.10b; 6.1; 6.6a (annotations by Christina Currie); 6.6b; 6.6d; 6.7a–b; 6.8a; 6.9a; 6.10a–c (annotations by Christina Currie); 6.11a–d (annotations by Christina Currie); 6.13a; 6.14a; 6.15a; 6.16a; 6.16c; 11.4; 14.17; Addendum, fig. 2c

Troyes, © Troyes, Musée d’Art moderne: fig. 21.8

Madrid, © Museo Nacional del Prado – Photo Maite Jover: fig. 26.6

© Van Heesch, Daan: figs 25.1; 25.2; 25.4; 25.5; 25.6; 25.7; 25.11 Veste Coburg, © Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg: fig. 8.24 Vienna, © The Albertina Museum, Vienna: fig. 1.12

Montreal, © Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts: fig. 11.8

Vienna, © KHM-Museumsverband: figs 14.13; 14.14; 15.2; 23.5; 23.7; 26.3

Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen: figs 8.2; 8.22; 13.2a; 13.3; 13.4; 13.5; 13.6; 13.7

© Wadum, Jørgen: figs 26.4

Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Doerner Institut: figs 13.1a–f; 13.2b; 13.3b–c; 13.4b–c; 13.5b; 13.6b; 13.7b; 26.2

Welshpool, © Trustees of the Powis Castle Estate: figs 14.1; 14.4; 14.8; 14.12

Munich, © bpk/ Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen: figs 12.5; 12.6b; 12.7b; 12.8b

Quoted Images

Munich, © Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich: fig. 24.1

Christie’s, London, 4 July 1997, auction cat., no. 44: fig. 8.23

Naples, © Laboratorio fotografico della Soprintendenza alle Gallerie – Napoli (4 March 1969, neg. no. 41476): fig. 4.3b

Christie’s, London, 11 December 1981, auction cat., no. 126: fig. 8.21

Narbonne, © Jean Lepage, Palais des Archevêques, Ville de Narbonne: fig. 14.15 New Haven, © New Haven, Yale Center for British Art: fig. 11.3 New York, © The Frick Collection: fig. 18.14 New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art: figs 5.11a; 5.11b; 8.1; 8.3; 8.6; 8.7; 11.1; 11.5; 11.7; 14.12a; 17.1; 17.2; 17.3; 20.7; Addendum, figs 12; 15c Oxford, © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford: fig. 1.1 Paris, © bpk/RMN-Grand Palais, Jean-Gilles Berizzi: fig. 12.12 Paris, © Paris, Bibliothèque national de France: figs 8.13; 21.1; 21.2; 21.3; 21.4; 21.5; 21.6; 21.7 Paris, © Paris, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts – photo Jean-Michel Lapelerie: fig. 25.9

BRCP (Bosch Research and Conservation Project): fig. 1.9

Gravell Watermark Archive, : fig. 3.2c Inside Bruegel/Vienna, KHM-Museumsverband: figs 4.12b; 5.1a; 5.2a; 5.2d (annotations by Christina Currie); 5.3a; 5.3d (annotations by Christina Currie); 5.4a; 5.5a–b (annotations by Christina Currie); 5.6a–b (annotations by Christina Currie); 5.7a (annotations by Christina Currie); 5.9c; 5.11c; 5.14a(a–b); 5.14b(a); 7.6; 7.8a–b; 8.16; 16.10; 16.11; 16.12; 16.13; 16.15; Addendum, fig. 2a Old Master Drawings, auction cat., London (The Matthiesen Gallery), 1963, cat. no. 57, fig. 30: fig. 24.2 Reine de Bertier de Sauvigny, Jacob et Abel Grimmer, Catalogue Raisonné, Tournai, 1991, p. 166, pl. 33: fig. 8.20 Wikimedia Commons, : fig. 1.10 Wikimedia Commons – Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence: fig. 10.7

Paris, © Paris, Musée du Louvre: fig. 5.10 Paris, © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) – photo Franck Raux: fig. 14.5 Paris, © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) – photo Martine Beck-Coppola: fig. 23.4 Paris–Geneva, Image courtesy of De Jonckheere Gallery: fig. 15.1 Saint Petersburg, © Saint Petersburg, Hermitage: fig. 11.11 Speyer, © Speyer, Historisches Museum der Pfalz: fig. 12.13 Stockholm, ©, Nationalmuseum – photo Cecilia Heisser: fig. 26.1

Wikipedia Commons – Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0): fig. 18.2 Documents and Manuscripts Archief Onroerend Erfgoed Antwerpen: fig. 22.3 FelixArchief/Antwerp City Archives, Gilden en Ambachten, GA 4346, 13-11-1617: fig. 26.7 Stadsarchief Antwerpen, Glasplaat#2740: fig. 22.2