The Image of the City in Early Netherlandish Painting 1400-1550: Representations of Urbanity in Early Netherlandish Painting (Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800)) 9782503579825, 2503579825

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The Image of the City in Early Netherlandish Painting (1400-1550)

SEUH Studies in European Urban History (1100–1800)

Volume 44 Series Editors Marc Boone Anne-Laure Van Bruaene Ghent University

The Image of the City in Early Netherlandish Painting (1400-1550)

Jelle De Rock

F

Cover illustration: Workshop of Rogier Van der Weyden, A Man Reading (detail), ca. 1450. © National Gallery, London.

© 2019, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2019/0095/27 ISBN 978-2-503-57982-5 E-ISBN 978-2-503-57983-2 DOI 10.1484/M.SEUH-EB.5.115221 ISSN 1780-3241 E-ISSN 2294-8368 Printed on acid-free paper.

for Hanne and Isolde

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

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Acknowledgements 19 Introduction 21 1. A brief historiographical overview 23 2. Conceptual framework 28 2.1. The pictorial turn: content analysis and semiotics 28 2.2. The spatial turn: the production of space 32 2.3. Cognitive geography 34 3. Panel painting and the Northern Renaissance: patronage and 36 social context 3.1. Panel painting and urban culture 37 4. A quantitative approach: corpus and methodology 43 5. Outline of the book 47 Chapter I. Religious space. The city as devotional theatre 49 1. The city as intellectual and religious concept 52 2. The city as religious space in early Netherlandish panel painting 57 2.1. The city as religious theatre: Simultanbilder 58 2.2. The terrestrial Jerusalem 67 2.3. The celestial Jerusalem 74 Chapter II. Economic space. The pulse of the city 85 1. A ‘bourgeois’ proximity to urban daily life? 88 2. Quantifying depictions of the city as economic space 94 2.1. Interior views: street views throughout early 95 Netherlandish painting a. The Master of Flémalle, Jan Van Eyck and the 97 domestic street view b. Petrus Christus 102 c. Rogier Van der Weyden 105 d. Hans Memling 109 e. The anonymous masters of the end of the fifteenth century 114 f. A general trend towards idealisation 118 2.2. Exterior views: the city and its hinterland 122

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2.3.

The sixteenth century: harbour views, genre painting and the primacy of Antwerp 3. Conclusion

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Chapter III. Monumental space. The city as a stage 145 1. The city as monumental space 147 2. The city as a socio-political arena 148 2.1. The major features of the urban monumental space 149 2.1.1. The belfry 149 2.1.2. The town hall 157 2.1.3. The exoskeleton of the city: walls and gates 172 2.1.4. Towers as social markers in the urban arena: the Bruges 178 towerscapes (1475-1510) 3. The ducal perspective on the urban theatre 196 3.1. The court and the city: Brussels 208 4. Idealisation and theatricalisation: towards a conclusion 213 Chapter IV. Looking Away from the City. Urban Depictions of a Rural Ideal 1. Landscape in early Netherlandish art 2. The exegesis of landscape motifs 3. Landscape motifs in early Netherlandish painting revisited 3.1. Town versus countryside: dichotomy or symbiosis? 3.2. The countryside a as a place of recreation and mental retreat 3.3. The social ideal of the seigniorial countryside 3.4. The seigniorial countryside in early Flemish painting 4. Conclusion

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Chapter V. Towards an Identifiable City. Town Portraits of the Sixteenth Century 1. The hesitant development of identifiable city views 2. Between continuity and change: towards an ‘urban cartography’? 3. The first Netherlandish profile views and the primacy of Antwerp 4. A rising viewpoint: towards the perspective plan 5. Conclusion

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General conclusion

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Bibliography 307 Archival Sources 307 Edited Sources 307 Secondary Literature 307 Annex 1. List of panel paintings with Bruges towerscapes (1475-1510) 339 Colour plates

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List of Illustrations

Introduction Figure 0.1: Jan Van Eyck, The Madonna with Chancellor Rolin, ca. 1435, Musée du Louvre, Paris. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels. Figure 0.2: Rogier Van der Weyden, Bladelin Triptych (or Middelburg Altarpiece), 1445-1448, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. © Photo Jörg P. Anders.

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Chapter I Figure 1.1: Workshop Jan Van Eyck / Petrus Christus, Madonna with Jan Vos (or Exeter Madonna), 1445-1450, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz.© Photo Jörg P. Anders. Figure 1.2: Hans Memling, Saint John Altarpiece (detail), 1474-1480, Musea Brugge / Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Hugo Maertens Figure 1.3: Anonymous illumination, The Heavenly Jerusalem, in ‘Liber Floridus’ (Lambert of Saint Omer), ca. 1120, Ghent University Library, Ghent. Figure 1.4: Anonymous, The Municipal Seal of Tongeren, 1231, Municipal Archives, Tongeren. Figure 1.5: Franco-Flemish miniaturist, Cité de Dieu, Cité terrestre, frontispiece in Augustine, ‘Cité de Dieu’ (trans. by Raoul de Presles), Paris, 1469-1473, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. Français 18, fol. 3v. Source gallica.bnf.fr/BnF. Figure 1.6: Hans Memling, Scenes from the Passion of Christ, 1470-1471, Galleria Sabauda, Turin. Source Wikimedia Commons. Figure 1.7: Master of the Turin Adoration (Bruges), Christ Carrying the Cross, with the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple, the Last Supper, Christ Crowned with Thorns, the Flagellation, “Ecce Homo”, the Agony in the Garden, and the Crucifixion, ca. 1500, Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, Cat. 338.

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Figure 1.8: Master of the Life of Saint Catherine (Brussels), The Life of Saint Catherine, 1480-1495, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel. Figure 1.9: Renward Cysat, Plan of the Passion Play in Luzern (second day), 1583, Zentralbibliothek, Luzern. Figure 1.10: Gillis Mostaert, Ecce Homo and the Antwerp City Hall, ca. 1560, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. Figure 1.11: Workshop Jan Van Eyck, Three Marys at the Tomb, 14301435, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Figure 1.12: Iconography of the Holy Temple, Details from: A. workshop Jan Van Eyck, Crucifixion, 1430-1440, Metropolitan Museum, New York; B. workshop Jan Van Eyck, Three Marys at the Tomb, 14301435, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; C. workshop Jan Van Eyck, Crucifixion, 1440-1450, Galleria Giorgio Franchetti (Ca’ d’Oro), Venice; D. workshop Rogier Van der Weyden, Sforza Triptych, 1450-1460, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels; E. Rogier Van der Weyden, The Entombment of Christ, 1463-1464, Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze; F. Petrus Christus, Nativity, ca. 1450, National Gallery, Washington; G. Dirk Bouts, Adoration of the Magi (the ‘Pearl of Brabant’), 1454-1462, Alte Pinokothek, Munich; H. Hans Memling, Adriaan Reins Triptych, 1480, Musea Brugge / Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges; I. Gerard David, Nativity, 1483-1485, Szépmüvészeti Museum, Budapest; J. Gerard David, Lamentation, ca. 1490, Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Figure 1.13.: Franco-Flemish miniaturist, Jerusalem and the Holy Land, in Jean Miélot, ‘Avis directif pour le passage d’Outre-Mer’, 14501475, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, ms. fr. 9087, fol. 85v. Source gallica.bnf.fr/BnF. Figure 1.14: Workshop Jan Van Eyck, Virgin and Child with Saints and Jan Vos (Frick Madonna), 1441-1443, Frick Collection, New York. Source Wikimedia Commons. Figure 1.15: Jan Van Eyck, The Ghent Altarpiece (exterior wings), ca. 1432, Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Dominique Provost. Figure 1.16: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, The Merode Altarpiece, 1425-1430, Metropolitan Museum, New York. Figure 1.16a: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, The Merode Altarpiece: detail of the left panel with donors, 1425-1430, Metropolitan Museum, New York. Figure 1.16b: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, The Merode Altarpiece: detail of the right panel with Joseph, 1425-1430, Metropolitan Museum, New York. Figure 1.17: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, Madonna with Firescreen (Salting Madonna), 1440, National Gallery, London. Creative Commons CC BY NC ND.

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Figure 1.18: Epigone of Petrus Christus, Madonna with Child, 14501460, Galleria Sabauda, Turin. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels. Figure 1.19: Rogier Van der Weyden, Saint Luke drawing the Virgin, ca. 1435, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Figure 1.20: Bruges miniaturist, Saint Augustine teaching, frontispiece of Augustine, ‘Cité de Dieu’ (trans. by Raoul de Presles), ca. 1445, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, ms. 9015, fol. 1.

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Chapter II Figure 2.1: Gilles de Rome, Livre du gouvernement des princes, France, early 16th century, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, ms. fr. 5062, fol. 149v. Source gallica.bnf.fr/BnF. Figure 2.2.: Loyset Liédet, Execution of Guillaume Sans, in Jean Froissart, ‘Chroniques’, 1470-1475, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, ms. fr. 2644, fol. 1r. Source gallica.bnf.fr/BnF. Figure 2.3: Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in his Shop, 1449, The Metropolitan Museum, New York, Robert Lehman Collection. Figure 2.4: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, Nativity, 1433-1435, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Dijon. Source Wikimedia Commons. Figure 2.5: Rogier Van der Weyden, Columba Altarpiece (detail), 14501458, Alte Pinakothek, Munich. CC BY-SA 4.0. Figure 2.6: Rogier Van der Weyden, Miraflores Altarpiece, ca. 1440, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. © Photo Christoph Schmidt. Figure 2.7: Rogier Van der Weyden, The Entombment of Christ (detail), 1463-1464, Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze. Source Artstor. Figure 2.8: Hans Memling, Jan Floreins Triptych (detail the central panel with Adoration), 1479, Musea Brugge / Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels. Figure 2.9: Hans Memling, Saint Veronica, 1480-1483, Samuel H. Kress Collection, Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington. Figure 2.10: Dirk Bouts, Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament, 1464-1468, Museum M, Leuven. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels. Figure 2.11: Gerard David, Marriage at Cana (detail), ca. 1501, Musée du Louvre, Paris. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels. Figure 2.12: Master of Saint Barbara (Brussels), The Life of Saint Barbara (detail of a typical Rogierian street view), ca. 1480, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels. Figure 2.13: Master of the View of Saint Gudula (Brussels), Clothing the Naked, ca. 1470, Museum Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid. © Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

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Figure 2.14: Master of San Lorenzo della Costa, Della Costa Altarpiece, 1499, San Lorenzo della Costa Church, Santa Margherita Ligure. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels. Figure 2.15: Master of the View of Saint Gudula, Virgin and Child, with Mary Magdalen and donatrix, ca. 1475, Grand Curtius Museum, Liège. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels. Figure 2.15a: Master of the View of Saint Gudula, Virgin and Child, with Mary Magdalen and donatrix (detail background), ca. 1475, Grand Curtius Museum, Liège. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels. Figure 2.16: Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula (environment), Portrait of a Man, 1480, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte. © KIK/ IRPA, Brussels. Figure 2.17: Hans Memling, Virgin and Child and Maarten Van Nieuwenhove (detail donor), 1487, Musea Brugge / SintJanshospitaal, Bruges. Figure 2.18: Rogier Van der Weyden, Saint George and the Dragon (detail), 1432-1435, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington. Figure 2.19: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Virgo inter Virgines (detail), ca. 1488, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Figure 2.20: Anonymous Master (Northern Netherlands?), Feeding the Multitude, ca. 1490, Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History, Münster. © LWL – Museum für Kunst und Kultur (Westfälisches Landesmuseum). Figure 2.21: Goswin Van der Weyden, Detail from the scenes of the life of Saint Dymphna, oil on panel, 1503-1505, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. © KIK-IRPA, Brussels. Figure 2.22a: Jan Provoost, Saint Nicholas and Saint Godelieve with Donors, 1515-1521, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Hugo Maertens. Figure 2.22b: Jan Provoost, Death and the Miser, 1515-1521, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Source Wikimedia Commons. Figure 2.23: Joos van Cleve, Crucifixion with Donor (detail), ca. 1520, Metropolitan Museum, New York. Figure 2.24: Adriaan Isenbrant, Virgin and Child with Portrait of a Donor (detail of the right panel with a member of the Hillensberger family), 1513, Lowe Art Museum, Miami. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels. Figure 2.25: Jan Gossaert, Portrait of a Merchant, ca. 1530, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Figure 2.26: Cornelis Engelbrechtsz., Portrait of a Couple, (detail donor) 1518, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Figure 2.27: Pieter Pourbus, Double Portrait of Jan Van Eyewerve and Jacquemyne Buuck (detail of the male donor), 1551, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Hugo Maertens.

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Figure 2.28: Anonymous Master, Saint Francis and the Cloth Market in ‘s Hertogenbosch, ca. 1530, Noordbrabants Museum, ‘s Hertogenbosch. 140 Chapter III Figure 3.1: Master of the Joseph Sequence, Affligem Altarpiece (panel with Deploration and Entombment), ca. 1495, Royal Museum of 153 Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Source Wikimedia Commons. Figure 3.2: Anonymous Flemish Miniaturist, The Battle of Beverhoutsveld (1382), in Jean Froissart, ‘Chroniques’ (Breslauer Froissart), 1464, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer 154 Kultubesitz, Berlin. Figure 3.3: Pieter De Keysere, Woodcut of the Ghent cityscape surrounded by the coats of arms of the thirty-one Ghent lineages, first woodcut out of a series of three, 1524, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 155 Rotterdam, Prentenkabinet, BdH n° 1429. Figure 3.4: Anonymous Bruges Master, A Miracle of Saint Anthony of Padua, ca. 1500, Prado, Madrid. © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado. 159 Figure 3.5: Dirk Bouts, Justice of Emperor Otto III (detail from the Ordeal by Fire), 1471-1482, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, 162 Brussels. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel. Figure 3.6a: Gerard David, Judgement of Cambyses (the Bribery and Arrestation of Sisamnes), 1498, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Source 163 Wikimedia Commos. Figure 3.6b: Gerard David, Judgement of Cambyses (the Flaying of Sisamnes), Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Source Wikimedia Commons. 164 Figure 3.7: Anonymous Italian Painter (Pierro della Francesca / Luciano Laurana?), La città ideale, 1480-1490, The Walters Art 171 Gallery, Baltimore. Source Wikimedia Commons. Figure 3.8: Master of the View of Saint Gudula, Resurrection (detail), 179 ca. 1490, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Figure 3.9: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Lamentation (detail), ca. 1485, Institute of Arts, Minneapolis. © Bridgeman Art Library. 183 Figure 3.10: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Saint Nicolas Altarpiece (detail central panel), 1501-1505, Groeningemuseum, 185 Bruges. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel. Figure 3.11: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Madonna of the Rose 187 Garden, ca. 1480, Institute of Art, Detroit. Figure 3.12: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with the Defeated Emperor, 1475-1500, Museum of Art, Philadelphia. 191

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Figure 3.13: Gerard David, Madonna and Child (Wrightsman Madonna), 1515-1520, Metropolitan Museum, New York. Figure 3.14: Master of the View of Saint Gudula, The Sermon of Saint Gery, 1475-1500, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Figure 3.15: Simon Bening (workshop), Jousting in the City, in ‘Hennessy Hours’, ca. 1530, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, ms. II 158, fol. 6v. Figure 3.16: Anonymous Brussels Tapestry, The Tournament of Antwerp, 1494-1498, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes. © Réunion des Musées Nationaux et du Grand Palais. Figure 3.17: Jean Tavernier, Presentation miniature, in David Aubert, ‘Chroniques et Conquêtes de Charlemagne’, 1458-1460, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, ms. 9066 fol. 11. Figure 3.18: Loyset Liédet, Philip the Goods visits the copyist Wauquelin, in ‘Chroniques de Hainaut’, 1468, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, ms. 9244 fol. 3. Figure 3.19: Anonymous Miniaturist, Chapter Meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece, 1473, in ‘Statutes of the Golden Fleece’, Royal Library, The Hague, 76 E 10 fol. 5v. Graph 3.3: Setting of the presentation miniatures of Philip the Good and Charles the Bold (in %) Figure 3.20: Master of the Joseph Sequence, Portrait of Philip the Handsome and His Wife Joan the Mad, ca. 1495, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Figure 3.21: Anonymous Master, The Zuylen Triptych (detail right panel), 1515-1515, Slot Zuylen, Oud-Zuilen. Figure 3.22: Goswin Van der Weyden, The Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, 1515-1520, Metropolitan Museum, New York. Figure 3.23: Gerard David, Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor, 1500-1510, National Gallery, London.

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Chapter IV Figure 4.1: Workshop Rogier Van der Weyden, Lamentation with Figure 4.1: Workshop Rogier Van der Weyden, Lamentation with Pierre de Ranchicourt, bishop of Arras (detail central panel), 1462-1465, Mauritshuis, The Hague (before restoration in 2018). © Mauritshuis, Den Haag. Figure 4.2: Workshop Rogier Van der Weyden, Lamentation with Pierre de Ranchicourt, 1462-1465, Mauritshuis, The Hague, The initial underdrawing as revealed by the infrared reflectogram (emphasis of the structures by Jelle De Rock). Figure 4.3: Workshop of Rogier Van der Weyden, A Man Reading (Saint Ivo?), ca. 1450. © National Gallery, London.

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Figure 4.4: Epigone Dirk Bouts, Trinity Triptych (detail right panel), 1475-1500, Saint Servatius Church, Berg (Kampenhout). © KIK232 IRPA, Brussel. Figure 4.5: Hans Weiditz, Dialogue between Sorrow and Reason, in Francesco Petrarca, ‘Von der Artzney bayder Glück’, Augsburg, 235 1520, London, British Library, ms. C39 H25 fol. 64. Figure 4.6: Jacques Daret, The Arras Altarpiece (detail of the wing with the Visitation), 1433-1435, Gemäldegalerie Staatliche Museen zu 241 Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Photo: Jörg P. Anders. Figure 4.7: Master of the Embroidered Foliage, Portraits of Louis Quarré and Barbe Croesinck, 1481, Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille. 245 © KIK-IRPA, Brussel. Figure 4.8: Anonymous Flemish Master, Saint Amandus and Saint Quirin, 1475-1500, Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel. 247 Figure 4.9: Hans Memling, Triptych of Willem Moreel (detail left wing), 1484, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Photo Hugo Maertens. Source 248 Wikimedia Commons. Figure 4.10: Anonymous Miniaturist, Abbot Viglius Aytta and the Castle of Tillegem, illumination in a book of hours, 1562, private collection. 251 Chapter V Figure 5.1: Anonymous artist / Anton Woensam?, Civitatis Lovaniensis (detail), woodcut, ca. 1540, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, 256 Print Room, Inv. no. S.I.23172. © Royal Library of Belgium. Figure 5.2: Anonymous Brussels Master / Van der Weyden workshop?, The Dream of Pope Sergius, late 15th century, J. Paul Getty Museum, 259 Los Angeles. Figure 5.3: Master of the Guild of St. George, Detail of Guild members with Mechelen towerscape, ca. 1500, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, 261 Antwerp. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel. Figure 5.4: Taddeo di Bartolo, San Gigmignano, 1395, Museo Civico, 262 San Gimignano. Source Wikimedia Commons. Figure 5.5: Anonymous Artist, The Virgin Protecting Siena from the Earthquake of 1466, 1467. Oil on panel. Archivio di Stato, Siena, 264 Italy. © The Bridgeman Art Library. Figure 5.6: Andrea Mantegna, Death of the Virgin, ca. 1460, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado. 265 Figure 5.7: Jacopo de’Barbari, Venetii MD, 1500, woodcut, Museo 266 Correr, Venice. Figure 5.8: Hans Bornemann, The Punishment of the Governor of Ageas, ca. 1445, Sankt Nicolaikirche, Lüneberg. Source Wikimedia Commons. 267

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Figure 5.9: Anonymous Master, Predella with the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (detail), 1411-1414, Wallraf-Richardz-Museum, Cologne. 268 Source Wikimedia Commons. Figure 5.10: Anonymous Miniaturist, Saint Lucius preaches to the people of Augsburg (with the Augsburg skyline in the background), in Hector Mülich, ‘Sigismund Meisterlin’s Stadschronik’, 1457, Staatsund Stadtbibliothek Augsburg Codex Halder 1, fol. 65r. Source 269 Wikimedia Commons. Figure 5.11: Marcus Gheeraerts, Perspective Plan of Bruges, 1562, later coloured print of the original copper engraving, Collection Musea 274 Brugge / Groeningemuseum. Source Wikimedia Commons. Figure 5.12: Cornelis Anthonisz., Perspective Plan of Amsterdam, 1544, 275 woodcut, University of Amsterdam Library, Special Collections. Figure 5.13: Anonymous Artist, Map of the Scheldt (Detail of the City of Antwerp), 1468, ink on paper and linen, States Archives of Belgium, Brussels, Collection Kaarten en Plannen, Inventory no. 351. 277 Figure 5.14: Anonymous artist, Salve Felix Andwerpia, woodcut in ‘Unio pro conservatione rei publice’ (ed. Jan de Gheet), Antwerp, 1515, University Library, Leuven, Inv. no. 2B 2529. © University 278 Library Leuven. Figure 5.15: Anonymous artist, Antwerpia Mercatorum Emporium (detail), woodcut, ca. 1515-1518, Museum Plantin Moretus / Prentenkabinet, Antwerpen, Inv. no. 20839. Photo credit: Peter Maes. 279 Figure 5.16: Anonymous artist, Antwerpia in Brabantia, 1524-1528, copper engraving, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Print Room, Inv. 283 no. RP-P-OB-4318. © Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Figure 5.17: Anonymous artist, Antwerp from the Southeast, engraving in Lodewijck Van Cauckercken, ‘Chronicle of Antwerp’, 1545, City 284 Archives Antwerp. © Felixarchief, Antwerpen. Figure 5.18: Anonymous artist, Ganda Gallie Belgice Civitas Maxima, painting on linen, 1534, City Museum STAM, Ghent. © Lukas – 285 Art in Flanders VZW, photo Hugo Martens. Figure 5.19: Jan Otho, Plan of Ghent (down-scaled version of the plan of 1550), woodcut, 1551, Ghent University Library, Muntenkabinet en Kaartenzaal, Inv. no. BRKZ.KRT.0777. © Ghent University Library. 287 Figure 5.20: Jan Thévelin, Perspective plan of Ypres (detail), woodcut printed by Jacques Destré, 1564. © Collectie Stedelijke Musea, Ypres. 288 Figure 5.21: Virgilius Bononiensis, Urbs Antverpia, 1565, coloured woodcut, Museum Plantin Moretus / Prentenkabinet, 289 Antwerpen, Inv. no. MPM.V.VI.01.002. Figure 5.22: Anonymous artist, Detail from a plan of the city of Antwerp, 16th century, ink on paper, City Archives Antwerp, Inv. no. 12 # 292 11667. © Felixarchief, Antwerpen.

list of illustrations

Figure 5.23: Evert van Schayck, Plan of Utrecht and its judicial territory (‘vrijheid’), oil on panel, 1541, Collectie Centraal Museum, Utrecht. © Image & copyrights CMU / Ernst Moritz.

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Colour Plates Plate 1: Jan Van Eyck, The Madonna with Chancellor Rolin (details of the cityscape in the background), ca. 1435, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Plate 2: Master of the Life of Saint Catherine (Brussels), The Life of Saint Catherine (detail), 1480-1495, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel. Plate 3: Jan Van Eyck, The Ghent Altarpiece: detail of the Annunciation on the exterior wings, ca. 1432, Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Dominique Provost. Plate 4: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, Nativity (detail), 14331435, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Dijon. Source Wikimedia Commons. Plate 5: Rogier Van der Weyden, Miraflores Altarpiece, ca. 1440, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. © Photo Christoph Schmidt. Plate 6: Dirk Bouts, Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament (details of the Last Supper and of Abraham and Melchisedech), 1464-1468, Museum M, Leuven. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels. Plate 7: Master of the View of Saint Gudula (Brussels), Clothing the Naked, ca. 1470, Museum Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid. © Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Plate 8: Jan Provoost, Saint Nicholas and Saint Godelieve with Donors, 1515-1521, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Hugo Maertens. Plate 9: Master of the Joseph Sequence, Affligem Altarpiece (panel with Deploration and Entombment), ca. 1495, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Source Wikimedia Commons. Plate 10: Anonymous Bruges Master, A Miracle of Saint Anthony of Padua (detail), ca. 1500, Prado, Madrid. © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado. Plate 11: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Lamentation (detail), ca. 1485, Institute of Arts, Minneapolis. © Bridgeman Art Library. Plate 12: Goswin Van der Weyden, The Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary (detail of donor), 1515-1520, Metropolitan Museum, New York. Plate 13: Master of Frankfurt, Virgin and Child Enthroned (detail), ca. 1515, Institute of Art, Detroit. Plate 14: Workshop Rogier Van der Weyden, Lamentation with Pierre de Ranchicourt (detail), bishop of Arras, 1462-1465, Mauritshuis, The Hague (before restoration in 2018). © Mauritshuis, Den Haag.

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Plate 15: Epigone Dirk Bouts, Trinity Triptych (right panel), 1475-1500, Saint Servatius Church, Berg (Kampenhout). © KIK-IRPA, Brussel. 354 Plate 16: Jacques Daret, The Arras Altarpiece (detail of the wing with the Visitation), 1433-1435, Gemäldegalerie Staatliche Museen zu 355 Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Photo: Jörg P. Anders. Plate 17: Anonymous Flemish Master, Saint Amandus and Saint Quirin, 356 1475-1500, Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel.

Acknowledgements

This book is the outcome of a FWO-project called ‘The image of the city’, initiated in 2007 and completed in 2011. Most of the research that led to this monograph was done during the period I stayed as PhD-student at the University of Antwerp. None of this could have been possible without the initiative and support of my promotor, Peter Stabel (University of Antwerp) and my co-promotors, Maximilaan Martens and Marc Boone (Ghent University). They were pivotal for my personal coming-of-age, both on the academic and gastronomic level. I would like to thank the many colleagues of the Antwerp Centre for Urban History for animating a phase of my young life to which I often look back with a healthful feeling of nostalgia. I especially mention Jeroen Puttevils, with who I shared for many years an office, and Katrien Lichtert, with who I shared a common research project. The English edition of my dissertation ony gradually came about while working at the History Department of Ghent University. I would like to express my gratitude to Marc Boone and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, who engaged me as postdoctoral researcher on the IAP-Programme 7/26 City and Society in the Low Countries (ca. 1200 – ca. 1850), funded by the Federal Belgian Science Policy. It enabled me to elaborate my PhD dissertation and translate it into English. Without their support this book could not have been accomplished. I can impossibly name all the colleagues that animated the lunch breaks and department trips, but I insist to thank my ‘room-mates’ Tineke Van Gassen, An-Katrien Hanselaer and Micol Long and my colleague teachers in the inspiring master seminars on urban history and medieval history: Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Antoon Vrints, Arjan Zuiderhoek, Jeroen Deploige and Steven Vanderputten. I especially want to thank the members of my PhD jury, Bruno Blondé, Marc Boone, Bert De Munck, Jos Koldeweij, Maximiliaan Martens and Tim Soens for the many usefull comments, Wim Blockmans for reviewing the original Dutch version, Larry Silver for the numerous suggestions and corrections of the final English version, Hugo Soly for some cutting remarks and, during the length of years, many other colleagues: Inneke Baatsen, James Bloom, Jonas Braekevelt, Frederik Buylaert, Mario Damen, José Deguffroy, Julie De Groot, Jan Dumolyn, Colin Dupont, Bart Fransen, Jelle Haemers, Samuel Mareel, Hadewijch Masure, Tine Meganck, Bart Lambert, Michaël Limberger, Andy Ramandt, Wouter Ryckbosch, Jan Van der Stock, Bram Vannieuwenhuyze, Tineke Van Gassen, Sabine Van Sprang, Marco Vencato, Catherine Wilson and Ellen Wurtzel. I owe a large debt of gratitude to Susie Speakman-Sutch, Robert Mayhew and Jessica Steward for meticulously revising the English manuscript.

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A short stay at the Academia Belgica in Rome during the Spring of 2015 enabled me to elaborate the last chapter of this book on urban cartography. I would like to thank the helpfull staff of the libraries of the Academia Belgica, the British School at Rome and the Bibliotheca Herziana, as much as the fellow residents that gave me a great time. Eventually, the realisation of this book became an endeavour that covered over a decade of my life. It took me much longer than anticipated, and I need to thank my friends and family for showing so much patience and understanding. At the first place my parents, whose permanent support has been crucial for the coming about of this book. Finally, I was lucky to meet Hanne. She showed great interest in my research, yet gently urged me to finish this project that had too often burdened our evenings and weekends. With the publication of his monograph I can at last close a fascinating phase of my life. I want to dedicate this book to her and to our daughter Isolde. Oudenaarde, 22 June 2018

Introduction

Item, après le ciel, le monde ou quel se doit monstrer une partie de la cité de Romme.1

When viewing a fifteenth-century painted altarpiece, one’s gaze freely moves between the devotional scene in the foreground and the detailed cityscapes and idyllic landscapes that fill in a large part of the background. Any careful observer would note the omnipresence of cities in the visual culture of the late medieval Low Countries. Urban settings were represented in virtually every conceivable medium: costly tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, prints, sculpted altarpieces, stained-glassed windows, on coins, seals, maps and drawings. It comes as no surprise that one of the most densely urbanised regions of late medieval Europe witnessed the development of a sophisticated iconography of the city.2 By the end of the fifteenth century approximately one third of the population of the Low Countries lived in the city, with an even higher percentage for the counties of Holland and Flanders, and the duchy of Brabant.3 Many of these towns were no more than a large village with less than 5.000 inhabitants, while cities such as Bruges, Ypres, Ghent, Brussels, Leuven, Antwerp, Mechelen, Courtrai, Namur and Liège developed into major urban centres with populations that ranged from 15.000 to 55.000 inhabitants. These towns constituted a dense urban network within which the maximum intermediate distance rarely exceeded 25 kilometres.4 For many people in the Low Countries, the city was an undeniable reality of daily life. For most country dwellers, the town was always nearby as a place to sell foodstuff, to find work or to obtain all kinds of services.5 In particular oil-painted altarpieces and devotional portraits captured the variety of urban life and its spaces with an astonishing degree of detail and natu

1 Passage from the contract of the Coronation of the Virgin by Enguerrand Quarton, 1453 (Charles Sterling, Enguerrand Quarton: le peintre de la Pieta d’Avignon (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1983), p. 201, § 12). 2 A good introduction to the very divergent visual culture of the Burgundian Netherlands is Susie Nash, Northern Renaissance Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 3 Peter Clark, European Cities and Towns. 400-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) pp. 34-41; Jan De Vries, European Urbanization. 1500-1800 (London: Methuen, 1984). 4 Peter Stabel, ‘Urbanisation and spatial development: Flanders in the late middle ages’, in Raumerfassung und Raumbewusstsein im Mittelalter, ed. by Peter Moraw (Sigmaringen: Thorbeke Verlag, 1997), pp. 179-202. 5 Peter Stabel, Dwarfs Among Giants: the Flemish Urban Network in the Late Middle Ages (Leuven: Garant, 1997).

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ralism. Already widespread at the end of the fourteenth century, panel painting reached its heyday with the iconographic and stylistic innovations initiated by the Master of Flémalle, Jan Van Eyck and the succeeding generations of the so-called ‘Flemish Primitives’.6 This new style of painting or ars nova appealed to the devotional and social desiderata of a diverse group, including urban elites, well-off artisans, petty clerics and, to a lesser extent, nobles. Early Netherlandish panel painting was highly visible in the (semi)public sphere of the chapel or church, and increasingly found its way into private residences. Moreover, most high-end panel paintings were commissioned works of art, which communicated the patron’s status in (urban) society. All this, combined with its relatively high degree of preservation (especially when compared to other media such as cloth and mural painting) and the very rich tradition of scholarly research, makes early Netherlandish panel painting a favourable medium for an in-depth analysis. In addition, the well-documented corpus of paintings for the period 1425-1510 allows for a serial, quantitative approach. Starting with the Master of Flémalle and Jan Van Eyck and concluding with Gerard David, this study focuses on the Southern Netherlands (what is nowadays more or less Belgium), between 1425 and 1510. Although other media, including tapestry, miniatures and graphic arts will occasionally be taken into consideration. A locus of economic growth, social advancement, political power and cultural innovation, the city played a pivotal role in the late medieval Low Countries, making it a very relevant subject for a critical history of mentality. The central question of this study is simple: what can the image of the city in panel painting tell us about how the city was perceived by contemporary artists and patrons, and by late medieval society at large? And can we discern a pattern or an evolution of how urbanity was represented throughout the fifteenth century? By the end of the Middle Ages, the city still occupied an ambivalent position in the mental framework of both the nobility and the Church, the two traditional pillars of medieval society that were still strongly rooted in the feudal countryside. Although these two institutions were already strongly embedded in urban society, disdain towards the city as a place of seduction, materialism, vulgarity and ‘bourgeois’ emulation slumbered. The traditional social order was not yet fully at terms with the city as the cradle of a new society. This makes the fifteenth century a particularly interesting period to investigate the pictorial representation of urbanity. Painted cityscapes were more than mere staffage or meaningless decoration with as sole purpose to please the eye. They often functioned as the logical setting or framework of the central narrative (or its various episodes) and in some cases even served a sophisticated representation



6 The term ‘primitifs flamands’ was coined in the 1840s to denominate a primitive purity and deep Christian sentiment, analogous to early Italian painting such as Fra Angelico. It gradually eased into the artistic vocabulary as the general term for the highly realistic and sophisticated oil painting of the fifteenth century. A good introduction is Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne Van Buren and Henk Van Veen (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings. Rediscovery, Reception and Research (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005).

introduction

strategy. The delicate city views that often figure in the background of the donor portraits have aroused the fascination of scholars of early Netherlandish painting for decades. This gave rise to numerous attempts to identify some cityscapes as a specific town or street. The colourful realism of many early Netherlandish city views is, however, deceptive: despite their pretence of verisimilitude they rarely mirror the city as it really looked. In fact, most town views are selective, fictitious constructions, in which some architectural elements or functions were highlighted and others were brushed aside. It is in this distortion, in the selection of which features of the city to depict and which not, that lies the most telling clue of how the medieval man defined his relation and attitude towards the urban phenomenon. By using pictorial city views as a ‘proxy’ for the mind-set of a society at large, this study ventures toward a true Achëologie des Sehens (‘an archaeology of seeing’).7 This Introduction first offers a short historiographical overview of some key publications and major research traditions in the field of urban iconography. A second section then discusses the conceptual framework that gave direction to this monograph, focusing on two important paradigm shifts that fundamentally inspired its methodology and analytic assumptions: the ‘spatial turn’ and the ‘pictorial turn’.8 This is followed by a brief social contextualisation of the Northern Renaissance art and an overview of several cultural models as defined in the historiography on urban culture in the late medieval Low Countries. The last section discusses the corpus of early Netherlandish panel paintings and the methodology that forms the backbone of this study. 1.

A brief historiographical overview

Until the middle of the twentieth century pictorial representations of the city almost exclusively attracted the attention of art historians and local amateur historians. These scholars predominantly studied cityscapes on tapestries, paintings and miniatures from a formal/stylistic point of view (this is as an iconographic motif that allowed for the attribution of the work of art to a certain artist or school), or as a documentary source for the architectural and spatial reconstruction of the medieval city. Amateur historians have been especially keen to treat city views as testimonies for how their own cities actually appeared. In most cases, this is simply not true (as discussed in Chapter V of this book). Modern academic study of iconography, first applied to early Netherlandish art by Erwin Panofsky in the interbellum period and shortly after the Second World War, aroused scholarly interest in city views as meaningful components



7 Wolfgang Behringer and Bernd Roeck (ed.), Das Bild der Stadt in der Neuzeit (1400-1600) (München: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1999), p. 7. 8 See also Jelle De Rock, ‘De stad verbeeld. De representatie van stedelijke ruimte in de late middeleeuwen en vroegmoderne tijd: een status quaestionis’, Stadsgeschiedenis, 7:1 (2012), 108-121.

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of a work of art.9 Just as for other realistically depicted artefacts, iconologist started to delve into the ‘disguised symbolism’ of pictorial cityscapes. Given the predominantly religious function of panel painting they mainly sought this deeper or secondary significance in the theological sphere (see Chapter I). The strong focus on panel paintings’ biblical exegesis within the relevant art historical literature has produced a neglect of alternative, more profane layers of meaning. This book addresses this historiographical lacuna. It does not fundamentally question the religious layers of meaning attributed to painted city views, but attends to their potential secular significances. In 1954, the French urban historian Pierre Lavedan was the first to publish a global and exploratory study of the representation of cities in medieval art. Lavedan discussed the user context and the divergent typology of medieval urban iconography. Trained as an urban designer he was particularly interested in the documentary value of town views as a source to study the topography and physiognomy of the city. He acknowledged the importance of city views for art history and the history of medieval mentality in general: [les representations de villes] n’importent pas moins à l’histoire de l’art en général et même à l’histoire de l’esprit humain.10 Lavedan foreshadows the growing scholarly awareness of how pictorial city views might teach us something about the subjective perception and representation of urban space by the medieval man. It would however take some decennia and a ‘cultural turn’ before historical city views were subjected to a true discourse analysis. The 1960-70s produced predominantly very traditional art historical and iconological studies of Italian and seventeent-century Dutch city views.11 In 1978 Juergen Schulz published a pivotal article devoted to the famous bird’s-eye view of Venice made in 1500 by Jacopo de’Barbari. His study broke new grounds by explicitly focusing on the print’s numerous distortions and misrepresentations. De’Barbari’s city view selectively highlights symbolic places and provides a sense of architectural uniformity. Schulz argued that the dazzling plan of Venice must have had some abstract or conceptual meaning that went beyond its significance as topographical record. In its disproportionate attention to highly charged components of the urban space, the plan offered an idealised vision of the Venetian Republic as a superior type of society. For example, the city view rationalises and gives pictorial unity to a number of different urban 9 Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, Its Origins and Character (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953). 10 “the representation of cities did also matter to the history of art and even to the history of the human esprit” (Pierre Lavedan, Représentation des villes dans l’art du moyen âge (Paris: Vanoest Editions, 1954), p. 7). 11 Claudio Buttafava, Visioni di città nelle opere d’arte del Medioevo e del Rinascimento (Milaan; Liberia Salto, 1963); J. G. Links, Townscape Painting and Drawing (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); Carry Van Lakerveld (ed.), The Dutch Cityscape in the 17th Century and Its Sources (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Historisch Museum, 1977). More recent studies are Leonore Stapel, Perspectieven van de stad: over bronnen, populariteit en functie van het zeventiende-eeuwse stadsgezicht, (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000); Ariane Van Suchtelen, Arthur Wheelock, Boudewijn Bakker et al. (eds), Dutch cityscapes of the Golden Age (Zwolle: Waanders, 2008). For the pure iconological studies, see Chapter I.



introduction

spaces, including the Rialto, a commercial site, the Piazza San Marco with the Doge’s Palace, the political center, and the Arsenale, the naval headquarters. Even though widely acclaimed as a pinnacle of Renaissance cartographic skill, Schulz categorically places the Venice plan in a long medieval tradition of didactic and symbolical world maps and views of Jerusalem, labeling it a ‘moralized geography’.12 By looking to the ideas and concepts behind the cityscape, rather than the physical appearance of the city, he made a shift towards a critical discourse analysis that deeply inspired further research. From this moment on, Lavedan’s plea to use pictorial cityscapes as a prime source for the history of human mentality was increasingly heard. In the early 1980s the renowned French historian Jacques Le Goff pointed to the fundamental reciprocity between the tangible, material space of the medieval city on the one hand, and the mental representation of the city in literature and art on the other hand.13 By doing so, Le Goff expounded the conceptual framework of Henri Lefebvre’s La production de l’espace (1974) and the so-called ‘spatial turn’ (cf. infra). From the 1980s onwards the study of urban iconography advanced into a separate research domain in both Italy and Germany. Beginning in the late Middle Ages, artists from these regions had pioneered the iconographies of city life. Fully autonomous city portraits (see Chapter V) became a subject during this period. Chiara Frugoni’s 1983 Una lontana città. Sentimenti e immagini nel Medioevo, translated in 1991 into A Distant City. Images of Urban Experience in the Medieval World, was the first monograph to be completely devoted the changing conceptions of the city in medieval Italy as revealed in a wide variety of visual and literary sources.14 Among other topics, the book discusses Isidore of Seville’s (560-636) concepts of urbs (the material, built city) and civitas (the city as a community of people). Frugoni sketches a gradual movement from a conventional representation of the city as a schematic ‘ideogram’ (urbs) in the early Middle Ages to a much more realistic and interactive evocation of urban space from the fourteenth century onwards (civitas). She links this shift from abstraction to concrete reality to the rise of the urban communes of Northern and Central Italy from the late eleventh century onwards, many of which had turned into merchant oligarchies by the fourteenth century. A large part of her study is devoted to an in-depth contextual and iconographical study of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescoes of the Allegory of Good and Bad Government (1338-1339), in which the contemporary cityscape and the depiction of ordinary urban life take a very prominent position. Frugoni sees these paintings as the ultimate expression of the city as civitas or bene commune. Richard Kagan similarly

12 Juergen Schulz, ‘Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice: Map Making, City Views, and Moralized Geography before the Year 1500’, The Art Bulletin, 60:3 (1978), 425-474. 13 Jacques Le Goff, ‘L’immaginario urbano nell’Italia medievale (secoli V-XV)’, in Storia d’Italia. Annali 5. Il paesaggio, ed. by Cesare de Seta (Torino: Einaudi, 1982), pp. 4-43. 14 Chiara Frugoni, Una lontana città. Sentimenti e immagini nel Medioevo (Torino: Einaudi, 1983); Chiara Frugoni, A Distant City. Images of Urban Experience in the Medieval World (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991).

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applied the conceptual division between urbs and civitas to his study on urban iconography in early modern Spain.15 Several other studies produced in the past few decades have been devoted to the image of the city in late medieval urban Italian painting16 and cartography17 and their social, political, scientific or religious contexts. In 1998 the Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca sull’Iconografia della Città Europea was founded by Cesare de Seta (University of Naples). The research centre explicitly aims to develop alternatives to the positivist fixation on local topography, which traditional research on pictorial city views has perpetuated.18 Building on the scholarly interventions made at this research centre Marco Vencato’s research investigated how fifteenth-century Neapolitan urban iconography (including the famous Tavola Strozzi, 1472) registered monarchic political discourse and the renovatio urbis that radically reshuffled the urban landscape at that time.19 In Germany, Austria and Switzerland – regions with a long history of urban autonomy and a strong tradition of urban iconography – scholarship has focused on different questions. Within the past two decades German-language publications have been energised by tremendous historiographic interest in the image of the city in art and crafts (paintings, seals, woodcuts, engravings and scale models) and literature (chronicles, poems, novels). Published in 1999 Das Bild der Stadt in der Neuzeit. 1400-1600 has become a landmark study.20 The first part of this volume surveys the diverse theoretical and methodological facets of contemporary Stadtbildforschung, including the agency of urban self-consciousness, the role of the intended audience, literary representations of the city, the impact of scale models of the city (a common phenomenon in early modern Germany) and the usefulness of urban images for economic and demographic studies. The second part documents the historical urban iconography of 46 German cities, with a particular interest in longue durée evolutions. Still, the study is narrowly focused on the iconography and pedigree of a selection of city views, and does not attempt to relate local developments to broader, international trends. Rather than offering a thorough cultural analysis of these German city views as part of 15 Richard Kagan, ‘Urbs and civitas in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Spain’, in Envisioning the City: Six Studies in Urban Cartography, ed. by David Buisseret (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998), pp. 75-108. 16 Lucia Nuti, Ritratti di città. Visione e memoria tra Medioevo e Settecento (Venice: Marsilio, 1996); Felicity Ratté, Picturing the city in medieval Italian painting ( Jefferson: McFarland, 2006); Pierluigi De Vecchi and Graziano Vergani (ed.), La rappresentazione della città nella pittura italiana (Milano: Silvana, 2003). 17 Marco Folin (ed.), Rappresentare la città. Topografie urbane nell’Italia di antico regime (Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 2010); Francesca Bocchi and Rosa Smurra (ed.), Imago Urbis. L’immagine della città nella storia d’Italia (Rome: Viella, 2003). 18 The research centre issue some interesting publications: Cesare de Seta (ed.), Città d’Europa. Iconografia e vedutismo dal XV al XVIII secolo (Napoli: Electa, 1996); Cesare de Seta and Daniela Stroffolino. (ed.), L’Europa Moderna: Cartografia Urbana E Vedutismo (Napoli: Electa, 2001). 19 Marco Vencato, Kampf ums Stadtbild. Zur politischen Ikonographie und Raumgeschichte Neapels in der Frühen Neuzeit (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Basel, 2007). 20 Wolfgang Behringer and Bernd Roeck (ed.), Das Bild der Stadt in der Neuzeit. 1400-1600 (München: C. H. Beck, 1999).

introduction

a larger, European phenomenon, this project limits the scope and impact of its findings and serves largely as a historical study of city atlases. A similar tendency occurs in the Austrian volume Bild und Wahrnehmung der Stadt (2004), which contains ten articles on the iconography of specific cities (Ikonographie) and only six dedicated to the underlying discourse of city views (Mentalität, Geschichte).21 An eponymous German volume, edited in 2012 by Peter Johanek, shows a more balanced selection, fewer case studies, and a number of contributions that tackle topics of greater theoretical complexity, such as literary description of cities, cultural memory, urban stereotyping, realistic versus idealised city views, and the diverging orientations of horizontality and verticality.22 The Institut für vergleichende Städtegeschichte in Münster, an incubator of interdisciplinary research with a strong focus on both urban space and issues of identity and representation, has generated a considerable number of publications in which the image of the city takes a central place.23 Two publications are of particular interest to the research questions tackled in this book. In an article from 2001 the Austrian historian Gerhard Jaritz stresses the significance of idealised cityscapes in Austrian (religious) panel painting and deconstructs this ideal image of the city into its major constituent parts, ranging from the city walls, the pavement of the streets, the town hall and clockwork and the stone residences and glass windows.24 A second recent publication by Carla Meyer confronts the modern concept of ‘city branding’ with late medieval iconography and urban identity politics. In this article she questions the widespread assumption that pictorial and literary representations of the city were as a rule a top-down expression of a collective urban self-consciousness imposed by the municipal government on the urban community as a whole. Meyer argues that many images of the city were created within the private sphere of the family (e.g. a family chronicle), as the outcome a personal memory practice (e.g. a diary) or as an individual commercial venture (e.g. a patent woodcut). As a consequence, the social profile of the patron, artist or publisher becomes a crucial research category when conducting a discourse analysis of historical city views.25 Particularly in the German-speaking community research on urban iconography has evolved into an increasingly interdisciplinary science. A growing number

21 Ferdinand Opll (ed.), Bild und Wahrnehmung der Stadt (Linz: Österreichischer Arbeitskreis für Stadtgeschichtsforschung, 2004). 22 Peter Johanek (ed.), Bild und Wahrnehmung der Stadt (Köln: Böhlau, 2012). 23 Especially in the Reihe Städteforschung A: Darstellungen. We cite the most recent titles: Ute Schneider and Martina Stercken (ed.), Urbanität. Formen der Inszenierung in Texten, Karten, Bildern (Reihe Städteforschung A 90) (Köln: Böhlau: 2016); Karsten Igel and Thomas Lau, Die Stadt im Raum. Vorstellungen, Entwürfe und Gestaltungen im vormodernen Europa (Reihe Städteforschung A 89) (Köln: Böhlau, 2016). 24 Gerhard Jaritz, ‘Das Image der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt: Zur Konstruktion und Vermittlung ihres äußeren Erscheinungsbildes’, in Die Stadt als Kommunikationsraum, ed. by Helmut Brauer and Elke Schlenkrich (Leipzig, 2001), pp. 471-485. 25 Carla Meyer, ‘“City branding” im Mittelalter? Städtische Medien der Imagepflege bis 1500’, in Stadt und Medien vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. by Clemens Zimmermann (Köln: Böhlau, 2012), pp. 19-48.

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of scholars that work with pictorial city views started to integrate concepts and methodologies from the fields of history, art history, geography, urban planning, archaeology and linguistics into their research. This has led to a growing awareness of the pertinence of the larger historical context, the specific use context, the underlying discourse(s) and the semiotics of the artefact. Without a doubt, the dynamic evolution of the field has been driven by a couple of paradigm shifts, such as the pictorial turn, the spatial turn and the new cultural geography. 2. Conceptual framework 2.1.

The pictorial turn: content analysis and semiotics

During the last decades of the twentieth century a pictorial turn – a term coined by William J. T. Mitchell in 1992 – provoked within the social sciences a renewed interest in the meaning and performance of pictorial images. Also among historians the use of iconographical artefacts as fully fledged sources started to take hold in the 1980s. A turning point was the American conference on the ‘evidence of art’ in 1985, which resulted in a special issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History.26 The growing scholarly interest and the specific pitfalls and challenges posed by the use of historic images led to the issue of several manuals around the turn of the twentieth century.27 The scientific analysis of images increasingly required the development of specific methodologies and historical criticism, which was largely derived from linguistics. Two of these ‘visual methodologies’ are of particular importance for our study of city views in early Netherlandish panel painting: content analysis and semiotics. In her manual on the interpretation of visual materials Gillian Rose discusses content analysis as a methodological instrument that enables consistent screening of a large iconographical corpus, without losing ‘touch’ with the individual object. By measuring the frequency of well-defined parameters (‘coding categories’), the corpus can be subdivided in relevant clusters or ‘types’ of representation. One of the major challenges of content analysis is its reproducibility. A repeated analysis might in some cases result in a (slightly) different outcome. This is why an unambiguous choice of parameters is crucial. A good ‘questionnaire’ is by preference binary (yes/no) or numerical (exact numbers), while more descriptive input (like ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘high’) should be carefully defined and even standardised. Nevertheless, content analysis should not be assessed according to the criteria of the exact sciences: its major strength is its ability to reveal representative patterns that go beyond the level of the individual work.28 It 26 ‘The Evidence of Art: Images and Meaning in History’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 27 (1986). Also published as a book: Robert Rotberg and Theodore Rabb, Art and History: Images and their Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 27 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies. An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2001). 28 Rose, Visual Methodologies, pp. 54-67.

introduction

goes without saying that the development of relevant ‘coding categories’ derives from a series of solid research questions. This book departs from a corpus of 550 panel paintings (cf. infra) and aims to investigate a variety of questions, ranging from the general ‘incidence’ of cityscapes in Flemish painting, the architectural elements by which Jerusalem views were composed, to what extent town views represented the city as a vibrant economic space, and how often and in which way the countryside was depicted instead of the city. All these questions can be translated into specific ‘coding categories’ (e.g. ‘city view with shop motif ’), quantified and represented in a graph. Serial quantification is a method virtually unknown to art historians – at least on a content level – yet is a very useful tool to put into perspective the potentially distorted view that is based on the analysis of a couple of masterpieces. This does not take away the pertinence of a thorough quantitative analysis on a micro-level. Here another ‘visual methodology’ proves very useful: semiotics.29 This method approaches texts, artefacts (from images, furniture, dress to architecture) and even space as complex sign systems that convey a variety of meanings.30 In other words: semiotics studies how signs operated in the process of meaning-making. One of the basic ideas as defined at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure is that a sign consists of two parts: the signifier (the material form which can be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted) and the signified (the mental concept (s) to which a signifier refers). Besides a literal or denotative meaning (the definition most likely to appear in a dictionary), a signifier can encode a theoretically endless variety of secondary or connotative meanings. Take the instance of ‘blue’: its denotation is ‘a primary colour between violet and green’, while a myriad of secondary meanings or connotations are attached to it. ‘Blue’ can signify ‘cold’ in the case of a water tap. Some might decode ‘blue’ as the colour of Mary, whereas in the specific context of late medieval painting ‘blue’ also communicates ‘wealth’, as it was generally known as one of the most precious pigments. Likewise, the image of a purse on a late medieval portrait denotes the leather recipient for coins, whereas it might evoke a variety of connotations ranging from a token of affluence to a symbol of avarice. It is very likely that this semiotic ambivalence for instance moved chancellor Nicolas Rolin to waive the depiction of a purse in his world-famous portrait with the Madonna by Jan Van Eyck, as the underdrawing reveals that the artefact was originally part of the composition (Figure 0.1 – Plate 1). These simple examples illustrate how signifiers do not convey meaning in a social vacuum: they generate a multitude of meanings according to a larger context. Connotative meanings attached to a sign can be purely emotional and

29 Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, ‘Semiotics and art history’, Art Bulletin, 73 (1991), 174-208. 30 For architecture, see Umberto Eco, ‘Function and Sign: Semiotics of Architecture’, in Semiotics, ed. by Mark Gottdiener, Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou and Alexander Lagopoulos (London: Sage, 2003), vol. 3, pp. 241-290. For the semiotics of urban space, see Mark Gottdiener and Alexandros Lagopoulos, The City and the Sign. An Introduction to Urban Semiotics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).

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Figure 0.1: Jan Van Eyck, The Madonna with Chancellor Rolin, ca. 1435, Musée du Louvre, Paris. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels.

personal, but they might also derive from a much larger, more complex system of signification, such as religion or politics. By ‘reading’ images as sign systems, the (art) historian might get track of the social, cultural, religious and political discourses that added significance to the various actors involved in the communication process (the artist, patron and beholder of the image). The subfield of ‘social semiotics’ explains meaning-making as a social practice by investigating human signifying practices in specific social and cultural circumstances.31 A publication edited in 2009 by the art historian Jonathan Nelson and the economist Richard Zeckhauser combines social semiotics, distinction theory, 31 Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress, Social Semiotics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988).

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and information economics into a conceptual framework that allows to analyse how Italian Renaissance art transmitted meaning. The volume, composed of a theoretical introduction and a handful of case studies by various authors, starts with three key concepts: signalling, signposting, and stretching. These economic concepts all deal with the question of how to convey difficult information in a market where information is held asymmetrically: how can a seller communicate in a convincing way information on the quality of his wares or on his own trustworthiness to the buyer, who often lacks the due knowledge or expertise? The costly investment in a work of art struggles with similar challenges: how to credibly convey information on the status of the patron, which might be unknown to many spectators? Signalling is the overt demonstrating of the qualities of the patron or artist. In order to ‘pay off ’, a work of art not only had to convey the mere wealth of the patron, but also his/her status and ‘magnificence’. Michael Baxandall, for instance, demonstrated how in fifteenth-century Florentine painting the priority of patrons shifted from the skilled use of expensive materials, such as gold leaf and azurite blue, to more immaterial criteria, such as inventiveness, virtuosity, design, artistic skill, and the mastery of perspective.32 In this way, a work of art could signal the sophistication and good taste of its donor. Signposting refers to the underlining of particular characteristics while concealing others (for instance the ‘missing’ purse of chancellor Rolin), while stretching means that some qualities of the patron are exaggerated or played down.33 The research tools offered by semiotics, and in particular the concept of signposting and stretching, proof very instructive for the study of the representation of cities in early Netherlandish painting. One could, for instance, wonder to what extent the painted city view functioned as an attribute of the donor portrait, as part of a larger sign system – the painting and its spatial setting – that was devised to signal the status of the patron by signposting some aspects of his/her identity. Nevertheless, one should be wary of an inflation of conjectural meanings imposed on signs. It is sometimes hard to tell whether a particular significance attached to a sign has been deliberately intended by the material author (the artist) or intellectual author (the artist and/or patron).34 Artists can copy certain signs from another artist as a mere stylistic motif, without necessarily having the intention to copy the connotations attached to it. The fallacy of projecting a particular meaning on a painting without it being necessarily intended by the author is real, and scholars should be aware of this. This does not take away that the content analysis of a large series of artefacts, combined with the semiotic analysis of some carefully selected specimen and a thorough investigation of the larger historical context might yield a well-founded hypothesis.

32 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 23-38. 33 Jonathan Nelson and Richard Zeckhauser (ed.), The Patron’s Payoff. Conspicuous commissions in Italian renaissance art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 34 On this ‘intentional fallacy’, see Rose, Visual Methodologies, pp. 22-23.

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The pictorial turn provoked a rapprochement between historians, art historians, archaeologists, and linguists, yet truly interdisciplinary projects in the field of early Netherlandish culture and art remain scarce. Some recent case studies of Rogier Van der Weyden’s Middelburg Altarpiece (Figure 0.2) and Gerard Horenbout’s Pottelsberghe Triptych combine socio-historical, prosopographical, archaeological, stylistic and hard scientific, technical research into a socio-semiotic analytical framework.35 One can only hope that the future brings similar initiatives. 2.2.

The spatial turn: the production of space

A second paradigm crucial to this book is the so-called ‘spatial turn’. Towards the end of the twentieth century historians developed a growing awareness of space and spatiality as an analytical category. With the reappraisal of Henri Lefebvre’s La Production de l’Espace (1974) historiography gradually turned aside from the structuralist vision of space as a given, immutable, and passive container.36 On the contrary, as stated by the Marxist sociologist Henri Lefebvre, space is not neutral, yet a socially productive category that actively interferes with society. Space is thus not only a physical, but also an ideological category. The representation of space through maps, plans, all kind of images, movies, and legislation (for instance property rights, curfew) reproduces and fixes a certain social order.37 Lefebvre distinguishes three components that stand in a constant interaction with each other and that constitute the ‘production’ of space: l’espace perçu, or the ‘perceived space’ (the daily spatial practices that can be perceived by the human senses); l’espace conçu, or ‘conceived space’ (the representation of space by urbanists, cartographers, surveyors, legislators …); and l’espace vécu, or ‘lived space’ (the space as imagined through images and symbols, especially by artists, writers and philosophers; in fact the result of the dialectical relation between the perceived and the represented space but separate from them).38 Especially the last two components are highly relevant for this book. One of the central questions of this book is how painted city views might have reproduced a particular social order.

35 Jan Dumolyn, Frederik Buylaert and Wim De Clercq, ‘Sumptuary legislation, material culture and the semiotics of vivre noblement in the county of Flanders (14th–16th centuries)’, Social History, 36 (2011), 393-417; Frederik Buylaert, Annick Born, Jan Dumolyn, Wim De Clercq and Maximiliaan Martens, ‘The Van Pottelsberghe-Van Steelant Memorial by Gerard Horenbout: Lordship, Piety and Mortality in Early Sixteenth-Century Flanders’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 77:4 (2014), 491-516. 36 As a marxist philosopher, Henri Lefebvre was particularly interested in the link between the spatial process of urbanization on the one hand, and the socio-economic process of industrialisation and the rise of capitalism: Henri Lefebvre, La Production de l’Espace (Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1974). 37 Peter Arnade, Martha Howell and Walter Simons, ‘Fertile Spaces: The Productivity of Urban Space in Northern Europe’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32:4 (2002), 515-548. 38 Lefebvre, La Production de l’Espace, 48-49. See also Marc Boone and Martha Howell (ed.), The Power of Space in late medieval and early modern Europe. The cities of Italy, Northern France and the Low Countries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); Michel Pauly and Martin Scheutz (ed.), Cities and their spaces: concepts and their use in Europe (Cologne: Böhlau, 2014).

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Figure 0.2: Rogier Van der Weyden, Bladelin Triptych (or Middelburg Altarpiece), 1445-1448, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. © Photo Jörg P. Anders.

A second important premise of Lefebvre’s theory is that space is a multiple category. As such, urban space has a religious, economic, political, social, juridical, architectural, cultural, ritual, or monumental dimension. In the course of this book several dimensions of the urban space will be held up to scrutiny: the religious one (Chapter I), the economic (Chapter II) and the monumental dimension (Chapter III).39

39 Martha Howell, ‘The Spaces of Late Medieval Urbanity’, in Shaping Urban Identity in Late Medieval Europe, ed. by Marc Boone and (Leuven/Apeldoorn: Garant, 2000), pp. 3-23; A very good introduction on the ‘spatial turn’ in medieval studies is Albert Classen, Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009).

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Cognitive geography

A third conceptual pillar of this book rests on the innovations brought in the 1960-70s by the New Cultural Geography. This new movement wanted to break with the very descriptive post-war geography and sought to understand the landscape as a text or sign system that actively impacts human behaviour and society.40 Cognitive geographers take a great interest in how landscapes are sensory and mentally perceived by its ‘users’. A pioneer work is The Image of the City published in 1960 by Kevin Lynch. As an urban planner, he understood that the degree to which users and visitors could image the urban space, and its morphology played a crucial role in the way the city was perceived and functioned: “places are not merely what they are, but what we perceive them to be”.41 Based on the personal experiences of a set of ‘city users’, he tried to assess the quality of the public image (or ‘imageability’) of a couple of contemporary American cities. Lynch distinguishes five important constituent element of the ‘image of the city’: paths (the roads along which the city user moves), edges (linear boundaries that signify discontinuity, such as quays, railways, viaducts …), districts (larger, homogeneous sections within a city), nodes (strategic places in the city such as gates, train stations, squares, crossings,…) and landmarks (remarkable places or spots that occupy a prominent place in the framework of reference of the city user). A good public image of the city enhances the wellbeing, the orientation, and the sense of safety of the city users.42 These basic parts of the urban image are universal and proved to have been very useful for the deconstruction of medieval city views. In the same line of thought the Chinese-American geographer Yi-Fu Tuan explored the role of personal experience as the thing that turns an abstract ‘space’ into a meaningful ‘place’.43 Also among urban historians and specialists of medieval literature the awareness of the sensory, subjective perception of urban space has been aroused. Scholars and exhibition curators are increasingly interested in the odour, colour, and sound of the city, as they are reflected in travel stories, diaries and all kinds of iconography.44 A medievalist who has appropriated the analytic framework

40 For a detailed overview of the recent developments in cultural geography, see Thomas Boogaart, An Ethnogeography of Late Medieval Bruges. Evolution of the Corporate Milieu 1280-1349 (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), pp. 48-55. 41 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960). 42 Lynch developed some instructions for urban planners in order to enhance the ‘imageability’ of the city: Kevin Lynch, Good City Form (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984). 43 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place. The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977). On the development of cognitive geography, see Kitchin and Blades, The Cognition of Geographic Space (Londen/New York: 2002). 44 Alexander Cowan and Jill Steward (ed.), The City and the Senses. Urban Culture since 1500 (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007; Michael Camille, ‘Signs of the City. Place, Power, and Public Fantasy in Medieval Paris’, in Medieval Practices of Space, ed. by Barbara Hanawalt et al. (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 1-36; Carol Symes, ‘Out in the open, in Arras: sightlines, soundscapes and the shaping of a medieval public sphere’, in Cities, texts and social networks (400-1500). Experiences and perceptions of medieval urban space, ed. by Caroline Goodson, Anne Lester and Carol

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of contemporary cultural geography on a consequent basis is Thomas Boogaart. His phenomenological approach bears a close resemblance to the work of Tuan. Boogaart aims to get a deeper understanding of how the urban landscape of fourteenth-century Bruges took shape. He investigated the urban space as an ‘environment’ where ideology, social role models, and cultural practices intersect with individual ideas, social relations and routine practices.45 The New Cultural geography triggered the attention of historians to the representation of the rural and urban landscape. In 1984 the Marxist geographer Denis Cosgrove published the inspiring Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. Very much in the wake of Lefebvre Cosgrove sees the representation of landscape, for instance in maps and paintings, as an instrument to reproduce a certain social order. He starts from the idea that major socio-political changes are reflected in the spatial order of society: “The self-contained universes of manor and parish which we take as the model of the spatial order of feudalism gave way over time to the integrated and structured space economy of the nation state with its urban hierarchy and specialised agricultural and industrial regions”.46 Cosgrove gives a lot of attention to the development of cartography and the concept of landscape (painting) in Italian quattrocento and cinquecento art and how these reflect the changing social formation of the Italian city states, in particular the rise of the signorie and a humanist elite: “Landscape is the perspective of an ideal citizen contemplating the good order of the immediate zone of intensively cultivated land, most of which he and his fellow citizens own”.47 As such, the Venetian elite, who by the sixteenth century had massively turned towards the investment in landed property in the Terra Ferma (the Venetian hinterland), started to cultivate a ‘Palladian’ landscape ideal, both in reality and painting. The same line of thought can be applied to the representation of a ‘seigneurial countryside’ in early Netherlandish panel painting, as discussed in Chapter IV. Moreover, the association of the representation of space and the wielding of (territorial) power through the development of iconography and cartography has been studied by various scholars and will be obliquely discussed in the last chapter of this book.48

Symes (Farnham: Routledge, 2010), pp. 279-302; Peter Stabel, ‘Venetië in de ogen van pelgrims. Stedelijkheid en stadservaring in laatmiddeleeuwse reisverhalen uit de Nederlanden’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 129 (2009), pp. 134-147. 45 Thomas Boogaart, An Ethnogeography of Late Medieval Bruges. Evolution of the Corporate Milieu 12801349 (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004). 46 Denis Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), pp. 4-5. 47 Cosgrove, Social Formation, p. 101. 48 Martin Warnke, Political Landscape. The Art History of Nature (London: Reaktion Books, 1994).

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3. Panel painting and the Northern Renaissance: patronage and social context The Burgundian Netherlands witnessed a storied blossoming of the arts that soon gained renown far outside the Low Countries. Costly tapestries, refined manuscripts, glittering carved altarpieces, and delicate panel paintings became important export products of the highly specialised urban production centres of the Southern Low Countries. In the 1980s Wilfried Brulez investigated the relationship between the economic climate and the artistic flourishing of a society and came to the conclusion that this question departs from a faux problème.49 Whereas in some cases that Brulez and his students investigated the flowering of arts coincided with a phase of economic growth and even contributed to it, in at least a cases artistic creativity peaked during a period of economic hardship, as for instance argued by the so-called Lopez-thesis for quattrocento Italy.50 Much more pertinent are the shifting nature of the urban economies (e.g. towards a higher share of luxury goods), processes of social mobility and polarization, and the political empowerment of rising groups. The Burgundian Netherlands witnessed a thorough economic and social reconfiguration that fanned both the supply and demand of a wide array of artistic products. Propelled by the dynamics of ducal centralisation, the social fabric of many cities in the late medieval Low Countries condensed. The establishment of international trade in urban centres such as Bruges, combined with the reconversion from a predominant cloth industry towards a very wide array of luxury goods and mercantile services drastically restructured the major urban economies.51 At the heart of these terres de promission52 the towns of the Southern Netherlands offered ample economic, social, and political opportunities to a select group of citizens. The dynamics of social advancement not only impacted the top segment of successful merchants and entrepreneurs, but also reshuffled the urban middle classes. Post-plague Europe witnessed a reshaping of the class lines within artisan and working classes. A growing division opened between the respectable middling artisan class and those beneath them. This oligarchy of fortunate masters formed the backbone of many confraternities, shooting guilds, charitable institutions, and chambers of rhetoric.53 These processes of 49 Wilfrid Brulez, Cultuur en getal. Aspecten van de relatie economie-maatschappij-cultuur in Europa tussen 1400 en 1800 (Amsterdam: Nederlandse vereniging tot beoefening van de sociale geschiedenis, 1986). 50 Robert Lopez, ‘Hard Times and Investment in Culture’, in The Renaissance: A Symposium (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1953), pp. 19-32. 51 Raymond Van Uytven, ‘Splendour or Wealth: Art and Economy in the Burgundian Netherlands’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 10:2 (1992), 101-124. 52 Or ‘the promised lands’ as the Low Countries were called in the 1470s by Philippe de Commynes, a Flemish diplomat and chronicler at the service of the Burgundian court (Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier, The Promised Lands: The Low Countries Under Burgundian Rule, 1369-1530 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), p. 141). 53 Samuel Cohn, ‘Rich and Poor in Western Europe, c. 1375-1475: The Political Paradox of Material Well-Being’, in Approaches to Poverty in Medieval Europe: Complexities, Contradictions, Transformations, c. 1100-1500, ed. by Sharon Ann Farmer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 145-173; Raymond Van Uytven,

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social polarization led to the formation of a hybrid elite with – to a great extent – a shared material culture and mind-set. An increasingly heterogeneous urban elite acquired properties outside the city, married into established noble families and started to wield a noble lifestyle, while – mutatis mutandis – a growing group of local and regional nobles ‘urbanised’. However, this did not mean that noble status became widely accessible: it remained a highly exclusive property that was rooted in social consensus. In late medieval Flanders one was a noble if one was recognised as such by the community at large. Mere ostentation or the occupation of a ducal office did not suffice to do so. As we will see in Chapter IV, lordship or the public exercise of justice remained the key criterion for nobility. This does not alter the fact that, other than in France or England, the city played a pivotal role in the strategies of self-preservation developed by the established Netherlandish nobility. Nobles increasingly resided inside the city walls, participated at the municipal government, socialised with the urban elites, and married into families of fortunate commoners. This remarkable lack of social distance within a heterogeneous elite supercharged the consumption of art – in particular panel painting – in the Burgundian Low Countries.54 3.1.

Panel painting and urban culture

Today, panel painting is generally known as one of the most successful and best documented artistic media of the fifteenth-century Low Countries, even though the medium did not necessarily take such a prime position within the visual culture of the Burgundian Netherlands. This biased picture derives from the relatively favourable degree of preservation of panel painting and its art historiographical canonisation– together with sculpture – as the pinnacle of the visual arts by art critics such as Giorgio Vasari and Carel Van Mander.55 Flemish tapestry, however, was a much more conspicuous type of art particularly favoured by nobles and clerical elites throughout Europe, yet relatively poorly conserved, as many were deliberately burned in order to recuperated the gold and silver treads that once gave these precious artefacts their fabulous glow. At the other side of the spectrum, cloth painting was a much cheaper and socially widespread medium that seemed to have been prolific among urban middling households as a low-end imitation of tapestries.56 Unfortunately, almost none ‘Plutocratie in de “oude demokratieën der Nederlanden”. Cijfers en beschouwingen omtrent de korporatieve organisatie en sociale structuur der gemeenten in de late Middeleeuwen’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuidnederlandse Maatschappij Taal-en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis, 16 (1962), 373-409. 54 Frederik Buylaert, ‘Lordship, Urbanisation and Social Change in late Medieval Flanders’, Past and Present, 227 (2015), 31-75. 55 On the classicizing canon and the instructive role of the Art Academies, see Marina Belozerskaya, Rethinking the Renaissance: Burgundian Arts across Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 10-19. 56 Diane Wolfthal, The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Catherine Reynolds, ‘The function and display of Netherlandish cloth paintings’, in The Fabric of Images: European Paintings on Textile Supports in the 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. by Caroline Villers (London: Archetype Publications, 2000), pp. 89-98.

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of these ephemeral canvases have survived to this day. The same is true for the once omnipresent mural paintings that adorned chapels, churches, large profane building such as town halls and private residences.57 Only a fraction of this imagery, which was often made by the same artists who created world-famous panels paintings,58 has survived the ravages of time. Of course, there was a high degree of cross-fertilisation between the different types of artistic media. The vital role of painters in the design of other media made that during the last quarter of the fifteenth century tapestry, manuscript illumination, and sculpture increasingly emulated the pictorial sensibilities of panel painting.59 Panel painting represented a distinct medium, subject to its own visual conventions and strictly delimited functions. As has been sharply observed by James Bloom, “the history of Flemish oil painting is [most] effectively viewed as originary, marking the introduction of a novel product and catering to a discrete demand”.60 This is why we have left the early-sixteenth-century paintings that were a product of the innovative Antwerp art market (and which increasingly turned towards secular cloth paintings) outside our corpus (cf. infra), even though they are occasionally discussed in this monograph. Moreover, unlike the largely anonymous sixteenth-century art market, many panel paintings that were made in the fifteenth century were commissions or customised ready-mades. For that reason, early Netherlandish paintings frequently include donors’ portraits, coats of arms, or – in some very exceptional cases – a topographical reference to the patron. The high degree of involvement in the iconographical programme of the commissioned work means that the choice for particular motifs or the question of whether and how to represent the city in an altarpiece or portrait might have been fuelled by individual concerns of the patron. Most art historians today agree that besides a primary devotional function, panel paintings fulfilled an equally important function as ‘social ornament’ or as a ‘surrogate self ’.61 The investment in an altarpiece, a devotional group portrait, or private diptych undoubtedly served to frame the donor(s) visually within a particular social network (in the case of a group portrait) or within a sign system that had been carefully designed to bestow a particular social status or specific set of qualities upon the patron(s).

57 Carina Fryklund, Flemish Wall Painting. Late Gothic Wall Painting in the Southern Netherlands (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Specifically for Ghent see: Maximiliaan Martens, De muurschilderkunst te Gent (12de tot 16de eeuw) (Brussel: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 1989). 58 As official court painter, Jan Van Eyck supervised, for instance, the lavish decoration programme of the ducal court de pleasance at Hesdin (Artois). Robert Campin (sometimes associated with the Master of Flémalle) is known to have decorated a wall in 1428 in the Tournai Halle des Jurez (a room in the town hall) with a mural painting representing some local saints accompanied by the French king and dauphin. Unfortunately, none of these paintings has survived. 59 James Bloom, ‘Why Painting?’, in Mapping Markets for Paintings in Early Modern Europe, 1450-1750, ed. by Neil De Marchi and Hans Van Miegroet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), p. 24. 60 Bloom, ‘Why Painting?’, p. 31. 61 Bret Rothstein, Sight and Spirituality in Early Netherlandish Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 92-136; Laura Gelfand and Walter Gibson, ‘Surrogate Selves: The Rolin Madonna and the Late-medieval Devotional Portrait’, Simiolus, 29:3/4 (2002) 119-138.

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Early Netherlandish panel paintings attracted a wide array of donors, ranging from a very diverse group of new urban climbers (such as indigenous and foreign merchants, entrepreneurs, financers, well-off artisan masters, members of shooting guilds and religious confraternities, some of them with close ties to the ducal court, such as princely officers and jurists), both the intermediate and high clergy (canons, monks, canons, bishops), and – to a lesser extent and with a distinct preference for portraiture – the traditional noble elite.62 What exactly constituted the identity or status of these fifteenth-century patrons remains, however, a matter of fierce debate within the art historical community. This debate provoked two diametrically opposed cultural models that touch upon the essence of urban culture and society in the late medieval Low Countries. A first strand of historiography understands the typical realism and iconographical inventiveness of panel painting and manuscript illumination as unique expressions of a mature urban culture. A whole range of explanatory factors for this sudden bloom of such an autonomous urban culture has been suggested, ranging from the increasingly specialised and innovative urban economy, the thriving force of the craft guilds as centres of learning, innovation and artistic cross-over, processes of social advancement among urban middle groups leading to the growing self-awareness of an urban elite, to the changing devotional practices of the urban lay community. The paradigm of an autonomous and authentic urban culture incited some authors to label various expressions of early Netherlandish art and literature as essentially ‘bourgeois’. Scholars, such as Craig Harbison, distinguished the development of a novel way of illusionistic panel painting suffused with ‘the vocabulary of bourgeois realism’.63 Likewise, Maurits Smeyers associated a similar tendency towards verisimilitude in the manuscript illuminations of the early fifteenth century with a ‘proximity to life’ characteristic of the late medieval burgher.64 Adherents of this social categorisation of early Netherlandish painting find themselves confirmed by the vivid town views, depicting the city as a vibrant economic space that can be found in the oeuvre of the Master of Flémalle and Jan Van Eyck. In particular Chapter II will critically evaluate this particular reading of Flemish painting. Another approach stresses the artistic primacy of the princely court and the prevalence of the traditional (high) nobility as the most important cultural reference point for late medieval society. This model advocates a cultural trickle-down from courtier to burgher, from nobleman to commoner, as epitomised in Johan Huizinga’s The Autumn of the Middle Ages (first published as Herfsttij 62 For a good overview of the different types of patrons, see Maximiliaan Martens, ‘La clientele du peintre’, in Les primitifs flamands et leurs temps, ed. by Brigitte de Patoul and Roger Van Schoutte (Brussels/Louvain-la-Neuve: Renaissance du Livre, 1994), pp. 144-179; Maximiliaan Martens, ‘Patronage’, in Early Netherlandish Paintings. Rediscovery, Reception and Research, ed. by Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne Van Buren and Henk Van Veen (Amsterdam: University Press, 2005), pp. 345-377. 63 Craig Harbison, The Mirror of the Artist. Northern Renaissance Art in its Historical Context (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1995), pp. 50-51. 64 On this historiographical tradition, and particularly the seminal work of Herman Pleij on Middle Dutch literature, see Chapter II, § 2. A ‘bourgeois’ proximity to urban daily life?

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der Middeleeuwen in 1919). Whereas Huizinga witnessed in the art of Dirk Bouts and the Northern Netherlands a ‘bourgeois seriousness’, he discerned in the art of the Southern masters, such as Jan Van Eyck, an ‘aristocratic air’. Huizinga saw the culture of the Burgundian Netherlands as a final expression over an overripe medieval art, driven by the patronage of the noble-dominated court of the Dukes of Burgundy. To him, the ‘Northern Renaissance’ was thus the perfect antithesis to the Italian Renaissance, which has been energised by a dynamic urban bourgeoisie.65 According to this model, not the bourgeois merchant, but the courtier who aspired to noble status, is the typical patron of early Netherlandish painting. Both in the context of museological exhibitions,66 but also in recent scholarly publications, a cultural model that revolves around the Burgundian duke as grand mécène and the eager emulation of a traditional, chivalrous culture remains predominant.67 In a relatively recent publication on late medieval Bruges art Jean Wilson sees panel painting as a select type of conspicuous consumption and as an instrument to assume a noble lifestyle or vivre noblement. The investment, for instance, in an altarpiece accounted as a public manifestation of magnificence, whereas the enclosure of family portraits and heraldic arms clearly expressed a patrilineal ideology. Wilson considered these as attributes of an essential noble lifestyle and mind-set.68 This very topdown approach that departs from a hegemonic court culture has been repeatedly criticised for ignoring the dynamics of a bottom-up supply and demand of art.69 Both grand narratives continue to dominate art historiography, notwithstanding their strong tendency towards social reductionism and a too simplistic social categorisation of late medieval society. The social context was much more complex than the traditional images of the three orders (the nobility, the clergy and the commoners) suggest. For a long time, scholarship on early Netherlandish painting has been lacking the appropriate criteria to assess social status. Since the 1990s a third, much more nuanced cultural model has been developed, with a distinct emphasis on the high degree of symbiosis between the princely court and the urban elites. Walter Prevenier, for instance, pointed at the high level of ‘cultural interference’ between the urban ‘patriciate’ and the nobility

65 Edward Peters and Walter Simons, ‘The New Huizinga and the Old Middle Ages’, Speculum, 74 (1999), 587-620. 66 Susan Marti, Till-Holger Borchert and Gabriele Keck (eds), Charles the Bold (1433-1477). The Splendour of Burgundy (Brussels: Mercatorfonds, 2009), the catalogue of an exhibition that took place in Bern and Bruges. 67 Laura Gelfand, ‘Piety, Nobility and Posterity: Wealth and the Ruin of Nicolas Rolin’s Reputation’, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, 1:1 (2009) (e-journal). See also Belozerskaya, Rethinking the Renaissance, passim. 68 Jean Wilson, Painting in Bruges at the Close of the Middle Ages: Studies in Society and Visual Culture (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). 69 See the remarks of Katherine Wilson, ‘The household inventory as urban “theatre” in late medieval Burgundy’, Social History, 40:3 (2015), 335-359, esp. 336-337, 356-357. See also Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, ‘At the Court as in the City: the Miniature in the Burgundian Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century’, in Medieval mastery: book illumination from Charlemagne to Charles the Bold, 8001475 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 263-271.

introduction

in late medieval Arras.70 In 1995 Wim Blockmans discussed the socio-political conditions that shaped late medieval Bruges as a ‘creative environment’: “The density of the social network in Bruges permitted close contacts between different social categories, from courtiers to deans of crafts. In daily practice the social distance between a nobleman and an artisan was smaller here than in less populated and less cosmopolitan places […] In this environment, where different cultures, languages, political forces and economic systems met, the expression of one’s individual identity was more important than in a less diversified context”.71 The cities of the late medieval Low Countries were cultural melting pots, where traditional noblemen, courtiers, clerics, wealthy merchants, and artisan elites shared to a large extent a common material culture and mind-set.72 The Burgundian Netherlands witnessed a farfetched cultural and behavioural aristocratisation of its urban elites, paralleled by an ongoing urbanisation of its nobility. Already in the fourteenth century mercantile elites competed with nobles in civic jousts73 whereas ordinary middlemen mimicked tournaments and other chivalric behaviour to their own ability.74 A conspicuous lifestyle and material culture were widespread among the urban worthies and gradually trickled down to well-off artisans, to the extent that from the early fifteenth century onward sumptuary legislation tried to restrain certain sartorial and vestimentary practices to a particular social elite. In 1420 the Ghent aldermen deemed it necessary to restrict the use of liveries and various types of fashion, such as jerkins and bonnets, to the nobles, prelates, patricians (poorters), a selection of princely officers (such as the bailiff and sheriff ), and lessors and leaseholders of minimum 60 lb. parisis.75 In 1497 Philip the Fair issued a

70 Walter Prevenier, ‘Culture et groupes sociaux dans les villes des anciens Pays-Bas au moyen âge’, in : Jean-Marie Duvosquel, Jacques Nazet and André Vanrie, Les Pays-Bas bourguignons. Histoire et institutions. Mélanges André Uyttebrouck (Brussels: Archives et Bibliothèques de Belgique, 1996), pp. 349-359. 71 Wim Blockmans, ‘The Burgundian Court and the Urban Milieu as Patrons in 15th century Bruges’, in Economic History and the Arts, ed. by Michaël North (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 1996), pp. 15-26. See also: Wim Blockmans, ‘The Social and Economic Context of Investment in Art in Flanders around 1400’, in Flanders in a European Perspective: Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad, ed. by Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), pp. 711-720. 72 Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, ‘La ville: creuset des cultures urbaines et princières dans les anciens Pays-Bas’, in La cour de Bourgogne et l’Europe. Le rayonnement et les limites d’un modèle culturel, ed. by Werner Paravicini (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2013), pp. 289-304. 73 On civic jousting see [Andries vd Abeele / Vanneste]. 74 Jean Germain, a high-ranking cleric in the entourage of Philip the Good, facetiously observes: “Les Gantois, dans des joutes, se provoquent, tantôt avec des baules, tantôt avec des pieux, parfois avec des perches servant à la pêche; ils s’essaient aux tournois […] et s’imaginent faire les chevaliers en montant des chevaux loués; n’ayant pas d’ecusson nobiliaire, ils s’attachent des bandiaux sur la poitrine et se frappent d’immenses bâtons en guise de lances aiguës” ( Jean Germain, Liber de Virtutibus Philipi, ca. 1452, translation by Victor Fris, ‘Analyse de chroniques bourguignonnes’, Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Gand (1905), p. 195). 75 “[…]behauden altoes te scepenenwaert ende in haerlieder verclaersen, de ghene die den heere ende der wet toebehoeren, den edelen, prelaten ende poertren die van houden tijden levereye ende saysoene sijn gheploghen te ghevene met haerlieden costen ende haven, bailliu, scoutheeten, meyers, ontfanghers ende

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princely sumptuary law for the entire Habsburg Low Countries,76 reserving the wearing of silk, damask and velvet garments to those that ‘live noble and are of rank’.77 This vague delineation of the upper end of the social spectrum allowed municipal governments to socially benchmark local society according to their own criteria. Nearly a month later the Bruges aldermen clarified who precisely had to be considered as ‘living nobly’ and ‘being of rank’ (‘edelic levende ende van state’): namely those burghers who lived from rents, merchants who did not perpetrate manual labour, just like some master-entrepreneurs within the major guilds (such as the butchers) who were not directly involved in the actual craft.78 By doing so, the aldermen demarcated the social boundaries of a very hybrid social elite. This case clearly reveals that contemporaries interpreted the ideal of vivre noblement very broadly and certainly not literally as an imitative lifestyle geared towards noble status. The cities of the Low Countries facilitated a whole range of associations, confraternities, shooting guilds, jousting companies, chambers of rhetoric, and other types of elite conviviality that offered this hybrid elite ample opportunities to meet each other. A typical example of such a meeting-ground for a heterogeneous, aristocratic elite is the Confrérie des Damoiseaux in Tournai. This confraternity was founded in 1280 and incorporated the major patrician lignages, noble and non-noble, of the city, and it was – according to its 1503 statutes – extremely exclusive.79 In late medieval Bruges the Jousting Company of the White Bear and various elite confraternities, such as those of the Holy Blood and Our Lady of the Dry Tree, had a very diverse, yet socially select

pachtren dies ontfanc ende pachte jaerlicx draeght LX lb. parisis, ende der boven ende anders niement” (23 May 1420, Municipal ordonnance (voorgebod van de schepenen van de keure), Ghent City Archives, series 108, no. 5, fol. 73r). I would like to thank dr. Jonas Braekevelt for his kind help. 76 See also Frederik Buylaert, Wim De Clercq and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Sumptuary legislation, material culture and the semiotics of vivre noblement in the county of Flanders (14th-16th centuries)’, Social History, 36 (2011), 393-417. On sumptuary laws in premodern Europe, see Martha Howell, Commerce before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 208-260. 77 “Et saulf que les hommes vivans noblement et destat les pourront porter en pourpoinctz, cornettes, barrettes et sayons; esquelz sayons ne poura ester mis et employe plus de huit aulnes desdiz draps de soye” (Louis Gilliodts – Van Severen, Inventaire des Chartes de la ville de Bruges, vol. 6 (Bruges, 1871-1876), pp. 480-482). 78 “Als van den lieden edelic levende ende van state omme te mueghen draghene wamboysen, cornetten, ende rocken, etc., dat de poorters levende up huere renten ghereputeirt zyn edelic levende, ende de cooplieden die hem niet en moyen met consten van ambochten zyn ghereputeirt lieden van state, ende ooc huerlieder wyfs; ende zynder eeneghe van den principalen ambochten, als vleeschauwers ende andere ghelicke, die hemlieden metter handt van hueren ambachte niet en moyen” (Louis Gilliodts-Van Severen, Cartulaire de l’ancien grand tonlieu de Bruges faisant suite au cartulaire de l’ancienne estaple: recueil de documents concernant le commerce inférieur et maritime, les relations internationales et l’histoire économique de cette ville, volume II (Bruges, 1901-1908), pp. 312-312. 79 Maurice Houtart, ‘Une réalité urbaine, économique et sociale: la confrérie des Damoiseaux’, in La Grande Procession de Tournai (1090-1992). Une réalité religieuse, urbaine, diocésaine, sociale, économique et artistique (Tournai/Louvain-la-Neuve, 1992), pp. 35-42; Philippe Desmette, ‘Les confréries religieuses à Tournai aux XVe et XVIe siècles’, in De Pise à Trente: la réforme de l’Eglise en gestation. Regards croisés entre Escaut et Meuse, ed. by Monique Maillard-Luypaert and Jean-Marie Cauchies (2004), pp. 85-125 (esp. p. 105).

introduction

membership.80 Moreover, within the confines of such elite associations artists met their patrons. The Confraternity of Our Lady of the Dry Tree counted, besides a variety of musicians and visual artists, also the famous painters Petrus Christus and Gerard David as members.81 Likewise, the Confraternity of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows played a very prominent role in the art patronage in early sixteenth-century Brussels.82 This third cultural model departs from the idea of an aristocratic culture, fuelled by the dynamics of distinction and emulation among a very diverse, heterogeneous elite or ‘aristocracy’. Importantly, one should distinguish ‘aristocracy’ (literally, ‘the rule of the best’) from the much stricter term ‘nobility’. Once again, various scholars – most recently Jan Dumolyn – have criticised this model for its too-strong focus on the top segment of society, largely denying the agency of a middle-class, corporate ideology.83 4. A quantitative approach: corpus and methodology Already in 1997 Peter Stabel called for a more serial analysis of ‘artistic’ urban images by means of a systematic screening of the oeuvre of some major late medieval Flemish masters for representations of the city and countryside.84 Even though he could not yet draw firm conclusions, his test case can be considered as one of the first attempts towards quantification within urban iconographical research. Ever since, several small-scale quantitative research projects conducted on images of the city in various medieval pictorial media. One of the most thorough serial analyses was performed by Christian de Mérindol on a corpus of 739 medieval French city seals, representing a total of 434 towns. Typologically very homogeneous and relatively easy to date, city seals are suited for a systematic comparative analysis. Part of a volume dedicated to the phenomenon of ‘civic religion’ in late medieval and early modern Christianity and Islam, de Mérindol’s article limits its scope to the incidence of religious motives on city seals.85

80 Andrew Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges c. 1300-1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 155-166. 81 Hugo Van der Velden, ‘Petrus Christus’s Our Lady of the Dry Tree’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 60 (1997), 89-110. 82 Edmond Roobaert and Trisha Rose Jacobs, ‘An Uncelebrated Patron of Brussels Artists. St Gorik’s Confraternity of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows (1499-1516)’, in The Seven Sorrows Confraternity of Brussels. Drama, Ceremony, and Art Patronage (16th-17th Centuries), ed. by Emily Thelen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 93-112. 83 Jan Dumolyn, ‘Het corporatieve element in de Middelnederlandse letterkunde en de zogenaamde laatmiddeleeuwse burgermoraal’, Spiegel der Letteren, 56:2 (2014), 123-154. 84 Peter Stabel, ‘Social Reality and Artistic Image: the Urban Experience in the Late Medieval Low Countries. Some Introductory Remarks on the Occasion of a Colloquium’, in Core and Periphery in Late Medieval Urban Society, ed. by Myriam Carlier, Anke Greve and Walter Prevenier (Leuven: Garant, 1997), pp. 11-31. 85 Christian de Mérindol, ‘Iconographie du sceau de ville en France à l’époque medieval et religion civique’, in La religion civique à l’époque medieval et modern (chrétienté et islam), ed. by André Vauchez (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1995), pp. 415-428.

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Similar research has been conducted by Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, but on a higher level of abstraction. Her approach is in essence diachronic, as she distinguishes in the thirteenth century a major shift from an emblematic representation of the city (an image-ville or ‘ideogram’) towards an individualizing rendering of a specific city.86 Another medium that became the subject of some modest serial analyses are miniatures. Already in the fourteenth century historiographical and religious manuscripts were often lavishly decorated with landscapes and cityscapes. The majority of these city views functioned as a generic backdrop of a siege or battle. In the second volume of the Breslauer Froissart (1456, Staatbibliothek, Berlin), for instance, Peter Ainsworth counted forty-five illuminations, of which thirty-four depict a military event, and twenty-eight clearly evoke an urban setting.87 Ainsworth observes a sharp contrast between the central ‘chivalrous’ action in semi-grisaille and the vividly coloured and confident town views in the background, but he fails to formulate a convincing explanation or conclusion. The predominantly military features of the city views in late medieval historiographical manuscripts are confirmed by the research of Christine Bousquet-Labouérie. She has systematically screened six versions of the Grandes Chroniques de France and draws the conclusion that most cities are depicted as a castle, especially in the fourteenth-century versions.88 Perhaps the most significant effort to link a quantitative analysis of miniatures to the social function of early Netherlandish art was recently undertaken by Hanno Wijsman.89 His study of the iconography of a substantial number of calendaria in late medieval books of hours revealed a remarkable absence of city views in the calendaria made for an urban clientele. He refers to the iconographical conservatism and the private function of the medium as major explanations. Furthermore, his prospecting of a limited number of panel paintings prompted Wijsman to suggest that the more ‘public’ medium of painting contained considerably more city views. This vision is closely related to the wide-spread assumption that urban, so-called ‘bourgeois’ patrons often chose to publicly establish a visual link between their portraits and the urban background from

86 Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, Form and Order in Medieval France: Studies in Social and Quantitative Sigillography (Farnham: Ashgate, 1993); Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, ‘Du modèle à l’image: les signes de l’identité urbaine au Moyen Age’, in Le verbe, l’image et les représentations de la société urbaine au Moyen Âge, ed. by Marc Boone, Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin and Jean-Pierre Sosson (Antwerpen/ Apeldoorn: Garant, 2002), pp. 189-205. 87 Peter Ainsworth, ‘The Image of the City in Peace and War in a Burgundian Manuscript of Jean Froissart’s Chronicles’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 78:2 (2000), 295-314. 88 Christine Bousquet-Labouérie, ‘L’image de la ville dans les Grandes Chroniques de France: miroir du prince ou du pouvoir urbain?’, in La Ville au Moyen Âge, ed. by Noël Coulet and Olivier Guyotjeannin (Paris, 1998), pp. 247-260 89 Hanno Wijsman, ‘Images de la ville et urbanité des images. Quelques réflexions sur la représentation de l’espace urbain et la function des oeuvres d’art aux Pays-Bas bourguignons’, in Villes de Flandre et d’Italie (XIIIe-XVIe siècle), ed. by Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan and Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2008), pp. 247-258.

introduction

which they sprang.90 Nevertheless, the question remains whether most urban elites really wanted to stress their urban origins as a prominent aspect of their identity. In order to tackle this question, a much more comprehensive serial study of the representation of the city in early Netherlandish panel painting is necessary. This is precisely the objective of this monograph. This study focuses on panel painting made in the Southern Netherlands between ca. 1420 and 1520. Dutch and French literature often use the term ‘Flemish Primitives’, German historiography speaks of ‘Altniederländische Malerei’, whereas the Anglo-Saxon tradition prefers ‘Early Netherlandish Painting’. In this book we will give preference to the latter, sporadically alternated with the term ‘Flemish painting’. The focus of this book lies in the first place on the high-end segment of painted panels, made in one of the major production centres of the Southern Low Countries: Bruges, Brussels, Leuven, Tournai, and to a lesser extent Ghent. Both the documentary and heuristic conditions of this type of arts are favourable. More or less 5000 panel paintings that were made in the late medieval Southern Netherlands are still preserved.91 Approximately 1700 of these works are described and documented by the Centre for the Study of Flemish Primitives, situated on the fifth floor of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in Brussels.92 The German art historian and connoisseur Max Friedländer made a 14-volume repertory of early Netherlandish paintings, first published in 1924-1937 as Die altniederländische Malerei.93 This catalogue comprises 4106 works, even though eight volumes are dedicated to sixteenth-century Antwerp painters, that fall outside the scope of this study.94 Friedlander played a pivotal role in the categorisation of painting in clusters of major masters, workshop collaborators, and anonymous masters with provisional names. The quantitative segment of this study is based on a corpus of nine major masters and a selection of sixteen minor masters,95 most of them active in Bruges or Brussels. In total 550 works have been systematically analysed with the help of Friedländer’s Early Netherlandish Painting and the photographic documentation of the Centre for the Study of Flemish Primitives, supplemented with a multitude of catalogues raisonnés and monographs dedicated to the oeuvre of the major masters. It goes 90 Craig Harbison, Jan Van Eyck: the Play of Realism (London: Reaktion Books, 1991), p. 122. On ‘bourgeois realism’, see also Craig Harbison, The Mirror of the Artist. Northern Renaissance Art in Its Historical Context (Upper Saddle River: Harry N. Abrams Incorporated, 1995), pp. 47-50; Brigitta Zülicke-Laube, ‘Die “Flandrische Manier” und die Entdeckung des bürgerlichen Welt der Städte’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Universität Leipzig, 12 (1963), pp. 429-444. 91 Maryan Ainsworth and Maximiliaan Martens, Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994), p. 181. 92 See http://xv.kikirpa.be/home/. 93 We used the English translation: Max J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting (Leiden: Sijthoff, 1967-1973). We used the volumes 1-4 and 6. 94 The repertory has been recently digitalised into the on-line accessible database Friedländer 3.0: http://xv.kikirpa.be/2/friedlaender-30/. 95 A good introduction on these masters with provisional names is Nathalie Toussaint, Paul Eeckhout, Jelle Dijkstra et al., ‘Les petits maîtres de la fin du XVe siècle’, in Les primitifs flamands et leurs temps, ed. by Brigitte de Patoul and Roger Van Schoutte (Brussels/Louvain-la-Neuve: Renaissance du Livre, 1994), pp. 495-571.

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without saying that every act of selection entails a certain bias. Our corpus predominantly contains high-end panel paintings and is thus especially representative for the elite segment. This offers the advantage that many paintings were original creations in which the patron often had a say. Major Masters

Masters with a provisional name

Flémalle Group (Tournai) Jacques Daet (Tournai) Jan Van Eyck (Bruges) Rogier Van der Weyden (Tournai/Brussels) Petrus Christus (Bruges) Dirk Bouts (Leuven) Hugo van der Goes (Ghent) Hans Memling (Bruges) Gerard David (Bruges)              

Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy (Bruges) Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula (Bruges) Master of the Bruges Passion (Bruges) Master of the Legend of Saint Augustine (Bruges) Master of the Legend of Saint Godelieve (Bruges) Master of the Turin Adoration (Bruges) Master of the Baroncelli Portraits (Bruges) Master of San Lorenzo della Costa (Bruges) Master of 1499 (Bruges) Master of the Khanenko Adoration (Ghent) Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine (Brussels) Master of the Legend of Saint Barbara (Brussels) Master of the Embroidered Foliage (Brussels) Master of the Joseph Sequence (Brussels) Master of Saint Gudula (Brussels) Master of Saint Georges (Mechelen)

The city appears on circa 35 per cent of the 550 paintings in our corpus (Graph 0.1). This ratio remains relatively stable throughout the fifteenth century. Most cityscapes are imbedded in a larger landscape. Many paintings consist of multiple panels, where each contains a separate cityscape. In the case of such polyptychs we treat the different panels as separate works, unless one continuous cityscape spans several panels. This brings the total to 220 panels that depict one or more cities in a significant manner. Landscapes in which the city has been reduced to a nearly perceivable silhouette are not selected. The sample of 220 painted city views has been screened for a variety of criteria (or ‘coding categories’, cf. supra). By doing so, this study tries to objectively measure to what extent various dimensions of the urban space are expressed in the pictorial city view. The quantification of the components by which Jerusalem has been evoked, for instance, says something about the religious dimension of the city (Chapter I). By counting the number of interior street views, the amount of shops, harbour views, or other mercantile motifs we try to get a better understanding of the degree to which the city has been represented as an economic space (Chapter II). Also the absence of the city, in favour of a pure landscape, might learn us something about how the contemporary patron perceived the city (Chapter IV). This study combines the serial analysis of a large corpus with the in-depth analysis of a selection of significant cases. One single time, a particular subset within the corpus has been subjected to a specific quantitative analysis (a selection of Bruges towerscapes, Chapter III).

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introduction Graph 0.1: Background motives Flemish panel painting (1420–1520) (%) 100% 30

45

36

70% 27

27

15

0%

5

23

10

21

22 7

17 5

37 33

30

46 20

21

21

28

27

Plain

Interior

Predominantly cityscape

Landscape with city

20

25

TOTAL (550)

10%

5 1

26

Christus (39)

5

van Eyck (20)

20%

30

vd Weyden (43)

30%

9 3

34

30

18

10

5

3

Flémalle (30)

40%

13

16

Minor Masters (239)

50%

19

27

David (51)

60%

31

Memling (94)

80%

23

Bouts (32)

90%

Predominantly Landscape

5. Outline of the book The first short chapter of this book is dedicated to the religious dimension of the city. Given the predominantly devotional function of panel painting, this forms the first, primary layer of meaning that is condensed in the city views. The city often constitutes the logical setting of a religious narrative, such as a saint’s life or the Passion of Christ, while other compositions made use of the allegorical meaning of the city as a symbol of the earthly or heavenly Jerusalem. Chapter II seeks to add a more secular plot to the predominantly religious narrative of early Netherlandish panel painting by investigating the economic dimension of the represented cities. By doing so, this chapter tackles the question of whether panel painting can be considered as a typical ‘bourgeois’ medium of art. Chapter III focuses on the theatrical and monumental dimension of the city as a political and social stage. Especially in the second half of the fifteenth century this facet becomes more important in the Flemish painted city views. Chapter IV discusses the absence of the city: a considerable amount of early Netherlandish panel paintings turns aside from the city and depict an idealised countryside. The last chapter looks into the alleged ‘realism’ of early Netherlandish painting by tackling the issue of topographical verisimilitude and spatial accuracy.

city views

Figure 1.1: Workshop Jan Van Eyck / Petrus Christus, Madonna with Jan Vos (or Exeter Madonna), 1445-1450, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz.© Photo Jörg P. Anders.

Chapter I

Religious space. The city as devotional theatre

Enfin, que représente la ville pour le christianisme médiéval?1

In the twelfth chapter of his The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919) the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga peerlessly dissects how late medieval society was pathologically affected by the Christian doctrine: “Individual and social life, in all their manifestations, are imbued with the conceptions of faith. There is not an object nor action, however trivial, that is not constantly correlated with Christ or salvation. All thinking tends to religious interpretation of individual things; there is an enormous unfolding of religion in daily life”.2 Huizinga describes the constant interchange of religious and profane terms: “While religious symbolism represented the realities of nature and history as symbols or emblems of salvation, on the other hand religious metaphors were borrowed to express profane sentiments”.3 It does not come as a surprise, therefore, that the concept of the city – an essentially earthly creation – could also convey a deeper religious meaning. The urban space had religious significance on various levels: as the setting of biblical or hagiographical narratives and the related function as a place of pilgrimage, as the arena of religious processions and other rituals, but also as a metaphor for God, the Church, the community of Christians and even the entire cosmos. It is revealing that many clerics, including various Carthusians, opted to be portrayed with a prominent cityscape in the background (Figure 1.1).4 The sacral dimension of the city was undeniable and formed a crucial ideological foundation of urban identity and cohesion. Historians such as André Vauchez have developed the notion of ‘civic religion’ – a phenomenon originally associated with the city (states) of Antiquity – for medieval Italian urban communes.5 The term was initially used by Vauchez to describe specific religious practices supported by the municipal government, such as large-scale 1 Jacques Le Goff, ‘Ville’, in Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Occident medieval, ed. by Jacques Le Goff and JeanClaude Schmitt (Paris: Fayard, 1999), p. 1186. 2 Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (New York: Dover Publications, 1999), p. 136. 3 Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, p. 141. 4 For a recent study of the artistic patronage of the Carthusians in the Low Countries, see Liesbeth Zuidema, Verbeelding en ontbeelding. Een onderzoek naar de functie van kunst in Nederlandse kartuizerkloosters (1450-1550) (unpublished PhD thesis, Leiden, 2010). 5 André Vauchez (ed.), La Religion Civique à l’Époque Médiévale et Moderne (Chrétienté et Islam) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1995).



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processions and the cult of patron saints, as expressed in the numerous images of saints who hold a scale model of the city in their protective hands. This blending of political power with the spiritual was geared towards a sursacralisation of society in order to enhance its unity and legitimise the power claims made by the ruling elite. The meaning of ‘civic religion’ has been recently expanded by scholars such as Nicolas Terpstra and Pierre Monnet to a variety of phenomena in which the social and political intersects with the religious.6 This could range from diverse confraternities and hospitals to religiously inspired endowments and foundations of various entities, ranging from individuals, families, confraternities to craft guilds. The latter practiced a myriad of commemorative practices, including the patronage of devotional panel paintings that gave expression to the donor’s aspirations. Civic religion was not only a top-down phenomenon, but also a personal, bottom-up practice. Moreover, ecclesiastical power pervaded daily city life: weekly markets and annual fairs took place in the shadow of the church tower, while church bells and festive days gave rhythm to the worldly time of labour and leisure. The urban landscape was dotted with statues of saints – from street corners, house fronts, to city gates – while a variety of clerics populated the streets. A tiny detail on Hans Memling’s Saint John Altarpiece (Figure 1.2) vividly expresses this entanglement of church and city: the background of the central panel figures a view of the Bruges Kraanplaats, where a brother of the Saint John Hospital measures and levies taxes on the incoming shipments of wine and oil (see also Chapter II). Spurred by the Devotia Moderna, a religious movement that gained momentum in the late medieval Low Countries, panel painting (together with illuminated books of hours) became the favourite medium for personal devotion and religious patronage.7 The fifteenth century witnessed an explosion of devotional portraits. A recent study by Ingrid Falque compiled and classified a corpus of no fewer than 721 paintings of donor portraits made in the Low Countries between 1400 and 1550. Besides a very useful catalogue for future research, Falque investigated how these paintings accommodated the spiritual and contemplative processes as described and visualised in the devotional and mystical writings of the time.8 This chapter discusses how the sacral dimension shaped the representation of the city in various ways. The iconological tradition in the wake of Erwin Panofsky has devoted a disproportionate attention to the religious symbolism in early Netherlandish painting. This study supplants this overly







6 Nicolas Terpstra, ‘Republics by Contract. Civil Society in the Papal State’, in Sociability and its Discontents. Civil Society, Social Capital, and their Alternatives in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Nicolas Eckstein and Nicolas Terpstra (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 293-311; Pierre Monnet, ‘Pour en finir avec la religion civique?’, Histoire Urbaine, 27 (2010), 107-120. 7 Recent scholarship, however, suggests that the Devotia Moderna might be overstressed by art historians in relation to an affective piety of late medieval religion in general. For the Devotio Moderna, see John Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, Penn State University Press, 2008). 8 Ingrid Falque, Devotional Portraiture and Spiritual Experience in Early Netherlandish Painting (Amsterdam: Brill, 2017).

r eligious space. the city a s devotiona l theatre

Figure 1.2: Hans Memling, Saint John Altarpiece (detail), 1474-1480, Musea Brugge / Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Hugo Maertens

hermetic religious interpretation by investigating how devotional practices were rooted in the spatial reality of the city. The first section discusses how the city was used as a powerful intellectual and religious concept and how this was expressed in medieval iconography. The second focuses on the representation of the city as sacral space in panel painting, both as a religious metaphor and as the setting of a devotional narrative. In particular the power of religious theatre – an omnipresent practice in the late medieval city – will receive special attention.

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1.

The city as intellectual and religious concept

One of the most elementary features of medieval culture is its analogical or concentric line of reasoning. Crucial to understanding how the medieval man thought of the world and his place within it is the idea of a fundamental cohesion between the world, its creatures, and their Creator. Within the hierarchical order of the Creation the features of the whole (the cosmos) recur on every single level, even into the smallest parts. From this point of view the composition and structure of the ‘cosmic body’ and the ‘human body’ are analogous. The city finds itself in between these two scales, as it can be understood as a macrocosm of man (the city as body), but also as a microcosm of society, the earth, and the entire creation. Aron Gurevich deemed this analogy between microcosm and macrocosm as the foundation of medieval symbolism.9 It made perfect sense, therefore, to represent the city by means of a one single building, an allegorical person, a metaphor of the human body, or as a cosmological shape, such as a circle or square. Chiara Frugoni illustrates this ‘thinking through concentric circles’ by referring to Isidore of Seville (560-636), who defined the city as the multiplied version of an inhabited modular unit, the single house.10 The analogy cosmos – the city – body stood as the basis of Neoplatonic cosmology and refers to Plato’s Timaeus. Through the Latin translation of Calcidius, Plato’s ideas had a strong impact on medieval thinking. According to Neoplatonic thinking, the citadel rules over the city, just as the spirit conducts the body, heaven directs earth, and God rules man. And just as the circular earth stands at the centre of the spherical cosmos, the city of Jerusalem is the navel of the world.11 The ‘Heavenly Jerusalem’ or ‘New Jerusalem’ is one of the most powerful metaphors advanced by medieval analogous thinking. The Old Testament prophecy of Ezekiel had already foretold the construction of a New Jerusalem near the Temple Mount. Saint John the Evangelist recycles this idea in his Book of Revelation, making the anticipation of a Heavenly Jerusalem a key point of Christian eschatology. The Apocalypse describes John’s vision of the descent of the Heavenly Jerusalem as a ‘New Heaven’ and a ‘New Earth’ that will harbour all true faithful Christians after the Last Judgement. Not only did the concept of the Heavily Jerusalem signify the prospect of salvation, it equally functioned as a metaphor for the community of true Christians and eventually the Church (Ecclesia) itself. Although the Revelation describes the heavenly city as a perfect square with walls of gold and with twelve gates, early medieval iconography often depicts the Heavenly Jerusalem as a perfect circle (sometimes in combination with a square). This anomaly can undoubtedly be explained by the cosmological significance of the idea of Jerusalem. The heavenly city was often understood as a microcosm of God’s creation, and according to Neoplatonic standards, the 9 Aron Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 59. 10 Frugoni, A Distant City, pp. 4-5. 11 Keith Lilley, City and Cosmos. The Medieval World in Urban Form (London: Reaktion Books, 2009), pp. 7-12.

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latter was composed of concentric circles. In the Middle Ages, the geometrical cityscape of the Heavenly Jerusalem constituted the archetype of the ideal city, against which all earthy cities matched oneself. A recent study by Keith Lilley argued that the spatial layout and pictorial representation of many medieval cities were fundamentally inspired by the idealised plan of the heavenly city.12 Some Italian cities boasted a biblical number of twelve city gates,13 whereas the episcopal city of Utrecht harboured five churches that constituted a cross when connected on the urban plan. Several German cities, such as Bamberg and Paderborn, aspired to a similar ‘town cross’. Nevertheless, no archival documents attest to these allegedly deliberate forms of symbolic town planning. Possibly it concerns a post-factum discourse based on a coincidental spatial configuration of the city.14 Moreover, the rigid geometrical grid of the bastides in Southern France, for instance, chiefly served practical purposes. That does not alter the fact that the impact of the Jerusalem ideal on urban identity was undeniable. This becomes clear in the pictorial rhetoric of city seals that appeared together with the communal movement throughout Europe. Pierre Lavedan labelled these concise representations of the city ‘ideograms’, since these icons encapsulated a particular idea.15 The image and/or legend of many municipal seals undoubtedly refer to the sacral role model of the Heavenly Jerusalem. For example, the first seal of Cologne (ca. 1147) – one of the oldest in Europe – depicts the patron saint Peter encircled by a crenelated wall with twelve towers and a cupola. It is obvious that the city on the Rhine wanted to present itself as the earthly match of the heavenly city. Likewise, the three arcades, central gate, and cupola architecture on the twelfth-century Arras seal bears close resemblance to the image of the Heavenly Jerusalem in the contemporary Liber Floridus (Figure 1.3). Another example is the municipal seal of Tongeren in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (1231), consisting of a perfectly circular city wall and four city gates (Figure 1.4).16 These sporadic allusions to the Heavenly Jerusalem especially typify the earliest city seals. From the thirteenth century onwards the typology and iconography of municipal seals diversified.17 A serial analysis of a large corpus of French city seals by Brigitte Bedos-Rezak revealed that from circa 1300 onwards seals were less conceived as a generic representation of an ideal city. They were increasingly replaced by a more individualised image that stressed the topographical or institutional singularity of the city. The ideogram gradually turned into a basic

12 Lilley, City and Cosmos, pp. 41-73. 13 Frugoni, A Distant City, p. 27. 14 August Berkum, ‘Het Utrechtse kerkenkruis, vooropgezet plan of interpretatie achteraf ?’, Maandblad Oud-Utrecht, 62:1 (1989), pp. 1-3; Charlotte Broer, Het Utrechts kerkenkruis: feit of fictie? (Utrecht, 2001). 15 Lavedan, Représenations des villes, p. 27. 16 Emanuel Klinkenberg, Architectuuruitbeelding in de Middeleeuwen. Oorsprong , verbreiding en betekenis van architectonische beeldtradities in de West-Europese kunst tot omstreeks 1300 (Utrecht: Clavis, 2010), pp. 452-458. 17 Nathalie Woedstad, Stadszegels en image-building in het Middeleeuwse graafschap Vlaanderen (unpublished Master thesis, Ghent, 1993).

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Figure 1.3: Anonymous illumination, The Heavenly Jerusalem, in ‘Liber Floridus’ (Lambert of Saint Omer), ca. 1120, Ghent University Library, Ghent.

portrait of the town.18 The high medieval tendency to depict the city as a circle also occurs in other media, such as miniatures, maps, and drawings. The physical reality of the earthly Jerusalem, in addition to the idealised idea of the heavenly Jerusalem, impacted the self-image of many European cities. For the setting of many key episodes of the Old and New Testament – in particular the Passion of Christ – the city was an important site of pilgrimage. During annual processions, many medieval cities transformed into the Jerusalem 18 Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, ‘Du modèle à l’image: les signes de l’identité urbaine au Moyen Age’, in Le verbe, l’image et les représentations de la société urbaine au Moyen Age, ed. by Marc Boone, Elodie LecuppreDesjardin and Jean-Pierre Sosson (Antwerpen/Apeldoorn : Garant, 2002), pp. 189-205.

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Figure 1.4: Anonymous, The Municipal Seal of Tongeren, 1231, Municipal Archives, Tongeren.

associated with the Entry or the Passion of Christ, often making use of mock architecture (cf. infra). In several cities an imitation of the Holy Sepulchre was constructed.19 An illustrious example is the Jerusalem Chapel in Bruges, built in the fifteenth century by the Adornes family.20 Another famous case is Aachen, conceived by Charlemagne as a kind of new earthly Jerusalem and a second Rome.21 By the fifth century, the Eternal City had become the spiritual match of Jerusalem. Pope Leo the Great (440-461) greatly contributed to the spatial sacralisation of Rome, transforming it into a major place of pilgrimage and the epicentre of Western Christianity. Nevertheless, Rome’s pagan past compromised its lofty claims as a ‘second Jerusalem’. Some theologians bracketed the city together with the haughty Babylon. One of the most renowned critics of the previous pagan history of Rome was the Church Father Augustine of Hippo (354-430).22 Next to John’s Revelation, Augustine’s De Civitate Dei contra Paganos (412-426) thoroughly shaped the religious conception of the medieval city. With Raoul de Presles’s translation into French, this magisterial work was widely read in the Low Countries. Augustine conceived his City of God as an ardent apology of the Christian faith that, after the sack of Rome in 410, had been under fierce attack by the adherents of the old, pagan religions. At the core of his vision lies the duality of two opposite ‘cities’ that emerged after the Fall of man: “Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of 19 Early medieval imitations can be found throughout Europe: Fulda (Saint Michael), Paderborn, Dijon (Saint Bénigne), Bologna (Saint Stephan) and Cambridge (Philippe Angers, Principles of religious imitation in mediaeval architecture: an analysis of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and its European copies from the Carolingian period to the late Romanesque (unpublished Master thesis, Montréal, 2006). 20 Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, ‘Les Imitations du Saint-Sépulcre de Jérusalem (IXe-XVe siècles): archéologie d’une dévotion’, Revue d’histoire de la spiritualité, 1 (1974), pp. 319-342; Noël Geirnaert and André Vandewalle, Adornes en Jeruzalem: internationaal leven in het 15de- en 16de-eeuwse Brugge (Brugge: Stad Brugge, 1983). 21 Robert Konrad, ‘Das himmlische und das irdische Jerusalem im mittelalterlichen Denken. Mystische Vorstellungen und geschichtliche Wirkung’, in Speculum historiale. Geschichte im Spiegel von Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsdeutung, ed. by Clemens Bauer et al. (Freiburg, 1965), pp. 523-540, esp. p. 527. 22 Konrad, ‘Das himmlische und das irdische’, pp. 523-526.

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self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord”.23 Interestingly enough, Augustine uses the word ‘civitas’: a body of people constituting a community or ‘city-state’. In fact, it would be more appropriate to translate the title of the work into ‘On the State of God’, rather than ‘The City of God’ (as the German translation for instance goes Vom Gottesstaat). In the Roman languages and in English the meaning of the term ‘civitas’ evolved into ‘urban community’ stricto sensu (città, cité, city). For medieval man this semantic discussion held little importance, as within the analogical frame ‘city’ and ‘state’ were exchangeable. Augustine uses the metaphor of the civitas dei to signify the community of true faithful, in opposition to the civitas terrena, the community of false Christians and pagans. Since the beginning of time these two ‘states’ coexist and they will continue to do so until the Last Judgement. Augustine illustrates this divide of mankind with a series of historical and biblical examples, with Jerusalem (city of peace) and Babylon (city of confusion) as prototypes. Rome, whose very foundation had been fouled by fratricide, counted as another example of the terrestrial city. However, within this pagan city gradually grew a City of God: the small community of early Christians. After the Last Judgement this terrestrial Civitas Dei will eventually merge with its celestial counterpart. The duality central to Augustine’s vision clearly comes to the fore in a fifteenth-century miniature in a manuscript copy of the Cité de Dieu made circa 1475 in Paris for the French nobleman Jacques d’Armagnac (Figure 1.5).24 The illumination clearly shows how the terrestrial city is divided into sinful and virtuous people. In every compartment of the city, a cardinal sin has been juxtaposed with a virtue. Despite the presence of some isolated true Christians, the majority of the world is possessed by evil: along the city wall seven demons dance. The pious inhabitants of the terrestrial city hopefully await the arrival of the celestial city. This City of God floats above the earth and harbours God, Mary, and a multitude of saints and angels. Augustine’s attitude towards the city is highly ambiguous: it signifies both good and bad. The equivocal meaning of the city as a place of great riches and potential on the one hand, and of triviality and depravity on the other, pervaded medieval perception and representation of urbanity, as will become obvious throughout this book (especially Chapter II). The notion of the Civitas Dei recurred in various late medieval literary works, such as Christine de Pisan’s Cité des Dames (1405). Clearly inspired by Augustine, she uses the city as a metaphor for the book itself (as a construction built by arguments) and for the community of virtuous women.25 Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia (1308-1321), in turn, revised

23 Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei contra Paganos, trans. by Marcus Dods (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009), Book XIV, Chapter 28, p. 430. 24 A similar miniature was made in the workshop of Jacquemart Pilavaine in Mons (Hainaut) for the high noble Croy family (Maurits Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures from the 8th to the mid-16th Century. The Medieval World on Parchment (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 1999), Figure 58). 25 Maureen Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority Christine de Pizan’s ‘Cité des Dames’ (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1991).

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Figure 1.5: FrancoFlemish miniaturist, Cité de Dieu, Cité terrestre, frontispiece in Augustine, ‘Cité de Dieu’ (trans. by Raoul de Presles), Paris, 1469-1473, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. Français 18, fol. 3v. Source gallica.bnf.fr/BnF.

the Augustinian antithesis of the terrestrial Rome and the celestial Jerusalem by associating his hometown, Florence, with the demonic Babylon, while glorifying the role of Rome in the realisation of the Civitas Dei.26 2. The city as religious space in early Netherlandish panel painting Given the predominantly devotional purpose of late medieval panel painting, most painted city views owe their position and meaning to the overall religious scheme into which they are woven. This section discusses three different aspects of the representation of the city as a religious space: the depiction of the city as a devotional theatre, the portrayal of the terrestrial Jerusalem as a narrative setting, and the allegorical representation of the Heavenly Jerusalem.

26 Joan Ferrante, The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

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The city as religious theatre: Simultanbilder

In the second half of the fifteenth century, early Netherlandish painting increasingly embedded religious scenes into urban architecture. Generally, the city transformed evolved from a distant background motif to the increasingly prominent setting of Christ’s Passion or of a saint’s life. One of the most remarkable features of devotional paintings of the late fifteenth century is that they often make use of so-called Simultanbilder or ‘simultaneous images’, a term coined in 1974 by Ehrenfried Kluckert.27 This pictorial device depicts the consecutive episodes of the religious narrative simultaneously in a series of architectural compartments. As a result, the cityscape is turned into a devotional doll’s house; a stack of separate stages moulded into a distinctly urban architectural whole. Perhaps one of the most renowned examples of this kind of Simultanbilder is Hans Memling’s Turin Passion Altarpiece (ca. 1470), a commission by the Florentine banker Tommaso Portinari (Figure 1.6). Memling integrated a patchwork of scenes into a landscape, with at the very centre the ‘narrative space’ or Erzählraum par excellence: Jerusalem as the stage of the Passion of Christ.28 A decade later Memling created for the Bruges tanner Pieter Bultinck an even more comprehensive narrative panorama of over 25 winding stories from the Life of Christ, including the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Adoration of the Magi, the Passion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost, the Dormition and the Assumption of Mary (the so-called Scenes from the Advent and Triumph of Christ in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich).29 The Simultanbilder attest to a general tendency towards theatricalisation and monumentalisation that typify early Netherlandish painted city views from circa 1450 onwards (see Chapter III). In fact, they bear a close formal and functional resemblance to the theatrical performances that were simultaneously performed in various locations in the city at the occasion of religious processions and important liturgical feasts.30 The ingenious spatial syntax of Memling’s Turin Passion, for instance, shows a remarkable likeness to the passion plays that annually filled Bruges’s public spaces during the Procession of the Holy Blood. Since the late fourteenth century this procession, which encompassed the entire urban community, had been accompanied by biblical stage plays that were performed on the streets and squares of Bruges. In the middle of the sixteenth century, Joos de Damhoudere mentions twenty-one ‘plays of old times’, among which were fifteen evocations of

27 Ehrenfried Kluckert, ‘Die Simultanbilder Memlings, Ihre Würzeln und Wirkungen’, Das Münster, 27 (1974), 284-295. 28 Annette Hoffmann and Gerhard Wolf (eds), Jerusalem as Narrative Space / Erzählraum Jerusalem (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 29 Maurits Smeyers, ‘Analecta Memlingiana: From Hemling to Memling – From Panoramic View to Compartmented Representation’, in Memling Studies, ed. by Hélène Verougstraete, Roger Van Schoute and Maurits Smeyers (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), pp. 171-194. 30 For the most recent literature on the relation between medieval theatre and visual arts, see Laura Weigert, French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater (Cambridge: University Press, 2015).

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Figure 1.6: Hans Memling, Scenes from the Passion of Christ, 1470-1471, Galleria Sabauda, Turin. Source Wikimedia Commons.

the Passion cycle.31 Many Eucharist processions throughout the Low Countries witnessed a similar ‘dramatisation’ towards the end of the middle ages. Another well-documented example is the Procession of the Holy Sacrament in late medieval Oudenaarde, during which every street on the processional route organised a different biblical tableau vivant. These processional plays were performed on temporary stages, on which costumed actors evoked a particular scene from the Old or New Testament, sometimes supplemented by a short dialogue.32 In Bruges, the guild of Saint Luke became officially involved in the stage building and decoration of the processional plays from 1445 until the early sixteenth century. Many stages were adorned with painted backcloths and mock architecture.33 One particular play that graced the Procession of the Holy Blood makes the suggested link with the painted Simultanbilder, such as the Turin Passion, almost tangible. The Bruges city accounts mention numerous (between 1399 and 1434 even annual) expenditures for a stage setting called the Stede van Jerusalem (‘The City of Jerusalem’). This

31 Joos de Damhoudere, Van de Grootdadigheyt der Breedtvermaerde Regeringhe van de Stadt Brugge: Met de Plaetsbeschryvinghe der selver stede (Amsterdam, 1684), pp. 564-265. 32 Bart Ramakers, Spelen en Figuren. Toneelkunst en processiecultuur in Oudenaarde tussen Middeleeuwen en Moderne Tijd (Amsterdam, 1996). For processional plays in other cities: Mark Trowbridge, ‘Processional Plays in Aalst. A View from the Archives’, Medievalia, 28:1 (2007), 95-117. 33 Mark Trowbridge, ‘Jerusalem Transposed. A Fifteenth-Century Panel for the Bruges Market’, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, 1:1 (2009), pp. 3-4 (e-journal). Trowbridge refers to a description of the Procession of the Holy Blood in a version of the Excellente Chronike van Vlaenderen (1531): ‘Wat daer was ghetoocht de[n] boom van Yesse […] ende andere [taferelen] seere chierlic toe ghemaect va[n] schilderye’ (note 30).

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Figure 1.7: Master of the Turin Adoration (Bruges), Christ Carrying the Cross, with the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple, the Last Supper, Christ Crowned with Thorns, the Flagellation, “Ecce Homo”, the Agony in the Garden, and the Crucifixion, ca. 1500, Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, Cat. 338.

Bruges production must have gained a certain regional reknown, as in 1432 the aldermen of the city of Aalst (Eastern Flanders) commissioned a replica. The ‘City of Jerusalem’ consisted of a float dressed with a huge scale model of the Holy City, made out of wood, iron, and canvas. The structure rested on four iron-plated wheels and could be pulled through the streets with the assistance of nine people. The Bruges accounts mention a total of 72 persons who were needed to operate the construction during the procession, suggesting a simultaneous performance of various scenes of the Passion cycle. On the occasion of the triumphal Entry of duke Philip the Good in Bruges on 22 February 1463, the municipal government hired the famous painter Petrus Christus to supervise the construction of two gigantic props installed in the streets, among which the city of Jerusalem.34 An early sixteenth-century illustration of a similar theatrical performance of the Holy City during the Entry of Charles V in Bruges in 1515, gives us a clue of what such a construction might have looked like. The scene was made by the Castilian nation and represented the city of Jerusalem as an ensemble of painted buildings and towers, very similar to Memling’s Turin Passion.35

34 Maximiliaan Martens, ‘New information on Petrus Christus’s biography and the patronage of his Brussels Lamentation’, Simiolus, 20:1 (1990), 5-23 (esp. p. 9). 35 A printed version of the illustrated description of Charles V is kept in the British Library in London: Remy du Puys, The Entry of Charles V into Bruges (La tryumphante et solemnelle entrée), 1515, published by Gilles de Goumont, Paris, British Library, no. C.44.g.11, pp. 51-52. The text that accompanies the woodcut describes the scene as follows: “une arche […] sur laquelle fut assise la cite de Hierusalem contrefaicte en edifices, tours, painctures et aultres, toutes ses parties bien au vray” (p. 52).

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Various scholars, such as Mitzi Kirkland-Ives and Mark Trowbridge, have recently demonstrated that the multi-scenic panorama’s of Jerusalem made by Memling and other contemporary painters, such as the Master of the Turin Adoration (Figure 1.7), were strongly indebted to the processional culture and public stagecraft that flourished throughout the Burgundian-Habsburg Low Countries.36 The same could be said of a myriad of saints’ legends that were painted by anonymous Bruges and Brussels masters at the end of the fifteenth century. Making use of Simultanbilder, they tell the episodes of the Saint’s life by means of a sequence of architectural or scenic frames, compressed into a limited number of panels. A telling example is the Life of Saint Catherine, made around 1480 by an anonymous Brussels master named after this eponymous work. Within the urban precinct, scattered along immaculately paved streets that evoke a primitive sense of linear perspective, the dramatic story of Saint Catherine unfolds (Figure 1.8 – Plate 2).37 The consecutive episodes are set in tiny scale models of burgher houses and city palaces of which one wall has been removed to enable an interior view on what is happening inside. Also here there is a striking parallel with the ubiquitous miracles plays that were performed on a regular basis on temporary stages set up in the urban public sphere.38 The affinity between the Simultanbilder and the performance of religious drama becomes even more obvious when looking at sixteenth century drawings and stage plans that were used for the planning of the yearly Passion Play on the town’s central square (Figure 1.9).39 During these well-orchestrated spectacles the scenes were re-enacted in symbiosis with the monumental framework of the square. It is, for instance, no coincidence that the Ecce Homo scene (in which Christ led to Pilate) was often set before the city hall.40 In some cities, crucial scenes from the Passion of Christ were even permanently entrenched into the urban topography by means of sculpture (e.g. Christ sitting on the Cold Stone) or specific toponyms.41 36 Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, In the Footsteps of Christ. Hans Memling’s Passion Narratives and the Devotional Imagination in the Early Modern Netherlands (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). Mark Trowbridge (Marymount University) is currently preparing a monograph on art and theater in late-medieval Bruges (Brepols). 37 Another good example is the Life of Saint Godelieve (1475-1500), made by the anonymous Bruges master who was named after this work (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1912, accession number 12.79). See also: Toussaint, ‘De kleine meesters’, passim; Soetkin Bruneel, ‘De architectuurweergave bij de kleine meesters van het einde van de 15de eeuw te Brussel’ (unpublished Master thesis, Ghent University, 2011). 38 The French artist Jean Fouquet made a magnificent miniature of the performance in such a miracle play (of the martyrdom of Saint Apollonia) in Les Heures d’Etienne Chevalier (1452-1460, Musée Condé, Chantilly). 39 On these stage plans, see: Alois Nagler, The Medieval Religious Stage: Shapes and Phantoms (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1976), pp. 29-54. Nagler also discusses some drafts for a series of (lost or never executed) tapestries in Reims. These Simultanbilder, which bear close resemblance to the saints’ lives of the Flemish small masters, depict the Vengeance de Notre Seigneur, a mystery play performed in 1531 in Reims (pp. 82-88). 40 See for instance Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Mesurer et recréer les espaces de la Passion dans la France du Moyen Âge tardif ’, in Orbis disciplinae. Hommages en l’honneur de Patrick Gautier Dalché, ed. by Nathalie Bouloux, Anca Dan and Georges Tolias (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 183-198. 41 Aart Mekking and Marcel Zijlstra, ‘Het Utrechtse “Hanengeschrei”: burengerucht of passietopografie’, Madoc, 12:1 (1998), 25-31.

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Figure 1.8: Master of the Life of Saint Catherine (Brussels), The Life of Saint Catherine, 1480-1495, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel.

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Figure 1.9: Renward Cysat, Plan of the Passion Play in Luzern (second day), 1583, Zentralbibliothek, Luzern.

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Not only did the lay community enact religious theatre on the public streets and squares; the clergy also participated in liturgical dramas that were performed inside the church building. Sally Whitman Coleman recently suggested how to cluster and interpret the complex narrative structure of Memling’s Advent and Triumph of Christ in Munich in terms of the liturgical drama that was performed on the four major religious feasts (Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost) throughout the year in the Bruges Church of Our Lady.42 Both the multi-sequence paintings and the theatrical performances (whether on the street or in the church) served a common devotional goal. Even if the painted spiritual scale-models of the Holy City offered a tool for a more individualised devotion, they incorporated the same principles of religious instruction and contemplation as witnessed in the collectively performed Passion and miracle plays. The late medieval dramatization of the Via Sacra and other scenes from the life of Christ were essentially geared towards the substitution of actual pilgrimage to the Holy Land or to re-experience revelation. Indulgences obtained by the collective contemplation of processions, Passion plays, and miracle plays became increasingly substantial throughout the late Middle Ages.43 Another exponent of the same devotional movement are the written pilgrim guides that were used as mnemonic devices44 for such a mental pilgrimage. These manuscripts tended to present the key devotional events in a topographical arrangement rather than a chronological order, reflecting the experience of an actual pilgrim touring Jerusalem.45 As the painted Simultanbilder were used as a guideline for a mental pilgrimage or the contemplation of a saint’s life, their main objective was not to evoke a faithful or recognizable urban setting. In fact, they isolated the subsequent episodes of the story into distinct tableaux vivants. Molding this cluster of Andachtsbilder into a completely fictitious mock-up, the main purpose of the urban architectural ensemble was to propel and structure the narrative of the painting rather than to evoke a lifelike city. Hans Memling used various architectural styles to typify different geographic locations. In the Turin Passion he represents the village of Bethlehem by means of half-timbered houses and mud walls, as opposed to the typical brick architecture of a Flemish town, plus the exotic and ancient features (including cupolas and Romanesque arches) of Jerusalem. The artist uses a similar architectural stereotyping in his Saint Ursula Shrine to distinguish Cologne (with predominantly Gothic features, including the local cathedral, under construction) from Rome (mainly composed of Romanesque

42 Sally Whitman Coleman, ‘Hans Memling’s Scenes from the Advent and Triumph of Christ and the Discourse of Revelation’, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, 5:1 (2013), electronic journal, DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2013.5.1.1. 43 Trowbridge, ‘Jerusalem Transposed’, p. 6 (note 55). Kathryn Rudy, Northern European Visual Responses to Holy Land Pilgrimages, 1453-1550 (unpublished doctoral thesis, Columbia University, New York, 2001). 44 For the mnemonic use of landscape painting in the Middle Ages, see: Margeret Goehring, Space, Place and Ornament: the Function of Landscape in Medieval Manuscript Illumination (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), p. 32. 45 Kathryn Rudy, ‘A Guide to Mental Pilgrimage: Paris, Bibliotheque de L’Arsenal ms. 212’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 63:4 (2000), 494-515.

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buildings). Also in the majority of hagiographies painted by the late fifteenth-century small masters (such as the Legend of Saint Catherine) the episodes of the story were not integrated in a lifelike or realistic spatial setting, but in an artificial patchwork of architectural recesses. In a similar way, religious theatre was also extracted from urban space, as the devotional plays were usually performed on isolated stages, either installed on a temporary platform or on a mobile wagon. At first sight they did not seem to have actively used the monumental setting of the city as the actual stage, but rather reduced the town to an arrangement for the audience. However, there are various examples of Passion plays that were orchestrated at strategic places in the city and in close relationship with the surrounding space, as illustrated by the already mentioned sixteenth-century stage plans. Moreover, one should not forget that the ensemble of religious plays and tableaux vivants was entrenched in a procession culture that fixated on the ritual movement in and around the city. Research on the fifteenth-century Bruges procession culture by Thomas Boogaart and Andrew Brown stresses the key role of the urban landscape as a frame for the ritual action and a device to condense multiple layers of meaning. The city – both as a whole and its constituent parts – embodies a permanent, meaningful backdrop and common point of reference for its inhabitants and visitors. In this capacity, the urban landscape mediated between the personal perception of space (the individualised framework of meaningful places during the daily, ‘profane’ time) and the common moral principles the procession wished to cultivate. In this way, the procession’s sequence of urban and suburban places to which a myriad of personal spiritual connotations and routines were attached, gained a more universal meaning. Boogaart states: “In Bruges the landscape appears to have functioned as a condensation symbol in which diverse subjective experiences could be lodged and associated with objectified moral principles”.46 Furthermore, Boogaart refers to an additional, more profane rationale for fixing the Procession of the Holy Blood on certain landmarks, market squares, and city gates, namely the ritual framing of the annual Fair that coincided with the Procession.47 Brown, in turn, attributes a central role to the Bruges Belfry as the geographic and conceptual midpoint around which the procession circulated.48 At this point, the pictorial Simultanbilder seemed to have fundamentally differed from the late medieval processional culture. Contrary to religious plays, they secluded the episodes of the religious narrative in a timeless, fictional, and socially sterile scenery. The hagiographies and Passion stories painted by Memling and the small masters focused on epic and devotional essence, enabling a highly individualised devotional experience, largely detached from the specific, 46 Thomas Boogaart, ‘Our Saviour’s Blood: Procession and Community in Late Medieval Bruges’, in Moving Subjects. Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. by Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken (Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 2001), 69-116 (p. 94, see also pp. 43, 90-92). 47 Boogaart, ‘Our Saviour’s Blood’, p. 85. 48 Andrew Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 37-72. Only during the latter fifteenth century were pinnacles added to city towers to create a more imposing physical presence. These elements increasingly dominated the entire urban landscape and could be seen from virtually everywhere in the city.

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recognizable urban frame of reference. The paintings personally guided the devotee through the stages of the narrative cycle, rather than evoking a collective ritual that underscored the town’s unity as civic body. Only exceptionally did painters, such as Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula and Saint Lucy, insert architectural references of their own city into Saints’ lives (such as the Bruges belfry tower and the Saint Walburga Church in the Legend of Saint Ursula, ca. 1475-1485, Groeningemuseum, Bruges or the numerous images of the Bruges tower of Our Lady’s church by the Lucy Master; see Chapter III). Several generations later, around 1560, the Antwerp painter Gillis Mostaert succeeded in capturing the complex relationship between ritual drama and the lived urban space. His image of the Ecce Homo successfully grasps the polysemic nature of urban public space, in casu the Antwerp market place (Figure 1.10). Mostaert deliberately blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality. He situates the dramatic scene on the Grote Markt of Antwerp. On the steps of the old city hall Christ is brought before an agitated crowd of Antwerp burghers and figures in Eastern dress that rushes at the building.49 It is uncertain whether the Antwerp city hall was really used at the time as a stage for this kind of Passion scene, but the image makes clear that religious drama often functioned in symbiosis with the monumental framework of the city. The city hall, seat of the Antwerp alderman, was an appropriate location to enact an episode that takes place in the palace of Pilate. The very association of the Ecce Homo scene with the city hall – whether through a theatrical performance or through an image such as Mostaert’s painting – endorsed the city aldermen in their function as official representatives of the urban law and government. Moreover, by embedding the scene in the clearly recognizable setting of the market square and town hall, the painting obviously carries a moralizing overtone. This composition must be understood as a subtle warning for the consequences of misjudgement, not only by the city aldermen, but also by the consumers on the market (see also Chapter II). In the periphery of the central event on the steps of the city hall, town dwellers unsuspectingly continue their daily market activities. Elisabeth Honig noticed in the Ecce Homo genre painting an accumulation of divergent social and visual experiences that were bound to the urban market square.50 These images evoke as no other the polyvalence of urban public space. Not only was it a commercial space, the market also functioned as the stage for ceremonies, religious performances, and the execution of justice, as an arena for social encounters, and a forum for political statements and discontent.51 49 By the 1540s plans were already made for a new city hall to replace the old fifteenth century century structure. By 1561 the construction of the new renaissance building had already begun. Mostaert’s view contains one of the few detailed images of the old city hall. 50 Honig, Painting and the Market, pp. 66-72. See also Peter Van der Coelen, Friso Lammertse (eds), De ontdekking van het dagelijks leven van Bosch tot Breugel (Rotterdam: Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2015), in particular pp. 190-193. 51 For a discussion of the multifunctional character of the medieval market square, see Peter Stabel, ‘The Market-Place and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Flanders’, in Shaping Urban Identity in Late Medieval Europe, ed. by Marc Boone and Peter Stabel (Leuven/Apeldoorn: Garant, 2000), pp. 43-64.

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Figure 1.10: Gillis Mostaert, Ecce Homo and the Antwerp City Hall, ca. 1560, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

These aspects of the urban public space will be further discussed in Chapters II and III, which address commerce, and the socio-political arena, respectively. 2.2.

The terrestrial Jerusalem

Many painted cityscapes function as the logical setting of the central biblical or hagiographical narrative of an altarpiece. Frequently recurring cities are Bethlehem in the background of a Nativity or Adoration, Heliopolis in the Flight to Egypt, Cologne in the Legend of Saint Ursula, Rome in the story of Saint Sebastian and of course Jerusalem in the numerous Passion scenes, such as the Ecce Homo, the Bearing of the Cross, the Flagellation, the Crucifixion and the Lamentation. As a rule, the urban setting of these biblical and hagiographical episodes is a generic, late medieval Netherlandish city; a place that contemporaries would instantly recognise as a city from their own experience. These city views are rarely identifiable as a particular city, let alone topographically accurate (see also Chapter V). There existed a wide variety of town views, ranging from a distant silhouette to a detailed street vista. Only in the case of Jerusalem does there seem

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to be a more fixed pattern of recurrent topographical elements, even though also these were handled with a relative artistic liberty.52 Of the 220 painted city views in our corpus, 65 logically represent the historical city of Jerusalem. Nearly all of these town views appear in Passion scenes. Even though almost all Jerusalem views structurally resemble a Northern European late medieval city, 22 (or 34 per cent) contain a number of ‘exotic’ or ‘oriental’ architectural features, such as cupolas, lanterns, columns and tall structures with onion-shaped rooftops (Graph 1.1). These are occasionally combined with archaising elements, such as Romanesque round arches.53 This often resulted in original, eccentric structures that are particularly present in the oeuvre of Jan Van Eyck (and epigones) and Hans Memling (Figures 1.7 & 1.11). Late medieval artists had to creatively process the few descriptive elements of the Holy City into a convincing, familiar image. Their major sources were literary descriptions, travel accounts, oral testimonies of pilgrims and sketches that circulated among artists. Commonly known features were the city’s fortifications, its hilly topography, the presence of a citadel (comprising the Tower of David), the Holy Sepulchre with some basic notions of its layout, and the remains of the Holy Temple.54 The Jerusalem views in early Netherlandish painting show a particular focus on the latter (Graph 1.1). Half of the 65 painted views of the city contain an allusion to the Temple,55 a fixation that is remarkably absent in the late medieval travel accounts. Christian pilgrims were denied access to the Temple Mount by the Mameluk rulers of the city, and they virtually ignored the site in their writings.56 This might partially explain the widespread misunderstanding of what the Temple of Solomon actually looked like. Many artists seemed to confuse the Jewish Temple with the Dome of the Rock, the iconic gold-plated cupola on an octagonal base that had been constructed at the end of the seventh century by the Umayyad caliph Abd Al-Malik.57 In fact, the entire Temple Mount 52 For a general discussion of the Jerusalem iconography, see Rehav Rubin, Image and Reality: Jerusalem in Maps and Views ( Jerusalem, Magnes Press, 2000). 53 References to the Romanesque architectural forms seem to signify an elongation in both time and distance. 54 François Robin, ‘Jérusalem dans la peinture franco-flamande (XIIIe-XVe siècles). Abstractions, fantaisies et réalités’, in Jérusalem, Rome, Constantinople. L’image et le mythe de la ville, ed. by Daniel Poirion (Paris : Presses de L’université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1986), pp. 33-62; Larry Silver, ‘Mapped and marginalized: early printed images of Jerusalem’, in The real and ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art: studies in honour of Bezalel Narkiss on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, ed.by Bianca Kühnel ( Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1998), pp. 313-324; Ben Wasser, ‘Die peregrinatie van Iherusalem. Pelgrimsverslagen van Nederlandse Jeruzalemgangers in de 15de, 16de en 17de eeuw. Ontstaan en ontwikkeling’, De Gulden Passer, 69 (1991), 5-72. 55 In addition, at least six representations of the Temple appear in the background of Nativity and Adoration scenes, which are theoretically set in Bethlehem. It concerns four Nativity panels by Gerard David, the Washington Nativity by Petrus Christus and the Adoration of the Magi (or so-called Pearl of Brabant) by Dirk Bouts. 56 Robin, ‘Jérusalem dans la peinture franco-flamande’, pp. 35-36. See also Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem. The Biography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011), pp. 216-230. 57 Carol Krinsky, ‘Representations of the Temple of Jerusalem before 1500’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 33 (1970), 1-19; Helen Rosenau, Vision of the Temple: The Image of the Temple of Jerusalem in Judaism and Christianity (London, Oresko Books, 1979).

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Figure 1.11: Workshop Jan Van Eyck, Three Marys at the Tomb, 1430-1435, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

had been transformed into an Islamic sanctuary, which left no remnants of the old Jewish Temple. Figure 1.12 shows the diverse typology of Temple buildings as painted by early Netherlandish artists. The Van Eyck workshop’s Three Marys at the Tomb shows a relatively truthful version of the Dome of the Rock (Figure 1.12b), which in turn influenced several other painters who developed a myriad of variations, ranging from a circular or hexagonal ground plan to the addition of flying buttresses (Figures 1.12d-h). A minority of painters, such as Gerard David and some epigones of Van Eyck, relinquished the basic form of the Dome of the Rock and created a much more monumental and completely imaginary image of the Temple (Figure 1.12a-c-i). The strong association of Jerusalem with the (alleged) Temple of Solomon indicates how intricately the terrestrial and heavenly Jerusalem were entwined. Many painted Jerusalem views merged the historical city (the Temple) and some conspicuous features of the contemporary cityscape (The Dome of the Rock) into an ideal image. One of the most important sanctuaries of Christianity, the Holy Sepulchre, remains remarkably absent in the painted Jerusalem views. An unambiguous reference to the site figures in nearly 5 percent of all depictions of the Holy City. Of course, the place did not yet exist at the time Christ spent his last days on earth (the period most panel paintings depict), even though this kind of

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Figure 1.12: Iconography of the Holy Temple, Details from: A. workshop Jan Van Eyck, Crucifixion, 1430-1440, Metropolitan Museum, New York; B. workshop Jan Van Eyck, Three Marys at the Tomb, 1430-1435, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; C. workshop Jan Van Eyck, Crucifixion, 1440-1450, Galleria Giorgio Franchetti (Ca’ d’Oro), Venice; D. workshop Rogier Van der Weyden, Sforza Triptych, 1450-1460, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels; E. Rogier Van der Weyden, The Entombment of Christ, 1463-1464, Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze; F. Petrus Christus, Nativity, ca. 1450, National Gallery, Washington; G. Dirk Bouts, Adoration of the Magi (the ‘Pearl of Brabant’), 1454-1462, Alte Pinokothek, Munich; H. Hans Memling, Adriaan Reins Triptych, 1480, Musea Brugge / Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges; I. Gerard David, Nativity, 1483-1485, Szépmüvészeti Museum, Budapest; J. Gerard David, Lamentation, ca. 1490, Museum of Art, Philadelphia.

r eligious space. the city a s devotiona l theatre Graph 1.1: Iconography Jerusalem views (total: 65 – absolute numbers) 35 33 30 25

22

20 15 10 5

3

0 Orientalising elements

Holy Temple

Holy Sepuchre

anachronism was very common in medieval iconography, as demonstrated by the frequent use of the medieval Dome of the Rock (cf. supra). Still, there are some indications that in particular Hans Memling and Gerard David did have the intention to insert a highly imaginative reference to the Holy Sepulchre in some of their Jerusalem views. For instance, the open cupola beside the Temple in Memling’s Turin Passion vaguely resembles the Anastasis Rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre (Figure 1.7). Gerard David’s Frick Deposition shows an austere church building with two round-arched windows with a cupola structure to the left that might refer to the Holy Sepulchre.58 Furthermore, four Bruges towers in landscapes by the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy contain a depiction of the Bruges Jerusalem Chapel, which was vaguely inspired by the Holy Sepulchre (see also Chapter III). Perhaps the most sophisticated Jerusalem view appears in the background of the recently restored Three Marys at the Tomb, made around 1430-1435 by the workshop of Jan Van Eyck (now in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam) (Figure 1.11). Within the dense urban fabric, crammed with orientalising turrets and cupolas, some distinct topographic features stand out: the citadel to the right, the hilly setting, a truthful image of the Dome of the Rock virtually at the centre, and – well-hidden between the Temple and the castle – the open cupola and clock tower of the Holy Sepulchre. Van Eyck must have consulted a primitive map or detailed sketches (especially of the Dome of the Rock), on which he loosely based this splendid urban panorama. It cannot be excluded that the master even visited the Holy City himself. The Rotterdam Jerusalem view remarkably resembles a miniature of the Holy City that figures in the Avis directif pour le passage d’Outre-Mer, a 58 Dated around 1490, Frick Collection, New York. For David’s Jerusalem views, see Mar Borobia, ‘La ciudad de Jerusalén en la pintura de Gerard David’, in Gerard David y el paisaje flamenco (Madrid: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2003), pp. 73-94.

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French translation of Bertrandon de la Broquière’s travel guide, made in the third quarter of the fifteenth century for Philip the Good (Figure 1.13). It might well be that both refer to a common drawing or sketch. As the result of Philip the Good’s fascination with a crusade against the Mameluk Empire, a growing number of maps and drawings of the Levant and the Holy City circulated at the ducal court. From 1421 onward several Burgundian expeditions set out for the eastern Mediterranean. Jan Van Eyck possibly joined the expedition to the Holy Land led by Guyot bastard of Burgundy, in 1426. Without a doubt, these initiatives must have generated a large amount of iconographical documentation, some of which might have even made its way to the famous Book of Hours of René of Anjou (the so-called Egerton Hours).59 It was most likely through this information channel that relatively accurate drawings of the Holy Sepulchre and the ‘Temple’ found their way to the Van Eyck workshop, Franco-Flemish paintings and miniatures, and even Brussels tapestry.60 Interestingly, one of the most true-to-life Jerusalem views, the Rotterdam composition, hardly found any following. Some scholars have supposed an intimate link between the patrons of the painting and the Holy City, which was indeed the case for the Adornes family, who built in Bruges the Jerusalem Chapel.61 Several family members made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Jan and Anselm Adornes’ trip in 1470 resulted in an extensive travel report that was written down in Latin (of which the original version has been unfortunately lost).62 As such, the last quarter of the fifteenth century witnessed the breakthrough of printed travel accounts, some of them lavishly illustrated. By far the most successful travel guide was Bernhard von Breydenbach’s Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam, first published in 1486 in Mainz and translated into numerous languages. The Peregrinatio was richly decorated with woodcuts of the Utrecht artist Erhard Reuwich, among which was a panoramic view of Venice and a map of the Holy Land containing a detailed city view of Jerusalem.63 Also Reuwich erroneously identified the Dome of the Rock as the Templum

59 Around 1435-1438 a relatively accurate depiction of the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock was added to a Book of Hours, at that time possessed by René of Anjou, who was concurrently held captive at Dijon. These miniatures might well have been contributed by an artist active at the Burgundian court (Robin, ‘Jérusalem dans la peinture franco-flamande”, pp. 44-45). Shortly after, a Flemish artist painted an altarpiece for the Parliament of Paris, which featured an image of the Holy Sepulchre that is almost identical to the one in the Egerton Hours (Dominique Thiébaut, Philippe Lorentz and François-René Martin, Primitifs français. Découvertes et redécouvertes (catalogue de l’exposition) (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2004), p. 87). 60 The Louvre in Paris houses a tapestry, presumably made around 1485 in Brussels, that clearly shows the Holy Sepulchre and the Temple as depicted in the Egerton Hours (Guy Delmarchel, La Tapisserie flamande du XVe au XVIIIe siècle (Tielt: Lannoo, 1999). 61 Stephan Kemperdick and Friso Lammertse (eds), The Road to Van Eyck. Exhibition Catalogue (Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2012), cat. no. 82. 62 Jacques Heers and Georgette de Groer, Itinéraire d’Anselme Adorno en terre Sainte (1470-1471) (Paris: Centre national de la Recherche scientifique, 1978). 63 Recent research stresses the accuracy of the maps and buildings, including the Holy Sepulchre, by Reuwich: Elisabeth Ross, Picturing Experience in the Early Printed Book. Breydenbach’s Peregrinatio from Venice to Jerusalem (Philadelpia, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014).

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Figure 1.13.: Franco-Flemish miniaturist, Jerusalem and the Holy Land, in Jean Miélot, ‘Avis directif pour le passage d’Outre-Mer’, 1450-1475, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, ms. fr. 9087, fol. 85v. Source gallica.bnf.fr/ BnF.

Salomonis. The woodcut of the Civitas Iherusalem offered a simplified but authentic representation of the Holy City, which soon found its way into German panel painting. A triptych with Lamentation (ca. 1490) attributed to the Austrian Master of the Krainburg Altar, almost literally copies Reuwich’s Jerusalem view, including the inscriptions.64 However, despite its early translation into Dutch, the Peregrinatio left no traces in early Netherlandish painting. The representation of the Holy City largely remained the product of each artist’s imagination, combined with the recycling of older models. Early Netherlandish painting developed the first topographical Jerusalem view only around 1526 with the Lokhorst Triptych by Jan Van Scorel, who had been a Jerusalem pilgrim himself.65

64 Till-Holger Borchert (ed.), Van Eyck to Dürer. The Influence of Early Netherlandish Painting on European Art, 1430-1530 (London: Thames & Hudson, 2010), p. 463. 65 Molly Faries, ‘Jan van Scorel’s Jerusalem Landscapes’, in In Detail. New Studies of Northern Renaissance Art. Essays in honour of Walter S. Gibson, ed. by Laurinda Dixon (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), pp. 113-134.

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Figure 1.14: Workshop Jan Van Eyck, Virgin and Child with Saints and Jan Vos (Frick Madonna), 14411443, Frick Collection, New York. Source Wikimedia Commons.

2.3.

The celestial Jerusalem

A considerable number of altarpieces and devotional portraits contain city views that do not depict a particular biblical location or setting of a saint’s story, but nevertheless did convey a religious meaning. These involve so-called hieratic images, such as the Enthroned Mary, sometimes surrounded by a host of saints (the so-called sacra conversazione) or in an intimate encounter with the donor of the painting. One of the most famous examples is Jan Van Eyck’s Madonna with Chancellor Rolin (ca. 1435), where the central scene – Nicolas Rolin kneeling before the Virgin – is set against the background of a splendid urban panorama (Figure 0.1). The Van Eyck workshop had a proverbial patent on this kind of divided composition that places an intimate, sacral space in the foreground against an urban background. As a rule, both spheres are separated by a physical barrier or an opposition in height. Two other examples from the Van Eyck workshop with a very similar composition are the Madonna with Petrus Wijts (also known as the Maelbeke Madonna) and the Frick Madonna (Figure 1.14). By isolating the front scene in a tower, an elevated chamber, or an enclosed garden, the artist captures a detachment from time and space. A perfect illustration of this spatial dualism can be found in the Exeter Madonna (1445-1450) by Petrus Christus (Figure 1.1). Secluded in a celestial tower, the patron – the Carthusian monk Jan Vos – and the

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Figure 1.15: Jan Van Eyck, The Ghent Altarpiece (exterior wings), ca. 1432, Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Dominique Provost.

Madonna soar above the earthly city below. In an article titled ‘Highlands in the Lowlands’ (1961), Millard Meiss labelled this oppositional spatial configuration as one of the major artistic innovations of the early fifteenth century. It was fine-tuned by Jan Van Eyck and also gained popularity in Italian painting from 1450 onwards.66 By the second half of the fifteenth century, however, this type of composition had lost much of its appeal in the Low Countries, giving way to a lower viewpoint and stronger integration of foreground and background (see Chapter II). A similar view appears on the Annunciation panels of Jan Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece: a distinct spatial duality opposes the domestic interior in the foreground to an animated street view that unfolds through the window in the back (Figure 1.15 – Plate 3). This compositional device also occurs in the Virgin and Child Before a Firescreen (ca. 1440) and Merode Altarpiece by the Tournai Master of Flémalle,67 and various other paintings by Petrus Christus and some

66 Millard Meiss, ‘“Highlands” in the Lowlands. Jan Van Eyck, the Master of Flémalle and the FrancoItalian Tradition’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 57 (1961), 273-314. 67 Felix Thürlemann, ‘Der Blick hinaus auf die Welt. Zum Raumkonzept des Merodetriptychons von Robert Campin’, in Espaces du Texte. Recueil d’hommages pour Jacques Geninasca, ed. by Peter Fröhlicher (Neuchâtel: A la Baconnière, 1990), pp. 383-396.

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Figure 1.16: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, The Merode Altarpiece, 1425-1430, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

epigones of Jan Van Eyck (Figures 1.16-1.18). Chapter II further discusses this opposition between the secluded, domestic interior and the open, public street. The spatial dichotomy that underlies many early Netherlandish paintings (especially before 1450) has often been interpreted as an allusion to the Heavenly Jerusalem and the prophecy of the Apocalypse. For instance, a communis opinio holds that the dazzling city views of Jan Van Eyck embody the New Earth, while the elevated architectural space in the front signifies the New Heaven. This interpretation undoubtedly derives from the Warburg School and the iconological paradigm.68 In the 1930s art historians, such as Erwin Panofsky and Charles de Tolnay, were attracted to the idea of a sophisticated theological programme that structures both the iconography and composition of early Netherlandish painting in a way that is hardly comprehensible for the uninformed modern viewer. As time went by, much of the spiritual significance of medieval altarpieces fell into oblivion, to the extent that the modern spectator fixates on its superficial realism while ignoring its deeper, ‘hidden’ meaning. After a short period of post-war scepticism of iconology, the fascination with the ‘disguised symbolism’ of medieval art witnessed a major revival in the 1960s and 1970s. In one of the most fervent Neo-Panofskian studies on the Ghent altarpiece, Lotte Brand Philip argues that the altarpiece can only be fully understood if one takes into account the overarching iconographical programme and architectural framework of the Vijdt Chapel and the Saint John Church (now the Church of Saint Bavo). Unfortunately, the original context in which the polyptych was displayed has been lost. In accordance with the medieval analogical line of thought, Philip states that the chapel and the sculpted structure that framed the altarpiece functioned as

68 For a short introduction and critique on this art historical school, see Burke, Eyewitnessing, pp. 34-43.

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Figure 1.16a: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, The Merode Altarpiece: detail of the left panel with donors, 1425-1430, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

Figure 1.16b: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, The Merode Altarpiece: detail of the right panel with Joseph, 1425-1430, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

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Figure 1.17: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, Madonna with Firescreen (Salting Madonna), 1440, National Gallery, London. Creative Commons CC BY NC ND.

a miniature version of the Gothic church building, which in its turn was conceived as a miniature evocation of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Within this context, the Ghent Altarpiece expresses the essence and finality of Christian eschatology, namely the prospect of the Heavenly Jerusalem as predicted in Revelation. According to Philip the panels break down into two strata. The upper register evokes the New Heaven, while the paradisiacal landscape and exquisite skyline on the lower panels refer to the New Earth.69 As mentioned above, this duality of the celestial and terrestrial recurs on the Annunciation panels on the reverse.70 By extension many Eyckian works gave expression to “Jan’s great idea of the Heavenly Jerusalem”.71 Philip also discusses the Rolin Madonna: “The painting symbolizes man’s salvation by presenting the donor united with the Deity in a setting in which the earthly part, the attribute of a mankind redeemed, and the heavenly part, the realm of the redeeming Deity, fuse in a miraculous embrace”.72 Some scholars see the same sacral duality in the

69 Lotte Brand Philip, The Ghent Altarpiece and the Art of Jan Van Eyck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971); Lotte Brand Philip, ‘Raum und Zeit in der Verkündigung des Genter Altares’, WallrafRichartz-Jahrbuch, 29 (1967), 61-104. 70 John Ward, ‘Hidden Symbolism in Jan Van Eyck’s Annunciations’, The Art Bulletin, 57:2 (1975), 196220, esp. 211-213. 71 Philip, The Ghent Altarpiece, p. 211. Philip postulates a connection between the Jerusalem ideal of Van Eyck and the unbridled fascination of the Burgundian court with the Holy City. 72 Philip, The Ghent Altarpiece, p. 212. She made a similar interpretation for the Madonna with Petrus Wijts. For the New York Diptych with Crucifixion and Last Judgement (ca. 1440), see Dagmar Eichberger, Bildkonzeption und Weltdeutung im New Yorker Diptychon des Jan Van Eyck (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 1987).

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panoramic city in the background of the Rolin Madonna: while the ordinary city on the left bank of the city – just behind the portrait of the chancellor – represents the idea of the New Earth, the spectacular metropolis on the right bank evokes the New Heaven.73 Van Eyck’s iconography of the Heavenly Jerusalem witnessed a considerable Nachleben in early Netherlandish painting, even though Philip argues that the initial spiritual significance of the composition soon eroded. She refers to Rogier Van der Weyden’s Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin (ca. 1435), which copied the spatial duality of the Rolin Madonna, yet lost a lot of its original meaning (Figure 1.19). Philip sees in the directness of Rogier’s ordinary street view an indication that he did not so much have the New Earth in mind, but rather an image of the still unredeemed, terrestrial world. This subtle shift seemed to have been symptomatic for the generations to come: “In the art of the later fifteenth century, the landscapes and buildings can start to mean our own unredeemed earthly world; and they can even be used to signify the world in its radically negative sense”.74 On this point, however, we must contradict Philip. In Chapter II we will argue that, in general terms, early Netherlandish city views became in fact distinctly idealised in the second half of the fifteenth century. Furthermore, one can question whether the city view in Rogier’s Saint Luke is so fundamentally different from the animated street view that figures in the background of the Annunciation of the Ghent Altarpiece or the anecdotal market square in the Virgin and Child Before a Firescreen of the Master of Flémalle. In other words, should the spatial duality that typifies many Eyckian and Flémallesque compositions not be interpreted in terms of a sharp opposition between a worldly and celestial sphere, rather than in terms of a sacral duality (a New Earth and New Heaven)?75 The possibility of an alternative reading illustrates the difficulty of an in-depth iconological analysis, as much as it reveals the ambiguity of the city as religious concept. Philip’s interpretation departs from an overly one-sided, apocalyptic approach to the spiritual concept of the Heavenly Jerusalem. As already mentioned, Augustine’s De Civitate Dei formulated a slightly different vision of the concept that became widespread during the late middle Ages. Other than the Apocalypse, Augustine devoted a lot of attention the existence of a contemporary City of God on earth, thus before Redemption. This City of God thrives as a foreign community in the terrestrial city, the community of infidels. Their soul has already been detached, and on the Last Day also its body will be separated

73 Carol Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan Van Eyck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 80; Laura Gelfand, ‘Reading the architecture in Jan Van Eyck’s ‘Rolin Madonna’’, in In Detail. New Studies of Northern Renaissance Art. Essays in honour of Walter S. Gibson, ed. by Laurinda Dixon (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), pp. 15-25. 74 Philip, The Ghent Altarpiece, p. 214. 75 A similar interpretation has also been suggested for the Saint Luke Triptych in Stolzenhain, made around 1480 by a Nether-Rhenish master that was heavily influenced by the Van der Weyden composition. See Felix Thürlemann, ‘Das Lukas-Triptychon in Stolzenhain. Ein verlorenes Hauptwerk von Robert Campin in einer Kopie aus der Werkstatt Derick Baegerts’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 55:4 (1992), 524-564, esp. 538.

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Figure 1.18: Epigone of Petrus Christus, Madonna with Child, 1450-1460, Galleria Sabauda, Turin. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels.

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Figure 1.19: Rogier Van der Weyden, Saint Luke drawing the Virgin, ca. 1435, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

from the terrestrial city.76 Thus, more plausibly, the dual composition of the Rolin Madonna, for instance, alluded to this Augustinian tension between the worldly and the celestial.77 In this way, the altarpiece could be considered as a miniature 76 Gerard Wijdeveld, ‘Inleiding’, in Augustinus, De Stad van God (Baarn: Ambo, 1983), pp. 18, 21. 77 For a similar interpretation, see Martine Jullian, ‘La ville d’après Van Eyck et Fra Angelico. Description d’une réalité ou vision idéale?’, in Représentations et forms de la ville européenne. Le Patrimoine et la Mémoire, ed. by Sandra Costa (Paris: Editions Harmattan), pp. 27-51.

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Figure 1.20: Bruges miniaturist, Saint Augustine teaching, frontispiece of Augustine, ‘Cité de Dieu’ (trans. by Raoul de Presles), ca. 1445, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, ms. 9015, fol. 1.

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painted equivalent of the Cité de Dieu mentioned above. From this point of view, it is at least remarkable that the city view in the Frick Madonna, a creation of the Van Eyck workshop that can be dated around 1440, recurs a couple of years later in the frontispiece of the Cité de Dieu, which was copied and illuminated for the Tournai bishop Jean Chevrot (Figures 1.14 & 1.20).78 This would imply that the cityscape in the Rolin Madonna must be understood as a symbol of the earthly co-existence of sin and true faith. Moreover, this viewpoint alters the altarpiece’s overall discourse from the patron’s final redemption to his spiritual retreat from the profane world. The latter sense was much more aligned with the preoccupations of the donor in the hic et nunc and less geared towards his or her future salvation. Ingrid Falque in turn argues that early Netherlandish painters used subtle spatial and pictorial devices in order to construct “a kind of spiritual topography, in which the devotees are depicted as moving towards union with God, thereby showing their spiritual progress”. She notes the presence of small pictorial motifs, such as roads, porches and doorways, that connect the urban or rural background to the devotional scene in the front, and she interprets them as an evocation of the spiritual path the devotee follows. Either way, the city functions in many devotional panel paintings as an attribute of the portrayed patron and as an unmistakable allusion to his/her earthly condition. This viewpoint raises the poignant question of exactly how this reference to the worldly origin of the donor was established.79 Even though the primary religious function of the majority of early Netherlandish panel paintings cannot be denied, the sacral dimension of an altarpiece or devotional diptych has often been overstated. This results in a pensée unique that reduces the artistic creation to an almost religious action. The following quote by Lotte Brand Philip captures the fixation of some committed iconologists: “The new realism as we see it in Van Eyck’s art did not serve secular ends”.80 This book, on the contrary, wants to go beyond a strictly religious reading of landscapes and cityscapes. By investigating how artists represented, emphasised or omitted architectonic structures of the city, the coming chapters seek to track the more secular aspirations and preoccupations of the late medieval citizen. Early Netherlandish panel painting not only served a spiritual purpose; many paintings literally framed the patron within a complex of identity markers, among which the city view was a recurrent reference point.81

78 Philippe Contamine, ‘À propos du légendaire de la monarchie française à la fin du Moyen Âge: le Prologue de la traduction par Raoul de Presles de la “La Cité de Dieu” et son iconographie’, in Texte et image. Actes du Colloque international de Chantilly, 13-15 octobre 1982 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1984), pp. 201-214. 79 Ingrid Falque, ‘The Exeter Madonna by Petrus Christus: Devotional Portrait and Spiritual ascent in Early Netherlandish Painting’, Ons Geestelijk Erf, 86:3 (2015), 219-249. 80 Philip, The Ghent Altarpiece, p. 193. 81 Guy Bauman, ‘Early Flemish Portraits. 1425-1525’, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. New Series, 43:4 (1986), 1-64, esp. 17.

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Chapter II

Economic space. The pulse of the city

[Bruges] is a large and beautiful city, rich in merchandise, for there is access to it by land and sea, from all countries of the Christian world. (Schaseck, squire in the company of Leo of Rozmital, ca. 1467)1

The Cloisters Museum of New York harbours one of the gems of early Netherlandish painting: the so-called Merode Triptych (Figure 1.16). This altarpiece, with its central Annunciation scene, has since the early twentieth century been ascribed to the Tournai master Robert Campin. Some art historians, however, prefer a more circumspect attribution to the anonymous Master of Flémalle or Flémalle Group. The most recent stylistic and dendrochronological research dates the triptych around 1430, shortly before or after the completion of the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan Van Eyck.2 The work was likely a commission of the Ymbrechts/ Engelbrechts, a family of entrepreneurs with ties in Mechelen and Cologne.3 The detailed, almost tangible depiction of drapery, stone, wood, and flesh, a strong but defective attempt at three-dimensionality in the interior spaces, and a captivating dedication to the materiality of daily life make this altarpiece one of the very first mature expressions of what has been called ‘descriptive realism’ in Flemish panel painting. What is more, both wing panels contain one of the oldest realistic snapshots of the urban everyday life in Netherlandish art. On the left wing, directly behind the kneeling donors, a small doorway affords a glimpse of how a street in an ordinary Netherlandish city might have looked. In front of a tiny house a colourful scarfed woman sits on a bench, while her neighbour – perhaps a cloth worker or tailor – runs an atelier and shop with a streetside counter. This was how an average craftsman’s house was spatially configured in the later Middle Ages, as is also evident on the right panel of the altarpiece, which depicts a carpenter’s workshop from the inside. In the middle





1 Malcolm Letts, The travels of Leo of Rozmital through Germany, Flanders, England, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy (1465-1467) (Cambridge: University Press, 1957), p. 41. 2 The genesis of the Merode Triptych is very complex and much debated. It seems that the central panel was painted around 1430 by a member of the Master of Flémalle’s workshop, while the donor wing and the Saint Joseph were painted shortly after by another master (Stephan Kemperdick and Jochen Sander, The Master of Flémalle and Rogier Van der Weyden (Frankfurt: Städel Museum, 2008), pp. 192-201, cat. 4). 3 The portrait of the donatrix and the escutcheons were added in a later stage. On the complex and puzzling matter of who commissioned the altarpiece and who might be the donatrix, see Kemperdick and Sander, The Master of Flémalle, pp. 197-200.

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of the road a horseman slowly passes.4 A fascinating detail in the underdrawing reveals that the artist had initially projected a nearly closed doorway, as if he wanted to strengthen the secluded atmosphere of the inner court as a sort of hortus conclusus (Figure 1.16a).5 What exactly compelled the painter to fling open the door of the gatehouse will remain a mystery forever, but in doing so, he invigorated a longstanding iconographic tradition in Netherlandish art: the anecdotal streetscape.6 In fact, the street view intriguingly prefigures the great tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting, epitomised by Johannes Vermeer’s The Little Street in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. In the background of the right panel unfolds a much more elaborate town interior. It shows Joseph working in a carpenter’s workshop (Figure 1.16b). The opened shutters of the workplace give onto a bustling city view. On what seems to be a large square a variety of figures – men, women and children – move and interact. Besides a social forum, the city is here foremost an economic space. Most of the houses that border the square clearly have a commercial function. Conspicuous signs indicate the presence of a shop (a barber or coppersmith on the right) and an inn (on the left), while in the central stone building the door to the left of the steps gives access to an underground storage depot. The scene is brimming with tiny, almost microscopic details, such as the gently whirling snowflakes, the smoke that curls up from the chimneys, the pottery jug on a window sill, and the subtle gestures of the miniature figures that dot the square. The almost photographic nature of the city view makes it so radically different from the reductive and clumsy architectural evocations of cities that typified miniatures and panel painting up to that moment. How can this shockingly different, almost voyeuristic observation of the daily routine of urban economic life be understood? Is this how a successful entrepreneur, such as the patron of the Merode Triptych, envisioned the city? The association of the city with commerce and economic activity seems universal. Just as the oppressively crowded New York Times Square with its enchanting mixture of conspicuous brand logos, entertainment, and traffic lights incarnates the metropolis of the twenty-first century,7 so for the average medieval citizen did the teeming market square or busy quays refer to the heartbeat of the city. For many – now and then – the essence of urbanity lies within its economic dimension: the city as a place to earn a living, a space of production,





4 The raised left leg of the horse suggests a sense of movement. 5 Johan van Asperen de Boer et al., Underdrawing in paintings of the Rogier Van der Weyden and Master of Flémalle groups (Zwolle: Waanders, 1992), p. 106. Perhaps there is a correlation with the later addition of the figure of the messenger, who appears to have just entered through the door (as if he had just descended from the horse in the street). 6 Stuart Blumin, The encompassing city. Streetscapes in early modern art and culture (Manchester: Mancester University Press, 2008). 7 Such as in George Grosz’ painted impression of the frenetic metropolis (1916-1917, Museum ThyssenBornemisza, Madrid). For an intriguing study of the modern city and its ‘architecture of hurry’, see Richard Dennis, Cities in Modernity: Representations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840-1930 (Cambridge: University Press, 2008).

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consumption, and transfer of goods.8 The city breathes commerce, a fortiori in the Low Countries, where according to Wim Blockmans the genesis of urban space was driven by an economic logic: “The urban space in the most urbanized regions of the Low Countries was a reflection of the needs of merchants and artisans primarily, and may thus well be considered as a very close expression of the economic organization”.9 As Peter Stabel has demonstrated, the spatial fabric of the medieval city was to a large extent moulded to the needs of consumers, producers, and sellers, whereas long-term macroeconomic processes, princely and municipal ordinances, and guild regulation determined whether (and when) the outlet of goods was pushed to the public sphere of the market or to the semi-private sphere of artisan’s workshop.10 Fifteenth-century travel stories reflect how the city was primarily perceived as an economic space, especially when the visitor described the arrival and first impression of a major commercial gateway city, such as Bruges or sixteenth-century Antwerp.11 An often-cited travel account is that of the Castilian nobleman Pero Tafur, who praised Bruges as one of the largest markets of the world, and he judged its economic performance even higher than that of Venice: “This city of Bruges is a large and very wealthy city, and one of the greatest markets of the world. It is said that two cities compete with each other for commercial supremacy, Bruges in Flanders in the West, and Venice in the East. It seems to me, however, and many agree with my opinion, that there is much more commercial activity in Bruges than in Venice. The reason is as follows. In the whole of the West there is no other great mercantile centre except Bruges […]”.12Also Schaseck, a squire in the travelling company of the Bohemian noblemen Leo of Rozmital, who visited the Low Countries in 1467, pays considerable attention to the mercantile and logistic infrastructure of Bruges: “This is a large and beautiful city rich in merchandise, for there is access to it by land and sea from all countries of the Christian world. The merchants have their own stately houses there in which are many vaulted rooms. They lie close to salt marshes which spread through



8 The analogy with the present-day Times Square also applies for yet another dimension of urbanity: the entertainment function of the city. Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin analysed a series of late medieval travel accounts and found that besides economic activities all kinds of civic festivities drew the attention of the visitors: Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardi, La ville des cérémonies. Essai sur la communication politique dans les anciens Pays-Bas bourguignons (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 80-102. 9 Wim Blockmans, ‘Urban space in the Low Countries (13th-16th centuries)’, in Spazio urbano e organizzazione economica nell’Europa medievale. Annali della Facoltà di Scienze Politiche, 39 (1994), p. 166. 10 Peter Stabel, ‘Public or private, collective or individual? The spaces of late medieval trade in the Low Countries’, in Il Mercante Patrizio. Palazzi e Botteghe nell’Europa del Rinascimento, ed. by Donatella Calabi (Milano: Mondadori Bruno, 2008), pp. 37-54. 11 Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, ‘L’autre et la ville: l’apport des témoignages étrangers dans la connaissance des villes des anciens Pays-Bas bourguignons à la fin du Moyen Age’, in Le Verbe, l’image et les représentations de la société urbaine au Moyen Age, ed. Marc Boone, Elodie LecuppreDesjardin and Jean-Pierre Sosson (Antwerpen/Apeldoorn: Garant, 2002), pp. 55-74, especially p. 61; Joey De Keyser, Vreemde ogen: een kijk op de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, 1400-1600 (Antwerpen: Meulenhoff/Manteau, 2010), pp. 48-50, 94-134. 12 Malcolm Letts, Pero Tafur. Travels and adventures. 1435-1439 (London: Broadway House, 1926), p. 198.

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the town as far as those houses. There are many canals in the town and some 525 bridges over them. At least it is so reported, but I did not count them”.13 Likewise, local literary and political discourses equally cultivated the notion of Bruges as a place of commerce. The Excellente Kroniek van Vlaanderen (a cluster of manuscript chronicles of the county of Flanders) refers, for instance, to the town’s fame as ‘a city of trade and peace’ in order to explain the poor local expertise in fortification techniques.14 Furthermore, Jan Dumolyn demonstrated how during the crises of 1436 and 1488 the Bruges Great Council expressed by means of petitions to the prince a plain economic discourse that went beyond the local level. The municipal government stressed the vital importance of trade for the city and made strong claims about the role of the craft guilds, the regulation of the hinterland, and the responsibilities of the prince.15 This rhetoric of commerce was also reproduced on the level of the county of Flanders, as essentially represented by the so-called Four Members (Bruges, Ghent, Ypres and the Liberty of Bruges). The Great Privilege negotiated with Mary of Burgundy after the sudden death of Charles the Bold in 1477, for instance, clearly states that the county of Flanders is “in itself not very fertile, but only founded on trade and industry, and on privileges, freedoms and customs”.16 Not only Bruges was praised for its commercial potential. Pero Tafur describes Ghent as “very large and populous and very wealthy by reason of its trade, for the water reaches to the walls and many ships enter there”.17 Antwerp is reported to have “a good harbor: the ships enter by a river so that the galleys can be fastened to the city walls. The fair which is held here is the largest in the whole world […] As a market, Antwerp is quite unmatched”.18 1.

A ‘bourgeois’ proximity to urban daily life?

Where the economic dimension was a key factor for how most medieval city dwellers conceived of their city – both as a specific place (their own town), and as an abstract category – the question remains: to what extent did contemporary 13 Letts, The travels of Leo of Rozmital, p. 41. The 525 bridges Schaseck mentions is undoubtedly a huge exaggeration. 14 “[…] want Brucghe es een stede van comescepe ende van payse daer tevooren” (transcribed from the Douai manuscript of the Excellente Kronieke van Vlaanderen, ca. 1485-1490,Douai, Bibliotèque Municipale, 1110, fol. 361r). I would like to thank Lisa Demets for her help. See also Johan Oosterman (ed.), Stad van koopmanschap en vrede. Literatuur in Brugge tussen Middeleeuwen en Rederijkerstijd (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), p. 7. 15 Jan Dumolyn, ‘“Our land is only founded on trade and industry”: economic discourses in fifteenthcentury Bruges’, Journal of Medieval History, 36:4 (2010), pp. 374-389. 16 “dienende ter welvaert, orbore ende proffite van onsen vors[eiden] lande overmids dat van hem selven niet zeere vruchtbarich en es, maer alleenlic gefondeerd up de coopmanscepe ende neeringhe ende up previlegen, vrijheden, costumen ende usagen” (Wim Blockmans, ‘Privilegie voor het graafschap Vlaanderen, 11 februari 1477’, in Marie de Bourgogne – 1477 – Maria van Bourgondië, ed. by Wim Blockmans (Kortrijk: UGA, 1985), p. 129). 17 Letts, Pero Tafur, pp. 202-203. 18 Letts, Pero Tafur, p. 203.

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iconography reflect this fundamental aspect of city life? After all, the growing number of increasingly sophisticated artistic products, such as altarpieces and illuminated books of hours, were not just the outcome of altering devotional practices. Just as important for the artistic bloom of the late medieval Low Countries was the intense economic diversification and social polarisation that reshuffled the main production centres of the Low Countries and offered both artisans and patrons unseen prospects of commercial and social success. Thus this chapter looks for the pulse of the city, the activities and opportunities that prompted the urban community and unfolded day after day on the streets, squares, and waterways of the town. While the previous chapter elaborated upon the primary religious focus of the majority of panel paintings, this second chapter raises the question as to what extent painted altarpieces and devotional portraits did allow the secular world of the city to penetrate into the essentially devotional atmosphere they exuded. Or did most paintings deny the mundanity of urban life, namely that the city was a place where first and foremost people earned a living? This chapter hopes to come to a better understanding of the social discourse enclosed in panel painting and whether this particular type of medium should be assessed as a typical civic or even ‘bourgeois’ form of artistic expression. Many scholars have tried to look beyond the religious sophistication of early Netherlandish painting, and have become convinced of a secondary, more profane significance.19 Ever since the sixteenth century, art historiography has been intrigued by the dazzling pictorial realism that penetrates early Netherlandish painting into its tiniest details. Descriptive realism is often thought to set Netherlandish art20 apart from the stylization of the international Gothic court style and the idealizing nature of Italian quattrocento art. Nineteenth-century nationalist historiographers claimed it as a token of the down-to-earthiness attributed to respectively the French, German(ic), or Dutch national spirit, while others glorified the craftsmanship of the Flemish artisans, still unspoiled by the splendour and artifice of the opulent classes.21 Especially in France after the revolution of 1848, art criticism tended to associate the naïve realism of early Netherlandish art with progress, innovation, political freedom, and republicanism, as con-

19 These two divergent interpretations of the Flemish realism, namely a predominantly religious approach (‘hidden symbolism’) and a more profane one (‘bourgeois realism’) were already distinguished in 1991 by Reindert Falkenburg, ‘Het huishouden van de ziel: burgerlijk decor in het Merode-altaarstuk’, in Op belofte van profijt. Stadsliteratuur en burgermoraal in de Nederlandse letterkunde van de middeleeuwen, ed. by Herman Pleij (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1991), pp. 244-261, esp. p. 245. 20 From the later middle ages, over the ‘Dutch’ seventeenth century to the ‘naturalism’ of the nineteenth century. 21 Wessel Krul, ‘Realism, Renaissance and Nationalism’, in Early Netherlandish Paintings. Rediscovery, Reception and Research, ed. by Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne Van Buren and Henk Van Veen (Amsterdam: University Press, 2005), pp. 252-289. Krul cites on pp. 262-263 from Alfred Michiels’s, Histoire de la peinture Flamande (Paris, 1865-1876): “The artists, connected with the craftmen by public opinion and custom, had not yet conceived the ambitious ideas, the taste for luxury and splendor, and the inordinate self-esteem they acquired from the opulent classes later on”.

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trasted to classicism, the style endorsed by the establishment, which denoted conservatism and academic conformity.22 Henri Pirenne’s canonisation of the urban communities of the late medieval Southern Netherlands as the incubator of a modern, progressive, and capitalist society (and thus the precursor of liberal Belgium of the late nineteenth century) further crystallised the notion of the Flemish Primitives as the artistic incarnation of ‘les anciennes démocraties des Pays-Bas’. Significant, for instance, is the historiographical persistence with which the Tournai painter Robert Campin has been heralded as one of the leading figures of the radical corporate regime that was established in Tournai in 1423-1428. Only recently has Graeme Small demystified the figure of Campin as an opportunistic painter who continued to work for the reactionary regime that was installed after the revolt.23 The twentieth century brought a new, much more apolitical strand of scholarship. The post-war school of iconologists that thrived in the wake of Erwin Panofsky predominantly interpreted the quasi-photorealism of the Flemish Primitives in terms of a ‘hidden symbolism’, more or less detached from the political realities of the time. These iconological studies often tend to isolate fifteenth-century panel paintings as singular artefacts in a social vacuum. In particular the literature discussed in Chapter I is much indebted to this approach, which is primarily geared towards the unravelling of a ‘hidden’ Christian symbolism in both the iconographic details and the composition. The last decades of the twentieth century however, witnessed a renewed interest for a ‘social art history’ that – very much in line with the nineteenth-century art historical appreciation of Flemish art – tends to categorise the taste of pictorial realism as a typical urban, i.e. ‘bourgeois’ or ‘artisan’, predilection for the tangible materiality of daily life. This correlation was established in its most explicit form in the 1990s by Maurits Smeyers for the pre-Eyckian illuminations made between 1350 and 1420 by Flemish artisans active in Bruges, Ghent, Tournai, Paris and several French princely courts. He qualified their realism, inventiveness, and ‘proximity to the hic et nunc of daily life’ (levensnabijheid) as expressions of a confident burgher culture. This pre-Eyckian realism is characterised by neatly arranged compositions, by a clear sense of space (e.g. with the use of floor tiles and shadows to convey a sense of three-dimensionality), by a delicate rendering of figures with a natural expression, by an individualization of human physiognomy, the ‘tangible’ depiction of materials

22 However, one of the most fierce propagandists of Dutch art was the former French revolutionary Théophile Thoré, who published under the revealing pseudonym W. Bürger, saw no direct relation between the realism of early Netherlandish masters and the Dutch art of the seventeenth century (Krul, ‘Realism, Renaissance and Nationalism’, pp. 261-262). 23 Graeme Small, ‘Robert Campin et la “révolution démocratique” de Tournai: contexts politiques, socio économiques et culturels (ca. 1302-1521)’, in Campin in Context: peinture et société dans la vallée de l’Escaut à l’époque de Robert Campin 1375-1445, ed. by Ludovic Nys and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe (Valenciennes, Presses Universitaires, 2007), pp. 43-50. See also Marnix Beyen’, Appropriations asymmétriques: les Maîtres de Flémalle dans les conflits identitaires en Belgique’, in Idem, pp. 31-42.

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and voluminous drapery, and by a growing fondness for the trivial.24 Smeyers saw these features as the outcome of a fruitful synergy of the enterprising artisan and successful merchant. He stated that “in Flanders around 1400 people did perceive the reality differently than those at the princely courts of princes and nobles, this in close connection to the strongly urbanized character of the Flemish society […] This entailed a realistic vision on society and on the precise position of each within it […] It implied a political, economic and corporate life that was instructed by a practical and realistic vision […] In short, in Flanders flourished a society geared towards reality, with a way of life untouched by the courtly codes of conduct, a society where the concrete time of daily life prevailed on the grand and timeless ideals”.25 While many of the most exquisite miniatures were commissioned by princely courts and the high nobility, Smeyers attributes a significant artistic agency to the artisan. The Flemish miniaturists were trained in urban corporations and spent most of their time working for an urban clientele. Dominique Vanwijnsberghe has argued that the bottom-up demand of local elites for illuminated manuscripts impacted the development of taste and style patterns more than the top-down patronage of a princely Maecenas.26 Within the ‘learning communities’ of the art craft guilds27 a crossover of various artistic media, ranging from book illumination, tapestry, wall painting to funeral sculpture, enabled the gradual innovation of panel painting in the 1410-1420s.28 Also here, many scholars have postulated a correlation between the verisimilitude of ordinary street scenes and burgher interiors on the one hand, and the predominantly urban clientele of painted altarpieces and diptychs on the other. Pierre Lavedan for instance associated the manière flamande with a great liking for the anecdotal: “Flanders has above all a sense for the daily life; for [in Flanders] the city is 24 For a systematic discussion of the modalities of pre-Eyckian realism, see Albert Châtelet, ‘Modalités et origines du réalisme dans l’enluminure parisienne entre 1380 et 1415’, in Flanders in a European Perspective. Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad, ed. by Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), pp. 27-39. 25 Translation by Jelle De Rock from Maurits Smeyers, Bert Cardon, Susie Vertongen et al. (eds), Naer natueren ghelike. Vlaamse miniaturen voor Van Eyck (ca. 1350 – ca. 1420) (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 1993), pp. 39-41. See also Maurits Smeyers, ‘Middeleeuwse miniaturen. Spiegel van de werkelijkheid’, in Cultuurwetenschappen in beweging, ed. by Theo Venckeleer and Werner Verbeke (Leuven/Antwerp: Kapellen/Pelckmans, 1992), pp. 197-235. 26 Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, ‘At the Court as in the City: the Miniature in the Burgundian Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century’, in Medieval Mastery. Book Illumination from Charlemagne to Charles the Bold, 800-1475 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 263-271. 27 On the flexibility and opportunities of collaborations within the fifteenth-century art craft guild in Bruges, see Peter Stabel, ‘Selling Paintings in Late Medieval Bruges. Marketing Customs and Guild Regulations Compared’, in De Marchi, N., Van Miegroet, H. (ed.), Mapping Market for Paintings in Europe, 1450-1750, ed. by Neil De Marchi and Hans Van Miegroet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 89-105. On craft guilds as ‘learning communities’ see Bert De Munck, Steven Kaplan and Hugo Soly, Learning on the Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007). 28 For the complex matter of stylistic cross-over in the environment of Robert Campin, see Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon. ‘Campin and Illumination’, in Robert Campin. New directions in Scholarship, ed. by Susan Foister and Susie Nash (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), pp. 159-169.

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not necessarily a town hall – even though the region boasts some very fine specimens – or a church: it’s a street with its passers-by, with its houses, shops and interiors”.29 Peter Stabel stated that Northern-European painting in general tended to represent the city primarily as a vibrant economic and social space.30 Also Brigitta Zülicke-Laube clearly defines the ‘Flemish manner’ of panel painting in terms of its breathtakingly detailed cityscapes. According to her, the slices of daily urban life that can be found in the background of paintings Jan Van Eyck and the Flémalle Master constitute quasi-self-contained motives that prefigure the genre painting of sixteenth-century Antwerp and the Dutch seventeenth century: “The world of the cities of the Low Countries comes into being in these little, skillfully painted cut-outs, with their impressive liveliness and vitality and with all the charms of the accidental and of genre painting”.31 Zülicke-Laube amply discusses how this down-to-earth evocation of the urban environment strongly influenced early German painting and explicitly labels it as a “bourgeois exploration of the city”.32 Likewise, Craig Harbison, in his attempt at a social contextualization, saw in the illusionistic panel painting of the early fifteenth century a distinctively bourgeois realism. He refers to Robert Campin’s images of the Madonna in a burgher interior, in which nothing seems to “suggest noble interest or appeal”.33 Also Alarich Rooch, in his extensive study of donor portraits in late medieval Flemish altarpieces, descries in the urban – almost trivial – framing of religious scenes the manifestation of the self-conscious burgher: “Through the staging of religious themes in a bourgeois ambiance and through the accompanying humanization, in the sense of a bourgeoisization [Verbürgerlichung] of the sacred sphere, the bourgeois founder led his life confidently, just as the Madonna also arranged her household in the city”.34

29 “La Flandre a surtout le sens de la vie quotidienne; pour elle, la ville n’est pas nécessairement un hôtel de ville, bien qu’il y en ait de fort beaux, ou une église: c’est une rue avec ses passants, avec ses maisons, ses boutiques, ses intérieurs” (Lavedan, Representations des villes, p. 29). 30 Stabel, ‘Social reality and artistic image: the urban experience’, p. 25. 31 ‘Die Welt der Niederländischen Städte ersteht in diesen kleinen, von unerhörter Fertigkeit der Malkunst zeugenden Ausschnitten mit eindringlicher Lebendigkeit und Frische, mit allem Reiz des Zufälligen und Genrehaften’ (Brigitta Zülicke-Laube, Die “Flandrische Manier” und die Entdeckung des bürgerlichen Welt des Städte’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Universität Leipzig, 12 (1963), 429-444). 32 As is stated in the title of the article: “die Entdeckung des bürgerlichen welt des Städte”. 33 Craig Harbison, The Mirror of the Artist, p. 52. 34 “Durch die Inszenierung religiöser Themen im Ambiente stadtbürgerlichen Lebens und durch die damit einhergehende Vermenschlichung im Sinne einer Verbürgerlichung der heiligen Sphäre führte der stadtbürgerliche Stifter seine Lebensführung selbstbewußt als die jenige vor, nach der auch die Madonna beispielsweise ihre Häuslichkeit in einer Stadt gestaltete” (Alarich Rooch, Stifterbilder in Flandern und Brabant : Stadtbürgerliche Selbstdarstellung in der sakralen Malerei des 15. Jahrhunderts (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1988), p. 239).

econ omi c space. the pulse of the city

Unfortunately, many cultural historians keep us guessing about what exactly they mean by ‘bourgeois’, whether as a social category or as a mentality.35 While most commonly used as a term to denote the urban (upper) middle class and mercantile elites (and thus as an antonym to the traditional nobility), historians of Middle Dutch literature try to be more specific about which values a ‘bourgeois’ mind-set might signify. In particular Herman Pleij contributed to the reconstruction of what he called a ‘burgher morality’ in Middle Dutch poetry and prose. According to Pleij, a myriad of ‘burgher’ values, such as profit, pragmatism, diligence, inquisitiveness, ambitiousness, entrepreneurship, innovativeness, opportunism, thrift, self-support, smartness, individualism, flexibility, soberness, self-control, and moderation emerge in vernacular urban literature, often infused in traditional aristocratic literary genres and themes, such as the chivalrous romance or classical epic. These values were symptomatic of a novel ‘market mentality’ that thrived in the urban centres of the Low Countries.36 Pleij can be credited with the rehabilitation of Middle Dutch urban literature as a sophisticated, original, and multi-layered art, even though he has been criticised for projecting a nineteenth-century conception of ‘bourgeois mentality’ on late medieval society, fitting it into an essentially top-down civilization process.37 Jan Dumolyn has recently advocated the literary agency of corporate middle classes, making Pleij’s so-called ‘burgher morality’38 at least as much an attribute of the ordinary artisan as of the merchant-entrepreneur. In the end, ‘bourgeoisie’ remains a charged and anachronistic concept that is hard to calibrate and transpose to medieval society. This is why we choose to rephrase the research question that is central to this chapter as follows: how frequently did predominantly religious altarpieces and devotional diptychs include an image of the city as an economic space, and to what extent might these images reflect a mercantile ethos or the socio-professional status of the donor? In other words: did these representations of urban daily life image a new class spirit that was fundamentally different from the values, preoccupations, self-esteem, and ambition of the traditional social elites? 35 For an interesting discussion of the construction of the concept ‘bourgeois’, its alternative meaning as ‘urban citizenship’, see Maarten Prak, ‘The Dutch Republic as a Bourgeois Society’, BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review, 125:2-3 (2010), 107-139. 36 Herman Pleij, ‘With a view to reality. The rise of bourgeois-ideals in the late middle ages’, in Flanders in a European Perspective. Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and abroad, ed. by Maurtis Smeyers and Bert Cardon (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), pp. 3-14; Herman Pleij, ‘Restyling Wisdom. Remodeling the Nobility, and Caricaturing the Peasant: Urban Literature in the Late Medieval Low Countries’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32:4 (2002), 689-704; Paul Vandenbroeck, ‘Stadscultuur in de Nederlanden, ca. 1400 - ca. 1600: ideologische zwaartepunten, evenwichtsmechanismen, dubbelbinding’, Tijdschrift van het Gemeentekrediet, 44:2 (1990), 17-41. 37 For a history of the concept of bourgeois culture in The Netherlands, see: Remieg Aerts and Henk Te Velde, De stijl van de burger: over Nederlandse burgerlijke cultuur vanaf de Middeleeuwen (Kampen: Kok Agora, 1998). For some critical remarks and a more institutional approach of the notion of ‘burger’ and ‘bourgeois society’ see Maarten Prak, ‘The Dutch Republic as a Bourgeois Society’, BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review, 125:2-3 (2010), 107-139. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18352/bmgn-lchr.7117. 38 Pleij confusingly uses also the label ‘middleclass mentality’ (see for instance Pleij, ‘With a view to reality’), as if this term is more or less exchangeable with ‘bourgeois mentality’.

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2. Quantifying depictions of the city as economic space Most studies on the social implications of the Flemish realism seemed to be remarkably biased towards pre-Eyckian art and the first two generations of early Netherlandish painters – in particular the oeuvre of Jan Van Eyck, the Flémalle Master, and Rogier Van der Weyden. Pierre Lavedan, for instance, acknowledged that the works of later artists, such as Hans Memling and Gerard David, seem to fit far less the anecdotic manière flamande as he defined it. The limited scope of the studies cited in the paragraph above – both in sheer number and in chronological range – generate a monolithic view of early Netherlandish painted cityscapes, based on a small number of iconic works, such as the Ghent Altarpiece or the Merode Triptych. Also Rooch based his observations predominantly on the ‘bourgeois’ (stadtbürgerlich) spatial setting of donor images and religious scenes from the second quarter of the fifteenth century, even though he signals the prevalence of a new, more ‘noble’ strategy of self-staging from 1450 onward (cf. infra). This is why a long-term quantitative analysis of a large corpus of panel paintings is essential to gain an insight that looks beyond the art historical canon of a few masterpieces. In order to assess to what extent the city has been pictured as an economic space, the corpus of 224 early Netherlandish panels with one or more city views (cf. Introduction) has been confronted with a set of specific queries. A first significant parameter is how much painted city views offer an insight into the urban interior, and whether these vistas show human activity or allusions to commerce, such as shop signs, market stalls, or logistical activities. Only a small portion of the studied city views, however, depict interior spaces (Graph 2.1). On the contrary, the majority is confined to a hermetic representation of the city walls and skyline. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily preclude the depiction of the city as an economic entity. The urban economy was essentially embedded in a much larger hinterland. As a second parameter to assess the economic dimension of city views, one should thus also look at how panel paintings portray the surrounding countryside. To what extent do these landscapes show, for instance, traffic to and from the city, or do they suggest access to waterways or the sea (Graph 2.5)? The systematic analysis of a corpus of paintings draws on a methodology that is closely related to content analysis, as discussed in the Introduction. A clear definition of the ‘coding categories’ – the distinct features of the image quantified throughout the corpus – is of utmost importance. When the main objective is to assess the economic dimension of a city view or hinterland, one must make a clear distinction between those human figures who are intrinsically part of the street view or landscape as a whole, and those who are part of the central narrative of the painting. In some cases, the human figures that populate the urban architecture and surrounding landscape function as actors or figures in an episode of a saint’s life or passion story. Hans Memling’s Turin Passion (Figure 1.6), for instance, might offer an inside view of a city with plenty of people, but it does not refer whatsoever to the economic dimension of the city. All figures participate in one of the Passion scenes that

econ omi c space. the pulse of the city

constitute an architectural ensemble: they are not there to labour, transport, buy, or sell, so they cannot qualify as a coding category for economic activity. Whereas in many other paintings, human figures are secondary staffage to the cityscape, with no other purpose than to provide perspective and vividness to the scene. The tiny, diligent figures in the town views of Robert Campin (Figures 1.16-1.17), for instance, do not act in any narrative or story, but are intrinsically part of the street. In this case, this does qualify as a token of the city as a place of manufacture and commerce (and can thus be accounted as a ‘inside view with people’). The results of this content analysis are represented in two graphs. In the next few pages, the results of the quantitative analysis will be supplemented by a discussion of a number of illustrative cases. 2.1.

Interior views: street views throughout early Netherlandish painting

A look at Graph 2.1 shows that inner town views were strongly represented in the period 1425-1450. In the first cohort, almost half (49%) of the cityscapes penetrate to the level of the street. Nearly all of those images depict people who are occupied with a myriad of activities: some converse or stop by a shopping window, while other transport goods or repair roof tiles. Nearly one third (32%) of all city views before 1450 explicitly feature commercial motifs, such as shop signs, or logistic elements, such as a crane, a wagon or wheel barrow. After 1450 the number of street views decreases significantly, and on those panel paintings that did depict the city from the inside, the streets are increasingly represented as abandoned and sterile spaces. In the last quarter of the fifteenth century barely 27% of the cityscapes penetrated to the city interior, whereas only 20% display people on the streets. The decline of explicit commercial motifs, such as shops and transport facilities, is even more notable. With some exceptions (such as the Antwerp iconography at the turn of the fifteenth century, cf. infra) they largely disappear from panel painting, only to return both as background motifs and as an autonomous genre during the course of the sixteenth century. It has to be said that for the period (1500-1525), for which the proportion of (commercial) interior views in our corpus is even smaller, quantification is no longer representative. This last cohort mainly contains later paintings of Gerard David and some other anonymous Bruges masters who continued to be active in the early sixteenth century and must be more or less considered as a prolongation of the period 1475-1500. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the number of paintings exploded, which renders the composition of a representative selection of works almost impossible. Later in this chapter we will devote a separate paragraph to sixteenth-century painting, in particular the Antwerp School, which is virtually absent from our corpus. A crucial factor is the changing angle from which the city has been depicted. Graph 2.2 shows that from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards profile views vastly gained popularity. The trend of a descending view-point inevitably entailed the visual obstruction of what happens inside the city. The focus progressively shifted towards the urban exterior, namely the city walls and more specifically the

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c h a p t e r  ii Graph 2.1: Inside views (%) 60

50

49 46

40 32

31

30

26 22

22 19

20

11 10 6 3 0

1425-1450 (37) Inside view

0

1450-1475 (36)

1475-1500 (119)

Inside view with commercial motives/stores

Populated inside view

Graph 2.2: Viewpoint city views per time cohort (%) 100% 90%

16

80% 70%

1500-1525 (18)

12

11

88

89

53

60% 50% 40%

82

30% 20%

45

10% 0% 1425-1450

(38)

1450-1475 Bird's eye view

(38)

1475-1500

Oblique view

(130)

1500-1525

(18)

Profile view

towers, turrets, and rooftops of the civic skyline. An exception are those profile views that are set within the city, but also these street views tended to remove any reference to commercial or other daily activities from circa 1450 onward. It is hard to postulate a straightforward explanation of this remarkable descent of the view

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point throughout the fifteenth century, yet it is tempting to assume an abatement or at least reconfiguration of the symbolically charged spatial dichotomy that existed within many compositions from the first generation of painters (see Chapter I). Whereas ‘early’ masters, such as Jan Van Eyck or Petrus Christus, repeatedly took recourse to a difference in altitude to discriminate the elevated sacred space from the profane space in the lower background, later masters tended to soften the barrier between foreground and background by embedding the religious core scene and donor portraits in a continuous background. This composition alleviated the spatial dichotomy that might have triggered an idealization of the background, either under the form of a pristine and monumental cityscape, or as an idyllic countryside. A short overview of some of the main features (and exceptions) of the oeuvre of the major masters and anonymous small masters will help suggest a better understanding of the changing representational mode of painted cityscapes throughout the fifteenth century. Graph 2.3 shows the proportion of interior views and streetscapes with commercial motives, this time according to master. These figures show how the depiction of the city as an economic space was most common in the oeuvre of the first generation of ‘Flemish Primitives’, such as the Tournai painters Jacques Daret and the Master of Flémalle, the Bruges painter Jan Van Eyck, and the young Rogier Van der Weyden. Also the oeuvre of Hans Memling, who was active in Bruges from ca. 1465 to 1494, shows a relatively high number of inner city views, even though commercial motives were rather sparse. a. The Master of Flémalle, Jan Van Eyck and the domestic street view

The Master of Flémalle can be considered one of the first to integrate tiny scenes of everyday urban life in religious imagery. He did so with a compelling degree of realism and detail, as has already been discussed for the Merode Altarpierce at the beginning of this chapter. A few other panels that have been situated in the environment of the Master of Flémalle contain similar street views. The Madonna and Child before the Firescreen (or Salting Madonna), dated around 1440, shows the Madonna in a burgher interior (Figure 1.17) that looks out on a busy square and a couple of adjoining streets. Very similar to the streetscapes on both wings of the Merode Altarpiece, this window view contains a miniature evocation of daily city life, in all its architectural, professional, and social diversity. As has been remarked by the architectural historian Rutger Tijs, nearly the entire typology of late medieval living culture is reflected in the street views of the Salting Madonna.39 While two craftsmen repair the roof tiles of a medium-sized stone dwelling, two horsemen gently cross the square. A woman stands in the front doorway of a brick step-gabled house. Meanwhile, three well-dressed figures halt at a corbelled timber house, where a figure – based on the white headscarf, a woman – sits at a shop-window. The narrow street between the two shops winds toward the city

39 Rutger Tijs, Antwerpen. Historisch portret van een stad (Tielt: Lannoo, 2001), p. 13.

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Figure 2.1: Gilles de Rome, Livre du gouvernement des princes, France, early 16th century, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, ms. fr. 5062, fol. 149v. Source gallica.bnf.fr/BnF.

gate in the distance. A handful of minuscule figures – virtually reduced to some colourful dots – suggest traffic and add to the illusion of three-dimensionality and perspective. On the other side lies a corner house with a signboard consisting of a staff, to which copper dishes are attached. The same iconic motif also occurs on the right wing of the Merode Altarpiece and will develop into a topos that recurred throughout the fifteenth century in the oeuvre of Rogier Van der Weyden,40 Hans Memling41 and in works by the Westphalian master Derick Baegert (active in the Lower Rhine town of Wesel).42 The exact meaning of the shop sign continues to puzzle art historians. It has been erroneously taken for a soup kitchen or a shop of painters’ materials, as some have identified the signboard as pig bladders – a commonly used recipient for paint – instead of copper plates.43 The most plausible explanation, however, is that the copper plates denote the presence of 40 Rogier Van der Weyden, Saint Luke drawing the Virgin, ca. 1435, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Rogier Van der Weyden, Saint George and the dragon, ca. 1430, Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Van der Weyden epigone, Marriage of Joseph and Mary, Our Lady Cathedral, Antwerp (see also later). 41 Hans Memling, Jan Floreins Triptych, 1479, Saint John’s Hospital, Bruges. 42 Derick Baegert, Saint Luke Altarpiece, ca. 1470, Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Munster. 43 This questionable identification was suggested for Rogier’s Saint Luke painting the Madonna, as a subtle allusion to the assumed patron of the painting, namely the painters’ guild of Saint Luke. However, as stated above, the motif goes back on an earlier Flémallesque prototype.

econ omi c space. the pulse of the city

Figure 2.2.: Loyset Liédet, Execution of Guillaume Sans, in Jean Froissart, ‘Chroniques’, 1470-1475, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, ms. fr. 2644, fol. 1r. Source gallica.bnf.fr/BnF.

a coppersmith or a barber.44 A convincing argument for the latter interpretation can be found in a French book illumination from the early sixteenth century that figures in a manuscript copy of Giles of Rome’s Livre du gouvernement des princes (Figure 2.1). The miniature depicts the ideal arrangement of an average street, composed of a variety of shops, including a barber in full swing. The barber shop is notably present in the street scene by means of a conspicuous shop sign consisting of four copper basins, just like the one in the Flémallesque city views. Likewise, a miniature of the Execution of Guillaume Sans made by Loyset Liédet for a manuscript edition of Jean Froissart’s Chroniques (ca. 1470) contains a corner shop with – once again – copper scales (and not pig bladders) as a very prominent signboard (Figure 2.2). In any case, the recurrent iconic use of the corner house with shop sign in various pictorial media indicates their pivotal role in the ordinary streetscape. These shop signs were essential to how contemporary city dwellers navigated the 44 See for instance Thürlemann, ‘Das Lukas-Triptychon in Stolzenhain’, p. 550, esp. note 71.

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50

50

42

43

39

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42

40

39

17

33

16

38 8

10 30 0

28

24

Flémalle/ Daret (10)

33

22

17

Van Eyck Vd Weyden P. Christus (12) (18) (12)

Inside view

Inside view with people

10

11

Memling (21)

Minor masters (99)

0 Bouts (12)

17

3

G. David (29)

Inside view with shops/commercial motifs

Graph 2.4: Number of cities in one pictorial field (per time cohort) (percentage) 3 100% 9 90% 27 80%

6

70% 60% 50% 40% 30%

97

91

94

1475-1500 (121)

1500-1525 (18)

73

20% 10% 0%

1425-1450 (33)

1450-1475 (38) Single

Multiple

street.45 Signboards functioned as beacons in a maze of narrow streets, and a couple of flickering copper plates further attracted the attention of the passers-by. In their

45 Michael Camille, ‘Signs on medieval street corners’, in Die Strasse. Zur Funktion und Perzeption öffentlichen Raums im späten Mittelalter, ed. by Gerhard Jaritz (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001), pp. 91-117; Idem, ‘Signs of the city. Place, power, and public fantasy in medieval Paris’, in Medieval Practices of Space, ed. by Barbara Hanawalt and Michal (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 1-36. See also Jean-Pierre Leguay, La rue au Moyen Age (Rennes, 1984, pp. 127-130; Jonathan Alexander, ‘“The Butcher, the Baker, the

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objective to realistically depict the triviality of daily urban life, medieval artists could hardly ignore the omnipresent shop signboard. This is why its increasing absence in Flemish painting from the second half of the century is remarkable, suggesting that it must have been a deliberate choice of the artist and/or patron (cf. infra). Jan Van Eyck’s street view on one of the Annunciation wings of the Ghent Altarpiece (Figure 1.15) shows a compelling likeness to the Flémallesque cityscapes: the pictorial immediacy; the perspective effect of the street that is geared towards the city gate; the realistic alternation of wooden houses and crenelated stone mansions; the furtive observation of daily actions; and the pleasant bustle at the street corner. Charles de Tolnay and Erwin Panofsky advanced the hypothesis that Jan Van Eyck must have been inspired by Robert Campin and the Flémalle Group while visiting the city of Tournai in 1427 and 1428, even though there is no absolute consensus on this thesis among art historians.46 This discussion is of minor importance. What matters is that the wing panels of the Merode Triptych, the Salting Madonna, and the Annunciation scene of the Ghent Altarpiece (all roughly dated between 1425 and 1440) initiated an iconographical theme that was revived by a handful of painters of the following generation. It is important to notice that despite their apparent topographical accuracy and particularity,47 these cityscapes constituted stereotypical variations on the same theme, with as major recurrent components: the perspective street, often directed towards a city gate or church, the scattered presence of people (often in pairs of two), the rich variation of building styles and materials, and the iconic corner house with copper plates. Paintings featuring this theme and composition were made in the circle of Jan Van Eyck (Covarrubias Madonna, ca. 1450)48 and Petrus Christus (Turin Madonna with Child, 1450-1460, see Figure 1.18), and – via the Saint Luke composition of Rogier Van der Weyden – by the Westphalian artist Derick Begaert.49 These domestic interiors that look out onto ordinary street life and economic routines of the city have been often interpreted as a clear-cut artistic and devotional expression of the new burgher. The suggested identification of the patron of the Merode Altarpiece as Jan Ymbrechts, a Mechelen quadrigarius or entrepreneur active in the transport business between Cologne and the Netherlands, further added the interpretation of the Flémallesque cityscapes as a quintessentially bourgeois envisioning of the city.50 Nevertheless, Catherine Reynolds warned not to misunderstand the apparent sober outlook of these paintings: “To consider

46 47 48 49 50

Candlestickmaker”: Images of Urban Labor, Manufacture and Shopkeeping from the Middle Ages’, in Material Culture and Cultural Materialisms in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. by Curtis Perry (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), pp. 89-109. Kemperdick et al., The Master of Flémalle, p. 196. On the fervent attempts to identify the cityscapes on the Van Eyck and Flémalle panels, see Chapter V. Museo Colegiata San Cosme y San Damian, Covarrubias, Spain (Till-Holger Borchert (ed.), The Age of Van Eyck 1430-1530. The Mediterranean World and Early Netherlandish Painting (Ghent/Amsterdam: Ludion, 2002), cat. 42. Thürlemann, ‘Das Lukas-Triptychon in Stolzenhain’. H. Installé, ‘Le triptique Merode: Evocation mnémonique d’une famille de marchands colonais, réfugiée à Malines’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen, 1 (1992), 55-154.

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these interiors and their occupants as bourgeois and humble is to miss their contemporary impact”.51 Indeed, by late medieval standards these interiors were actually lavishly decorated with carpets, sophisticated furniture, and other precious objects. Stained-glass windows at times contain heraldic arms, while the presence of a courtyard and gatehouse suggests that the scenes are not set in an ordinary, middle-class house, but a real city palace. As has been revealed by recent scholarship, noble and non-noble urban elites largely shared the same kind of residential architecture, material culture, and types of conviviality, to such an extent that it is hard to discriminate noble culture from ‘common’ or ‘bourgeois’ culture.52 One of the few elaborate contracts of panel paintings still preserved in the Low Countries subtly hints at this high degree of compatibility of both cultural spheres. A contract from 1448 between the Abbey of Flines (today in France, near Douai) and an artist from the Hainaut city of Valenciennes meticulously defines the iconography of the commissioned painting. For the Nativity scene the contract stipulates that the crib of the infant Jesus should be depicted as “how cradles of lords and burghers look nowadays” [“ainsi quant par telle manière que a présent on fait les couches des seigneurs et bourgeois”].53 Apparently, contemporaries did not perceive the material culture of nobles and rich burghers as being so divergent as has been long assumed by modern art historians. In sum, there are no real indications that the ordinary street views of the first half of the fifteenth century have to be understood as expressions of an original and exclusively bourgeois mind-set. Moreover, none of these cityscapes seems to have included allusions to the economic activities or occupation of the patron. In fact, their main function appears to provide the religious core scene with a setting that was recognisable for a wide social elite. b. Petrus Christus

Petrus Christus, who became a Bruges citizen in 1444 and was strongly influenced by the work of Jan Van Eyck, rarely observed urban daily life at close range. As already discussed in the previous chapter, the Exeter Madonna contains one of the rare bird’s-eye views in early Netherlandish panel painting (Figure 1.1). The typical Eyckian composition contrasts a Carthusian monk with the teeming city below. The miniature patchwork of streets, houses, shops and crowded squares bears close resemblance to city views of the Master of Flémalle. Once more, the omnipresent shop with copper scales figures twice in the cityscape. Most of Christus’s paintings contain distant views of the city, which are occasionally

51 Catherine Reynolds, ‘Reality and Image: Interpreting Three Paintings of the “Virgin and Child in an Interior” Associated with Campin’, in Robert Campin. New Directions in Scholarship, ed. by Susan Foister and Susan Nash (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), pp. 188-189. 52 Inneke Baatsen, A bittersweet symphony. The social recipe of dining culture in late medieval and early modern Bruges (1438-1600) (unpublished PhD thesis, Antwerp, 2016); Inneke Baatsen, Bruno Blondé, Julie De Groot and Isis Sturtewagen, ‘Thuis in de stad: dynamieken van de materiële cultuur’, in Gouden Eeuwen. Stad en Samenleving in de Lage Landen. 1100-1600, ed. by Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Bruno Blondé and Marc Boone (Gent: Academia Press, 2016), pp. 251-285. 53 Alexandre Pinchart, Archives des arts, sciences et lettres, I (Ghent: Hebbelynck, 1860), p. 44.

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Figure 2.3: Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in his Shop, 1449, The Metropolitan Museum, New York, Robert Lehman Collection.

embedded in the folds of the landscape, generating some relief and thus a perspective on the urban fabric. Explicit commercial allusion, such as shops or traffic, are rare in the painter’s oeuvre. An intriguing exception is the so-called Goldsmith in his Shop (1449) in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (Figure 2.3). The main figure in this enigmatic painting has long been identified as an effigy of Saint Eligius (the patron saint of the goldsmiths) in his workshop, as since time immemorial the man had been accompanied by a halo. This led many art historians to believe that the panel must have functioned as a devotional object in the chapel or guild house of the goldsmiths.54 The urban world pierces to the intimate setting 54 Ainsworth and Martens, Petrus Christus, cat. 6.

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of the shop through the convex mirror that stands on the public counter of the shop. The reflection of the mirror converges with the viewpoint of the spectator and shows two well-dressed figures in an empty street with a series of very modest houses. It is perfectly plausible that the scene constituted a lifelike representation of the setting and appearance of a goldsmith shop in fifteenth-century Bruges.55 The mirror has been interpreted by neo-Panofskian scholars as a textbook example of disguised symbolism, turning the painting into a ‘exemplum’ or ‘speculum’ for the spectator. Another typical demonstration of such a ‘hidden symbol’ is the falcon on the arm of one of the elegant figures in the street as an allusion to greed and pride. Through the device of the mirror, the composition thus opposes the harmonious interior scene with the saint and the devout couple (symbol of purity, marriage and spiritual love) to the outside world of the two idlers in the street (symbol of vanity and materiality). At the end of the twentieth century this old fashioned iconological interpretation has been seriously questioned, once the halo motif was definitively recognised as a later addition and subsequently removed in 1993. Various other arguments led Hugo Van de Velde to the ‘defrocking’ of Saint Eligius. Van de Velde convincingly argued that the panel is one of the oldest preserved vocational paintings, portraying the profession of goldsmithing, perhaps even a specific goldsmith. This makes the panel one of the rare secular paintings in our corpus. Technical analysis revealed the carefully modelled underdrawing of the goldsmith’s face, especially when compared to the generically sketched faces of the couple. An accumulation of circumstantial evidence led Hugo van de Velde to identify the person as Willem van Vlueten, a Bruges goldsmith in service of Philip the Good and around the middle of the fifteenth century active in Bruges. Furthermore, Van de Velde argued that the couple to the left represents the high noble Mary of Guelders and James II, King of Scots. Philip the Good himself commissioned (the date of the panel) from van Vlueten a marriage gift for this royal couple in 1449.56 Perhaps the painting had to commemorate this important commission. It may even have functioned as a sort of publicity for the van Vlueten business. Van de Velde states: “The painting was an overt expression of (artistic) self-assurance, which promulgated Willem van Vlueten’s professional success. As such, the Lehman panel marks the epitome of secular painting. Far from being an altarpiece, the painting may well have been displayed in the goldsmith’s booth or workshop in Bruges, or even in the guild’s communal house, advertising his prestige and services”.57 Following this line of thought, the falcon on the sleeve of one of the figures in the street did not necessarily 55 There does not seem to have been a real spatial concentration of goldsmiths and silversmiths in a particular neighbourhood in late medieval Bruges, but many lived in the Vlamingenstraat, Vlamingenbrug, Geldmuntstraat and Sint-Jacobsstraat (Silke Muylaert, De Brugse goud- en zilversmeden in de late middeleeuwen: een prosopografische studie (unpublished Master thesis, Ghent University, 2012), p. 51). 56 Hugo van der Velden, ‘Defrocking St Eloy: Petrus Christus’s Vocational Portrait of a Goldsmith’, Simiolus, 26:4 (1998), pp. 242-276. 57 Van der Velden, ‘Defrocking St Eloy’, p. 261.

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signify vanity. Rather, the hunting bird had to convey an aura of aristocracy and magnificence to the two visitors of the shop window.58 This much more prosaic interpretation makes the panel one of the oldest (and very rare) depictions of a member of the Bruges corporate ‘upper middle class’ in an occupational setting, namely in his own shop. Among the predominantly devotional and hagiographical panel paintings of the fifteenth century, Christus’s vocational portrait of a goldsmith stands out as an exceptional expression of a blossoming consumer society. Once the panel had lost its original function and context, it soon turned into an awkward artefact. At a certain moment it was transformed into a familiar devotional painting by adding a halo to the bold goldsmith, who had fallen into oblivion. The New York panel can thus be considered as an early precursor of the occupational portrait that would become a successful genre in the early modern period (see below). c. Rogier Van der Weyden

Rogier Van der Weyden, who was trained in Tournai, developed several variations on the Flémallesque street view, inserting them into various compositions, such as Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin (ca. 1435) (Figure 1.19).59 The spatial configuration of an elevated front plane with Saint Luke and the Madonna in a palatial setting, as opposed to a large landscape and city view in the background, is clearly derived from Van Eyck’s Rolin Madonna (see Chapter I). Yet, instead of the grandiose urban panorama of the latter, Van der Weyden, who by that time had already moved to Brussels, decided to compose the left cityscape around the prototypical street view with which he was familiar from his Tournai period.60 Facing a large square dotted with several people and a horseman, one can easily spot the typical Flémallesque corner shop with copper plates as signboard. The panel may have been installed in the chapel devoted to Saint Catherine at the church of Saint Gudula in Brussels, where the guild of painters held their services and where the artist was later buried. Alternatively, it may have been installed in the guildhouse.61 In Saint George and the Dragon, another early work of Rogier (nowadays dated around 1435),62 the dual cityscape, comprised of a lower town and a castle, combined with some suburban structures, bears a striking resemblance to the Dijon Nativity of the Master of Flémalle (Figure 2.4 – Plate 4). 58 Some late medieval portraits contain a hunting bird as status symbol, as for example the portrait of Engelbert II of Nassau by the Master of the Portraits of Princes (ca. 1490, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). 59 The original is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Late fifteenth-century copies can be found in Bruges, Munich and Saint Petersburg. 60 On the Tournai connection of Rogier, see Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, ‘Rogier Van der Weyden before 1435. The Tournai roots of a master of pathos’, in Rogier Van der Weyden 1400-1464. Master of passions, ed. by Lorne Campbell and Jan Van der Stock (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2009), pp. 64-81. 61 Till-Holger Borchert, ‘Rogier’s St. Luke: A Case of Corporate Identity?’, in Rogier Van der Weyden. St. Luke Drawing the Virgin. Selected Essays in Context, ed. by Carol Purtle (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), pp. 61-87. 62 Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (see Kemperdick and Sander (eds), The Master of Flémalle, cat. 21.).

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Figure 2.4: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, Nativity, 1433-1435, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Dijon. Source Wikimedia Commons.

Likewise, the city view is remarkably open and comprises the archetypical alternation of stone, brick and stone buildings and the shop signboard motif. Also later works of Rogier integrate city views that can be traced back to the Flémalle streetscapes. The Middelburg Triptych (1445-1448), for instance, places the Nativity scene on the central panel against a winding street with shops (with copper plates as signboard!), city palaces, and ordinary houses (Figure 0.2). More or less the same cityscape figures a couple of years later in the background of the Columba Altarpiece (1450-1458) (Figure 2.5). Once again appears the

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Figure 2.5: Rogier Van der Weyden, Columba Altarpiece (detail), 1450-1458, Alte Pinakothek, Munich. CC BY-SA 4.0.

very transparent view of the urban interior that is so typical of the first half of the fifteenth century. It looks like if Van der Weyden has deliberately removed the city gate in order to fully depict urban daily life. This becomes even more obvious in the Vienna Crucifixion (1443-1445), where an entire stretch of the city wall has been eliminated in favour of an inside view.63 The thoughtful breaching of the city wall or other architectural barriers, enabling the spectator to view deep inside the urban fabric, was a pictorial device also sporadically practiced by other painters, such as Hans Memling (cf. infra). While the early Rogier Van der Weyden clearly worked within the Tournai tradition, his later oeuvre shows a clear trend towards a more hermetic and monumental depiction of the urban landscape, or even a marginalisation of the city. This shift is already obvious in the Miraflores Altarpiece (1442-1445) and seems to have paralleled Rogier’s increasingly emphatic focus on the deeply human emotions of the religious protagonists (Figure 2.6 – Plate 5). The central panel of the Miraflores Altarpiece places the utterly doleful lamentation scene against the soothing background of a tranquil city view embedded in a serene landscape. Many other later works of Van der Weyden and his workshop that 63 Lorne Campbell and Jan Van der Stock (eds), Rogier Van der Weyden 1400-1464. Master of passions (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2009), p. 123 (figure 55).

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Figure 2.6: Rogier Van der Weyden, Miraflores Altarpiece, ca. 1440, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. © Photo Christoph Schmidt.

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Figure 2.7: Rogier Van der Weyden, The Entombment of Christ (detail), 1463-1464, Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze. Source Artstor.

depict the Lamentation or Entombment tend to reduce the city to a complex of walls, towers and other monumental buildings on the fringes of the image (Figure 2.7). The process of monumentalisation and the growing momentum of landscape motifs will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter III and IV. d. Hans Memling

Hans Memling’s city views show a high degree of eclecticism, and some of them are clearly inspired by Rogier Van der Weyden. Memling presumably received his training in the workshop of Rogier in Brussels, where he stayed active probably until the death of his master in 1464. Nearly a year later Memling became a citizen of Bruges, where he continued to work until his death in 1494. Nine out of the 21 cityscapes of Memling in our corpus (or 43%) contain an inside view. The streetscape in the back of the Madrid Adoration Triptych (1474-1480) is an almost literal citation from the Van der Weyden Middelburg Triptych, mentioned just above. In the Jan Floreins Triptych (1479) Memling once again recycles the motif in the background of an Adoration scene, including the shop with the copper dishes, but this time more loosely (Figure 2.8). In the Saint John Altarpiece (1474-1479), behind Saint John the Evangelist, appears the sole cityscape of Memling that can be identified as a specific place (and one of the rare instances in fifteenth-century Flemish panel painting as a whole). Behind the rubble of some generic houses (a technique also used by

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Figure 2.8: Hans Memling, Jan Floreins Triptych (detail the central panel with Adoration), 1479, Musea Brugge / Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels.

Van der Weyden to add some transparency to a city view) the distinctive crane of the Bruges Kraanplaats emerges (Figure 1.2). This small square was situated at the heart of the city, midway between the Bourse Square (the financial heart of the city) and the Grote Markt, and played a pivotal role in the transshipment and taxation of goods (especially barrels of wine and oil).64 The triptych was a commission of four brothers and sisters of the Saint John Hospital, where it must have been installed on the high altar of the chapel. The allusion to the city crane and the measuring of wine that took place on the Kraanplaats framed the central spiritual vision of the altarpiece (the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine on the central panel) in a worldly context. The measuring of wine was a lucrative concession given to the hospital by the city authorities in the mid-fourteenth

64 André Vandewalle, ‘De Stadskraan’, in Hanzekooplui en Medicibankiers. Brugge, wisselmarkt van Europese culturen, ed. André Vandewalle (Oostkamp: Stichting Kunstboek, 2002), p. 25.

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Figure 2.9: Hans Memling, Saint Veronica, 1480-1483, Samuel H. Kress Collection, Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

century. The patrons of the altarpiece may have had a religious vocation, but their activities and occupations were utterly profane: the practical organisation of health care by an institution that had been in severe financial troubles a couple of decades earlier.65 Clerical patronage and a liturgical setting did not a priori exclude the pictorial evocation of some of the most worldly preoccupations of city life. In fact, clerical authorities were often deeply involved in all kinds of secular affairs. This is how, for instance, around 1500 the Northern Netherlandish stained glass artist Arnoult de Nimège was asked by the Our Lady Chapter of Tournai to design a series of windows for the cathedral, including a view of a 65 De Vos, Hans Memling, cat. 31.

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Figure 2.10: Dirk Bouts, Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament, 1464-1468, Museum M, Leuven. © KIK/ IRPA, Brussels.

traffic-loaded bridge and a vivid market scene, both allusions on chapter’s rights to levy taxes on the market stalls and on the passage over the Scheldt.66 Nevertheless, trivial street views constitute a minority in the oeuvre of Memling. Just as Rogier Van der Weyden in the second half of his career, Memling often reduces the city to a monumental architectural mass. In his most original creations the city becomes a sequence of theatre stages, an architectural framework with no other function than a setting for the narrative (Figure 1.7) (see also Chapter I and Chapter III). In some other creations the urban skyline floats at a distance above a strip of vegetation, as for instance in the Saint Veronica (ca. 1483) or the Berlin Enthroned Madonna with Child (1489-1490) (Figure 2.9). In these works the city has become a peripheral phenomenon, well hidden in an increasingly prominent, tranquil countryside (see Chapter IV). The oeuvres of Dirk Bouts (active in Leuven in the third quarter of the fifteenth century) and Gerard David (who becomes the leading painter in Bruges after the death of Hans Memling) show a parallel tendency towards idealisation. Both painters envision the city through monumental skylines – virtually ignoring the daily city life that takes place at ground level – and deserted streets and squares, with a distinct focus on the city’s architectural fabric, rather than human activity. This becomes obvious, for instance, in Bouts’s Triptych of the Holy Sacrament

66 Jean Helbig, Les vitraux médiévaux conservés en Belgique: 1200-1500 (Brussel, 1961). See also Albert D’Haenens, De wereld van de Hanze (Antwerpen: Mercatorfonds, 1984), p. 137.

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Figure 2.11: Gerard David, Marriage at Cana (detail), ca. 1501, Musée du Louvre, Paris. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels.

(1464-1468) (Figure 2.10 – Plate 6), where in the margin of the central panel a slice of a deserted square with the new city hall of Leuven can be observed (see also Chapter III). A very similar ‘petrification’ of the urban interior has taken place in Gerard David’s Marriage at Cana (ca. 1500), where the opulent banquet

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hall gives out onto a square bordered by the monumental architecture of a sort of city hall, a chapel and some city palaces (Figure 2.11). A glance at Graph 2.3 indicates that the number of this kind of interior views was rather small, especially in the oeuvre of Dirk Bouts (nearly two out of twelve city views). In particular, Bouts preferred to embed distant cityscapes in a prominent, idealised countryside. e. The anonymous masters of the end of the fifteenth century

The last quarter of the fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century witnessed a huge output by a myriad of anonymous masters who were predominantly active in Bruges and Brussels. Graph 2.3 shows that only one fourth of the nearly one hundred painted city views in our corpus that had been attributed to one of these anonymous masters picture an urban interior, whereas hardly 16% of the cityscapes contain people who were not directly related to the narrative. Many of these artists were trained or at least heavily influenced by the workshops of Memling and Van der Weyden, whereas some compositions of Jan Van Eyck, such as the Madonna in a domestic interior with street view (discussed above), experienced a modest Nachleben. The typical Rogerian street views as in the Columba Altarpiece were most eagerly recycled by Brussels artists, such as the Master of Saint Barbara, the Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine, and the Master of the Life of Saint Joseph (Figure 2.12).67 Even though these streetscapes contain feeble allusions to the economic dimension of town life, their tone is different. They have lost much of the anecdotal flair of their Rogerian precursors and look rather artificial. The buildings appear as cardboard structures constituting the lifeless architectural setting of the depicted story. This is all the more apparent in the oeuvre of the Bruges anonymous masters, where the influence of Memling’s Simultanbilder is obvious.68 Some other anonymous masters, such as the Brussels Master of the View of Saint Gudula and the Bruges Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy show a very strong focus on the monumental space of the city, such as city palaces and conspicuous towerscapes (Figure 2.13 – Plate 7) (see in particular Chapter III). The growing popularity of the latter can be associated with the continued trend of a descending viewpoint and the partial shift towards the distant profile view, as demonstrated by Graph 2.2. Besides some dull citations from Rogerian and Eyckian examples, the representation of the city as a commercial space is virtually non-existent in the corpus of nearly a hundred city views painted by anonymous masters at the end of the fifteenth century. One of the few exceptions to this pattern is the silhouette of 67 See for instance The Master of Saint Barbara, The Legend of Saint Barbara, ca. 1480, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels; The Master of Saint Catherine, The Legend of Saint Catherine, 1480-1495, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels; The Master of the Life of Saint Joseph, The Presentation of Mary (part of the so-called Affligem Altarpiece), 1490-1500, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels (for good reproductions of these works, see the online catalogue of the Royal Museum: www.fine-artsmuseum.be/en/research/the-digital-museum/fabritius. 68 See for instance The Master of Saint Godelieve, The Legend of Saint Godelieve, 1475-1500, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

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Figure 2.12: Master of Saint Barbara (Brussels), The Life of Saint Barbara (detail of a typical Rogierian street view), ca. 1480, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels.

some workmen moving around barrels on a quay in the far background of a Presentation of Mary painted in the environment of the Brussels Master of the View of Saint Gudula during the last quarter of the fifteenth century.69 The motif vaguely resembles the kind of illuminations of daily labour, both in the city and the countryside, that frequently adorned the calendaria of books of hours. Many painters were also active as illuminators of manuscripts, and it is at least remarkable that at the time Flemish miniatures excelled in the realistic depiction of daily life in the city, panel painting reverted to a rather artificial representation of the city. Another exception is the Della Costa Triptych, made around 1499 by an anonymous Bruges painter for a Ligurian merchant, which encompassed various explicit mercantile motifs. The left panel of the altarpiece is dedicated to the Marriage at Cana. Unlike the fabulous setting of the more or less contemporary evocation of this scene by Gerard David (see above), the banquet hall in the Della Costa Triptych indicates an ordinary street, where a man purchases some goods from a corpulent artisan in a shop window (Figure 2.14). This peripheral representation of the city as a place of commerce is consistent

69 See for instance the Brukenthal Breviary, ca. 1510, Brukenthal Library, Sibiu, ms. 761 fol. 13v (http:// www.brukenthalmuseum.ro/breviar/index_en.htm).

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Figure 2.13: Master of the View of Saint Gudula (Brussels), Clothing the Naked, ca. 1470, Museum Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid. © Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

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Figure 2.14: Master of San Lorenzo della Costa, Della Costa Altarpiece, 1499, San Lorenzo della Costa Church, Santa Margherita Ligure. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels.

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Figure 2.15: Master of the View of Saint Gudula, Virgin and Child, with Mary Magdalen and donatrix, ca. 1475, Grand Curtius Museum, Liège. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels.

with the prominent harbour motifs featured on the other two panels of the triptych and with the mercantile profile of the Italian patron (cf. infra). f. A general trend towards idealisation

We conclude this eclectic discussion of the economic dimension of interior city views in fifteenth-century Flemish painting with two pictorial trajectories that perfectly illustrate the general pattern sketched above. A first case is a comparison of Jan Van Eyck’s Rolin Madonna and Rogier Van der Weyden’s Saint Luke painting the

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Figure 2.15a: Master of the View of Saint Gudula, Virgin and Child, with Mary Magdalen and donatrix (detail background), ca. 1475, Grand Curtius Museum, Liège. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels.

Virgin (both dated ca. 1435) on the one hand, and the Virgin and Mary Magdalene and donor by the Brussels Master of the View of Saint Gudula (ca. 1475) on the other (See Figures 0.1; 1.19 and 2.15). All three panels depart from more or less the same composition, of which the Rolin Madonna is most likely the model. The core scene in the foreground is set in a translucent palatial structure, including an enclosed garden, which has been separated by a crenellated wall from the city view in the background. In all three painting the panoramic landscape has been carved in two by a river. A similar motif that recurs in all three paintings is the figures in the enclosed garden who peer down to the city below. When looking carefully, one can easily spot a remarkable change in clothing. The figures on the two oldest panels wear heavy fur trimmed houppelandes (a long, full body wool garment), whereas the Master of the View of Saint Gudula dresses the men in a tight hose and fancy bonnet, and the woman in an elegant dress and hennin (the coneshaped headdress typical for noble women in late medieval Burgundy). The Brussels master clearly adapted these figures to the latest fashion, but in all three paintings they seem to be members of the noble court elite. Besides the fact that all paintings depict a different central theme, the main difference is how the city has been represented. Whereas Van Eyck envisions the city as a spectacular panoramic accumulation of buildings and people, remote from the sacred scene in the foreground, Van der Weyden opts for a much closer observation of a particular part of the city (much more in the vein of the street views of the Master of Flémallle). Still, both clearly depict the city essentially as an economic space with abundant activity, even

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Figure 2.16: Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula (environment), Portrait of a Man, 1480, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels.

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Figure 2.17: Hans Memling, Virgin and Child and Maarten Van Nieuwenhove (detail donor), 1487, Musea Brugge / SintJanshospitaal, Bruges.

though Van Eyck further stresses the monumental features of the city. Nearly half a century later the Master of the View of Saint Gudula, on the contrary, designs the city as a pristine architectural gem, devoid of people and ordinary activities. A second illustration of the general shift towards idealisation and theatralicalisation can be found in an anonymous Bruges donor portrait in a domestic setting that was most likely the right wing of a devotional diptych made in 1480 in the environment of the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula (Figure 2.16) The spatial configuration of the panel – making use of a window device to separate foreground and background – is Flémallesque/Eyckian in origin, yet the actual streetscape has been significantly adapted. The omnipresent allusions to the daily economic function of the city that were characteristic of the first generation have been reduced to two generic shop signs, while the preponderant tone has become much more elitist and aristocratic. A gracious horseman quietly leaves through the city gate, two elegantly dressed figures stroll down the road, while a respectable couple takes a rest on a tree bench that looks out on a canal with swans. The ordinary street of two decades earlier has been transformed into an aristocratic idyll: a place of recreation, tranquillity, magnificence, and display. Seven years later Hans Memling would take the composition a step even further. In his devotional diptych of Maarten Van Nieuwenhove (dated 1487) the windows of the intimate setting in which the donor and the Madonna are assembled no longer give way to the city; they face the pastoral calm of the Bruges countryside (Figure 2.17).70 70 Based on the wooden bridge and two fortification towers that appear in the window behind Maarten Van Nieuwenhove, it has been argued to situate the domestic setting of the diptych near the Bruges city walls, close to the Minnewater (De Vos, Hans Memling, cat. 78).

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Figure 2.18: Rogier Van der Weyden, Saint George and the Dragon (detail), 1432-1435, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

2.2.

Exterior views: the city and its hinterland

Another crucial economic aspect of the city is its function as a central place in a larger network of villages and (smaller) towns. The average medieval city delivered both goods and services to the direct hinterland, while some cities, such as Bruges (and in sixteenth-century also Antwerp), functioned as a hub in a much larger international trade network. These commercial metropolises operated as gateways, distributing imported goods over a vast hinterland and exporting regional products to all corners of Europe and beyond.71 Roads and waterways constituted the blood vessels of the city as a logistic heart. Given the limited number of real inside views, these criteria will form a second parameter to evaluate the representation of the city as an economic space. This paragraph investigates to what extent painted city views represented the town as a central place. When looking at the number of cities depicted in one pictorial space, one has to conclude that most early Netherlandish paintings depict only one city 71 For a short critical discussion, see Tim Soens, Eline Van Onacker and Kristof Dombrecht, ‘Metropolis and Hinterland? A Comment on the Role of Rural Economy and Society in the Urban Heart of the Medieval Low Countries’, BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review, 127:2 (2012), 82-88; Peter Stabel, Dwarfs among giants. The Flemish urban network in the late Middle Ages (Leuven: Garant, 1997).

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Figure 2.19: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Virgo inter Virgines (detail), ca. 1488, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels.

(Graph 2.4). Only the first generation of painters were more inclined to depict a larger landscape with several city views, as in for instance the panoramic views of Jan Van Eyck. Still, the insertion of multiple cityscapes might have served to affect the illusion of perspective or to structure a chain of episodes in a narrative cycle (as is the case in Memling’s Simultanbilder), rather than to evoke the idea of an urban network. A systematic quantitative analysis of the representation of traffic in the hinterland in which the city was embedded reveals a great typological variety of landscapes. The number of travellers in the surrounding countryside can be considered as a parameter of the economic attraction of the depicted city. Graph 2.5 shows how especially the first generation of Flemish Primitives pictured traffic to and from the city. For the second quarter of the fifteenth century, 76% of the city views that are embedded in a larger landscape show a high amount of people that are on the road, alone or in a group, by foot, by horse, or by cart: namely 52% of ‘intense’ traffic of more than ten persons, and 24% of low traffic, a handful of people. Graph 2.6 tells that particularly Jan Van Eyck and the early Rogier Van der Weyden strewed their landscape with an almost uncountable number of tiny people making their way towards or away from the city. Once again, the Rolin Madonna counts as one of the finest exemplars, but also Van Eyck’s Saint Francis in Philadelphia or the Frick Madonna are studded

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with travellers. For Van der Weyden we refer to his Saint George (Figure 2.18) or the Saint Catherine in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Also the Master of Flémalle fits this patterns, but to a lesser extent. An interesting parallel is that most artists who were active in the second quarter of the fifteenth century also dedicated a lot of attention to the agricultural exploitation of the urban hinterland.

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The landscapes of Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, and the Master of Flémalle include a considerable amount of fertile farmland, meadows, vineyards, orchards, and windmills, even though the actual labour or cultivation of countryside is never depicted. The general trend in Graph 2.6 is more or less consistent with the shift towards idealisation, as revealed for inside views by Graph 2.3. Just like the inner street views of the second half of the fifteenth century, the wider hinterland of the city increasingly becomes an empty and tranquil landscape. Hans Memling, Dirk Bouts –labelled by Maurits Smeyers as ‘the painter of silence’72 – Gerard David, and most of the minor masters from the last quarter of the fifteenth century depict the city almost without exception as an isolated, self-sustained entity in an abandoned, paradisiacal landscape (Figure 2.19). Chapter IV further investigates this remarkable shift towards an idealised countryside. Especially in the Low Countries, the development of cities was heavily influenced by the country’s hydrography.73 Graphs 2.7 and 2.8 chart the number of city views that are situated close to the water, and the occurrence of explicit allusions to shipping traffic and harbour infrastructure. They reveal a slightly different pattern for maritime and fluvial transport, when compared to land traffic (Graph 2.3). The number of cities that are set close to the water seems to have been quite evenly spread throughout the fifteenth century. Only Van der Weyden stands out as the true master of the cityscape at the waterside, even though references to water-bound transport are scarce in his oeuvre. Besides the urban panoramas of Van Eyck and some specific motifs in the work of Memling (such as the image of the city crane in the Saint John Altarpiece discussed above), representations of the maritime logistic infrastructure are virtually non-existent in late-medieval Netherlandish panel painting. Notwithstanding that the access to waterways was of crucial importance for a city like Bruges, and even though a considerable amount of the patrons of early Netherlandish painting were (often foreign) merchants, references to international maritime trade remained strangely absent. The numerous Bruges towerscapes that adorned the panels of the Master of Saint Lucy and the Master of Saint Ursula during the last quarter of the fifteenth century (see Chapter III), for instance, embedded the renowned harbour city in a pristine, empty landscape. One of the very few exceptions is the Della Costa Triptych, painted by the Bruges Master of San Lorenzo della Costa on the verge of the sixteenth century (Figure 2.14). The altarpiece was made in 1499 for the Ligurian merchant and banker Andrea della Costa, who had become a Bruges citizen in 1483. He had worked his way up to receiver and councillor of Maximilian of Austria and was eventually appointed as ambassador to the French court.74 The background of the central and right panels of the triptych encompasses a continuous landscape with a sea view that clearly depicts a convoy of Genovese galleys (behind the central Crucifixion scene), which heads towards the harbour 72 Smeyers, Dirk Bouts, peintre du silence. 73 See for instance Wim Blockmans, Metropolen aan de Noordzee : de geschiedenis van Nederland 1100-1560 (Amsterdam: Bakker, 2010), pp. 275-282. 74 Carla Cavelli-Traverso, Primitivi fiamminghi in Liguria (Recco: Le Manie, 2003), cat. 25 (pp. 113-117).

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with its prominent dock crane (behind the Resurrection of Lazarus on the right). The triptych was created in Bruges and made a long overseas journey before it was eventually installed in the Church of San Lorenzo in Santa Margherita Ligure (nearby Genova). Without a doubt, the unambiguous allusions to long-distance trade must be understood as attributes of the donors portrayed on the central panel, since they have no narrative importance to the central themes of the panels. These references to harbour and shipping activities must have signalled to the local audience the successful achievements of Andrea Della Costa as a merchant active in international trade, which stood at the foundation of his extensive social network as well as his steep professional career climb in the Habsburg state apparatus. Apparently, Della Costa was one of the few donors who thought it expedient to highlight his mercantile status within the confines of a religious altarpiece. Yet this attitude would soon change. Around the turn of the century, when the economic and artistic centre of gravity gradually shifted towards Antwerp, explicit harbour motifs, market scenes, and allusions to the profession of the donor gained momentum in both religious painting and – within two decades – genre painting. 2.3.

The sixteenth century: harbour views, genre painting and the primacy of Antwerp

In the sixteenth century the evolution of pictorial cityscapes followed divergent directions. On the one hand the tendency towards idealisation and monumentalisation that had become the dominant representational mode in the second half of the fifteenth century persisted and even took some extreme forms. Inspired by the Italian Renaissance, some Antwerp Mannerists, for instance, designed highly imaginative cityscapes based on the canon of classical architecture.75 On the other hand, the sixteenth century brought a (renewed?) and much more explicit representation of the city as a commercial space. The dynamic Antwerp art market played an important role in this development. Already in the course of the fifteenth century the port city on the border of Brabant and Flanders attracted an increasing share of the international trade volume in the Low Countries. By the early sixteenth century Antwerp had become the major commercial gateway city, thanks to a combination of a favourable setting close to the Scheldt estuary, the political discredit of Bruges after its revolt against Maximilian of Austria, the silting up the Zwin (Bruges’s access to the sea), and the attractiveness of some of Antwerp’s commercial institutions.76 Not only did Antwerp become the ‘capital of commerce’ par excellence of the sixteenth-century Low Countries; both the 75 Good illustrations are Jan Gossaert, Danae (1527, Alte Pinakothek, Munich) and Pseudo-Bles, The beheading of Saint John the Baptist (ca. 1520, Gemäldegalerie, Kulturforum Berlin). See Peter van den Brinck and Maximiliaan Martens (eds), ExtravagAnt!  A forgotten chapter of Antwerp painting , 1500-1538: catalogue (Antwerp: Royal Museum of Fine Arts, 2005). 76 Helma De Smedt, Peter Stabel and Ilja Van Damme, ‘Zilt succes. Functieverschuivingen van een stedelijke economie’, in Antwerpen. Biografie van een stad, ed. by Inge Bertels, Bert De Munck and Herman Van Goethem (Antwerp: De Bezige Bij, 2010), pp. 111-116. On the shift from Bruges to

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Figure 2.20: Anonymous Master (Northern Netherlands?), Feeding the Multitude, ca. 1490, Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History, Münster. © LWL – Museum für Kunst und Kultur (Westfälisches Landesmuseum).

organisation and the output of its art market witnessed a process of profound innovation. Filip Vermeylen showed how by 1540 the Antwerp art market had evolved towards a permanent, secularised and professionalised market. This resulted in some serious shifts in the commercialisation and production (on Antwerp and the importance of economic institutions, see Oscar Gelderblom, Cities of Commerce: The Institutional Foundations of International Trade in the Low Countries, 1250-1650 (Princeton: University Press, 2013).

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Figure 2.21: Goswin Van der Weyden, Detail from the scenes of the life of Saint Dymphna, oil on panel, 1503-1505, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. © KIK-IRPA, Brussels.

spec, specialisation, and division of labour); in the distribution (the specialised ‘panden’ as outlet, the development of a specialised packaging industry); and in the consumption (the commodification of art as a consumer good).77 Some Antwerp panel paintings from around the turn of the century stand out for their explicit allusion to the commercial function of the city. The second half of the fifteenth century witnessed the development of an iconographic tradition that depicts the city of Antwerp from the left bank of the river Scheldt, with a distinct focus on its harbour infrastructure: the so-called Roadstead of Antwerp with its iconic wooden treadwheel crane, first mentioned in 1262.78 A hand drawn map of the Scheldt (dated 1468) already represents the city from

77 Filip Vermeylen, Painting for the Market: Commercialization of Art in Antwerp’s Golden Age (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003). 78 Albert Himler, Gert Thues and Paul van Schoors, 750 Years of Harbour Cranes in Antwerp (Antwerp: BAI, 2014).

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Figure 2.22a: Jan Provoost, Saint Nicholas and Saint Godelieve with Donors, 1515-1521, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Hugo Maertens.

this position.79 This relatively detailed profile view can be considered as one of the oldest topographical city views in the Low Countries (see Chapter V), and it indicates how at the time Antwerp was still a harbour town of secondary importance, whose image was already strongly defined by its commercial infrastructure. Around 1490 an image of Antwerp from more or less the same viewpoint appears in the background of an anonymous painting of the miracle of Feeding the Multitude (Figure 2.20). Compared to other contemporary religious paintings, the cityscape claims a relatively large proportion of the background, immediately drawing the attention of the viewer. Set in a completely fictitious, mountainous landscape, one can easily recognise the busy wharf activities, the crane, the urban fortifications and the Churches of Saint Walburga and Our Lady. The link with the rather uncommon theme of Feeding the Multitude is obvious: the spectacular growth of Antwerp had brought an incessant flow of goods to the banks of the Scheldt. The painting ingeniously refers to the city as a cornucopia in the guise of a biblical story. A couple of years later, around 1504, another anonymous Master of the Morrison Triptych combines a very similar view of Antwerp with an image of the 79 For a detailed digital analysis of this map, see Ellen Klompmaker, De Scheldekaart van Rupelmonde tot aan het Zwin en het eiland Walcheren (1468) en De Scheldekaart van Rupelmonde tot aan de zee (1504/05). Een digitale analyse (unpublished Master thesis, Ghent, 2013).

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Figure 2.22b: Jan Provoost, Death and the Miser, 1515-1521, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Source Wikimedia Commons.

Adoration of the Magi, yet another theme that alludes to the prosperity brought by long-distance trade.80 The Magi iconography was particularly popular among (German) merchants and became the subject of mass-production by the Antwerp Mannerist in the 1520s (an estimated 40% of the total output).81 Although these serially produced paintings did not contain any direct reference to the Antwerp topography whatsoever, approximately 25% show a variety of cargo-carrying motifs.82 The Antwerp harbour motif also figures in Scenes of the life of Saint Dymphna, painted around 1505 by Goswin Van der Weyden (Figure 2.21).83 Dymphna was the daughter of a pagan Irish king, and her story tells that she fled via Antwerp to Flanders. On one of the panels Van der Weyden depicts the arrival of Dymphna in Antwerp, and once again the wharfs and dock crane immediately catch the viewer’s attention. The particularly strong sign value of the crane as a pars pro

80 Philadelphia Museum of Art. See: http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/102138. html?mulR=356420259|2. 81 Maximiliaan Martens, ‘Antwerp painters: their market and networks’, in Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen 2004/2005 (Antwerp: 2006), pp. 47-74. 82 Dan Ewing, ‘Magi and merchants: the force behind the Antwerp Mannerist’s Adoration pictures’, in Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen 2004/2005 (Antwerp: 2006), pp. 275-300. 83 Annick Born and Maximilaan Martens, ‘Goossen Van der Weyden and the Transmission of the Rogeresque Tradition from Brussels to Antwerp’, in Rogier Van der Weyden in context, ed. by Lorn Campbell et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2012), pp. 341-352.

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Figure 2.23: Joos van Cleve, Crucifixion with Donor (detail), ca. 1520, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

toto for the commercial function of the city becomes clear in a wood sculpted altarpiece of Saint Dymphna, made towards the end of the fifteenth century. Here, the arrival of the saint is set against a generic, simplified image of a city, personalised as a harbour town by its crane.84 By the early sixteenth century, the appeal of Antwerp as the new commercial metropolis of the Low Countries had become undeniable. Jan Provoost, who was 84 Rita De Boodt and Ulrich Schäfer, Vlaamse Retabels. Een internationale reis langs laatmiddeleeuws beeldsnijwerk (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2009), pp. 190-192.

econ omi c space. the pulse of the city Graph 2.9: Iconclass ‘hits’ per volume Friedländer 25 20 20 15

46C223 ('harbour')

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active in both Bruges and Antwerp, portrays a still unidentified patron in front of a semi-fictitious view of the Antwerp wharf (1515-1520). Saint Nicolas – patron saint of the donor – meets some merchants on a quay with a treadwheel crane, while in the background the spire of Our Ladies looms (Figure 2.22a – Plate 8).85 Not only did this topographical reference to the commercial infrastructure of Low Countries exude a mercantile mind-set, but the back of the panel also contains a moralising scene that tackles the merchant’s preoccupation with the sins of usury and avarice (Figure 2.22b). Provoost’s panel thus combines two strands of genre painting that flourished throughout the sixteenth century: the vocational portrait and the moralising image of the banker/moneychanger (cf. infra). Maritime iconography was omnipresent in both Antwerp graphic arts and painting. Around 1515 two woodcuts of Antwerp as a port town were created, one of which explicitly refers to the city as ‘Antverpia Mercatorum Emporium’ (‘Antwerp Market of Merchants’) (see also Figures 5.14 & 5.15). A systematic serial analysis of a large corpus of sixteenth century paintings falls beyond the scope of this book. However, the recently composed Iconclass Index of Max Friedländer’s 14-volume repertory of Early Netherlandish Painting (which comprises both fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings) allows charting of the incidence of maritime city views throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Iconclass is a classification system of keywords specifically

85 The painting might well have been made for a Bruges patron, since it stayed until 1796 in the Monastery of the Bruges Dominicans. An important detail is that the dock crane resembles the one in Bruges more than the crane on the Antwerp wharf, which had a completely open treadwheel (Maximilian Martens (ed.), Bruges and the Renaissance. Memling to Pourbus: notes (New York, Abrams, 1999), cat. 21.

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Figure 2.24: Adriaan Isenbrant, Virgin and Child with Portrait of a Donor (detail of the right panel with a member of the Hillensberger family), 1513, Lowe Art Museum, Miami. © KIK/ IRPA, Brussels.

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Figure 2.25: Jan Gossaert, Portrait of a Merchant, ca. 1530, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

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Figure 2.26: Cornelis Engelbrechtsz., Portrait of a Couple, (detail donor) 1518, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels.

developed for art and iconography.86 Graph 2.9 shows the number of ‘hits’ for the keywords ‘harbour’ (Iconclass 46C22) and ‘dock crane’ (Iconclass 46C22341) for different volumes of Friedländer’s repertory, which more or less coincides with the succeeding generations of Netherlandish painters. This method has its limitations, of course, because we do not have control of how 86 Iconclass comprises 28,000 hierarchically ordered definitions divided into ten main divisions. Each definition consists of an alphanumeric classification code (notation) and the description of the iconographic subject. The definitions are used to index, catalogue and describe the subjects of images represented in works of art, reproductions, photographs and other sources. See http://www. iconclass.nl/home.

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Figure 2.27: Pieter Pourbus, Double Portrait of Jan Van Eyewerve and Jacquemyne Buuck (detail of the male donor), 1551, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Hugo Maertens.

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exactly the composer of the indexes defines a ‘harbour’. Moreover, the different volumes vary in size and composition. Still, we believe that Graph 2.9 gives an indication of the inflation of harbour motifs in the sixteenth century, especially in the oeuvre of the Antwerp painters Jan Gossaert, Joos Van Cleve, Joachim Patinir, and the Antwerp Mannerists.87 With some imagination, one can easily imagine the Antwerp wharf filtering through some of these harbour views (see for instance Figure 2.23). The majority of these paintings were still altarpieces and devotional diptychs, yet a major difference from the fifteenth century is the tendency towards a thematic inversion. This means that in a growing number of paintings, the secular landscape became the primary theme of the painting, pushing the religious scene to a secondary role.88 Without a doubt one of the major achievements of sixteenth-century painting is its emancipation from the religious sphere, leading to a breakthrough of both vocational portraits and genre painting. As discussed above, allusions to the profession of the donor were extremely rare in fifteenth century panel painting (Petrus Christus’s portrait of a goldsmith being one of the few exceptions). This situation changed in the sixteenth century, when both implicit and explicit references to how the portrayed person earned a living became much more common. This could take the form of a rather generic allusion to international trade by means of a prominent harbour view, as for instance in Provoost’s Donor with Saint Nicholas or Adriaan Isenbrant’s portrait of a member of the Hanseatic Hillensberger family with the Virgin (1513) (Figure 2.24).89 Other vocational portraits framed the patron within a much more specific professional context. Jan Gossaert and Maarten Van Heemskerk, for instance, situated their portraits of merchants in an office setting, investing the patron with all kinds of professional attributes, such as account books, trade registers, bills of exchange, signet rings, and balances (Figure 2.25). A similar pattern occurred for other money-related offices. In Joos van Cleve’s portrait of Antheunis van Hilten (ca. 1520), for instance, the presence of coins, parchment and pen clearly refers to the donor’s princely offices of bailiff and royal receiver.90 Perhaps one of the finest examples of a specific city view as a profession-related attribute comes from the Northern Netherlands. In 1518 Cornelis Engelbrechtsz. portrays a couple from Leiden in the county of Holland, accompanied by a topographical view of the Nieuwe Rijn and a brewery, while a couple of men move some barrels into a boat (Figure 2.26). The man portrayed is the owner

87 See also Katrien Lichtert, ‘Port Cities and River Harbours: A Peculiar Motif in Antwerp Landscape Painting c. 1490-1530’, in Medieval Urban Culture, ed. by Andrew Brown and Jan Dumolyn (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 183-199. 88 Marian Ainsworth, ‘Religious Painting from 1500 to 1550: Continuity and Innovation on the Eve of Iconoclasm’, in From Van Eyck to Bruegel. Early Netherlandish Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. by Marian Ainsworth (New York, 1998), p. 325. 89 Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection (European Schools, excl. Italian) (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1977), pp. 73-74. 90 Joos van Cleve, Portrait of Antheunis van Hilten, ca. 1520, Rijksmuseum Twenthe ( John Hand, Joos van Cleve. The Complete Paintings (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 64-67.

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of the brewery, Dirk Ottensz. Van Meerburch.91 In Bruges a very similar double portrait was made by Pieter Pourbus. In 1551 he painted Jan van Eyewerve and Jacquemine Buuck as if they were standing on the first floor of their house De Pelicaen, which looked out onto the Bruges Kraanplaats (Figure 2.27). The detailed vista of the activity around the city crane and the adjacent streets not only functioned as a residential reference, but also hinted at Van Eyewerve’s engagement in wine trade.92 More or less the same street view also figures in an anonymous portrait of the Bruges alderman Filips Dominicle (dated 1550-1560), but here the link of the patron with the city crane is less obvious. Possibly the vista of the Kraanplaats had evolved here into a sort of topos for the daily business activities of the city, as opposed to the picturesque view of the placid Minnewater that appears behind the female portrait.93 The contrast between these vocational portraits and the Arcadian setting of, for instance, Hans Memling portraits half a century earlier could not have been greater. The sixteenth century had obviously brought a radical change in mentality, which rendered the pictorial evocation of both the benefits and the challenges of commerce admissible and even desired. Antwerp painting played a pioneering role in this evolution. Not only did the commercialization of the Antwerp art market generate a myriad of new secular themes and genres, but the urban subconscious94 was pervaded with the belief that commerce and trade were pivotal to the prosperity and survival of the city. This attitude was rooted in the large group of foreign and local merchants that was based in Antwerp, as well as in the ongoing process of commercial democratization. Jeroen Puttevils has demonstrated that by the middle of the sixteenth century a large share of the Antwerp trade volume was taken by a multitude of small and middle-sized merchants.95 Moreover, what really set Antwerp apart from most other towns in the Low Countries was the limited integration of the mercantile elite into the established landholding families and the municipal government. Both the political oligarchy (the Antwerp patriciate) and the merchant community formed two relatively separated spheres.96 According to Hugo Soly, this sociology fuelled a particularly strong 91 Annette De Vries, Ingelijst Werk. De verbeelding van arbeid en beroep in de vroegmoderne Nederlanden (Zwolle: Waanders, 2004), pp. 196-197. 92 Martens, Bruges and the Renaissance, cat. 97. 93 Martens, Bruges and the Renaissance, cat. 147. 94 This term has been derived from Elisabeth de Bièvre. The central idea is that after a couple of generations, inhabitants of a city – regardless of their social rank – develop a collective subconscious that is rooted in the local natural and socio-economic context and in the awareness of a shared history (Elisabeth de Bièvre, ‘The Urban Subconscious: the Art of Delft and Leiden’, Art History, 43 (1995), 222-252). 95 Jeroen Puttevils, Merchants and Trading in the Sixteenth Century. The Golden Age of Antwerp (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2015), p. 168. 96 Hugo Soly, ‘Social Relations in Antwerp in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Antwerp, story of a metropolis. 16th-17th century, ed. by Jan van der Stock (Gent: Snoeck-Ducaju, 1993), pp. 37-47; Koen Wouters, ‘Een open oligarchie? De machtsstructuur in de Antwerpse magistraat tijdens de periode 1520-1555’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 82 (2004), 905-934. See also the ongoing research of Janna Everaert (Free University of Brussels).

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Figure 2.28: Anonymous Master, Saint Francis and the Cloth Market in ‘s Hertogenbosch, ca. 1530, Noordbrabants Museum, ‘s Hertogenbosch.

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‘esprit de corps’ among the Antwerp tradesmen, as is for instance manifested by the numerous sixteenth-century epitaphs in the Antwerp Our Lady’s Church that plainly denominate the deceased as ‘coopman’, ‘negociator’ or ‘mercator’.97 However, the outreach of this commercial ideology was not confined to an in-crowd of tradesmen and entrepreneurs. Based on a study of astrological predictions, theatre plays and processions, An Kint argued that sixteenth-century Antwerp actively cultivated the idea of a harmonious ‘community of commerce’ at large: “An analysis of select dimensions of Antwerp’s culture during this period suggests a pronounced consensus: in public discourse Antwerp was primarily depicted as a community of commerce, a ‘coopstadt’ in which the common fate was intricately linked to preservation of the merchant’s well-being and satisfaction”.98 This discourse needed to reduce the social frictions caused by the rapid economic expansion of the city and produced its own iconography.99 Larry Silver also sees the variegated Antwerp visual culture as a pictorial answer to the challenges of commerce. Several new genres were devised to offer the citizen a moral compass in the traitorous ‘capital of early capitalism’. Think of the following imagery: Bosch’s images of lust and avarice; the numerous tableaux of moneychangers, bankers, and tax collectors; Jan van Hemessen’s tavern images; and Joachim Beuckelaer’s market scenes. In one way or another they all warned about the dangers of the money economy, the excesses of early capitalism, the intemperance of the inn, the trickery of the market, the vanity of the merchant, or the shallow materialism of the consumer. These genre paintings formed a negative image of a code of urban behaviour that was based on honour and self-discipline. Silver sees in this ideology of good citizenship an increasingly successful counterpart of the traditional courtly code of conduct embraced by the nobility.100 According to Martha Howell, the commercial revolution of the late Middle Ages led to the moral rehabilitation of trade by the early sixteenth century. Gradually, the obstinate clerical contempt for commercial activities and banking gave way to a more positive discourse that stressed the benefits of

97 Out of 35 merchants who were buried in the Our Ladies Church, 32 were clearly labeled as such on their epitaph (Hugo Soly, ‘Het “Verraad” der 16de-eeuwse burgerij: een mythe? Enkele beschouwingen betreffende het gedragspatroon der 16de-eeuwse Antwerpse ondernemers’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 86 (1978), 261-280. 98 An Kint, ‘The Ideology of Commerce: Antwerp in the Sixteenth Century’, in International trade in the Low Countries (14th-16th centuries). Merchants, organisation, infrastructure, ed. by Peter Stabel, Bruno Blondé and Anke Greve (Leuven/Apeldoorn: Garant, 2000), p. 217. See also An Kint, The community of commerce: social relations in sixteenth-century Antwerp (unpublished PhD thesis, New York, 1996). 99 A classic example is Jost Amman’s Allegory of Commerce (engraving, 1585), in which the Antwerp skyline takes a central position ( Jean-Jacques Heirwegh and Monique Weis, ‘Commerce et espaces urbains dans la gravure Aigentliche Abbildung desz gantzen Gewerbs der Kauffmanschafft de Jost Amman (1585/1622)’, in Voisinages, coexistences, appropriations: Groupes sociaux et territoires urbains (Moyen Age-16e siècle), ed. by Chloé Deligne and Claire Billen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 285-297). 100 Larry Silver, Peasant Scenes and Landscapes. The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), pp. 20-25, 226-233. See also Larry Silver, ‘Pieter Bruegel in the Capital of Early Capitalism’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 47 (1996), 125-163.

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honest trade and moderate consumption. Whereas traditional noble elites could derive their status from birth and princely office, the merchant and ordinary craftsman felt the growing need to legitimate the core of their living and income by carving out their own moral economy.101 This shift in mentality was not restricted to the major commercial metropoles such as Antwerp, but soon pervaded also smaller towns. Around 1520-1530, for instance, a polyptych that pictures the lives of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul, attributed to the Bruges painter Lancelot Blondeel, comprises a double panelled painting that immortalises the busy quay and dock crane of Nieuwpoort, a small port town in Western Flanders.102 Perhaps one of the most compelling images of the insurgent notion of a harmonious moral economy can be found in an anonymous painting of the cloth market in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in Northern Brabant, dated 1525 (Figure 2.28). Under the benevolent protection of Saint Francis, patron saint of the cloth merchants depicted in front, the weekly market brings benefits for both buyers and sellers.103 The painting perfectly illustrates how by the early sixteenth century an ideology of commerce had found its way to the visual arts throughout the Low Countries. 3. Conclusion Neither the anecdotal street views that prevailed before 1450, nor the sterile vistas and monumental skylines that gained the upper hand in the second half of the fifteenth century seem to have been clear-cut expressions of a self-confident, particularly ‘bourgeois’ mind-set. In neither case did the donor want to raise any association with the city as a place of trade, profit, and economic mobility. The vividly detailed street views that typified the first generation of early Netherlandish painters predominantly functioned as a spatial and mental counterpart of the devotional scene in the foreground. The latter was often set in a domestic interior that referred to a material culture largely shared by both nobles and burghers. By the second half of the fifteenth century the physical barrier between foreground and background started to fade, often leading to a visual rapprochement between the donor portrait and the landscape or city view. However, more or less parallel with this compositional shift, references to the economic function of the city became increasingly scarce. Both the primary religious function of panel painting and the social stigma of commerce and trade might explain these patterns of spatial demarcation (before 1450) and subsequent idealization (after 1450). Moreover, the sharp infrequency of ‘economic’ town

101 Martha Howell, Commerce before Capitalism in Europe. 1300-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 261-297. 102 Linda Jansen, ‘Lanceloot Blondeel’, in Bruges and the Renaissance. Memling to Pourbus: catalogue (Bruges, Ludion/Flammarion, 1998), p. 173. 103 B. C. M. Jacobs, ‘Schilderij “De Lakenmarkt”. Handel en marktwezen in de Middeleeuwen’, Bossche Bladen: cultuurhistorisch magazine over ’s-Hertogenbosch, 4:2 (2000), 126-130.

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views remarkably coincides with the intensified integration of the local nobility and the urban elites from the second half of the fifteenth century onward, as described for the county of Flanders by Frederik Buylaert. The social reality of oligarchisation/aristocratisation that affected the urban communities of the late medieval Low Countries is plausibly a major explanation for the idealisation and theatralization of cityscapes throughout the fifteenth century. Chapter III will investigate this issue in much greater depth. Whereas clear-cut references to the city as a commercial space were virtually non-existent in the second half of the fifteenth century, Antwerp painting is the exception. The strong focus of Antwerp iconography on the harbour infrastructure of the city – as opposed to the tranquil Bruges towerscapes from 1475-1510 (see Chapter III) – tallied with the divergent socio-political configuration of the city at the Scheldt. Unlike Bruges and many other cities in the late medieval Low Countries, Antwerp experienced only a limited fusion of the constantly regenerating merchant community and the established political families of the city. This particular political configuration, combined with its innovative art market, strong economic growth, and the effects of a consumer revolution, made Antwerp a pioneer of a commercial ideology that found its expression in the visual arts. A new mentality, which embraced the benefits of trade while warning about its dangers, spread throughout the Low Countries and inspired a myriad of genre paintings, vocational portraits and harbour views.

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Chapter III

Monumental space. The city as a stage

L’espace social, celui d’une pratique spatiale, celui des rapports sociaux de production […] cet espace se condense dans l’espace monumental […] Ainsi chaque espace monumental devient le support métaphorique et quasiment métaphysique d’une société1.

The previous chapter discussed how the focus to the anecdotal hustle and bustle that defined the city views of the first early Netherlandish paintings lost importance towards the second half of the fifteenth century. Quite suddenly, the Flémallesque snapshots of the everyday town life were exchanged for daguerreotypes from which the transience of the daily street activities is banned, and in which the permanence of the urban architectural framework comes to the fore. To a large extent the focus shifts from the city dwellers and their doings (civitas) towards the physical space of the city (urbs).2 This shift entails what one could call a ‘monumentalisation’, as the depicted urban space is increasingly constituted by polished buildings, immaculate paving, and ageless monumental architecture. The outcome is a highly theatrical space, in which the civic buildings – rather than the citizens – become the main players. Especially in the compartmentalised, cardboard cityscapes of the numerous anonymous masters of the end of the fifteenth century the town has lost most of its anecdotal flair. These highly idealised and selective images of the late medieval urban landscape are at odds with the inconvenient reality of the poor material condition of the premodern urban buildings and roads.3 This representational shift is substantial, but not absolute, nor is it completely innovative. Jan Van Eyck, for instance, sporadically emphasised the monumental dimension of the city on the central panel of the Ghent Altarpiece. To a certain degree, this evolution towards monumentalisation echoes the architectural reduction of the city typical of pre-Eyckian painting,



1 Henri Lefebvre, La Production de l’Espace (Paris: Editions Anthropos, 1974/2000), p. 259. 2 On the distinction between urbs and civitas, see also Frugoni, A Distant City, p. 3. 3 In 1384, for instance, the funeral procession of Louis of Male, count of Flanders, got stuck at one of the Lille city gates because of the poor road conditions. On the dilapidated state of the city in the Burgundian era, see Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, ‘Grote Schoonmaak in de stad. Sanering, beveiliging en ruimtelijke inrichting van de stad naar aanleiding van vorstelijke plechtigheden in de Bourgondische Nederlanden (14e-15e eeuw)’, Jaarboek voor Ecologische Geschiedenis (2002), 19-35.

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illumination, and tapestries, making the polished towns views of the late fifteenth-century anonymous masters rather archaic.4 This chapter explores the representation of urban space and architecture as a stage or scenery. The ‘theatricalisation’ and ‘monumentalisation’ of the painted city cannot simply be dismissed as a mere aestheticizing idealisation, for this mode of representing the city was remarkably consistent with how the medieval city in reality also functioned as a theatre. Many segments of both urban and court society ingeniously used the urban public space as a stage for a variety of ritualised and often strongly dramatised performances, in order to define and establish their own identity and authority. Urban space was permanently endowed with meaning by religious processions, politically loaded manifestations, a variety of hastiludes such as jousts and pas d’armes, and a myriad of theatrical performances that for instance framed the entry of the prince or the execution of justice.5 Richard Trexler’s impressive study of the public ritual life of medieval Florence revealed the key role of the major urban monuments: “There was but one public stage in Florence, the city stage”.6 Scholars such as Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin and Peter Arnade have pointed out that also in the Burgundian Low Countries ‘les villes des cérémonies’ actively used urban space and architecture to stage public rituals that enabled the urban community to negotiate with its prince or appease tensions among diverging social groups.7 Likewise, on a more individual level or within a particular peer group fragments of the urban architectural landscape were manipulated and referred to in order to frame a certain personal or group identity. Chapter I already amply discussed the clear tendency of late fifteenth-century panel painting to embed biblical or hagiographical narratives in a compartmentalised urban setting, and how these devotional Simultanbilder attest to the cross-fertilization of the visual and dramatic arts in the Burgundian Low Countries. The main objective of this chapter is to investigate how early Netherlandish panel painting represented the city as a political and social theatre. This will ultimately lead towards a re-evaluation of the traditional art-historical dichotomy that opposes descriptive Northern art to the narrative and theatrical Italian Renaissance painting.

4 On the recuperation of the themes and the pictorial mode of tapestries in, respectively, panel painting and cloth painting, see James Bloom, ‘The Role of Painters before the Rise of Painting: The Master of Frankfurt’s Festival of the Archers’, in Envisioning the artist in the early modern Netherlands, ed. by Perry Chapman and Joanna Woodall (Zwolle: Waanders, 2010), pp. 71-89; Catherine Reynolds, ‘The function and display of Netherlandish cloth paintings’, in The Fabric of Images: European Paintings on Textile Supports in the 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. by Caroline Villers (London: Archetype Publications, 2000), pp. 89-98. 5 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Om beters wille. Rederijkerskamers en de stedelijke cultuur in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (1400-1650), (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), pp. 14-15; Mario Damen, ‘The town as a stage? Urban space and the tournaments in late medieval Brussels’, Urban History, 42:3 (2015), 1-25. 6 Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1980), p. 13. 7 Lecuppre-Desjardin, Villes des Cérémonies, passim ; Arnade, Realms of Ritual, passim. Also for the early modern period the interplay between theatre, (state) ceremony, architecture and visual arts has recently attracted scholarly attention: Caroline van Eck and Stijn Bussels, Theatricality in Early Modern Art and Architecture (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

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1.

The city as monumental space

The ‘tranquilization’ and ‘petrification’ of the depicted city did not imply its reduction to a mere recipient or meaningless container. Henri Lefebvre has played a crucial role in the understanding of space as an ideological construction. According to Lefebvre, this construction takes place through the interplay of three modes of spatial production: the everyday spatial practices and perceptions (le perçu), representations or theories of space (le conçu) and how the space is lived and interpreted (le vécu). The dialectic interplay between these three dimensions stands at the basis of what Lefebvre calls l’espace monumental, as parts of the urban architecture take on monumental proportions. These monuments constitute the keystones of the spatial texture of the city, underscoring and reproducing its social structure. Lefebvre gives the example of the medieval cathedral. Through the semiotic processes of metonymy (the extrapolation of meaning from a part to the whole) and metaphor (the association with another otherwise unrelated object) a building can be symbolically laden with meaning and turn into a durable monument.8 The renowned semiotician Umberto Eco delved deeper into the functioning of architecture – in its broadest sense9 – as a sign system. Apart from its obvious functional value, Eco considered architecture as a form of communication. Besides its primary function – its denotation or utilitas – he attributed to architecture a set of secondary functions or connotations. By means of additional signs, such as sculpted, painted or heraldic iconography, pieces of furniture or architectural particularities, such as a particular ground plan or the use of a specific type of merlons, a building could not only communicate its own functions, but also propagate a socio-political ideology or religious discourse. Eco stresses the intrinsic polysemy of architecture: during its lifetime, an artifact develops various (primary and secondary) functions and meanings. Just like the use of a building, its symbolical overtones could change or expand over time. On occasion, the hegemonic meaning of a monument could be ‘hijacked’ by a conflicting discourse.10 A striking illustration of such an alteration of meaning is the vicissitudes of the Liège perron. A stone pillar topped by a pineapple and cross, the perron was initially a token of the judicial power of the prince bishop, yet the structure soon evolved into a symbol of civic identity and autonomy (it still decorates the Liège coat of arms). When Charles the Bold virtually destroyed the city in 1468, the perron was dismantled and transported to Bruges, where it was rebuilt on the Bourse Square – the city’s financial heart. In the process, the perron was transformed into a reminder of the harsh repression of rebellion and thus functioned as a sharp warning to those who dared to impugn the power of

8 Lefebvre, La Production de l’Espace, pp. 253-260 (III.14-17). 9 Ranging from urban development, the design of daily objects to the built architecture sensu stricto. 10 Umberto Eco, ‘Function and Sign: Semiotics of Architecture’, in Semiotics, ed. by Mark Gottdiener, Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou and Alexander Lagopoulos (London: Sage, 2003), vol. 3, pp. 241-290. This article was first published in 1973.

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the duke. Only ten years later, after Charles the Bold had died in 1477, the perron returned to Liège, where it regained its original sign value.11 The monumental framework of the city comprised a great variety of churches and chapels, profane public buildings of all kinds (commercial halls, belfry tower, the city hall…), private residences, guild houses, and of course the city walls and gates. These architectural elements constituted the urban stage on which countless performances took place. The execution of justice, the trade of products, various ritualised performances, such as processions, Joyous Entries, and urban jousting – all of them – at least partially – derived their legitimacy and meaning from the architecture by which they were framed. In turn, these acts and ceremonies could add meaning to the places they called upon and enhance the symbolic value of certain buildings. Also pictorial representations of urban architecture could both incorporate and reinforce the sign value of civic monuments and architectural ensembles. By doing so, town views were able to propagate a religious or political ideal, or reproduce specific features of the urban social topography. 2. The city as a socio-political arena Throughout the Middle Ages, the development of urban space was not exclusively confined to a pragmatic-economic logic. For a long time, historiography in the wake of Henri Pirenne focused on economic and commercial activity as the prime mover of urban expansion and layout. More recently, however, scholars such as Marc Boone pointed out how the use and manipulation of urban space was as much determined by its political dimension. The late medieval city generated monumental spaces of political negotiation; places where internal conflicts within the city could be settled in a physical or ritual manner, and where the prince and the city could dialogue and negotiate.12 Very often, specific places in the city were created or appropriated in order to stage such socio-political encounters. In thirteenth-century Ghent and Lille building blocks were demolished to give way, respectively, to the Friday Market and Grande Place.13 These ex novo

11 Marc Boone, ‘Destroying and Reconstructing the City. The Inculcation and Arrogation of Princely Power in the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands (14th-16th Centuries)’, in The Propagation of Power in the Medieval West, ed. by Martin Gosman, Arie Vanderjagt and Jan Veenstra (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1997), pp. 1-33. 12 Marc Boone, ‘Urban Space and Political Conflict in Late Medieval Flanders’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32:4 (2002), 621-640. See also: Martin Warnke (ed.), Politische Architectur in Europa vom Mittelalter bis heute (Cologne, 1984). For a synthesis of the internal urban conflict and the tension between princely centralism and urban particularism in the Low Countries see: Marc Boone and Maarten Prak, ‘Rulers, Patricians and burghers: The Great and the Little Traditions of Urban Revolt in the Low Countries’, in A miracle mirrored. The Dutch Republic in European Perspective, ed. by Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 99-134. 13 Boone, ‘Urban Space and Political Conflict’, p. 624. For the pivotal role of the Ghent Friday Market in the political communication between the duke of Burgundy and the people of Ghent, see Arnade, Realms of ritual, pp. 112-113.

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creations of large-scale public space not only served a primary need for market space, but also simultaneously generated in the very centre of the city a forum for political action and the manifestation of urban and corporate identity. These places enabled the corporate middle groups – at that time subject to a turbulent process of political emancipation – to wield and express their political power. As the latter was essentially based on their sheer mass and combativity, the existence of a sizable public meeting space where craft guilds could assemble with their arms and banners was key. This was especially the case in the large productive centres, such as Ghent, Ypres, Bruges, and Lille. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth century the increasingly politicalised space of both major and minor urban centres in the Low Countries was supplemented by a growing number of symbolically charged constructions. On the central squares belfry towers and city halls were erected or enlarged, whereas guild houses were constructed on the market places and along the main roads.14 Throughout the city water wells and fountains were installed and conspicuous private palaces built. On the fringes of the town, the city walls and gates were expanded and fortified. These point chauds15 of the urban spatial texture constituted the monumental space of the city and were key features for the urban identity and its pictorial representation. 2.1. 2.1.1.

The major features of the urban monumental space The belfry

To this day, the sturdy bell-tower that still adorns the central square of many Flemish, Hainaut, and Artois cities stands as the ultimate symbol of the medieval urban commune. These eye-catching constructions were often integrated into the cloth hall, hence the term halletoren [hall tower] which is often used as synonym for the belfry tower. In the duchy of Brabant, the term ‘belfry’ seemed to have been restricted to its more narrow sense of ‘bell-cage’ and was usually integrated into the tower of the central church or town hall. Contrary to their Brabant equivalents, the Flemish belfry towers were usually part of a free-standing construction that closely related one of the pillars of the Flemish urban economy: the cloth trade.16 Notwithstanding these regional differences, the primary function of the belfry throughout the Low Countries and Northern 14 Thomas Coomans, ‘Belfries, Cloth Halls, Hospitals and Mendicant Churches: A New Urban Architecture in the Low Countries around 1300’, in The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture, ed. by Alexandra Gajewski and Zoë Opačić (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 185-202. See also Blockmans, Metropolen aan de Noordzee, pp. 185-195. 15 Jacques Le Goff, ‘Ville’, in Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Occident médiéval, ed. by Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt (Paris : Fayard, 1999), p. 1190. Others refer to the term ‘archetypes’, as those elements of the urban architecture we subconsciously associate with the city: Giovanna Massobrio and Paola Portoghesi, L’immaginario architettonico nella pittura (Roma: Editori Laterza, 1988), pp. 35-39. 16 In Brabant the location of the city’s major set of communal bells was similar to the Italian cities, the campanile of the major church or the tower of communal palace (e.g. the famous Torre del Mangia of the Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico).

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France was to accommodate the communal bell, which gave the building its high symbolic potency. The banklok [ban bell] embodied the voice of the municipal authority. The ringing of the bell was a seigneurial privilege, granted by the prince. The bell called the urban community to arms, marked off the working hours, and aurally supported the execution of justice. Because of its powerful sign value, the seizure of the bell enabled the prince to ritually take possession of the city. The symbolic repression of the city often entangled the removal of the bell from the belfry tower. Some other important civic functions were often housed in the tower, such as the municipal archive, including the princely privileges and charters granted to the city (the urban ‘memory’), the communal treasure-chest, and the municipal prison.17 In many cities the belfry bordered the central market square or Grand Place. This was, for instance, the case in Bruges, Ypres, and Courtrai. In Ghent, on the contrary, the belfry was encapsulated in a dense pattern of building blocks, narrow streets, and small squares.18 The juxtaposition of the Grand Place (or Markt) and the belfry mutually reinforced the function of this central space as the political core of the city. The square in the shadow of the bell-tower was sporadically used for executions and the public display of criminals, whereas in a city like Bruges it regularly hosted jousting competitions. Also in Bruges the Halletoren incorporated a bay facing the Markt, from which the municipal ordinances were proclaimed, the so-called hallegeboden. This very judicial performance was depicted in the mid-sixteenth century by Pieter Claeissens in his Seven Wonders of Bruges: on the central market square a crowd gathers at the foot of the Belfry, from which a representative of the aldermen proclaims new regulation.19 In times of popular revolt or a military expedition, the craft guilds or urban militia gathered armed under their banners at the square (the so-called wapeninghen).20 The Markt, flanked by the belfry, constituted the spatio-political counterpart of the nearby Burg Square. The former was a pole of civic power; the latter instead embodied princely and ecclesiastical power, as it hosted the oldest comital residence (the Steen), a second comital residence (the Love), the collegial church of Saint Donatian, and the city hall, the seat of the aldermen who spoke justice on behalf of the count.

17 Raymond Van Uytven, ‘Architecturale vormen en stedelijke identiteit in de middeleeuwen’, in Sporen en spiegels. Beschouwingen over geschiedenis en identiteit, ed. by Janna C. Dekker (Tilburg: Tilburg University Press, 1995), pp. 17-21. In Flanders the term ‘belfort’ has also been linked to the comital monopoly on the construction of fortifications, the so-called ‘balfardum’: Maurits Vandecasteele, ‘Het verre verleden van de Vlaamse rechtsterm “Balfart”: Het graafschap Vlaanderen als bakermat van de begrippen “bolwerk”, “boulevard” en “belfort”’, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis, 75 (2007), 17-38. 18 The current, open character of the space surrounding the Ghent belfry is the result of a large-scale project of urban renewal executed in 1895-1913. 19 Maximiliaan Martens (ed.), Bruges and the Renaissance. Memling to Pourbus: notes (New York, Abrams, 1999), cat. 117. 20 Jelle Haemers, ‘A moody community? Emotion and ritual in late medieval urban revolts’, in Emotions in the heart of the city (14th-16th century), ed. by Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 63-81.

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The symbolic tension between these two public places clearly came to the surface during a revolt in February, 1488 against the regime of Maximilian of Austria and those Bruges aldermen who stayed loyal to him. It is telling that the new revolutionary bench of aldermen was not sworn in in the city hall at the Burg – as was customary – but on the Markt.21 This event illustrates once again how the monumental space of the city played a significant role in the framing of political action and even rebellion. Yet another example of the powerful sign value of the Bruges Belfry is set in more peaceful times, during the festivities that accompanied the marriage of Charles the Bold in 1468. For this occasion, the Bruges rhetorician Anthonis De Roovere had installed a tableau vivant virtually at the bottom of the Halletoren, on the northeastern corner of the cloth hall, where the Breydelstraat connects the Markt to the Burg Square. The scene comprised an allegorical representation of the alliance between Flanders and England through the marriage of Duke Charles with the English princess Margaret of York. This alliance was of great importance to the urban economy, since the Bruges cloth industry largely depended on the supply of English wool. It is thus no coincidence that De Roovere chose that part of the urban landscape – the cloth hall with the belfry as a backdrop – to frame this particular tableau.22 During the Entry of Charles V in Bruges in 1515, four craft guilds related to the cloth industry constructed a miniature version of the old cloth hall and Halletoren, staging – amongst Moses and the Virgin – count Louis of Nevers (ca. 1304-1346), who hands over a series of privileges to representatives of the city.23 This particular configuration clearly articulated the association of the belfry with the urban privileges in general, and with the powerful textile craft guilds in particular. Notwithstanding the pivotal position of the belfry in the urban landscape as an architectural token of urban liberties, archival memory, financial strength, judicial power, and civic unity, one should not misinterpret it as the ultimate expression of the city’s longing for absolute autonomy. Raymond Van Uytven refuted this myth as a product of the romanticising and liberal-patriotic historiography of the young Belgian nation, which tended to overstate the role of the belfry as the embodiment of time-honoured bourgeois liberties. Van Uytven questions whether the bell tower really functioned as an unambiguous emblem of urban particularism. Especially in Northern France the tower often evolved from the

21 Jacoba Van Leeuwen, ‘Balancing tradition and rites of rebellion: The ritual transfer of power in Bruges on 12 February 1488’, in Symbolic communication in late medieval towns, ed. by Jacoba Van Leeuwen (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006), pp. 65-81. 22 Maximiliaan Martens, ‘Response to Craig Harbison’, in Petrus Christus in Renaissance Bruges. An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. by Marian Ainsworth (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), pp. 45-46. 23 Remy du Puys, The Entry of Charles V into Bruges (La tryumphante et solemnelle entrée), 1515, published by Gilles de Goumont, Paris, British Library, no. C.44.g.11, pp. 21-22: “au pont du molin sur lequel fut la place du second member qui sont les quatre mestiers. Ascavoir tisserans, foulons, taincturiers et tondeurs de draps. Lesquelz firent a l’exemple des bourgeois haultement eslever et bastir au vray en perfection de toutes les partiers leur maison de marchande appellee la vielle hale avec la tour en la mesmes forme quelle est assise sur le marché de ladicte ville”.

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comital or viscomital donjon, inheriting its square plan and its projecting corner turrets. Because its layout and decorative scheme were dictated by the ruling oligarchy of mercantile elites and a small group of craft guild masters, it comes as no surprise that the statues and heraldry that adorned the tower essentially drew on a traditional aristocratic and princely register.24 Moreover, it is striking that the belfry is not nearly as present in late medieval iconography, as it actually dominated the urban landscape. The number of pictorial representations of the monumental building is rather scanty. The most obvious medium to represent the belfry is, of course, the city seal. A soundboard of the municipal legislation (as ordinances were often exclaimed from the belfry), one would expect the bell tower to have been a frequently used element in the town seal. Nevertheless, only the belfries of Ypres, Soissons, and Tournai were incorporated into one of the city seals.25 One of the few free-standing images of a belfry and cloth hall figured in an illuminated charter book of the Ypres cloth weavers, which unfortunately perished during the First World War.26 The link between the core business of the weavers is obvious: here the monumental complex of cloth hall and belfry signalled the professional identity of one of the city’s most important craft guilds, rather than the larger communal identity of the city as a whole. Tournai is another city where the belfry occasionally determined the pictorial representation of the city. The presence of the tower in an early fifteenth century tapestry explicitly sets the depicted Legend of Saint Piatus and Eleutherius (1402) in the city of Tournai. Besides the life of two Saints, the woven narrative cycle also tells a history of Tournai, in order to assert the connection of the chapter and bishop to the city.27 Most remarkably, the detailed painted city views by the Tournai Master of Flémalle (painted only a couple of decades later) did not bear any reference to the local belfry at all, not even in a generic form. In these urban images the ecclesiastic bell tower dominates its secular counterpart, an observation that holds for the bulk of early Netherlandish paintings, especially before 1450. Confined to the background of religious images, the majority of the painted cityscapes were not inclined to put much emphasis on a profane construction, such as the belfry. Only sporadically did the tower, so key to our modern imagination of the medieval Flemish city, typify the image of the city in panel painting, miniatures, or tapestries.

24 Raymond van Uytven, ‘Flämische Belfriede und südniederländische städtische Bauwerk di im Mittelalter: Symbol und Mythos’, in Information, Kommunikation und Selbstdarstellung in mittelalterlichen Gemeinden, ed. by Alfred Haverkamp and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998), pp. 125-159 (esp. pp. 130-144, 159). 25 Woedstad, ‘Stadszegels en image-building’, vol. 2, p. 74 Bedos-Rezak, ‘Du modèle à l’image’, p. 199. 26 Only a chromolithographic reproduction by François Böhm (1861, Stedelijk Museum, Ieper) gives an idea of the original image. For a reproduction see: Octaaf Mus, Paul Trio and Jules Allemon, Geschiedenis van de Middeleeuwse Grootstad Ieper. Van Karolingische Villa tot de Destructie in 1914 (Ieper: Stad Ieper, 2010), p. 44. 27 Laura Weigert, ‘Performing the Past: The Tapestry of the City and its Saints in Tournai Cathedral’, Gesta, 38:2 (1999), 154-170.

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Figure 3.1: Master of the Joseph Sequence, Affligem Altarpiece (panel with Deploration and Entombment), ca. 1495, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Source Wikimedia Commons.

During the last decades of the fifteenth century, one of the most prominent exceptions to the relative absence of the belfry from late medieval iconography is the Bruges belfry. At the time when the municipal government expanded the grandeur of the Halletoren by adding an octagonal lantern and a wooden spire (1483-1487), the tower appears numerous times in the Bruges towerscapes that hallmarked a series of the paintings made by the Bruges Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy and the Legend of Saint Ursula (cf. later in this chapter). The

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Figure 3.2: Anonymous Flemish Miniaturist, The Battle of Beverhoutsveld (1382), in Jean Froissart, ‘Chroniques’ (Breslauer Froissart), 1464, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kultubesitz, Berlin.

latter also inserted the belfry – before the major architectural alterations of the 1480s – in the background of one of the panels of the Legend of Saint Ursula (ca. 1475-1483).28 The tower even migrated into the Brussels painting school, as witnessed by Affligem Altarpiece, made around 1495 by the Brussels Master of the Joseph Sequence (Figure 3.1 – Plate 9). Most likely, that anonymous painter had been apprentice in a Bruges workshop or was at least familiar with the work of some Bruges painters, from which he copied the tower as a token of his training in Bruges or as a mere stylistic motive.29 Perhaps the most detailed and vivid depiction of the Bruges Belfry figures, however, in a luxuriously illuminated manuscript of Jean Froissart’s Chroniques, made in 1464 for Anthony of Burgundy (the so-called Breslauer Froissart in the Staatsbibliothek – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin). One miniature depicts the Battle of Beverhoutsveld, which took place in 1482 near Bruges (Figure 3.2). The scene depicts the confrontation of the rebellious Ghentenaren with the troops of the count of Flanders and the city of Bruges. Eventually the Ghent craft guild militia (clearly recognisable by their banners) triumphed and rushed into Bruges through the Ghent Gate, prominently depicted in the miniature. Behind the gate unfolds a monumental 28 Groeningemuseum, Brugge. 29 The painting also included some references to the architectural topography of Cologne. The Affligem altarpiece is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.

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Figure 3.3: Pieter De Keysere, Woodcut of the Ghent cityscape surrounded by the coats of arms of the thirty-one Ghent lineages, first woodcut out of a series of three, 1524, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Prentenkabinet, BdH n° 1429.

vista of the city: a showpiece of the city’s architectural highlights, with at the very centre an over-sized representation of the Halletoren, flanked by the illustrious Water Hall. At the bottom of the belfry, one gets a glance of the crowded Markt. Around the pivotal belfry, a number of the city’s most characterizing buildings are gathered: the conspicuous city palace of the Seven Towers, and the churches of Our Lady, Saint Walburga, Saint Donatian and Saint Saviour. The pictorial focus on the political heart of the city is surely no accident, since it emphasises both the physical occupation of the central square and thus the symbolic usurpation of power by the Ghentenaren.30 Also in Ghent the belfry was one of the major landmarks of the urban landscape, topped by an iconic copper dragon, allegedly taken by Philip Van Artevelde from the Bruges church of Saint Donatian after the battle of Beverhoutsveld in 1382. This emblematic spire with dragon repeatedly figures in fifteenth-century manuscripts. Without a doubt the most famous – and arguably also the only –

30 The Excellente Kroniek van Vlaanderen bescribes how the Ghentenaren succeeded to advance to the Markt towards the evening of 3 May 1382. A couple of days later the Ghent craft guilds assembled on the square under their banners, this very act symbolically confirming the take-over (Corrie De Haan and Johan Oosterman, Is Brugge Groot? (Amsterdam: Querido, 1996), pp. 16-17.

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late medieval view of the Ghent skyline figures in a depiction of the so-called honourable amend of 1453, the public ritual of submission imposed by Philip the Good on the rebellious Ghentenaren after their defeat near Gavere. Part of the Boek van de Privilegien van Vlaanderen en Ghent (Book of the Privileges of Flanders and Ghent), offered in 1458 as a present to the duke, the miniature depicts the Ghent aldermen undressed, as they knelt in subjection before their lord. In the backdrop looms a generic towerscape, which can nonetheless be identified as Ghent due to the eye-catching yellow dragon on top of the belfry tower on the right.31 On an even smaller scale the belfry dragon subtly personalises one of the many generic city icons that dot a map of Europe in a manuscript of Ptolomy’s Cosmographia (1482), as Ghent, hometown of the owner of the manuscript, Raphaël de Mercatellis.32 Only from the early sixteenth century onward are more elaborated profile views of the Ghent skyline developed, first in some printers’ marks used in years 1510-1520 by the Ghent De Keysere family, and eventually also in a series of three woodcuts published by Pieter De Keysere in 1524 (Figure 3.3). The print series comprises a heraldic representation of the political system of the Three Members, which since the mid-fourteenth century the repartitioned aldermen among the traditional urban elite (poorterij), the craft guilds related to the cloth production (weverij), and the remaining crafts guilds (kleine neringen). Preceding this evocation of the Three Members a relatively accurate image of the Ghent skyline is figured as seen from the east. Amidst this accretion of monumental buildings (predominantly churches) firmly stands the belfry, labelled capitolium,33 a classicizing allusion to the core political function of the building. In front, precisely under the belfry tower, sits the Maiden of Ghent, an allegorical representation of the city, within a hexagonal brick enclosure. The print series thus comprises a triple representation of the city: as a political body, as a virgin civic body, and as a physical entity (see also Chapter V).34 Also in Brussels the conspicuous tower of the city hall, constructed in de first half of the fifteenth century and topped in 1455 by a gilded statue of Saint Michael, took a prominent place in the urban landscape. Contemporary sources often designate the tower as a beelfroot, notwithstanding the fact that the nearby church of Saint Nicholas fulfilled several functions typically associated with the belfry, such as the regulation of public time through bell ringing and the preservation of the urban privileges.35 The tower of the Brussels city hall could not stay unnoticed, when a decade after its completion a Bohemian delegation under the guidance of Leo of Rozmital visited the city: “This tower is an elegant 31 For a good reproduction, see Marc Boone and Gita Deneckere (eds), Gent: stad van alle tijden (Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 2010), p. 87. 32 Ptolemy, Cosmographia, 1482, Royal Library of Belgium, ms. 14887. 33 The term capitolium already figures in the Latin Bruges city accounts of 1280-1281 and 1287-1288 as a synonym for the middle French belafroid (Van Uytven, ‘Flämische Belfriede’, pp. 128, 130). 34 Frederik Buylaert, Jelle De Rock and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘City portrait, civic body and commercial printing in sixteenth-century Ghent’, Renaissance Quarterly, 68:2 (2015), 803-839. 35 Bram Vannieuwenhuyze, Brussel. De ontwikkeling van een middeleeuwse stedelijke ruimte (unpublished PhD dissertation, Ghent University, 2008), pp. 365-370, 392.

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structure and of great height, reaching up into the heavens and together with the council house it is situated in the heart of the city”.36 The powerful appeal of the tower, a pinnacle of fifteenth-century Brussels architecture and sculpture, also resounds in a variety of iconographic media. Shortly after its completion, an illustrated initial in an inventory of the charters of Brabant (dated second half of the fifteenth century) suggestively evokes Brussels, one of the principal cities of the duchy, by means of a city gate, the double towers of Saint Gudula and – at the very centre – the spire of the city hall (topped by Saint Michael).37 An illuminated manuscript that describes the Entry of Joanna of Castile in Brussels in 1496 (similar to the artefact fabricated on the occasion of the Entry of Charles V in Bruges in 1515) documents the pivotal place that the belfry of the city hall held in the dramatised space of a city that ritually received its princess in state. One of the hand-drawn illustrations shows a parade of torchbearers that accompanies the princess on what appears to be the central market square. In the background the city hall, conspicuously lit with torches, draws attention.38 The Brussels belfry has also left a few traces in late medieval panel painting. Remarkably, the tower especially figures in paintings made by non-Brussels painters, such as Hans Memling and the Louvain workshop of Dirk Bouts. In the case of Memling, his presumed apprenticeship in the workshop of Rogier Van der Weyden might explain the insertion of the Brussels tower in his famous Saint Ursula Shrine, rather than any explicit intention to set part of the depicted story into this particular city.39 Just as the Brussels Master of the Life of Joseph used the Bruges Belfry as a pun, Memling cited its Brussels counterpart as a neat allusion to his ‘Brussels connection’. Likewise, the slender tower sometimes figures in tapestries, hallmarking the artefacts as precious products of the renowned Brussels workshops.40 2.1.2.

The town hall

A second spearhead of municipal public building policy was the town hall (schepenhuis). These imposing structures were erected as the monumental seat of the board of burgomaster(s) and aldermen. It was the place where they gathered to decide on important political matters, to manage aspects of daily life, to dispense justice, and to administer contracts. When important guests visited the city, they were often invited to a banquet in the city hall. The building thus combined a jurisdictional, administrative, and representative function.

36 Letts, The travels of Leo of Rozmital, pp. 33-34. 37 Raymond Van Uytven, ‘Les emblèmes de la ville de Bruxelles’, in Le peintre et l’arpenteur: images de Bruxelles et de l’ancien duché de Brabant, ed. by Véronique Van de Kerckhof, Helena Bussers and Véronique Bücken (Brussels : Dexia, 2000), pp. 135-140. 38 The manuscript is now part of the collection of the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, ms. 78. 39 For the image of the Brussels town hall on Bouts’ famous exemplum of Otto III, see later in this chapter. For the image of the Brussels belfry, probably made in the Bouts workshop, see Périerd’Ieteren, Dirk Bouts, cat. B9. 40 Delmarcel, La tapisserie flamande, pp. 48-49.

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By and large, the construction of these elaborate city halls started fifty to a hundred years after the erection of the belfry. In particular in Brabant the town hall sometimes formed an integrated architectural whole with the latter. In an earlier phase the aldermen usually gathered in open air, often in the proximity of the seat of princely power, in whose name they executed justice. The aldermen could also meet in private dwellings, while in some cities a special chamber was installed for this purpose on the top floor of the (cloth) hall, especially in those towns where a strong tie between the political power and the local merchant guild persisted. In the course of the thirteenth century the expanding judicial, administrative, and fiscal competence of municipal government incited the acquisition or rental of a communal house to lodge a variety of functions. Only from the last quarter of the fourteenth century onwards did the construction of a series of imposing, late gothic town halls take off – often in a spirit of mutual competition.41 As a rule, these conspicuous constructions are characterised by their central location (often near or on the central market), a rectangular plan, a long stone façade with Gothic arches and corner towers or pinnacles. On the ground floor a public hall, a kitchen and storage rooms could be found, whereas the aldermen’s room and various offices were usually installed on the first floor. Both the interior and exterior were lavishly decorated. The front façade was often ornamented with polychromed statues of Mary, the city’s patron saints and other saints, prophets and apostles. Especially in Flanders statues of the counts of Flanders were added to the iconographic programme (see for instance the fictitious town hall in Figure 3.4). A variety of architectural components, such as consoles, tie beams, niches, stained-glass windows, fireplaces, and all kinds of furniture, were adorned with heraldic devices and historical scenes. References to princely power by means of heraldry and portraits were ubiquitous in the decorative scheme of late medieval city halls, as the aldermen derived their competences and authority from count or duke. City halls often contained a bay window or breteche that faced the square and through which the declamation of municipal and princely ordinances took place.42 The massive investment in the monumental architectural setting that framed the exercise of power by the aldermen was instigated by the institutional turnover of the fourteenth century that redefined the partition and rotation of political offices among an extended group of patricians and craft guild elites. As an increasing number of aldermen who originated from the corporative middle groups could no longer legitimise their position by means of their patrician origin or juridical status (as ministriales, erfachtige lieden or members of the poorterij), the spatial development

41 Among which Mechelen (1374), Bruges (1376), Sluis (1395), Brussels (1401), Kortrijk (1418), Veurne (1445), Leuven (1448), Mons (1458), Luik (1480) and Ghent (1482). See Van Uytven, ‘Flämische Belfriede’, pp. 148-149. On the shifting location of the bench of aldermen, see: Franz-Josef Arlinghaus, ‘Raumkonzeptionen der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt. Zur Verortung von Gericht, Kanzlei und Archiv im Stadtraum’, in Städteplanung – Planungsstädte, ed. by Bruno Fritzsche and Hans-Jörg Gilomen (Zürich: Chronos, 2006), pp. 104-107. 42 Boone, ‘Urban Space’, p. 630.

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Figure 3.4: Anonymous Bruges Master, A Miracle of Saint Anthony of Padua, ca. 1500, Prado, Madrid. © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado.

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of a robust architectural framework became crucial. The city hall had the clear purpose to articulate municipal authority in the urban space and to highlight its legitimation by the prince.43 Even though the new city halls had substantially changed the urban landscape throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth century, they have left remarkably few traces in late medieval iconography. Only a couple of city seals figure an allusion to the city hall or its precursor, such as the seal of the city of Vilvoorde (Brabant, 1266). The thirteenth-century seals of Arras and Saint-Omer opted for a schematic representation of the bench of aldermen in front of the halla scabinorum (aldermen’s hall).44 For the majority of the imposing Flemish and Brabant town halls we could state that they were constructed too late to have impacted the tradition-bound medium of town seals. Also late medieval Flemish book illuminations only rarely picture the city hall in a unequivocal manner. An exceptionally distinct – yet generic – image of the town hall of Oudenaarde (under siege by the Gentenaren) figures in Loyset Liédet’s Chroniques de Froissart from circa 1475. Besides its gates and main church the place is recognizable as a city by an eye-catching building ornamented with four statues that are topped by a baldachin and that are flanked by three Gothic windows.45 Just like the belfry, the city hall remained remarkably absent from fifteenth century painted town views. This especially applies to the paintings from the second quarter of the fifteenth century. In spite of their appearance of realism, the city views of the Flémalle-group, Jan Van Eyck, and Petrus Christus are predominantly composed of ordinary dwellings, churches, streets, squares, and city walls: the belfry and town hall, however, usually are lacking. Only once, on the wings of an Annunciation triptych in Turin, Van der Weyden inserts a structure that has the dimensions and layout of a town hall.46 In the second half of the fifteenth century references to the archetype of the city hall grow more frequent, especially in the oeuvres of Dirk Bouts and Gerard David.47

43 Van Uytven, ‘Flämische Belfriede’, pp. 152-154; Sascha Köhl, ‘Princely Architecture: Town Halls in the Burgundian Netherlands’, in Staging the Court of Burgundy, ed. by Till-Holger Borchert, Wim Blockmans, Nele Gabriëls et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 191-200. 44 In the case of Arras there are already in the twelfth century references to a ‘white stone wall’, in front of which the aldermen gathered. For Vilvoorde, see Van Uytven, ‘Flämische Belfriede’, p. 148. For Arras and Saint-Omer, see Woedstad, ‘Stadszegels en image-building in het Middeleeuwse graafschap Vlaanderen’ (unpublished master thesis, Ghent University, 1993), pp. 45-48, 233, 239. 45 See the Choniques de Froissart, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. F. 2644, fol. 85r (for a reproduction, see http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8438605h/f197.image.r=froissart.langEN). For a discussion of this miniature and the occurrence of (polychromed) statues in late medieval Flemish city halls, see Frederik Buylaert, Jelle De Rock, Jan Dumolyn and Ingrid Geelen, ‘De Poortersloge van Brugge: een sociale en culturele geschiedenis van een uniek laatmiddeleeuws gebouw’, Handelingen van het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis te Brugge, 152:2 (2015), 489-490. 46 More particularly, the left wing of the Annunciation triptych (ca. 1440) in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin (Campbell and Van der Stock, Rogier Van der Weyden, cat. 27b, pp. 349-350). 47 In the œuvre of Bouts we counted four separate panels and three among the works of David. Besides the works discussed below, for Bouts: the central panel of the Pearl of Brabant (Adoration, 1454-1462, Alte Pinakothek, Munich). For David: the Three Saints with canon Bernardinus de Salviatis (1501, National Gallery, London) and the London Adoration (1510-1515, National Gallery, London).

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Intentional and meaningful insertions of town hall architecture seem to have been primarily confined to commissions by the municipal government, in particular exempla iustitiae. This particular type of iconography was usually displayed in the aldermen’s chamber of the city hall and could comprise a depiction of the Last Judgment or a scene from the Old Testament, classical mythology, medieval legend, or regional historiography.48 Many of these ‘examples of justice’ were mural paintings that have not withstood the ravages of time. Two of the most renowned, extant ‘examples of justice’ were made by Dirk Bouts and Gerard David. The Justice of Emperor Otto III, a commission by the Leuven aldermen, was executed by Dirk Bouts in 1471-1482 (Figure 3.5).49 Both panels contain an architectural allusion about the exercise of judicial power. On the panel with the Beheading of the Innocent Count an impressive castle symbolises princely jurisdiction. Behind the walls of the stronghold, emperor Otto III and his guileful spouse witness the decapitation of an innocent count. In the background of the second panel (the Ordeal by Fire), where the emperor recognises his misjudgement and justice finally prevails, a lifelike image of the Brussels city hall prominently figures within a fictitious cityscape. It’s a mystery why Bouts did not opt for the opulent Leuven town hall that was completed in 1469, but perhaps this would have been too overt an association of the danger of misjudgement and the responsibilities of the Leuven aldermen.50 Another, more pragmatic explanation is that Bouts chose the Brussels edifice because its tall tower attracts more attention or enables a more balanced composition of the landscape. In 1498 Gerard David completed the Judgement of Cambyses, an exemplum iustistiae that had been commissioned almost ten years earlier by the Bruges municipal authorities, and that had been altered several times in the course of the decade. Just like the paintings made by Bouts for the Leuven aldermen, the Bruges panels were intended as a stern warning to the municipal judges against the temptation of corruption. Various references to the contemporary Bruges topography were inserted in order to call to account those layers of Bruges society that were particularly vulnerable to disloyalty and dishonesty.

48 Juliaan de Ridder, Gerechtigheidstaferelen voor schepenhuizen in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden in de 14de, 15de en 16de eeuw (Brussel: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 1989); Georges Martyn, ‘Painted Exempla Iustitiae in the Southern Netherlands’, in Symbolische Kommunikation vor Gericht in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Reiner Schulze (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2006), pp. 335-356; Hugo Van der Velden, ‘Cambyses for Exemple: The Origins and Function of an exemplum iustitiae in Netherlandish Art of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Simiolus, 23:1 (1995), 5-62. For other representations of justice in the late Middle Ages, see Rosalind Brown-Grant, Anne Hedeman and Bernard Ribémont (eds), Textual and visual representations of power and justice in Medieval France: manuscripts and early printed books (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). 49 Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. For further details see De Ridder, Gerechtigheidstaferelen, pp. 47-54. 50 The Leuven town hall was explicitly modeled on its Brussels predecessor: Michiel Heirman, Jan Staes and Leopold Oosterlynck (eds), Het Stadhuis van Leuven (Tielt: Lannoo, 1997).

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Figure 3.5: Dirk Bouts, Justice of Emperor Otto III (detail from the Ordeal by Fire), 1471-1482, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel.

On the first panel, which depicts the bribery and arrest of the corrupt judge Sisamnes, a clear reference to one of the hotspots of the Bruges political topography immediately catches the eye: the Poortersloge or Burgher’s Lodge (Figure 3.6a). Clearly in an exact portrait of the building, David made use of a number of architectural elements that unmistakably referred to the Lodge:

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Figure 3.6a: Gerard David, Judgement of Cambyses (the Bribery and Arrestation of Sisamnes), 1498, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Source Wikimedia Commos.

the octagonal tower with double lantern, the parapet that tops the façade, the landing leading to the entrance, and the roundel with an image of Saint George.51 The Poortersloge was constructed around 1400 as a sort of ‘club house’ of the Bruges elite, consisting of local and foreign merchants, innkeepers, brokers, wealthy entrepreneurs, and local nobility. The name Poortersloge refers to the term poorter / poorterij, which meant in its most exclusive sense the traditional mercantile, land-holding elite of the city, who had monopolised urban power 51 The tower of the Poortersloge was in reality topped by a statue of Saint Georges and the Dragon.

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Figure 3.6b: Gerard David, Judgement of Cambyses (the Flaying of Sisamnes), Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Source Wikimedia Commons.

until the early fourteenth century. Since 1361, out of thirteen aldermen and thirteen counselors chosen annually, nine in each body came from the craft guilds and four from the poorterij.52 The Poortersloge was also the seat of the jousting company of the White Bear. In the course of the fifteenth century the municipal government took over the management of the building. The Lodge was increasingly used for the reception of important visitors and the hosting 52 Carlos Wyffels, ‘De Vlaamse Hanze van Londen op het einde van de dertiende eeuw’, Handelingen van het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis, 97 (1960), 5-30.

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of banquets financed by the municipal government, turning it into a sort of semi city hall.53 Furthermore, the Judgement of Cambyses contains yet another reference to the Bruges topography of power. On the second panel, depicting the flaying of the corrupt judge Sisamnes, the ogee-arched doorway that supports the escutcheons of Flanders and Bruges bears close resemblance to the east side of the late medieval Bruges town hall (Figure 3.6b). Facing the currently overarched Blinde Ezelstraat, there existed until 1766 a very similar portico.54 The judicial loggia with the red marbled columns that also appears on the first panel is most likely a figment of David’s imagination, in which he combined traditional justice iconography (such as the Nine Worthies) with Italianizing motives.55 Its unusual subject, the tumultuous socio-political context and the various pentimenti and compositional changes have prompted Hans Van Miegroet to understand the Judgement of Cambyses as a true political manifesto. A detailed technical, iconographic, and archival analysis led Van Miegroet to the conclusion that the iconographic programme of the panels were adapted several times in response to the changing political situation. From 1487 to 1491 Bruges was engaged in open conflict with Maximilian of Austria, whose usurpation of power from his underage son Philip the Fair and whose aggressive anti-French policy had stirred up ill-feeling among the major Flemish towns. After a tumultuous episode, during which Maximilian was even held captive by the rebellious Bruges citizens, the city capitulated and its revolutionary magistracy was replaced by a board of governors loyal to the archduke. In the wake of these events, Gerard David changed the example of justice – which according to Van Miegroet was already started between 1488 and 1491 – several times. The analysis of infrared reflectograms (IRR) of the panels reveals the insertion of some fifteen portrayed heads (among which the portraits of Philip the Fair and the fine fleur of the Habsburg court), the ducal heraldic arms, and various allusions to the Bruges topography. By explicitly associating the severe yet fair judgment of king Cambyses with the Habsburg regime, while placing the bribery of the corrupt judge Sisamnes and his gruesome flaying within a distinct Bruges setting, the panels were conceived

53 Frederik Buylaert, Jelle De Rock and Jan Dumolyn, ‘La Loge des Bourgeois de Bruges. Les stratégies de distinction d’une élite commerçante cosmopolite’, Revue du Nord, 414:1 (2016), 37-69 ; Maurice Vandermaesen and Patrick Ronse, Van Poortersloge tot Rijksarchief : een gebouw met inhoud te Brugge (15e eeuw – 1995) (Brussel: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 1997). 54 The appearance of the Bruges town hall before the structural interventions of the eighteenth century can be derived from a seventeenth century painting of the Burg Square, now part of the collection of the Castle of Loppem (www.kasteelvanloppem.be). See also the paintings of Jean-Baptiste Van Meunicxhove (ca. 1672). See André Vandewalle, Guillaume Michiels and Ant Michiels, 600 jaar Brugs Stadhuis, 1376-1976 (Brussels: Bank Lambert, 1976). 55 The loggia contains the statues of Joshua and Charlemagne, two of the Nine Worthies. These figures were a typical element of the decorative programme of city halls. Towards the end of the fourteenth century Jan van Mansdale made for instance a series of stone consoles with the Nine Worthies for the city hall of Mechelen (De Ridder, Gerechtigheidstaferelen, pp. 14-19, 60).

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to ‘chastise Bruges for its political misconduct’.56 Nonetheless, not everyone is convinced of the explicit political overtones of the two panels. Marian Ainsworth, for instance, deems it very unlikely that the final version of the panels, which were installed in the city hall in 1498, were so entangled with the Bruges revolt of almost a decade earlier. According to Ainsworth, the Judgement of Cambyses did not fundamentally differ from the universal moralizing discourse of other examples of justice. Therefore, she understands the fragments of the Bruges topography that figure on both panels primarily as key elements to create a recognizable and convincing setting for the central narrative.57 Still, Ainsworth seems to underestimate the iconic power of buildings such as the Poortersloge or the city hall. Within the overall iconographic programme of the panels, it’s very unlikely that an allusion to these particular edifices did somehow call to account a specific layer of the Bruges urban society. Also in other examples of justice, the architecture of power and secular justice prevails. In the less known The brother of the king threatened with death by an anonymous master from the Southern Low Countries (1475-1485, Sarasota, The Ringling Museum of Art) the exemplum is framed by a monumental building adorned with three statues typical of city hall architecture (most likely princes or the Nine Worthies). Under the steps that lead to the entrance of the building, a trapdoor with a chained monkey refers to the prison in the basement of the building.58 Also in another example of justice, the Ecce Homo, typical architectural elements of the city hall often are incorporated.59 As already discussed, in some cases the palace of Pilate could even take the features of an existing town hall, such as the old Antwerp city hall in Gillis Mostaert’s Ecce Homo (Figure 1.10). The Northern Netherlandish monogrammist AM, in turn, situated the appearance of Christ before Pilate against a faithful depiction of the Haarlem town hall, as if he wanted to warn the aldermen about the conviction of the innocent (ca. 1480, Rotterdam, Boymans-Van Beuningen).60 Besides the genre of the exemplum iustitiae, references to the city hall figure only very sporadically in early Netherlandish iconography in general and painting in particular. Especially in two panels the town hall seems to constitute a meaningful part of the composition.

56 Hans Van Miegroet, ‘Gerard David’s Justice of Cambyses: exemplum iustitiae or political allegory?’, Simiolus, 18:3 (1988), 116-133. Weale suggested already in 1863 a similar political interpretation of the panels. 57 Ainsworth, Gerard David, pp. 60-73. See also Ainsworth’s review of Van Miegroet’s monograph on Gerard David in The Art Bulletin, 72:4 (1990), 649-654. 58 Hugo Van der Velden, ‘“De broer van de koning met de dood bedreigd”: een exemplum iustitiae in de vijftiende- en zestiende-eeuwse Nederlandse kunst’, Oud Holland, 108:4 (1994), 157-169. 59 See, for instance, the Ecce Homo attributed to the Brussels Master of the View of Saint Gudula (Private Collection), or the one by the Master of the Morrison triptych, which shows city hall architecture with various Italianizing elements (Zürich, Kunsthaus). Photographic reproductions of these quite obscure works can be found in the photo-archive of the KIK/IRPA (also consultable on-line on www.kikirpa.be). 60 Friso Lammertse and Jeroen Giltaij (eds), Vroege Hollanders. Schilderkunst van de late Middeleeuwen (Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen, 2008), pp. 127-129.

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First, Dirk Bouts’s Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament (1464-1468, Saint Peter’s Church, Leuven) contains a double allusion to the city hall. The triptych was commissioned by the confraternity of the Holy Sacrament. On the left wing (Abraham and Melchisedech), to the right of the huge church inspired by the Utrecht cathedral, appears a lofty construction with conspicuous corner towers, which could stand for a generic representation of a Netherlandish city hall (Figure 2.10 – Plate 6). This is one of the very few painted skylines in which this kind of building holds such a prominent position. Moreover, through one of the windows on the central panel appears an unmistakable fragment of the Leuven town hall. By juxtaposing the central scene of the Last Supper to the Leuven market square, a parallel was drawn between the sacred event (assisted by some members of the confraternity) and the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament of the collegial church of Saint Peter at the other side of the square, facing the city hall.61 Here the altarpiece was installed and the confraternity met for ceremonial purposes. The reference to the Leuven city hall not only had topographical value, but also a socio-political one. A nineteenth-century transcription of the original contract between the confraternity and Bouts reveals the names of the four members who were involved in the commission of the altarpiece: Raes Van Baussele, Laurens Van Winghe, Stas Roelofs and Reynier Stoep. Most likely, these are precisely the senior members of the confraternity who are portrayed in the background of the Last Supper.62 The Van Baussele, Van Winghe, and Roelofs families were closely related to one of the major local Leuven ‘geslachten’ or families.63 The most prominent (and best documented) of the four was Raes Van Baussele, son of the Leuven town clerk Gerard Van Baussele and Catharina De Blijde, daughter of a Leuven patrician family. The Van Bausseles had strong ties with the Leuven University and the collegial church of Saint Peter, where the family had founded the chapel of the Holy Trinity. Raes Van Baussele died before 1489 and was buried in the Saint Peter’s church.64 Smeyers suggested that Raes (Erasmus) Van Baussele was also the patron of Bouts’s Triptych of Saint

61 The collegial church of Saint Peter sits at the northern side of the Market Square, directly in front of the richly decorated facade of the city hall, constructed in 1448-1469. The Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament used two chapels in the northern choir aisle. Thus, the chapel of the Holy Sacrament, where the altarpiece was installed, did not face the Market Square but the current Margarethaplein. For the Leuven city hall, see Heirman, Staes and Oosterlynck, Het Stadhuis van Leuven. 62 For the ‘hidden’ portraits in the œuvre of Bouts, see Bert Cardon, ‘Ingekeerde portretten van Bouts’, Ons Erfdeel, 41 (1998), 520-524. See also Maurits Smeyers, Dirk Bouts. Schilder van de stilte (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 1998), p. 51. 63 Alfons Meulemans, ‘Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de Leuvense geslachten’, Jaarboek Geschied- en Oudheidkundige Kring voor Leuven en omgeving, 16 (1976), passim. 64 Maurits Smeyers, ‘De kapel van de Heilige Drievuldigheid in de Sint-Pieterskerk te Leuven en het geslacht Van Baussele’, in Dirk Bouts en zijn tijd (Leuven: Stadsbestuur, 1975), pp. 521-527. Little is known of the career of Raes van Baussele. In 1462-1463 a certain Raes Van Baussele was appointed in the town council by the ‘nation’ of the kasseimeesters (the supervisors of the city’s paved roads) (Peter Crombecq, Het alfabetisch register van de twaalfde- tot achttiende-eeuwse stadsbestuurders van Leuven (Edegem: own publication, 2010)).

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Erasmus (ca. 1464, Museum M, Leuven), even though hard evidence is lacking.65 While Raes Van Baussele belonged to the town’s patrician elite, the two other members of the confraternity that are mentioned in the contract, Laurens Van Winghe and Stas Roelofs, have to be situated among the corporate elite. Both were elected as sworn members by one of the ten ‘nations’ into which the Leuven craft guilds were divided. Furthermore, they combined various functions, such a supervisor of the roads (kasseimeester), artillery (artilleriemeester), inspector (keurmeester), or guardian in various charitable institutions.66 This accumulation of offices by the guild elite is indicative of the plutocratic character of the Leuven corporate regime. Only the wealthiest craftsmen could develop a solid political career.67 By the insertion of a pictorial wink to the architectural shrine of the municipal public power, the city hall, the Triptych of the Holy Sacraments subtly alludes to the position of the portrayed members of the confraternity in the city’s social topography. Using the concepts developed by Nelson and Zeckhauser, the painting signaled the status of the portrayed members of the Confraternity, by a strategic ‘signposting’ by means of specific architectural elements, such as the town hall.68 Remarkably, Bouts’s triptych takes an exceptional place among the rather limited number of preserved altarpieces that were commissioned by (elite) lay brotherhoods. Similar references to specific topographical features or recognizable urban monuments were very scanty in early Netherlandish painting (cf. Chapter V). It cannot be excluded that also other elements were at play in the case of the Leuven Sacrament Triptych, such as local pride or the personal involvement of some members of the confraternity in the construction of the new city hall. In a second early sixteenth-century painting where a detailed depiction of a generic city hall appears prominently is the background of the Miracle of Saint Anthony, made circa 1510 by the Master of the Bruges Passion Scenes (Prado, Madrid) (Figure 3.4 – Plate 10). The miracle scene in the foreground adjoins an immaculately paved town square that perfectly captures the polyvalence of the urban public space. In the far background some relatively modest houses with shop signs signal the key economic function of the square. It is no accident that

65 Smeyers, Dirk Bouts, p. 66. However, others refer to another member of the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament, Gerard De Smet, as patron of the triptych: Bert Cardon, ‘Na allen synen besten vermoegenen. Dirk Bouts en zijn opdrachtgevers’, in Dirk Bouts. Het laatste avondmaal. Leuven in de late middeleeuwen, ed. by Anna Bergmans (Tielt : Lannoo, 1998), p. 76. 66 Especially Laurens Van Winghe boasted an impressive career: he was eight times town councilor, two times [rentmeester], two times mayor of his nation, and one time even burgomaster. Stas Roelofs was various times town councilor for the nation of the bakers, supervisor of the roads and of the artillery, guardian (momboir) of the Twelve Apostles (Crombecq, Het alfabetische register, passim). 67 Raymond Van Uytven, ‘De geschiedenis van het stadsgewest Leuven tot omstreeks 1600’, in Leuven: ‘De beste stad van Brabant’, vol. 1 (Leuven: Uitgeverij J. Crab, 1980); Idem, ‘Plutokratie in de “oude demokratieën der Nederlanden”’, Handelingen Koninklijke Zuidnederlandse Maatschappij voor Taalen Letterkunde en Geschiedenis, 16 (1962), pp. 375-476. 68 Paul Trio, ‘The Social Positioning of Late Medieval Confraternities in Urbanized Flanders: from Integration to Segregation’, in Mittelalterliche Bruderschaften in europäischen Städte, ed. by Monika Escher-Apsner (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 99-110.

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the few women in the tableau appear in this commercial corner of the square, close to the public fountain. It has been demonstrated that in the late medieval Low Countries women played an important role in the daily routine of buying and selling.69 Moreover, the water well – both on the countryside and in the city – constituted an important anchor of female sociability.70 More to the front, the town square has been depicted as an exclusively male environment. Here, the market square has been detached from its basic commercial function and operates as a meeting place for all kinds of social and political encounters. In this public arena, contacts are made, hands are shaken, and deals are clinched. The square functions as a stage where the dignitaries of the city can parade, where they are dressed fashionably, assume elegant poses, and try to distinguish themselves from the common town dwellers. Also in David’s Judgement of Cambyses very similar sophisticated burghers stand in and around the building modelled on the Bruges Burgher’s Lodge (cf. supra). According to Pierre Bourdieu, the way one physically behaves oneself and literally ‘carries’ and presents his body towards the others (the corporal hexis or body technique) is a means to express one’s sense of social self-worth to peers and others. The importance of body language once again demonstrates how people behave as social performers on the stage of society.71 Except for the economic details and some anecdotal elements, such as playing children, the city in the Miracle of Saint Anthony is mainly represented as a governmental and elite theatre, with as its central piece of scenery a prototypical city hall, including a public watch, an ornamented landing, princely iconography, and an imposing sculpture of Saint George above the porch. The chained bear in front of the monumental landing also figures in other representations of city hall architecture, such as in the anonymous The brother of the king threatened with death (cf. supra). According to the legend, Saint Antony of Padua succeeded in converting a Cathar in Rimini (or, according to another version, a Jew) to the true faith by miraculously making a donkey adore the Sacred Host.72 This storyline explains the presence of exotically dressed figures in the foreground and on the public square, where these stereotypes of the Jew (or the heterodox in general) interact in a peaceful – almost ideal – way with the orthodox local 69 Laura Van Aert and Peter Stabel, ‘Medieval market and tradeswomen’, in Women and gender in medieval Europe: an encyclopedia, ed. by Margeret Schaus (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 515. 70 Chloé Deligne, ‘Edilité et politique: les fontaines urbaines dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux au Moyen Âge’, Histoire Urbaine, 22 (2008), 77-96. On the iconography of late medieval urban water wells, see Catherine Gouédo-Thomas, ‘Les points d’eau en milieu urbain d’après l’iconographie des manuscrits à peintures du nord de l’Europe (XIIIe-XVIe siècle)’, in La Ville au Moyen Âge (I. Ville et Espace), ed. by Noël Coulet and Olivier Guyotjeannin (Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1998), pp. 67-76. 71 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 466. The ‘performative turn’ in the human sciences shifted focus towards the ‘dramaturgy’ of human behaviour. A key study is Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (London: Penguin, 1959). 72 Ernest Gilliat-Smith, Saint Anthony of Padua according to his contemporaries (London/Toronto: J. M. Dent and sons, 1926), p. 62.

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worthies. The precise meaning of this remarkable town view, however, remains unclear. It has been suggested to identify the Franciscan friar who is depicted behind Saint Anthony as the patron of the panel,73 even though the clear focus of the town view on the public space of the square and the semi-public space of the city hall as an arena of elite sociability suggests the patronage of an exclusive brotherhood, such as the Confrérie of the Holy Blood,74 or a member of the Bruges political elite or poorterij. Saint George, conspicuously incorporated into the architecture of the city hall, was the chevaleresque patron saint of the crossbow guild and the jousting society of the White Bear.75 His image also figures on the Burgher’s Lodge imitation of the Judgement of Cambyses. The central building in the Miracle of Saint Anthony seems to have been conceived as a fusion between the town hall and the private clubhouse of the town’s elite. The town view on this panel thus expresses a very aristocratic and socially exclusive vision of the late medieval city. This is arguably the closest that early Netherlandish painting gets to the theme of the città ideale developed in quattrocento Italy. Disegnare la città, to design the city as a personal palazzo, became one of the spearheads of the Renaissance prince and his pursuit of magnificentia.76 In fifteenth-century Italy the medieval Augustinian model of the ideal city or civitas dei, made in the image of God, was redefined according to the standard of human society, in which civic laws and good government created harmony. Other than in the Middle Ages, where the beauty of the city was defined by the quality of its individual edifices, the Renaissance ideal city was conceived as one large scenic structure.77 From the mid-fifteenth century onward, highly idealised, geometrical urban vistas become a much recurrent theme in intarsia and painting. At the end of the quattrocento (most likely in 1480-1490) a series of three ‘ideal’ city views were painted for the court of the duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro. The three panels, which are now in Urbino, Baltimore and Berlin, have been attributed to a host of famous Renaissance artists, ranging from Pierro della Francesca, Luciano Laurana, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Giuliano da Sangallo, to Leon Battista Alberti. Rigorously designed according to the principles of linear perspective, these city views constitute a showpiece of Italian Renaissance architecture, as canonised in Alberti’s De re aedificatoria

73 Anonieme Vlaamse Primitieven (catalogus) (Bruges: Stedelijk Museum Van Schone Kunsten, 1969), pp. 72-73 (cat. 27). 74 The theme of the adoration of the host (or Corpus Christi) was closely related to the veneration of the Holy Blood that was kept since at least the thirteenth century in Bruges. The confraternity of the Holy Blood was closely interwoven with the municipal government. 75 The Society of the White Bear had been dissolved at the end of the fifteenth century, which makes a specific allusion on this elite club very unlikely, since the Miracle of Saint Anthony is dated around 1510 (Andries Van den Abeele, Het Ridderlijk Gezelschap van de Witte Beer. Steekspelen te Brugge tijdens de late Middeleeuwen (Brugge: Walleyn, 2000), Chapter VI. 76 (eds), p. 253. 77 Lorenza Mochi Onori, ‘Introduzione al tema della città ideale nel Rinascimento’, in La città ideale. L’utopia del Rinascimento a Urbino tra Piero della Francesca e Raffaello. Catalogo della mostra, ed. by Alessandro Marchi and Maria Rosaria Valazzi (Milano: Mondadori Electa, 2012), pp. 29-39.

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Figure 3.7: Anonymous Italian Painter (Pierro della Francesca / Luciano Laurana?), La città ideale, 1480-1490, The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Source Wikimedia Commons.

(1450).78 These Renaissance fantasy cities picture an ideal society as the result of good government. The ideal city is in essence a governmental and residential space, consisting of large public squares, fountains, administrative buildings, imposing palaces, religious structures (much alike Bramante’s Tempietto), and triumphal arches – all designed according to the rules of proportion, symmetry, and classical form. Denis Cosgrove sees the città ideale as the most significant symbolic landscape of the quattrocento, as it reproduces the ideal socio-political order that was cultivated at the Italian Renaissance courts. The daily productive and commercial function of the city is largely neglected: “The ideal city is designed for the exercise of administration and justice, for the civic life, rather than for production or exchange”.79 This focus on the architectural and socio-political dimension of the city also characterises the Miracle of Saint Antony, despite its total lacks of the strong geometrical design of the città ideale. Especially the Baltimore panel of the città ideale shows some remarkable similarities with the anonymous Bruges panel (Figure 3.7). At the centre of a geometric square a couple of women gather around a fountain, while in the background various groups of worthies elegantly stroll through the monumental architecture. Despite their obvious differences, both panels define the city as a socio-political theatre. Unfortunately, the exact patronage and intellectual context of the Flemish panel cannot be reconstructed, but it seems very unlikely that the Bruges artist was directly inspired by the Italian tradition of the ideal city.

78 For a thourough architectural analysis of the iconography of the three panels, see Saverio Ciarcia, Le città ideali del Rinascimento. Contributi per una lettura iconologico-architettonica delle tavole di Urbino, Baltimora e Berlino (Napoli: Giannini, 2013). See also Richard Krautheimer, ‘The panels in Urbino, Baltimore and Berlin reconsidered’, in The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo. The representation of architecture, ed. by Henry A. Millon (London: Saint Martins Press, 1997), pp. 233-258; Ruth Eaton, Ideal Cities. Utopianism and the (Un)Built Environment (London: Thames & Hudson, 2002), pp. 49-50. 79 Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, pp. 96-97.

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The exoskeleton of the city: walls and gates

Another crucial monumental component of the urban space consists of the city wall and gate. The urban precinct played a pivotal role – both physically and mentally – in the construction and delineation of the urban community and identity. It made a sharp distinction between the city and the surrouding countryside; between ‘to belong and not to belong’.80 Nevertheless, medieval city walls seldom formed a clear-cut boundary of the urban space. In the Low Countries, few cities could boast a complete, solid town wall. Large stretches of the urban fortification consisted of simple ditches, moats, and other natural barriers.81 Alexander Cowan stresses that the medieval city can hardly be understood as an island in an ocean of rurality and feudality: ‘The isolation of towns from their hinterlands by fortifications, laws, or mental attitudes had never been fully complete, even in the Middle Ages’.82 Many cities saw the development of a suburban twilight zone that – even though physically separated from the city – was entirely geared towards the urban economy. In fourteenth-century Ypres the town wall even functioned as a social boundary between the wealthy drapers and craft guild’s elite on the one hand, and the cloth workers and unskilled labourers who were predominantly living extra muros.83 On many levels the city expanded its influence well beyond its walls. The borders of the town as a judicial entity or liberty (the area in which the aldermen could execute justice) often spilled over its physical boundaries. In Bruges, for instance, the limits of the liberty or paallanden, amply exceeded the second fortification. In many cities the police and juridical authority of the aldermen extended approximately a mile beyond the town walls (the so-called banmijl, banlieu or literally ‘ban mile’), often making use of natural boundaries. In Ghent, the banmijl more or less followed the Rietgracht or Vrytgracht, a watercourse that had been dug in the thirteenth century. Within this perimeter, the municipal government often pursued a protectionist economic policy by forbidding the production of certain products or by compelling suburban producers to sell their products on the urban market. Also as a fiscal entity, the city largely surpassed its city walls.84 Throughout the Low Countries, and especially in Flanders, many towns counted

80 Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (London: Brace & World, 1961), p. 304. See also Jacques Le Goff and Cesare de Seta (eds), La città e le mura (Rome/ Bari: Laterza, 1989); James D. Tracy, City walls: the urban enceinte in global perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 81 Any a small fraction of the Ghent fortification – with 12 kilometers by far the largest of the medieval Low Countries – was made of solid stone walls (Capiteyn, André, Leen Charles and Marie Christine Laleman, Historische atlas van Gent. Een visie op verleden en toekomst (Amsterdam: SUN, 2007), p. 23. The Bruges fortification consisted for only one quarter of stone walls, towers and gates. 82 Alexander Cowan, Urban Europe (1500-1700) (Oxford: Hodder Education, 1998), p. 65. 83 Mus, De Geschiedenis van de Middeleeuwse Grootstad Ieper, p. 49. For an imaginary evocation of the outskirts of late medieval Ypres, see the historicizing town view of the Siege of Ypres (1383) made in 1610 by Guillaume du Tielt (Stedelijk Museum, Ypres). 84 For the suburban periphery, see Peter Johanek (ed.), Die Stadt und ihr Rand (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008); Martin Uhrmacher and Guy Thewes (eds), Extra Muros. Vorstädtische Räume in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit / Espaces suburbains au bas Moyen Âge et à l’époque moderne (Cologne: Böhlau, 2017).

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a lot of countrymen who purchased citizenship, without actually living in the city. These so-called buitenpoorters constituted fiscal enclaves of the city in the urban hinterland.85 Notwithstanding the fact that the city as spatial entity was certainly not confined to its walls and gates, the urban fortification offered the most tangible demarcation of the town. A physical barrier that protected the city from external threats, the urban precinct was one of the most distinctive features of the premodern city.86 Peter Johanek pointed to the remarkable focus of medieval Europe on fortified walls and gates as defining elements of the city, especially when compared to Antiquity.87 The pivotal position of the town wall in the Western perception of the city becomes apparent when having a closer look at the travelogues of European pilgrims to the Holy Land. Many travellers from the Southern Netherlands who visited Cairo on their way to the Sinai were struck by an apparent lack of city walls and gates, which by the fifteenth century had been completely absorbed by the rapidly expanding metropolis. Astounded by how the urban sprawl had blurred the demarcation of city and hinterland of the Mamluk capital, the late-medieval Westerner did not, however, postulate a clear-cut city wall as a universal condition for urbanity, but rather as a distinct characteristic of the Western city.88 Very much in keeping with the travel stories, the woodcut map of the Holy Land by the Utrecht artist Erhard Reuwich in Bernhard von Breydenbach’s illustrated Peregrinatio in terram sanctam (1486), also stressed the lack of visible walls by representing Cairo and various Middle Eastern towns, such as Damascus, as a rather amorphous accumulation of buildings.89 In the West, the city wall had a strong psychological impact on the urban community and its mental cohesion. Martha Howell observed how the city saw itself as an island in a contrasting countryside: “The city was understood and understood itself to be an incursion upon an existing sociopolitical landscape, a world of different values and practices, of different political actors, of different

For the complex relationship between town and countryside in late medieval Flanders, see Nicholas, David, Town and Countryside. Social, Economic, and Political Tensions in Fourteenth-Century Flanders (Brugge: De Tempel, 1971). 85 For buitenpoorterij, see Jelle De Rock, ‘La châtellenie de Courtrai: quelques aspects du rapport entre ville et campagne dans la Flandre du Bas Moyen Âge’, Revue du Nord, 89 (2007), 739-746. 86 Many early urban settlements in medieval Europe have the suffix ‘-burg’, a clear reference to their fortified character. 87 Peter Johanek, ‘Die Mauer und die Heiligen. Stadtvorstellungen im Mittelalter’, in Das Bild der Stadt in der Neuzeit (1400-1800), ed. by Wolfgang Behringer and Bernd Roeck (Munich: Beck Verlag, 1999), pp. 28-30. 88 Joos Van Ghistele, a Flemish knight that travelled in 1481-1485 tot the Holy Country, was for instance amazed by the observation that Cairo ‘leyt al open zonder mueren of vesten’ [was all open without walls nor ramparts]. For an analysis of these travel stories, see Kim Overlaet, ‘Zo comt men ter stadt van Alkayeren’. Een analyse van de representaties van Cairo in laat vijftiende-eeuwse reisverhalen uit de Nederlanden’, Stadsgeschiedenis, 5:1 (2010), 1-18 (esp. pp. 7-9). 89 For a good illustration, see the coloured edition from 1486 in the Belgian Royal Library, Brussels, Inc. B225 fol.°131.

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culture”.90 Lewis Mumford, for his part, used the following metaphor: “As in a ship, the wall helped to create a feeling of unity between the inhabitants: in a siege or a famine the morality of the shipwreck – share-and-share-alike – developed”.91 This comparison also reveals the ambiguity of the town wall: from a safeguard for external dangers, the wall could easily morph the city into a trap, by sealing it from the outside world and by accumulating dirt and disease. Especially in times of internal troubles, the protective capacities of the town wall could swiftly fade and turn (a part of) the urban community into captives. This is why Venice boasted its lack of walls and gates, while priding itself on being ‘the most free of all Italian cities’.92 Likewise, the sixteenth-century Ghent rhetorician Joos vander Stoct warned about the misleading feeling of security offered by the town walls with following verse: ‘Gheen steerker mueren en stel men an steden, dan de mueren zijn van eendrachticheden’ [‘cities could not be provided by stronger walls than the walls of unity’.93 The city wall as physical entity was not infallible and very often a sacral dimension was added. The defensive and unifying power of the medieval city was intricately linked to the patronage of the town’s patron saints. The spiritual support and interventions of the latter could stem the tide of the dangers that threatened the city, both from the outside and the inside. Walls, fortification, and gates were often inaugurated by means of a religious ceremony; they were exorcised in order to fend off evil, and provided with all kinds of religious iconography. In Bruges, the relic of the Holy Blood was carried every year in a procession that passed by a large part of the second expansion of the ramparts, in order to protect the urban community as a whole from disaster.94 At various places the town wall was pierced by fortified entrance gates. These structures streamlined the traffic of people and goods from and to the city. They functioned as toll gates and as checkpoints for identity control – and thus as a social filter. In premodern Europe, the perception of urbanity was closely linked to the experience of entering the city through the city gate. At this very spot the city as spatial entity really started: taxes were levied at the gate, whereas access to the town was granted or denied by the gate guards on social, political, medical, or age grounds.95 Even more than the city walls, the town gates took a central place in the symbolic communication of the city with its hinterland and visitors. They functioned as ceremonial thresholds that framed Joyous 90 Martha Howell, ‘The Spaces of Late Medieval Urbanity’, in Shaping Urban Identity in Late Medieval Europe, ed. by Marc Boone and Peter Stabel (Leuven/Apeldoorn: Garant, 2000), p. 3. 91 Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (San Diego: Harcourt Brace,1970), p. 54. 92 Frederic Lane, Venice. A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p. 1. 93 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken als spiegel van stedelijk historisch bewustzijn (14de tot 16de eeuw) (Ghent: Maatschappij voor geschiedenis en oudheidkunde, 1998), p. 224. 94 Peter Johanek, ‘Die Mauer und die Heiligen’, passim; Bernd Roeck, ‘Les murs de la ville, frontières en pierre de l’imaginaire? Sorcellerie et magie dans l’espace urbain’, in La ville à la Renaissance. Espaces, représentations, pouvoirs, ed. by Gérald Chaix (Tours: Honoré Champion, 2008), pp. 143-166; Julian Gardner, ‘An Introduction to the Iconography of the Medieval Italian City Gate’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 41 (1987), 199-213. 95 An intriguing study on the early modern practice of entering the town through the city gate is Daniel Jütte, ‘Entering a city: on a lost early modern practice’, Urban History, 41:2 (2014), 204-227.

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Entries, exit ceremonies, religious processions, and rituals of submission.96 The manuscript account of the Joyous Entry of Charles V in Bruges (written by in 1515 Remy du Puys and printed in the same year by Gilles de Gourmont in Paris) contains an illustration which shows the Kruispoort richly adorned with huge cloths, torches, the heraldic arms of the prince and the city, and sixteen Latin verses. Four trumpet players on top of the gate add lustre to the solemn event.97 The gate was even converted into a piece of scenery for a tableau vivant. In 1440 the Bruges Burgpoort was completely overgilded in order to evoke the Golden Gate in Jerusalem where Joachim and Anna had met.98 During revolts (or their repression) the busy city gates were often used as a mean to communicate terrifying messages. In 1488, for instance, the head of the detested Bruges sheriff Pieter Lanchals was exposed on a pole on the Gentpoort by the rebellious regime.99 It goes without saying that de city gates were one of the major instruments of control over the city. Occasionally, they were demolished or bricked up by external forces in their attempt to seize control or to punish a town that had disgraced the authority of the prince. After the Battle of Beverhoutsveld (1382), during which Ghent confronted the troops of the Count of Flanders and Bruges, the victorious Ghentenaren had seized the city of Bruges and demolished three gates in order to assure easy access to the town. A couple of decades later, in the aftermath of the Bruges Revolt of 1436-1438, Philip the Good gave the order to brick up the Boeveriepoort and to install a small chapel inside the gate as a penance for the assassination of the Lord de Lisle-Adam during an uprising in 1437.100 This manipulation of the urban space by external forces, which lasted for twelve years, once again demonstrates the polysemy of architectural framework of the city. The city gate, at the one hand an emblem of urban security and autonomy, could swiftly be transformed into a reprimand of the Bruges recalcitrance and a quasi-permanent reminder of the princely sovereignty. By adding (or forcing) new meanings to the urban monumental space, the prince tried gradually to appropriate the built urban environment and its significance.

96 Richard Trexler has shown for medieval Florence that ‘processions touched the gates as part of the via sacra, military forces had to pass under them at propitious times, and visiting dignitaries could not traverse them without solemn preparations and ceremonies’ (Trexler, Public Life, p. 48). On the use of the city gates of fifteenth-century Bruges for commemorations ceremonies and rituals of amende honorable [‘honorable punishment’], see Andrew Brown, ‘Exit Ceremonies in Burgundian Bruges’, in Staging the Court of Burgundy, ed. by Till-Holger Borchert, Wim Blockmans, Nele Gabriëls et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 113-119. 97 For the richly illustrated manuscript La tryumphante et solemnelle entrée (1515) in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, see Valentin Vermeersch (ed.), Brugge en Europa (Antwerp: Mercatrofonds, 1992), pp. 254-255. 98 Ramakers, Spelen en Figuren, pp. 172-173. On the city gate as stage, see Angelika Lampen, ‘Das Stadttor als Bühne: Architektur und Zeremoniell’, in Adventus. Studien zum herrscherlichen Einzug in die Stadt, ed. by Peter Johanek (Cologne: Böhlau, 2009), pp. 1-36. 99 A woodcut from 1531 illustrated this kind of practice: Marc Ryckaert, André Vandewalle et al., Brugge. De geschiedenis van een Europese stad (Tielt: Lannoo, 1999), p. 49. 100 Boone, ‘Destroying and Reconstructiong the City’, pp. 21-22; Brown, ‘Exit Ceremonies’, p. 116.

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As the city walls and gates were the most basic components of the city, it comes as no surprise that both the literary and pictorial representation of the medieval city by its contemporaries shows a strong focus on the urban exoskeleton.101 One of the most telling examples can be found in one of the last poems of the famous Gruuthuse manuscript (a compilation of almost 150 songs, 16 poems and 7 prayers, dated around 1395-1410), in which the gates of Bruges take a prominent place. The verses narrate how a hermit offers the ‘king’ of the Confraternity of the White Bear a scale-model of the city, built by two ‘wild men’. The later have provided the model with gates, walls, towers and ramparts [poorters, mueren, tor ende veste]. The hermit associates all seven gates of the replica with a letter that stands for two virtues or positive qualities. All together the letters form the word ‘BRUCGHE’. Jan Dumolyn has recently linked the allegorical poem, which was most likely performed at a banquet in the Bruges Poortersloge, to an attempt to reconcile rivaling factions within the Bruges elite. The Gentpoort, for instance, bears the letter ‘B’ of broederscap [‘brotherhood’] and bliscap [‘joy’]. This association of brotherhood with the gate leading towards Ghent was of course quite significant. A couple of years earlier, in 1382, the Ghentenaren had destroyed three gates. The verses can clearly be understood as a call for unity and peace, both within the city and with the outside world. The allegory of the gates also echoes a period of intense building activity that drastically changed the Bruges landscape. In 1400-1407 major construction rebuilt the demolished gates and expanded the city’s enceinte with several new towers and brick walls.102 A very similar pictorial emphasis on the wall and gates can be found in the typical (early) medieval schematic representation of cities (or so-called ‘ideograms’) as an enceinte with a geometric shape (a hexagon, octagon or a circle) that walls an empty space.103 The physical enclosure of the city frequently figures as a powerful pars pro toto for the city as a physical entity and as a social community on civic seals, miniatures, tapestries, and maps.104 Allegorical images of the City Maiden, a frequently used symbol throughout premodern Europe, were often set within a circular enclosure of walls, towers and gates. Renowned 101 A striking example of the semantic power of the gate as the ultimate symbol of the city can be found in the mid-fourteenth century Libro del Biadaiolo: an architectural ensemble that clearly refers to Florentine Duomo can nevertheless be identified as Siena by means of its gate and its Sienese heraldry (Françoise Robin, ‘Les portes des villes: symboles et representations dans la peinture et l’enluminure italienne (XIV-XV siècles)’, in Fortifications, portes de villes, places publiques dans le monde méditerranéen, ed. by Jacques Heers (Paris : Université de Paris Sorbonne, 1985), pp. 121-144). 102 For a thorough study of the poem of the Seven Gates of Bruges and its eclectic civic ideology, see Jan Dumolyn, ‘Une idéologie urbaine “bricolée” en Flandre médiévale: les sept portes de Bruges dans le manuscrit Gruuthuse’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 88 (2010), 1031-1083. For the sociopolitical context of early fifteenth-century Bruges, see Andrew Brown and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Brugge rond 1400: de sociaaleconomische, politieke en religieuze context’, in Liefde en devotie. Het Gruuthusehandschrift: kunst en cultuur omstreeks 1400, ed. by Jos Koldeweij, Inge Geysen and Eva Tahon (Ludion: Antwerpen, 2013), pp. 37-49. 103 Lavedan, Représentations des villes, p. 27. 104 Especially until the fourteenth century the city is represented as a ciruclar or polygonal accumulation of buildings (often gates, walls and towers), emphasizing the protective capacity of the city (Frugoni, A Distant City, pp. 6-9).

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examples are the Ghent Maiden (Figure 3.3) and the Pucelle de Tournai. In book illuminations and tapestries cities are very often reduced to elaborate castles: an accumulation of crenelated walls, fortified towers and gates with barbicans. This can be explained by the tendency to stylization and the predominance of military narratives (such as sieges and rebellions) that typify these media.105 Also fifteenth- and sixteenth-century maps and plans represented cities as a rule as a relatively coherent set of buildings, fenced off from the empty countryside by a conspicuous enclosure.106 Nevertheless, the undeniable prominence of the city wall and gate in both mental and spatial reality contrasts with the remarkably low profile of the urban enceinte in early Netherlandish panel painting. Even though most painted city views make a clear distinction between the city and the countryside, the city wall does not play a star part. On the contrary, quite often the walls and gates are hidden in the natural folds of the scenery. In many works, for instance by Petrus Christus and Dirk Bouts, the city floats above the landscape as if behind the ridge of the gentle hills (Plate 6).107 This is also the case for the fabulous cityscape on the central panel of Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece. Occasionally, the painter even deliberately breaches or lowers the wall, enabling the spectator to fully observe the narrative scenes that take place within the city (Figure 1.7).108 As an exception the suburban space comes into the picture, as for instance in a few Nativity paintings by Gerard David. In these rare cases, the city links up almost seamlessly with the countryside. Not the city wall, but a difference in building materials marks the transition from the city (stone/tiles) to the suburban countryside (loam/straw).109 In the background of Van Eyck’s Madonna of Chancellor Rolin the city almost dissolves into the surrounding woods, fields, and vineyards, especially on the left bank, where the city wall is completely missing (Figure 0.1 – Plate 1). For the most part, early Netherlandish panel painting seems to lack the hyperbolic representation of the city wall and gates that typifies many seals, illuminations, and tapestries. Most fifteenth-century painted cityscapes, on the contrary, show a predilection for a strikingly open 105 Peter Ainsworth, ‘The image of the city in Peace and War in a Burgundian manuscript of Jean Froissart’s Chronicles’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 78:2 (2000), 295-314; Idem, ‘Les représentations de villes dans les manuscrits de Froissart: d’un codex à l’autre’, in Villes en guerre, XIVe-XVe siècles: actes du colloque tenu à l’Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, 8-9 juin 2006, ed. by Christine Reynaud (Aix-en-Provence, P U Provence, 2008), pp. 13-42 ; Christine Bousquet-Labouerie, ‘L’image de la ville dans les Grandes Chroniques de France: miroir du prince ou du pouvoir urbain’, in La ville au Moyen Âge, sociétés et pouvoirs dans la ville, ed. by Noël Coulet and Olivier Guyotjeannin (Paris: Editions du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1998), pp. 555-563. 106 Martha Howell, ‘The Spaces of Urbanity’, pp. 12-13. On the city as a delicately cut gem in an amorphous countryside, see Bernd Roeck, ‘Stadtkunstwerke’, in Das Bild der Stadt in der Neuzeit. 1400-1800, ed. by Wolfgang Behringer and Bernd Roeck (Munich: Beck, 1999), pp. 15-25. 107 Good examples are Petrus Christus, The Washington Nativity, ca. 1450, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Dirk Bouts, Triptych of the Holy Sacrament (detail wing with the Meeting of Abram and Melchisedek), 1464-1468, Saint Peter’s Church, Leuven. 108 For instance: Master of the Turin Adoration, Passion Altarpiece, ca. 1500; Philadelpia Museum of Art. 109 See for instance Gerard David, Nativity, ca. 1485-1490, Museum of Art, Cleveland.

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city, with a clear emphasis on the distinctive architecture within a relatively transparent urban enclosure. Perhaps, given the predominantly religious nature of panel painting, a too-sturdy depiction of the urban fortification did not match the kind of idealisation that most altarpieces and devotional portraits aimed at. In a paradisiacal and peaceful state, the city was in no need of walls. 2.1.4.

Towers as social markers in the urban arena: the Bruges towerscapes (1475-1510)

Chapter II already demonstrated that throughout the fifteenth century in panel paintings the viewpoint from which the city was depicted gradually dropped, turning the profile view into the dominant mode of representation by the last quarter of the century (Graph 2.2). As discussed earlier in this chapter, this evolution did not lead to a greater focus on the exoskeleton of walls and gates, but on the contrary resulted in an increased prominence of those architectural features that surpassed the horizontality of the city wall. Embedded in the dense urban fabric, towers possessed a strong semiotic power. While the verticality of most public buildings (belfry, city hall, churches) was geared towards the unification and bonding of the urban community by literally surpassing its intrinsic heterogeneity, private towers, on the contrary, were raised as a highly individual architectural statement.110 The conspicuous staircase towers of city palaces functioned as socially distinctive beacons in the urban landscape that already from a distance caught the attention of both citizens and visitors.111 Throughout late medieval Europe, the spiny silhouette of the city inspired many artists.112 In early Netherlandish painting some anonymous late-fifteenth-century masters from Bruges and Brussels showed a particular predilection for towerscapes. In particular the environment of the Brussels Master of the View of Saint Gudula showed a peculiar fondness of the vertical, sometimes even inflating the city gates, belfry, church spires and other towers buildings to absurd proportions (Figure 3.8). In late-fifteenth-century Bruges, the Masters of the Legend of Saint Lucia and the Legend of Saint Ursula even started to use the city’s skyline as a sort of trademark (Figure 3.9). Also Gerard David integrated a

110 On urban towers as ‘architectural dominoes’ and their internal competition, see Bram Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Brussel, de ontwikkeling van een middeleeuwse stedelijke ruimte’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Ghent University, 2008), pp. 404-420; Aart Mekking, Het spel met toren en kapel: bouwen pro en contra Bourgondië, van Groningen tot Maastricht (Zutphen: Clavis, 1992). On Italian towerscapes, see Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination. City-states in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), pp. 32-33, 36. 111 A series of sketches of the Bruges skyline, made ca. 1550 by Anthonis van den Wyngaerde, shows numerous private towers (which van den Wyngaerde provided with written captions): the old and young Saint George’s Court, the Gros Court, the Watervliet Court, the Gistel Court, the Burgher’s Lodge, the towers of the nation houses at the Beurs square… (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum WA_B_I_331b_54-a). 112 For Italy, see for instance Ghirlandaio’s San Gimignano towerscape in The Funeral of Santa Fina, ca. 1475, Collegiata, San Gimignano; or Francesco Francia’s portrait of Bologna in the Madonna del Terremoto fresco (1505) in the Palazzo Comunale.

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Figure 3.8: Master of the View of Saint Gudula, Resurrection (detail), ca. 1490, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

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couple of the Bruges towers into two paintings. For the period 1480-1520 a total of 28 panel paintings113 can be traced in which (a part of ) the Bruges skyline is incorporated, among which 18 can be attributed to the Master of Saint Lucia, 8 to the Master of Saint Ursula and two to Gerard David. The precise composition of this corpus can be found in Annex 1. A unique, relatively homogeneous corpus of city portraits, the Bruges towerscapes were not conceived as an accurate topographical representation. The artists used a small selection of the Bruges towers in very diverse configurations (sometimes combined with the iconic Lake of Love or Minnewater114). Without a doubt, a number of towerscapes were composed à la tête du client, whereas others (especially those attributed to the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula) show a much more serial character. Art historians have variously interpreted this remarkable attention to the Bruges skyline, which is a very atypical feature among early Netherlandish paintings (cf. Chapter V). Panofsky understood this uninspired imitation of the local environment as a symptom of the artistic sclerosis that struck Bruges at the end of the fifteenth century. He rated the small masters of the turn of the century as ‘unpretentious artists [who] no longer endeavoured to move but to please’.115 According to Panofsky, the Bruges cityscapes had to flatter the civic pride of the patron in a period when major expansions of the belfry and the construction of various city palaces further embellished the skyline. Also Van Miegroet linked the Bruges school of the late fifteenth century to a fin de siècle archaism, which he related to the gloomy economic climate of the city.116 According to this ‘depression thesis’,117 artists sought to overcompensate for the city’s steady economic deterioration and political turmoil by presenting a picture of the opposite: a paradisical, calm, and prosperous city of Bruges. Others suggested that the towerscapes hallmarked the paintings as a Bruges product, a feature that must have been especially important for foreign patrons who liked to show off products from one of the most renowned artistic productions centres of Western Europe. The iconic towerscapes might also have added to the ‘souvenir’ value of the Bruges devotional paintings that were purchased by clients from all over Europe.118 According to Craig Harbison, the Bruges towerscapes not only functioned to express the urban self-image, but also to propagate a religious and social ideal. Harbison defines realism in early Netherlandish art as both fragmentary, 113 The sample was compiled as exhaustively as possible, based on Friedländer’s Early Netherlandish Painting, the Photo Library of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK/IRPA) in Brussels, and some auction catalogues. 114 A reference to the Minnewater (typified by a water basin with a wooden bridge flanked by two fortified towers) occurs in 12 (43%) of the 28 works. 115 Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, p. 346. 116 Van Miegroet, Gerard David, p. 105. 117 On the relation between art and economy, and for a criticism of Lopez’s famous depression thesis (which states that economic depressions often stimulated investment in art), see Wilfrid Brulez, Cultuur en getal. Aspecten van de relatie economie-maatschappij-cultuur in Europa tussen 1400 en 1800 (Amsterdam: Nederlandse vereniging tot beoefening van de sociale geschiedenis, 1986). 118 Borchert, De Eeuw van Van Eyck, p. 242, cat. 46.

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emblematic, and propagandistic. As such, realism in the Bruges towerscapes serves as fact (fragments of the Bruges topography), symbol (the expression of the civic pride by e.g. the belfry), and ideal (an incarnation of the Heavenly Jerusalem and an ideal society). Also Harbison links the insertion of fragments of the Bruges topography to the economic and political turbulences of the last two decades of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.119 Due to the uprising against Maximilian of Austria the international commercial community moved in 1488-1493 to Antwerp, with some trading nations never to return. Within this context of rebellion, depression, and urban rivalry, Harbison understands the idealised city portraits as a fierce expression of urban decorum and as a statement against (arch)ducal centralism.120 Harbison’s political analysis is valuable, yet debatable. First of all, the earliest Bruges towerscapes already start to appear in the late 1470s, well before the conflict with the central regime bursts open. Harbison even suggested a fancy for the painted Bruges towerscapes among the anti-ducal factions of the Bruges elite, as opposed to the pro-ducal patrons who favoured a more ‘neutral’ cityscape. In order to underpin his assertion, he wrongfully sees Jan Van Nieuwenhove,121 whose widow Anna Van Nieuwenhove was portrayed against a Bruges cityscape, as a champion of urban autonomy, while in reality this powerful Bruges patrician was a ducal councillor and supporter of the central regime.122 Also the suggested correlation with the declining urban economy does not hold water: none of the 28 Bruges towerscapes contains any significant reference to the renowned logistic and commercial infrastructure of the city. On the contrary, the towerscapes are placed in an idyllic countryside, devoid of roads, rivers, and traffic (see also Chapter II). Nevertheless, Harbison’s approach forms a valuable contribution to the interpretation of these cityscapes, by convincingly arguing that they were not simply mimetic, but very selective and manipulative. Moreover, Harbison expands the interpretation of the early Netherlandish city views to more earthly

119 Van Uytven situated the downfall of the Bruges economy in the years 1460-1470. Brulez, however, warned against a too pessimistic image of the late fifteenth-century Bruges economy. At least up to 1540 Bruges remained the second most important trade centre in the Netherlands (after Antwerp), an important financial centre and the staple port for Castilian wool (Raymond Van Uytven, ‘The stages of economic decline, late medieval Bruges’, in Peasants & Townsmen in Medieval Europe. Studia in Honorem Adriaen Verhulst, ed. by Adriaan Verhulst, Jean-Marie Duvosquel and Erik Thoen (Gent: Snoeck-Ducaju, 1995), pp. 259-269; Wilfrid Brulez, ‘Brugge en Antwerpen in de 15e en 16e eeuw: een tegenstelling?’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 83:1 (1970), 15-37). 120 Craig Harbison, ‘Fact, Symbol, Ideal: Roles for Realism in Early Netherlandish Painting’, in Petrus Christus in Renaissance Brugges. An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. by Marian W. Ainsworth (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), pp. 21-34. 121 Jan Van Nieuwenhove was everything short of an advocate of the urban resistance. See Jelle Haemers, Céline Van Hoorebeeck and Hanno Wijsman (eds), Entre la ville, la noblesse et l’État : Philippe de Clèves (1456-1528), homme politique et bibliophile (Turnhout : Brepols, 2007). 122 Harbison contrasts the epitaph of Anna Van Nieuwenhove (Master of the Legend of Saint-Ursula, ca. 1479, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) with an altarpiece made for the pro-ducal fur merchant Donaas De Moor, on which any reference to Bruges topography is lacking (Master of the Legend of Saint Lucia, ca. 1475, Thyssen-Bornemisza). For this argument, see Harbison, ‘Fact, Symbol, Ideal’, p. 30.

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Unclear 6

Saint Saviour5 Saint James1

Our Ladies 28

Saint Walburga 1 Jerusalem Chapel 4

Not identifiable profane74

Temple Jerusalem 1 Belfry 16

Not identifiable religious 14

Poortersloge 13

Gruuthuse Palace 1

House The Seven Towers 1

House of the German Hanse 1 Total: 166 towers

Graph 3.2: Frequency Bruges Towers (%) Gruuthuse Palace

3.6

Seven Towers

3.6

House of the German Hanse

3.6

Poortersloge

46.4

Belfry

57.1

Temple

3.6

Jerusalem Chapel

14.3

Saint Walburga

3.6

Saint James

3.6

Saint Savious

17.9

Our Ladies

100 0

20

40

60

80

100

Total: 28 towerscapes

concerns. By taking into account the potential of these towerscapes to evoke not only a religious (cf. Chapter I), but also a socio-political ideal image, one might better understand the remarkable popularity of this particular cityscape-motif among a very heterogeneous and international elite. The key to a better understanding of the kind of ideal society that the Bruges towerscapes stand for lies in an in-depth quantitative analysis of their composition. Graph 3.1 shows the incidence of a selection of towers in the corpus of 28 paintings (in absolute figures). The numeric predominance of secular towers is

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Figure 3.9: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Lamentation (detail), ca. 1485, Institute of Arts, Minneapolis. © Bridgeman Art Library.

immediately striking: 63,9 per cent are profane, versus 32,5 per cent religious. An average towerscape consists of six towers, of which four secular and two religious. Graph 3.2 indicates the occurrence of the major Bruges towers in each of the 28 towerscapes in relative figures. The configuration of the towerscapes shows an almost endless variety, with the Our Lady’s Church as a stalwart beacon of the Bruges Christian community. This imposing brick church tower figures in all 28 cityscapes (100%) and eclipses the belfry as the most powerful icon of the city, both in number and sheer size. It goes without saying that the predominance of the Our Lady’s tower relates to the devotional context in which these cityscapes were embedded, yet it should also temper our modern idolatry of the belfry as the foremost symbol of civic identity. Nevertheless, the prominence of the Our Lady’s Church was the major exception in the predominantly secular towerscapes. However, except for the iconic Our Ladies Tower, the majority of the buildings are secular, with a relatively high ratio of the Belfry (57,1 per cent) and the Poortersloge (46,4 per cent).123 This triad formed the core of numerous towerscapes, typically completed with a variety of secular or religious towers. Strikingly high is the number of private towers, many of which refer to city palaces, such as the Gruuthuse Palace, the House with the Seven Towers, the palace of the ducal officer Jean de Gros, and the De Baenst palace (or Saint George’s Court). Fewer in number, but showing a great variety,

123 For the main features of the Bruges townscapes, see: Mark Ryckaert, Historische Stedenatlas van België: Brugge (Brussel: Gemeentekrediet van België, 1991).

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are the remaining church towers: Saint Saviour and the Jerusalem Chapel both figure several times, whereas Saint James and Saint Walburga appear only once. Furthermore, many smaller generic towers mark the townscapes, of which 84,1 per cent are secular (44,3 per cent of the totality of towers). Considerable differences distinguish the towerscapes developed by the different masters. The Master of the Legend of Saint Lucia composed by far the most diverse and elaborated skylines. An excellent illustration of such an extensive towerscape can be found in the Minneapolis Lamentation Triptych (ca. 1485; Figure 3.9 – Plate 11). Besides the central triad of the Our Lady’s Church, the Belfry, and the Poortersloge, and one additional church tower (the Jerusalem Chapel), this city view consists of predominantly secular tower buildings (eleven in total). To the right of the Belfry, the slender tower of the Oosterlingenhuis immediately catches the eye. This building housed since ca. 1458 the German Hanse and went through a major renovation in 1478-1481.124 Perhaps, the patron of this triptych should be situated in the German merchant community (cf. infra).125 A myriad of small tower constructions allude to the private palaces that had gained prominence in the Bruges landscape in the course of the fifteenth century. By means of a distinctive residential building policy a very diverse elite of merchants, ducal officers, high clergy, and regional noblemen encroached on the public space of the city. A comparison with the city map by Marcus Gheeraerts (1562, cf. Chapter V) and the topographical images in Antonius Sanderus’ Flandria Illustrata (1640-1644) allows the identification of many of these private edifices. Between the Belfry and the Oosterlingenhuis appears the nebulous silhouette of the Seven Towers, an imposing residence that had been the property of the powerful hosteller family Bonin126 since the late thirteenth century. In the fifteenth century an ornamental gable and seven small turrets were added to the original stone building. In 1425 the house The Seven Towers was owned by Jacob Bonin. In 1494 the Spanish merchant Gomez de Soria took residence in the city palace, which remained throughout the sixteenth century among members of the Castilian Nation. The private residence obviously functioned as a focal point of the international mercantile community in Bruges.127 Furthermore, the Minneapolis Lamentation also contains several architectural references to an elite of ducal officers and courtiers that was omnipresent in late fifteenth-century Bruges. The small tower 124 On this building, see Firmin De Smidt, Het Oosterlingenhuis te Brugge en zijn ontwerper Jan van der Poele (Antwerpen: De Sikkel, 1948). 125 It is worth mentioning that a quite detailed and faithful image of the Oosterlingenhuis prominently figures in the background of an anonymous Visitation, painted in Bruges ca. 1500 (Kunsthaus Zürich, Schenkung August Abegg). It is tempting to understand this topographical insertion as a means to customise the generic image of Mary and Elisabeth for a German customer. 126 In the thirteenth century the Bonins were member of the merchant guild of the London Hanse and of the guild of the hostellers and brokers. Throughout the thirteenth to fifteenth century the family held many functions in the bench of aldermen and burgomaster. See Andries Van den Abeele and Michaël Catry, Makelaars en handelaars. Van middeleeuwse nering der makelaars naar moderne kamer van koophandel in het XVIIde-eeuwse Brugge, met de lijst van de leden (1281-1795) en van de besturen (1340-1791) (Brugge, Kamen van Koophandel, 1992). 127 Luc Devliegher, De huizen te Brugge (Tielt: Lannoo, 1975), pp. 125-129.

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Figure 3.10: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Saint Nicolas Altarpiece (detail central panel), 15011505, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel.

with onion-shaped rooftop immediately to the right of the Poortersloge closely resembles the turret that adorned the urban residence of Jean de Gros, who was appointed in 1472 by Charles the Bold contrôleur des domains et finances. A nobleman and loyal supporter of the ducal regime, Jean de Gros climbed to the top of Burgundian court society. He married a niece of chancellor Guillaume Hugonet. He was also treasurer of the Golden Fleece in 1478-1484. The de Gros family was a prolific maecenas of the nearby Saint James’s Church. Combining a career in the Burgundian state apparatus with a steep social promotion, Jean de Gros can be considered as a prototypical patron of high-end panel painting. His portrait is preserved in a small devotional diptych by Rogier Van der Weyden.128 On the central panel of the Altarpiece of Saint Nicolas, painted ca. 1501-1505 by the Master of Saint Lucia (Figure 3.10), the resemblance between one tower in the cityscape and the onion-shaped tower of the de Gros Court is even more striking.129

128 John Oliver Hand, Catherine Metzger and Ron Spronk (eds), Prayers and Portraits. Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), cat. 37, p. 246. 129 It concerns the tower left to the Belfry. Demolished in 1764, little iconography of the late Gothic Court de Gros exists. The most important iconographic sources are the city plan of Marcus Gheerarts (1562) and Anthonis Van de Wyngaerde’s drawings from around 1550 (denominated by the artist as ‘Feri de Gros’).

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Another small tower that takes a prominent place in the city views of the Master of Saint Lucia can be identified as a clear allusion to the Saint George’s Court, a splendid residence built ca. 1454 by Jan III De Baenst (not to be confused with the seat of the Crossbow shooting guild).130 This city palace, better known as the sixteenth-century Watervliet Court, comprised an octagonal tower topped by a steep spire with tiny dormer windows. A very similar tower figures in a total in seven town views of the Lucia Master, including the Minneapolis Lamentation (immediately to the right of Our Lady’s) and the Altarpiece of Saint Nicolas (to the left of the Belfry). Of a relatively humble noble origin, the De Baenst family witnessed a considerable social mobility throughout the fifteenth century, based on marital strategies and ducal office. Originally from the region of Sluis and Cadsand (to the north of Bruges), the family successfully integrated in both the Bruges political elite and the Burgundian state apparatus. From 1441 onward, Jan III De Baenst held a regular seat in the bench of aldermen and was elected several times as burgomaster. Within a reasonably short time the De Baenst family had become part of Bruges high society. The family soon appears in the Society of the White Bear and the elitist confraternities of Our Lady of the Dry Tree and of the Holy Blood. In 1454 Jan III De Baenst married Margaretha, daughter of the Colard de Fever, a Bruges patrician who had moved up to trésorier général of Philip the Good.131 The widespread connections of his in-laws undoubtedly propelled Jan De Baenst’s career at the ducal court. Presumably around 1460 he was appointed as a member of the Ducal Council and from 1469 onward he had become courtier at the Burgundian court.132 An influential mediator between the local Bruges elite and the court elite, Jan de Baenst regularly offered his Bruges residence at the disposal of the municipal government for hosting important guests and organising lavish banquets.133 Another meeting place of the local elite and court intimates was the impressive Gruuthuse Palace, whose construction began around 1425.134 The peculiar polygonal tower of the Gruuthuse palace, flanked by an elegant round turret and topped by an open gallery, figures in the Detroit Madonna of the Rose Garden (ca. 1480), a panel attributed to the Lucia Master and linked by Ann Roberts to the patronage of Lodewijk of Gruuthuse (1422-1492) (Figure 3.11).135

130 The name Saint George’s Court (Sint-Jorishof) refers to the seigneury of Sint-Joris-ten-Distel, an important property of the De Baenst family near Beernem. 131 Margaretha de Fever was also a granddaughter of the illustrious Pieter Bladelin, a high-ranking ducal officer who was also based in Bruges and most famous as the patron of the Middelburg Triptych by Rogier Van der Weyden (cf. Chapter V). 132 Frederik Buylaert, ‘Sociale mobiliteit bij stedelijke elites in laatmiddeleeuws Vlaanderen. Een gevalstudie over de Vlaamse familie De Baenst’, Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis, 8 (2005), 201-251. 133 In 1471 the city accounts mention the costs of a banquet (heerlijke maaltijd) in the Saint George’s Court. For other references, see Brigitte Beernaert, Jan D’Hondt and Noël Geirnaert, Het Hof van Watervliet (Cahiers van Levend Archief. Brugse huizen, 6, 2006). 134 Luc Devliegher, ‘De bouwgeschiedenis van Gruuthuse’, West-Vlaanderen, 1957, 10-13. 135 Ann Roberts, ‘The City and the Convent: The Virgin of the Rose Garden by the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy’, Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 72:1-2 (1998), 56-65.

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Figure 3.11: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Madonna of the Rose Garden, ca. 1480, Institute of Art, Detroit.

Yet, perhaps one of the most striking features of the oeuvre of the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucia is the omnipresence of the polygonal tower with double lantern of the Poortersloge (sometimes in a more generic version, but unmistakably recognisable as such). Out of the 18 variants of the Bruges skyline

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that figure in the oeuvre of the Lucia Master, 13 include a clear reference the Poortersloge or Burgher’s Lodge. As discussed earlier in this chapter, the Poortersloge was built around 1400 at the commercial heart of the city. Its location could not be more select, near the waterfront, a stone’s throw from the bustling Bourse Square where the Florentine, Genoese, and Venetians had their nation house or loge. The adjoining streets constituted a luxury district, teeming with wine taverns, goldsmiths, and spice merchants. Most likely, the Burgher’s Lodge was conceived as a pendant of the foreign nation houses, such as the Genoese loggia that was built a couple of years earlier.136 Probably an initiative of an inner-circle of the Bruges mercantile elite, the Poortersloge was also the seat of the chivalrous jousting Society of the White Bear. The exact composition of this Association cannot be reconstructed, but their jousting event, organised annually around Easter, assembled in 1440 a mix of 80 per cent rich, non-noble brokers, entrepreneurs, and merchants, and 20 per cent of old, ennobled families from Bruges and the Bruges hinterland. The annual joust of the White Bear attracted on a regular basis high-placed courtiers, both as spectator and as participant. Participants, for instance, included Jean de la Tremoille, Pierre de Luxembourg (count of Saint-Pol), Adolf of Kleef, Philippe de Lalaing, Antoine de Bourgogne, and in 1416 and 1427 even duke Philip the Good himself.137 The distinguished participants and spectators had ample opportunities to meet, not only on the market square where the actual spectacle was performed, but also in the adjoining taverns, the city hall, the private residence of the forestier (the actual winner of the joust), and of course the Poortersloge. The Society of the White Bear supported the integration of the diverse urban elites within the city, as much as it was able to bridge the social distance between the common ‘urban achievers’ and the noble court elite.138 Most of its members must be situated on what Frederik Buylaert has called a social continuum between the successful bourgeois of recent ascent (butchers, hoteliers, traders and powerful masters from the luxury craft guilds) on the one hand, and the established, noble families with close ties to the ducal court on the other.139 The Burgher’s Lodge did not function solely as the premises of a respectable jousting company. Throughout the year, the very diverse social upper layer of the city met at set times to celebrate, for instance, the Feast of the Epiphany, or to engage in literary and theatrical performances. The renowned Gruuthuse

136 One of the oldest references to the Burgher’s Lodge (1409) uses the term ‘Vlaeminghenloge’ or ‘lodge of the Flemings’ (Toon De Meester, ‘De ontstaansgeschiedenis van de Brugse Poortersloge’, Brugs Ommeland, 53 (2013), 32-54). 137 Andries Van den Abeele, Het Ridderlijk Gezelschap van de Witte Beer. Steekspelen te Brugge tijdens de late Middeleeuwen (Brugge: Walleyn, 2000). 138 Andrew Brown, ‘Urban jousts in the later middle ages: the White Bear of Bruges’, Belgisch tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 78 (2000), 315-330. 139 Frederik Buylaert, ‘La Noblesse urbaine à Bruges. Naissance d’un nouveau groupe social?’, in Les nobles et la ville dans l’espace francophone (XIIe-XVIe siècles), ed. by Thierry Dutour (Paris: Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2010), pp. 264-266.

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manuscript (1395-1410, cf. supra) probably functioned as a collection of songs and poems that were performed in the Burgher’s Lodge and in the ambience of the Society of the White Bear.140 Since the manuscript bears his heraldic device, the volume must at a certain point have entered the collection of Lodewijk van Gruuthuse, a scion of the Flemish high nobility, ducal councilor, member of the Golden Fleece, notorious bibliophile, and an ardent participant of the joust of the White Bear. Several elite literary circles in fifteenth-century Bruges rallied urban elites with high noblemen of the ducal court, such as Roeland van Uutkerke.141 Throughout the fifteenth century the Burgher’s Lodge was also used by the municipal government as a reception and banqueting hall to receive, for instance, foreign delegations. From the 1440s onward the urban government was increasingly involved in the maintenance and exploitation of the building (and eventually became its owner around 1500). It is quite clear that the Lodge soon – perhaps even from its very creation – functioned as a ‘light’ version of the city hall. Especially for smaller, more intimate events, the Lodge was a much-frequented venue. The fifteenth-century city accounts refer on a regular basis to banquets (heerlijke maeltijden), which also high noblemen, such as the Lord of Gruuthuse, the Lord of Praat, the count of Etampes, and the Lord of Roubaix attended.142 The Poorterloge, however, did not have an exclusively private character. Perhaps the most frivolous and inclusive form of conviviality it facilitated was gambling. Towards the end of the fifteenth and during the sixteenth century the Lodged functioned on an almost permanent basis as a gambling den.143 All these events of elite conviviality were not exclusively restricted to the Poortersloge, yet within the late medieval Low Countries it was a unique feature that all these functions were concentrated in such a conspicuous building.144 Matchless in the Low Countries, the Poortersloge cannot be understood apart from a range of constructions that were built in numerous cosmopolitan centers throughout late-medieval Europe, and that showed several functional, architectural, and etymological similarities with the Bruges Lodge. To a certain degree the Poortersloge did resemble the Spanish Lonja (Barcelona, Valencia, Palma de Mallorca), the Loge de Mer in Perpignan, or the Loggia della Mercantia (in Italian cities such as Bologna, Ancona or Siena). Even though these places were primarily used for trading, contracting, and commercial jurisdiction (which 140 Brown and Dumolyn, ‘Brugge rond 1400’. 141 Marc Boone, ‘Une famille au service de l´Etat Bourguignon naissant. Roland et Jean d´Uutkerke, nobles flamands dans l´entourage de Philippe le Bon’, Revue du Nord, 77 (1995), 233-255. 142 Buylaert, De Rock and Dumolyn, ‘La Loge des Bourgeois de Bruges’. 143 Around 1500, a couple of years after the Society of the White Bear was dissolved, the Lodge degraded into an ordinary casino, prompting the municipal government in 1509 to issue a new set of internal rules, in order to attract again ‘good and notable men’ (Buylaert, De Rock et al., ‘De Poortersloge van Brugge’, p. 280; Buylaert, De Rock and Dumolyn, ‘La Loge des Bourgeois de Bruges’). 144 Only around 1480 the Leuven magistrate erected a more or less similar structure called, with obvious chivalrous overtones, the Tafelrond or ‘Round Table’ (Marc Nevens, ‘De macht is ijdel: 500 jaar Tafelrond’, Maandelijks tijdschrift uitgegeven door en voor het personeel van de Nationale Bank van België, 2 (1987), 12-28).

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was not – at least not in a formal manner – the case for the Poortersloge), they also played an important role as places of social meeting, leisure, and cultural exchange.145 Also in many English towns, local merchant guilds started to construct from the thirteenth century onward their own ‘guildhall’ as the seat of an elite brotherhood that assembled merchants and gentry. Like the Poortersloge, many of these guildhalls started to function as a proto-town hall, and in some cases eventually became the actual city hall.146 Yet, the similarities with the Bruges Poortersloge are most striking when looking at a type of building that appeared from the thirteenth century in many Hanseatic towns, and that is sometimes called Artushof (Curia regis Artus or ‘Arthur’s Court’), but also Kumpenhaus, Junkerhof, Georgenhof, or Schwarzhaupterhaus. As the seat of one or several exclusive brotherhoods (originally often under the patronage of Saint George) they functioned as informal meeting places for local long-distance merchants, foreign merchants, and regional noblemen. The social activities organised in these places – often in a pseudo-chivalric atmosphere – were very similar to those that took place in the Poortersloge: literary events, banquets, reception of official delegations, gambling, and drinking.147 In this respect, it is telling that a large altarpiece, commissioned in Bruges in 1484 by the Confraternity of the Black Heads (or Schwarzhaupter) of Tallinn, has been attributed to none other than the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy.148 To sum up, it can be stated that the Poortersloge functioned as a locus of elite sociability and conviviality par excellence. It was a focal point of high-end networks – commercial, socio-political, and cultural – that extended far beyond the borders of the city. The place functioned as an ideal ambient to lobby (both at the ducal court and the municipal institutions), to discuss business deals, and to arrange marriages. The Lodge was a locus of informal power practice, very much as the ‘lobby’ of an expensive hotel or a freemason’s lodge (both etymologically affiliated with the term ‘loggia’). More than any other place in late medieval Bruges, the Poortersloge represented the heterogeneous elite that intensively patronised high-end panel painting. The prominent position of the 145 Olivia Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging , Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge: University Press, 2003), pp. 155, 186. For the most recent literature on the Spanish lonja, see Joaquín Bérchez and Fernando Marías, ‘Las lonjas de Mercado en España: de Barcelona a Sevilla’, in Public Buildings in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Konrad Ottenheim, Monique Chatenet and Krista De Jonge (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 201-220. For further references, see Buylaert, De Rock and Dumolyn, ‘La Loge des Bourgeois de Bruges’. 146 Saint Mary’s Hall in Coventry, for instance, not only functioned as a local political headquarters, but also as a meeting place for an supra-regional elite, as many English kings and notables of other cities were member of the Saint Mary’s Guild (W. B. Stephens, ‘The City of Coventry: Crafts and industries: Medieval industry and trade’, in A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 8: The City of Coventry and Borough of Warwick (Londen: Victoria County History, 1969), pp. 141-146, 151-157). 147 Marie-Louise Pelus-Kaplan, ‘Merchants and immigrants in Hanseatic cities, c. 1500-1700’, in Cities and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400-1700, ed. by Donatella Calabi and Stephen Christensen (Cambridge: University Press, 2007), p. 150. For further references, see Buylaert, De Rock and Dumolyn, ‘La Loge des Bourgeois de Bruges’. 148 Anu Mänd, ‘The Altarpiece of the Virgin Mary of the Confraternity of the Black Heads in Tallinn: Dating, Donors, and the Double Intercession’, Acta Historiae Artium Balticae, 2 (2007), 35-53.

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Figure 3.12: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with the Defeated Emperor, 1475-1500, Museum of Art, Philadelphia.

Poortersloge within the corpus of Bruges towerscapes made by the Lucia Master points out the key position of the Lodge in the mindset of those who purchased these paintings. The selective ‘signposting’ of architectural references to this hotspot of elite interaction, combined with various allusions on the private palaces that adorned the urban landscape, enabled the panels to signal subtly the exquisite social status of their patrons. In a single case the Lucia Master even ‘stretched’ the tower of the Poortersloge to the size of the Belfry (Figure 3.12).149 The Bruges cityscapes of the Lucia Master condensed the city into a monumental sociopolitical arena, in which worthies of all sorts could claim both spatially and socially a distinctive place. Within these town views the focus lies on the monumental dimension of the city that surpasses the triviality of common urban routines. Once again one notes the complete absence of any reference whatsoever to the logistical apparatus and commercial infrastructure of the famous port city (cf. Chapter II). Without a doubt, these early Netherlandish pendants of the Italian città ideale have to be understood as a product of the dense social networks that converged in late medieval Bruges. Both the ample opportunities for social promotion and the intense social competition stood as the basis of the ‘creative environment’ in which these socially distinctive panels were produced. The highly selective Bruges towerscapes indicate the ‘aristocratic’ landscapes

149 On the concepts of ‘signposting’ and ‘stretching’, see the Introduction.

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that came to dominate Flemish painting towards the end of the century and that will be discussed into greater detail in the next chapter. By depicting Bruges as a utopian, self-sufficient island of urbanity in a paradisical landscape, the Lucia Master created a very aristocratic vision of the city. Unfortunately, very little is known about the patrons/buyers of the panels of the Lucia Master.150 The only altarpiece that contains a heraldic reference to its patrons has not revealed all its secrets. So far, the three coats of arms on the Legend of Saint Lucia (ca. 1480, Saint James’s Church, Bruges) have not been identified with certainty.151 The Detroit Madonna of the Rose Garden (Figure 3.11) has been persuasively associated with the Gruuthuse family. Until 1785, the panel was part of the collection of the Bruges Colettine Poor Clares, a religious institution founded by Lodewijk van Gruuthuse in 1469. Given the prominent place of the tower of the Gruuthuse palace in the background, it can be assumed that the Madonna of the Rose Garden was a commission of Lodewijk van Gruuthuse.152 Furthermore, quite a lot of circumstantial evidence ties the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucia to a clientele of foreign merchants. For instance the early attestation or the stylistic Nachleben of some works of the Lucia Master in Italy or Spain points to a foreign patron. Ann Roberts convincingly linked an altarpiece of Saint Catherine in an Italian collection (late fifteenth century, Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa) to the Baldovini, a Pisan family of notaries with connections in Bruges.153 Likewise, a panel of the Spanish Master of Portillo attests to the artistic influence of the Lucia Master in late fifteenth-century Spain. That anonymous Spanish master recuperated the composition of the Saint Nicolas Altarpiece (Figure 3.10), including the town view, which he neutralised into a generic cityscape.154 To close, the configuration of the Bruges cityscapes might contain some valuable clues to the identity of the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucia. This intriguing question has puzzled art historians already for decades.155 After a painstaking investigation of the archives of the Bruges Guild of Saint Luke, Albert Janssens suggested in 2004 the identity of the Lucia Master with Frans Vanden 150 We refer in first instance to the unpublished PhD dissertation of Ann Roberts that can be consulted in the library of the KIK/IRPA in Brussels: Ann Roberts, The Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy: a catalogue and critical essay (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1982). 151 James Weales has attributed one of the coats of arms to the Blanckaert family (Anonieme Vlaamse Primitieven (Exhibition Catalogue Groeningemuseum, Bruges, 1969), p. 206). This family has been attested since the late fourteenth century as a noble lineage in the Liberty of Bruges (Frederik Buylaert, Repertorium van de Vlaamse adel (ca. 1350 - ca. 1500) (Ghent: Academia Press, 2011), p. 84). 152 Roberts, ‘The City and the Convent’. 153 Ann Roberts, ‘North Meets South in the Convent: The Altarpiece of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Pisa’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 1:2 (1987), 187-206. 154 Borchert, De eeuw van Van Eyck, compare cat. 46 with cat. 122. 155 Ann Roberts attempted in 1982 to identify the Lucia Master as the painter-architect Jean de Hervy, even though she deemed the many commissions Hervy received from the ducal court as incongruous with the essentially ‘bourgeois’ clientele of the Lucia Master. As has been argued in this chapter, however, the patrons of the Lucia Master were much more closely linked to the court milieu than was assumed by Roberts (Roberts, The Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy’, pp. 194-195).

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Pitte.156 Even though solid evidence is lacking and Janssens’s arguments are far from flawless,157 this identification seems to be supported by the afore-mentioned findings on the clientele of the Lucia Master and the ‘aristocratic’ vision that many of his cityscapes exude. Frans Vanden Pitte remarkably fits the picture. Born in Bruges, he worked his way up to the board of the Guild of Saint Luke. The municipal government regularly made use of his services, for instance, for the decoration and extension programme of the Belfry tower (of which the consecutive phases are meticulously documented in the Bruges towerscapes of the Lucia Master), for the decoration of the city hall, and for the painting of some city gates and fortification towers. Furthermore, from ca. 1475 onward, Frans Vande Pitte also received on a regular basis commissions from the Society of the White Bear. He was responsible for the decoration of the yearly joust and banquet, and in 1480 he fabricated a large panel with the coats of arms of all 88 ‘forestiers’ of the Society since its foundation, which was installed in the Poortersloge. As a privileged painter and decorator of the Society of the White Bear, Frans Vande Pitte must have had access to an elite clientele of local patricians, foreign merchants, and ducal officers who gathered in and around the Poortersloge. It was precisely this category of patrons who fancied the Bruges towerscapes of the Master of Saint Lucy. In contrast to the elaborated town views of the Master of Saint Lucy, the eight preserved Bruges towerscapes of the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula are much more concise. As a rule, they are composed of the Our Lady’s Church, the Belfry, the Lake of Love, and a variety of generic towers. It is unclear whether these rather inconspicuous city views were a pastiche of the eye-catching Bruges skylines attributed to the Lucia Master. What is certain, however, is that the Ursula Master worked for a very similar clientele. In 1480 the Ursula Master painted the epitaph of Anne De Blasere, spouse of Jan van Nieuwehove, a leading figure within the Bruges political establishment (cf. supra).158 A very similar work, which contains more or less the same configuration of Bruges towers, was made around the same time for the Florentine banker Ludovico Portinari, a nephew of the famous factor of the Medici bank in Bruges, Tommaso Portinari (Philadelpia Museum of Art).159 Most likely, these limited Bruges cityscapes were used by the Ursula Master to establish a much more general link between the patron and the port town, without the intention to highlight a particular social topography. 156 Albert Janssens, ‘De Meesters van de Lucia- en de Ursulalegende. Een poging tot identificatie’, Handelingen van het Genootschap van Geschiedenis, 141 (2004), 278-331. 157 Janssens departs from the questionable assumption that all the works that have been attributed by Max Friedländer to the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy are made by one and the same master. Based on this monolithic oeuvre, he tries to reconstruct the termini post / ante quem that mark off his ‘active years’. 158 Maximiliaan Martens, ‘The Epitaph of Anna van Nieuwenhove’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 27 (1992), 37-42. 159 Paula Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence. The Impact of Netherlandish Painting , 1400-1500 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 70-71. Marlier suggests that the panel was made for the Portinari Chapel in Santa Maria Nuova in Florence: Georges Marlier, ‘Le Maître de la Légende de sainte Ursule’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (1964), 5-42 (pp. 15-16).

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Figure 3.13: Gerard David, Madonna and Child (Wrightsman Madonna), 1515-1520, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

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Figure 3.14: Master of the View of Saint Gudula, The Sermon of Saint Gery, 1475-1500, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Gerard David, in turn, twice incorporated a Bruges town view into his panels. Atypically, he opted for a predominantly ecclesiastical towerscape. This choice was obviously motivated by the clerical profile of the patron. Around 1510-1520 David portrayed a monk (most likely an Augustinian) in between the isolated

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towers of Our Lady’s and Saint Saviour’s (London, National Gallery).160 The New York Wrightsman Madonna (1515-1520; Figure 3.13) comprises a much more elaborate cityscape, featuring Our Lady’s Church and Saint James’s Church. Also here the ecclesiastical focus does not really surprise, since the patronage of the panel must to be situated in the environment of the Bruges Charterhouse of Genadedal.161 The Madonna with four angels is set a porch that gives out onto a hortus conclusus in which a Carthusian wanders, secluded from the ‘worldly desert’ that looms behind the brick walls. Here, the Bruges cityscape clearly functions as a counterpoint for the spiritual monastic life (cf. Chapter I). Also In Brussels painting the tendency towards monumentalisation and idealisation is apparent. Not only did the workshop of the Master of the Views of Saint Gudula produce a series of stretched towerscapes, but the Brussels artist often depicts the urban interior as an aristocratic arena of display. In Clothing the Naked (ca. 1470) the typical Flémalleqsue motif of the shop with copper scales is well hidden in a tiny street to the left, while an imposing complex of city palaces fills the scene (Figure 2.13). Both the architectural setting and the costumes of the figures who are aiding the poor clearly situate the gesture of charity within the urban elite and/or courtly sphere. Likewise, The Sermon of Saint Gery (1475-1500) depicts the neighbourhood of lofty city palaces that surrounded the Brussels Church of Saint Gudula (Figure 3.14). Both panels represent the city as a place where the urban elite can display their magnificence, both by means of conspicuous residences and by noble deeds, such as public forms of poor relief. 3. The ducal perspective on the urban theatre Towards the end of the Middle Ages the court increasingly penetrated into the urban landscape. In the densely urbanised southern Low Countries the exercise of princely power required a more permanent integration in the urban space and social fabric. By the Burgundian era, the city, not the traditionally feudal countryside, had become the ??biotope par excellence of the princes. In the course of the fourteenth century the counts of Flanders started to develop a series of lofty city palaces in the county’s major towns, in addition to the traditional military castellum, which soon lost its residential function. In Bruges, the ancient comital stronghold on the Burg (with the Love residence) was gradually abandoned for the Prinsenhof in the Noordzandstraat, which the Burgundian dukes expanded into an extensive complex of hôtels, five courtyards, servants’ buildings, enclosed gardens, chapel, menagerie of exotic animals, library, swimming pool, bath

160 A. Veys, ‘Portrait of an ecclesiastic’, Album English. Studies over de kerkelijke en de kunstgeschiedenis van West-Vlaanderen (Bruges: De Tempel, 1952), pp. 423-432. 161 Ainsworth, From Van Eyck to Bruegel, no. 81.

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house, and Mint.162 In Ghent a similar shift occurred from the Castle of the Counts (since the ninth century the comital seat in the city) to the much more comfortable Posteerne and Hof ten Walle (Prinsenhof) residences. In Lille, Louis of Male, count of Flanders, had acquired in 1380 the Hôtel de la Poterne from a local knight. Soon, the site was developed into a multi-functional complex, and the hotel became the major residence for the ducal household in the city, until the latter moved around 1463 to the striking new Palais Rihours.163 The Poterne, however, continued to function as a powerful beacon of the Burgundian state in the urban landscape, as it housed from 1413 onward the central counting house for the duke’s northern dominions, the chambre des comptes. Even though the counts of Flanders and the dukes of Burgundy remained itinerant princes who constantly moved from one place to another, the development of these urban dwellings consolidated their physical and symbolic presence in the urban landscape. Moreover, it triggered the settlement of various court officers and noblemen in the immediate vicinity of the ducal hôtel. The spatial infiltration of the court into the city inevitably entailed a growing economic dependency of a select group of craftsmen and merchants who took care of the supply and maintenance of the ducal residences. By means of a widespread a scheme of clientelism, the court sought to bind a myriad of urban stakeholders, ranging from building contractors to butchers.164 However, the effects of the ducal court on the urban consumption pattern – both quantitatively and qualitatively – should not be exaggerated. Peter Stabel calculated that the passage of the ambulatory ducal court, combined with the expenses of the more home-loving retinues of the duchess and the comte de Nevers or Charolais, had a significant – but often temporary – impact on the economic output of the city. Especially for smaller residential cities the expenses of the princely courts could account for a considerable amount of the ‘urban income’, yet court demand was as a rule irregular and unpredictable, which rendered durable economic effects impos-

162 Around 1300 the new residence of the counts of Flanders was developed in the area between the Noordzandstraat and the Moerstraat. In the course of the fourteenth century a first living tower, a hall, and a chapel were constructed. In the Burgundian era the Prinsenhof was thouroughly reconstructed. In the sixteenth and early seventheenth century the Prinsenhof continued to function as a reception venue for important visitors. The core of the complex was sold in 1649 (Bieke Hillewaert, ‘The Bruges Prinsenhof: Absence of Splendour’, in Staging the Court of Burgundy, ed. by Till-Holger Borchert, Wim Blockmans, Nele Gabriëls et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 25-31; Luk Beeckmans, Brigitte Beernaert et al. (eds), Het Prinsenhof in Brugge (Brugge: Van de Wiele, 2007). 163 Graeme Small, ‘Vizualising the state in the towns and cities of the Burgundian Netherlands: The Chambre des comptes at Lille, 1466’, in Marquer la ville. Signes, traces, empreintes du pouvoir (XIIIe-XVIe siècle), ed. by Patrick Boucheron and Jean-Philippe Genet (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2013), pp. 483-511. 164 Marc Boone and Thérèse de Hemptinne, ‘Espace urbain et ambitions princières: les presences matérielles de l’autorité princière dans le Gand médiéval (12e siècle-1540)’, in Zeremoniell und Raum, ed. by Werner Paravicini (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1997), pp. 279-304; Boone, A la recherche d’une modernité civique, pp. 113-114; Lecuppre-Desjardin, ‘La ville: creuset des cultures urbane et princière’, p. 292.

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sible.165 More and more, court supply got organised within the urban network around the leading commercial metropolis of Bruges, which became – besides some other specialized centres – the leading market for luxury goods. In the course of the sixteenth century Brussels became the main residential city and the political capital of the Habsburg Low Countries, supplying most of the court demand.166 This growing integration of the ducal court in urban society not only had spatial and economic implications; it was also a ceremonial and political phenomenon. On very diverse occasions, such as Joyous Entries and other public ceremonies, manifestations of ducal power could take possession of larger parts of the city, or even the town as a whole. The city gate formed the first physical and symbolic threshold to the city, by which the prince could enter and take possession of the town. During official entries, the duke and his retinue often followed a fixed route that passed by the political and religious highlights of the city. Sometimes, the prince deliberately deviated from this customary track, making an unmistakable political statement. In 1458, during his first entry in Ghent after the city had revolted against the central authority in 1449-1453, Philip the Good went linea recta to the part of the city where the Prinsenhof and the residences of many ducal officers were situated, breaching a long-standing tradition.167 Besides Joyous Entries, various princely marriages, funerals, chapters of the Order of the Golden Fleece, civic processions, tournaments, and other spectacles offered the court the opportunity to state its presence in urban society. During some of these events, such as the pas d’armes, the urban market place became the exclusive domain of the chivalrous universe of the court, reducing the city to a mere piece of scenery and the citizens to mere spectators. After these heroic exploits had enthralled the urban audience, the princely extravaganza continued within the private confines of the ducal residence.168 Numerous miniatures and tapestries created for the duke and his entourage represent the city as a passive backdrop; on many other occasions the interaction between the courtly and civic sphere was much more intimate.169 During marriage celebrations or Joyous Entries, for instance, a plethora of

165 Peter Stabel, ‘For Mutual Benefit? Court and City in the Burgundian Low Countries’, in The Court as a Stage. England and the Low Countries in the later Middle Ages, ed. by Simon Gunn and Antheun Janse (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2006), pp. 101-117. 166 Peter Stabel and Luc Duerloo, ‘Du réseau urbain à la ville capitale? La cour et la ville aux Pays-Bas du bas Moyen Âge aux temps modernes’, in La cour et la ville dans l’Europe du Moyen Âge et des Temps Modernes, ed. by Léonard Courbon and Denis Menjot (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 37-52. 167 Boone and de Hemptinne, ‘Espace urbain et ambitions princières’, pp. 297-299. 168 From 1454 onwards the absolute top of the Burgundian court (chamberlains, ducal bastards, Charles the Bold himself ) started to participate at these pas d’armes (Eric Bousmar, ‘Jousting at the Court of Burgundy. The Pas d’armes: Shifts in Scenario, Location, and Recruitment’, in Staging the Court of Burgundy, ed. by Till-Holger Borchert, Wim Blockmans, Nele Gabriëls et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 75-84). 169 Jan Hirschbiegel and Gabriel Zeilinger, ‘Urban Space Divided? The Encounter of Civic and Courtly Spheres in Late-Medieval Towns’, in Urban space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age, ed. by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), pp. 481-503.

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ducal and civic colours, banners, heraldry, and tableaux vivants seized the public space. This enchanting mix of material culture and ritual, spatial and theatrical performances embodied a multi-layered political communication between duke and city.170 On a socially more exclusive level, a wide variety of jousts, tournaments, and shooting competitions made use of the public urban space as an arena in which court and urban elites could interact – and to a large extent merge into a heterogeneous aristocracy that shared a common material culture and habitus. During a couple of decades, in particular during the reigns of Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, the ducal court pursued a policy of unification and socio-political integration of the urban elites into the Burgundian state. It did so by offering urban worthies ample professional opportunities in the ducal bureaucratic apparatus and by actively participating in civic jousting and shooting contests, processions, and other spectacles. When in the 1490s the process of state formation had taken a new step towards centralisation,171 and the balance of power had unequivocally shifted in favour of the central state, the practice of informal lobbying and power brokerage vis-à-vis the urban elites had lost much of its political urgency. As suggested by Andrew Brown, it is no coincidence that the heyday of civic jousting and tournaments vanished with the advent of the Burgundian-Habsburg state. From that moment on, these chivalric exploits were again the exclusive domain of the court nobility.172 Contemporary courtly iconography reflects this evolution. Whereas late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century (so-called pre-Eyckian) miniatures still systematically set jousting scenes in a rural environment,173 illuminations from the second half of the fifteenth century acknowledged the shift towards the city and the participation of the princely court in this kind of civic events. REPMost of the ducal representations of jousts and tournaments tend to reduce the city to a passive stage, on which the microcosm of the court could unfold its chivalric spectacles. A very vivid and refined example can be found in the Hennesy Hours (illuminated around 1535 by the Bruges workshop of Simon Bening, probably for the Portugese court) and perfectly illustrates how ordinary citizens were represented as mere spectators, confined to the fringes of the arena (Figure 3.15). Earlier examples depict a very similar seclusion of an exclusively courtly event from the rest of the city. A miniature 170 One of the most extensive studies on the use of public space and symbolic communication is, of course, Lecuppre-Desjardin, La ville des cérémonies, passim; Jonas Goossenaerts, ‘Charles the Bold’s Ten Days of Marriage Celebration. Material Culture as a means of Political Communication Between Duke and City Council, in Staging the Court of Burgundy, ed. by Till-Holger Borchert, Wim Blockmans, Nele Gabriëls et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 97-104. 171 With the Peace of Tours (1490) and Cadzand (1492) the revolting municipal governments of, respectively, Bruges and Ghent were replaced by a new body of aldermen loyal to the central power. On the dynamics of ducal centralism and civic particularism, see various publications of Marc Boone. 172 Brown, ‘Urban jousts’. 173 Many examples can be found the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Division occidentale: Français 100, fol. 375; Français 101, fol. 285v (good reproductions van be easily found on http://mandragore.bnf.fr/).

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Figure 3.15: Simon Bening (workshop), Jousting in the City, in ‘Hennessy Hours’, ca. 1530, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, ms. II 158, fol. 6v.

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Figure 3.16: Anonymous Brussels Tapestry, The Tournament of Antwerp, 1494-1498, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes. © Réunion des Musées Nationaux et du Grand Palais.

of a tourney in Bordeaux (organised in 1387) that figures in a manuscript of Froissart’s Chroniques (illuminated around 1475 in Bruges by the Master of Anthony of Burgundy) sets the battlefield on the right bank of the Gironde, neatly separated from the common spectators and rest of the city on the opposite site.174 Another medium used for the evocation of tournaments and other heroic exploits are tapestries. Perhaps one of the finest examples is the Le Tournoi tapesty, made in Brussels and today in the Valenciennes Musée des Beaux Arts (Figure 3.16). It was commissioned around 1495 by Friedrich III, elector of Saxony, to commemorate the exclusively noble tournament that had been organised a year earlier in Antwerp in the wake of Philips the Fair’s Joyous Entry. Also here, the urban architecture in the background functions as a mere viewing stand for selected passive spectators. Furthermore, the permeability of

174 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Division occidentale, Français 2645, fol. 164v. Another fine example can be found in Jean de Wavrin’s Chroniques d’Angleterre, made around 1470 and owned by the Piemontese resident of Bruges Pietro Villa. The scene depicts the tragic death of Jean de Beaumont in the London tournament of 1342 (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Division occidentale: Français 87, fol. 58v). For both manuscripts, see http://mandragore.bnf.fr/).

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town and countryside catches the eye: city and hinterland seem to be part of one continuous space, merely separated by an undefended bridge (cf. infra).175 Ducal iconography barely reflected the growing entanglement of court and city, and when this was the case, it always happened from the perspective of ducal supremacy. Illuminated manuscripts made for the duke and his entourage only occasionally set the ducal residence in a distinctly urban setting. A miniature from the Breslauer Froissart (ca. 1464, Staatsbibliothek, Berlin), commissioned by Antoine of Burgundy, depicts for instance how count Louis of Nevers receives visitors in one of his urban residences. The relatively modest structure is situated in a street with shops and inns. What strikes the eye is the overt absence of city walls and gates: nearly unnoticed, the town fades into the countryside. The city is easily accessible by the count and his retinue, as if town and hinterland are part of one continuous princely territory.176 Also in the nearly endless series of besieged cities that can be admired in ducal chronicles and on huge tapestries the city is condensed to a large-size fortification: an accumulation of solid walls, robust gates and disproportionately large figures that crawl as giants on the crenelated walls of a toy-castle.177 Depicted from the ducal perspective, these cities are reduced to pawns on the board of regional warfare.178 Christine Bousquet-Labouérie systematically compared six versions of the Grandes Chroniques de France over a period of 150 years and concluded that the city was categorically represented by means of its defensive architecture: “Le cadre urbain ne se distingue guère au départ de la représentation d’un château”.179 In the fifteenth century, however, the fortified city views in the Grandes Chroniques became more individualised (an evolution discussed in Chapter V). Nonetheless, not all manuscripts represent the city unequivocally as a secluded fortification. Peter Ainsworth observed that in the Breslauer Froissart 34 out of a total of 45 miniatures depict a siege or another military action. In 28 miniatures the city takes a prominent place. Sharply opposed to the battlefield scenes depicted in grisaille, the city in the Breslauer Froissart has a remarkably colourful and open character (Figure 3.2).180 A particularly strong expression of ducal supremacy figures in a richly decorated copy of the statutes and privileges of Ghent and Flanders made for Philip the Good shortly after 1453 (the so-called Vienna Privileges). One of the

175 Delmarcel, La Tapisserie Flamande, pp. 50-53. 176 For a good reproduction, see Boone and Deneckere, Ghent. A city of all times, p. 95. Another example is the frontispiece made by Willem Vrelant for the second volume of the Chroniques de Hainaut (1468, Royal Library, Brussels, ms. 9243, fol. 1). For a reproduction, see Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures, Chapter 6, Figure 3. 177 A good example is for instance Jean Wauquelin’s Faicts et Conquetes d’Alexandre le Grand (ca. 1448, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. Fr. 9342). See: Chrystèle Blondeau, ‘Jean Wauquelin et l’illustration de ses textes. Les exemples des Faicts et Conquestes d’Alexandre le Grand (Paris, BnF, ms. fr. 9342) et du roman de Girart de Roussillon (Vienne, ÖNB, ms. 2549)’, in Jean Wauquelin: De Mons à la cour de Bourgogne, ed. by Marie-Claude de Crécy (Brepols: Turnhout, 2006), pp. 213-224. 178 Pierre Cockshaw, ‘L’image de la ville dans les miniatures des manuscrits présentés aux ducs de Bourgogne’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 78:2 (2000), pp. 331-338. 179 Bousquet-Labouerie, ‘L’image de la ville dans les Grandes Chroniques de France’, p. 253. 180 Ainsworth, ‘The Image of the City’.

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miniatures evokes the amende honorable (honourable punishment) imposed on the rebellious Gentenaren after their defeat in the Battle of Gavere in 1453. A large delegation of Ghent captains and craft guild representatives kneel barefoot and bareheaded for a horse-mounted Philip the Good and his retinue. Some scholars have pointed at the remarkable similarity between the latter and the famous panel of the Just Judges in the Ghent Altarpiece.181 It is no coincidence that this ceremonial submission of the Gentenaren took place outside the city of Ghent, clearly recognizable by the dragon on the belfry tower in the background.182 Perhaps one of the most powerful and ideologically laden representations of the princely presence in the city can be found in a famous miniature made around 1458 by Jean Tavernier in the Chroniques et Conquêtes de Charlemagne (now in the Royal Library in Brussels; Figure 3.17). This illumination epitomises as no other the idealised notion of the Low Countries as veritable terres de promesses, an encomium coined towards the end of the fifteenth century by the Burgundian chronicler Philippe de Commynes (1447-1511). Central to the Burgundian state ideology was that only under the sage government of the duke of Burgundy these densely urbanised ‘lands of promise’ could culturally and economically thrive. At the top right, the duke and his entourage receive the scribe (David Aubert) and the kneeling patron of the manuscript ( Jean de Créquy, lord of Canaples) in what seems to be one of the central rooms of princely residence.183 Clearly set in an urban environment, the palace is marked off by a crenelated wall with a conspicuous entrance gate, tagged by the ducal arms and the iconic Burgundian flint. The ducal residence by no means forms a segregated princely enclave in the city: both at the inner courtyard and just outside the entrance gate well-off burghers (recognisable by their long garment) converse with noble courtiers (recognisable by their sword, dagger, short jacket, and hose). In the monumental doorway, a jeweller has set up a stand, while just outside the walls nobles and common artisans – both men, women and children – interact. This perfect symbiosis of town and court does, however, reflect a very clear social hierarchy: literally at the top of the pyramid stand the duke and his entourage; at the middle princely and civic elites intermingle within the confines of the ducal residence; while at the base of the pyramid the court also intrudes into the daily life and economic reality of the common citizens. At the far left a woman sells draperies, while at the right fish and pottery are displayed. Most remarkably: any reference to civic monuments, such as the belfry, the city hall or the cathedral, is lacking in this princely idealisation of (civic) society. Also absent is the clergy. It is hard to tell why this important group, after all the first member of

181 Elisabeth Dhanens, ‘Het Boek der Privilegiën van Gent’, Actum Gandavi: Zeven bijdragen i.v.m. de oude kunst te Gent, 48:2 (1987), 53-89 (p. 107). 182 Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, ms. 2583, fol. 349. 183 The miniature has often been misinterpreted as a representation of a city wall and city gate. See Smeyers, Vlaamse miniaturen, pp. 292-293; Bernard Bousmanne, Tania Van Hemelryck and Céline Van Hoorebeeck (eds), La librairie des ducs de Bourgogne. Manuscrits conservés à la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Volume IV. Textes historiques (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 127-152.

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Figure 3.17: Jean Tavernier, Presentation miniature, in David Aubert, ‘Chroniques et Conquêtes de Charlemagne’, 1458-1460, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, ms. 9066 fol. 11.

the traditional medieval social order, is missing from this comprehensive scale model of society. As suggested by Lecuppre-Desjardin, the (episcopal) high clergy was not particularly strongly represented in the late medieval Flemish and Brabant towns, but this does not account for the complete absence of the very prominent group of canons and all kinds of monastics who lived in the

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city.184 A more plausible explanation might be the strong secular and economic focus of the discourse that lies at the basis of the miniature, namely how the just and peaceful governance of the prince stood as the basis of the vibrant urban economy. This was essential to safeguard the stability of the social order and thus to legitimise the natural authority of the prince. As pointed out by Jan Dumolyn, the notion of bewaernesse van den lande (the ‘safeguarding of the land’) is also key to the civic petitions that summoned the prince to his duties. In 1488 a petition issued by the Bruges Great Council summoned the prince to ‘good governance’, “so that peace, justice, unity, trade and industry, which has virtuously ruled, could have their course as in its original state, […] to the benefit and dignity of [the] heritable and natural prince”.185 An analogous discourse of the prince as protector of the country’s economic welfare speaks from the presentation miniature in Johannes de Vico’s World Chronicle (ca. 1493, Vienna). This image frames Philip the Fair in the garden of a lavishly decorated princely residence, far outside the city, yet intrinsically linked with the flourishing metropolis (an allusion to the fast growing city of Antwerp?) in the background.186 In the same line, an early sixteenth-century copy of a princely instruction book, composed by Gilles de Rome for the king Philip IV of France (1268-1314), associates ‘good governance’ with the image of a well organised and thriving city: the shops of a pharmacist, a draper, a barber, and a pelt merchant are harmoniously concentrated in a immaculately paved street.187 Even though a fair amount of the ducal book illuminations and tapestries reflect the increasingly urban habitat of the court, a strikingly high number of the princely presentation miniatures – i.e. the frontispiece of a manuscript that depicts the author or donor while presenting the manuscript to the prince – are set in a non-urban environment.188 An analysis of 62 presentation miniatures 184 Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, ‘Une réalité urbaine sublimée: la ville du prince dans le frontispice des Chroniques et Conquêtes de Charlemagne de David Aubert (vers 1460)’, in Marquer la ville. Signes, traces, empreintes du pouvoir (XIIIe-XVIe siècle), ed. by Patrick Boucheron and Jean-Philippe Genet (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2013), pp. 441-461. 185 Jan Dumolyn, ‘“Our land is only founded on trade and industry”. Economic discourses in fifteenthcentury Bruges’, Journal of Medieval History, 36:4 (2010), pp. 374-389, especially p. 379. On Philip the Bold as a ‘prince de justice’, see Jonas Braekevelt, Un prince de justice: vorstelijke wetgeving, soevereiniteit en staatsvorming in het graafschap Vlaanderen tijdens de regering van Filips de Goede (14191467) (unpublished doctoral thesis, Ghent University, 2013). 186 Johannes de Vico Duacensis, Chronicon ab Urbe Condito usque ad finem Saeculi Decimi Quinti, after 1493, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. For a good reproduction, see Smeyers, Vlaamse miniaturen, p. 439. The city can clearly be recognised as a harbour city by its crane. In the iconography from around 1500 the crane was a much-used ‘attribute’ to depict the new rising commercial gateway of Antwerp; see also Chapter V). 187 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, ms. 5061, fol. 149v. See Simonne Abraham-Thise, ‘La representation iconographique des métiers du textile au Moyen-Age’, in Le verbe, l’image et les représentations de la société urbaine au Moyen Âge, ed. by Marc Boone, Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin and Jean-Pierre Sosson (Antwerp: Garant, 2002), pp. 135-159 (155-156). 188 On this type of iconography and more specifically the representation of the scribe in ducal manuscripts, see Henk ’t Jong, ‘The Room of the Scribe. Reality in Disguise instead of Disguised Symbolism’, in Staging the Burgundian Court, ed. by Till-Holger Borchert et al. (Turnhout: Brepols,

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Figure 3.18: Loyset Liédet, Philip the Goods visits the copyist Wauquelin, in ‘Chroniques de Hainaut’, 1468, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, ms. 9244 fol. 3.

of Philip the Good and Charles the Bold shows that in 55 per cent of them the presentation scene (that usually takes place in the ducal state apartment) is set in a location outside the city, with the windows overlooking an idyllic countryside (Graph 3.3 – Figure 3.18).189 In 37 per cent any reference to the outside world is lacking, while in only 8 per cent the setting is distinctly urban.190 The same pattern applies to miniatures of the chapters of the Order of the Golden Fleece (Figure 3.19). Despite the fact that these illustrious meetings always took place in an urban environment,191 illuminations in the Statute Books and armorials 2013), pp. 221-228. 189 The corpus of 62 presentation miniatures is based on Cyriel Stroo, De celebratie van de macht. Presentatieminiaturen en aanverwante voorstellingen in handschriften van Filips de Goede (1419-1467) en Karel de Stoute (1467-1477) (Leuven: Peeters, 2002). On the spatial framing of the duke, see pp. 193202. For some other illustrations, see Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures, Chapter 6, no. 54 and Chapter 7, Figure 5, 16. 190 For some other illustrations, see Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures, Chapter 6, no. 54 and Chapter 7, no. 5, 16. 191 Lecuppre-Desjardin, La ville des cérémonies, pp. 159-163.

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Figure 3.19: Anonymous Miniaturist, Chapter Meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece, 1473, in ‘Statutes of the Golden Fleece’, Royal Library, The Hague, 76 E 10 fol. 5v.

of the Order almost systematically depict them in a pastoral environment.192 In the idealised, painted world of the illuminated manuscripts from the ducal entourage, the political pragmatism that urged city and court to interact was virtually absent. Here, the mirage of a time-honoured social order governed by the second estate (the nobility), which was essentially rooted in the countryside, persevered. As more amply discussed in Chapter VI, this social ideal also filters through in a growing segment of painted altarpieces. The image of the city in the illuminated manuscripts and tapestries that found their way to the libraries and reception rooms of the Burgundian princes, (high) nobility, and clergy was without a doubt more diverse than described in this paragraph. These media form a corpus on their own that asks for a further, more serial investigation, which falls outside the scope of this book.

192 See for instance the Statute Book and armorial of the Golden Fleece, 1473, Royal Library, The Hague, 76 E 10 (for reproductions see http://manuscripts.kb.nl/search/manuscript/extended/page/1/ shelfmark/76+E+10). On fol. 5v the plenary chapter gathers in a grand hall, set in a green hilly landscape. In some of the individual portraits of the knights the city looms in the far background.

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3.1.

The court and the city: Brussels

Towards the end of the fifteenth century the process of state centralisation intensified, and the ducal court and bureaucratic apparatus took a permanent place in the urban society and landscape. In particular the Brabant cities of Mechelen en Brussels hosted numerous central juridical and financial institutions, and with them an army of princely officers that erected stately urban residences. Gradually, Brussels evolved into the capital city of the Habsburg Low Countries. Not only its central position, but especially a very seductive policy of the Brussels municipal government had lured the ducal court to the Coudenberg hill, situated at the outskirts of the city. Already in the middle of fifteenth century the city had financially supported the renovation and expansion of the ducal Coudenberg Palace and various other houses of high noblemen and courtiers.193 The palace was situated on a heightened elevation in between town and countryside. Between the first and second city wall, the site was connected to the vast Sonian Forest, which was used by the dukes as a hunting ground (the so-called Warande).194

193 In 1431-1437 and 1452-1459 the city of Brussel spent large amounts on the expansion and embellishment of the ducal palace and garden: Krista De Jonge, ‘Het hof in de stad’, in Met Passer en Penseel. Brussel en het Oude Hertogdom Brabant in Beeld (Tournai: La Renaissance du livre, 2000), pp. 163-172; Krista De Jonge, ‘Adellijke residenties in en buiten de stad’, in Gotiek in het Hertogdom Brabant, ed. by Krista De Jonge, Piet Geleyns and Markus Hörsch (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), pp. 63-100 (esp. pp. 73-82). 194 For a comprehensive image of the Coudenberg palace, see for instance Bartholomeus de Mompere’s coloured etching of Le koert de Bruxselles (ca. 1550-1560): Le peintre et l’arpenteur, p. 267.

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Late fifteenth-century and sixteenth-century iconography reflects the key position of the Coudenberg Palace in the social topography of the city of Brussels and the Habsburg-Burgundian territory at large. A series of Brussels tapestries depicting The Hunts of Maximilian (designed by Bernard of Orley, dated 1531-1533) show the Coudenberg site in all its glory from the southeast. Especially in the March tapestry (Departure for the hunt) the palace takes a prominent place, attached as an exotic miniature city to the lower town. The tapestries emanate a peaceful coexistence of court and city.195 A similar vista of the Brussels ducal residence occurs on other tapestries,196 and even a couple of early sixteenth-century panel paintings make use of a comparable ‘ducal perspective’ on the city. As discussed in the Introduction, early Netherlandish panel painting seems not to have been a medium that was particularly favoured by the prince and the high nobility. When purchasing painted panels, court elites seem to have preferred soberly painted portraits (set against a plain or rural background) to the more complex altarpieces with elaborate panoramas and urban vistas patronised by the urban elites and well-off middle-groups. By the early sixteenth century, however, a number of panel paintings explicitly frame members of the court elite within a particular part of the Brussels topography, namely the Coudenberg palace and its view on the city of Brussels (on the growing number of ‘topographic’ city views see Chapter V). The wings of an exemplum iustitiae, made around 1505 by the Master of Joseph Sequence (possibly the court painter Jacob Van Laethem) for the bench of aldermen of the small town of Zierikzee, depict Philip the Fair and Joanna of Castile on the tournament field close to the ducal palace (Figure 3.20). Behind the portrait of Philip the Fair a number of Brussels monuments are represented with considerable accuracy: the first city wall with five protruding towers; the double spire of the collegiate church of Saint Gudula; and within the confines of the Coudenberg site a low wall with an entrance to the vineyard and a view over a pond known as the ‘Clutinc’. The portrait of Joanna of Castile offers a glimpse in the opposite direction, with the second urban fortification and the ducal family’s private domain la Folie, including ponds, a greenery, a wooden building with four protruding gables, and a stone summer house. An indication of the relative position of the tournament field and the summer house can be found at the centre of Orley’s Month of March tapestry (cf. supra). It is surely no coincidence that both portraits are set on the Coudenberg, the political focal point of the Habsburg Low Countries, nor that the representation of the prince is directed to the outside world (the city of Brussels), whereas the portrait of Joanna is oriented towards the private sphere of the court. Most likely, the

195 Claire Billen and Sabine Van Sprang, ‘Les chasses de Maximilien parlent en français: réévaluation d’une tenture à la gloire de la dynastie des Habsbourg’, in L’art au service du prince. Paradigme italien, expériences européennes (vers 1250-vers 1500), ed. by Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan and Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur (Roma: Viella, 2015), pp. 283-304. 196 Such as Jan de Buck’s tapestry of Solomon and Sheba, ca. 1550, Collection National Bank of Belgium, Brussels (see: Le peintre et l’arpenteur, pp. 276-277).

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Figure 3.20: Master of the Joseph Sequence, Portrait of Philip the Handsome and His Wife Joan the Mad, ca. 1495, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels.

Zierikzee Triptych was a commission by Jacob van Cats, bailiff of Zierikzee and chamberlain of Philip the Fair.197 A decade later, Lieve van Cats,198 a close 197 Anne Dubois and Bart Fransen, ‘Zierikzee Triptych’, in The Flemish Primitives. Masters with Provisional Names (Catalogue Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, vol. IV) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 68-94. 198 Coomans identifies Lieve van Cats / van Welle as a daughter of Jacob Van Cats. Mario Damen, however, identifies her as the daughter of Klaas Lievenz. van Cats. See Thomas Coomans, ‘Les vues de ville sur les portraits, expression de la “topographie sociale”’, in Le peintre et l’arpenteur: images de Bruxelles et de l’ancien duché de Brabant (Brussels: Royal Museums of Fine Arts Belgium, 2000), pp. 172-181; Mario Damen, ‘De schenkers van Scheut. Het glasmecenaat van een kartuizerklooster, 1450-1530’, Millennium, 23:1-2 (2009), pp. 78-111.

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Figure 3.21: Anonymous Master, The Zuylen Triptych (detail right panel), 15151515, Slot Zuylen, Oud-Zuilen.

relative of the patron of the Zierikzee Triptych, chooses to be portrayed for a Brussels city view that is very similar to the one on the portrait of Philip the Fair (Figure 3.21). On the right wing of the Lazarus Triptych (1515-1525) she kneels at a prie-dieu that seems to be located at the interior of the ducal palace, in a room that overlooks the pleasure ground, the first city wall, and the Church of Saint Gudula (for which the triptych was most likely made). This panel is a very fine example of the how a carefully constructed city view was used to signal the social topography of the patron. On the left wing, her husband, Jan Micault (from 1506 to 1534 receiver-general of all finances)199 is depicted before an exclusively rural landscape, a background motive that might have fit as well within an overarching aristocratic discourse, as will be discussed in the next chapter. The underlying representational strategy of the Lazarus Triptych is obvious: by framing themselves as intimate visitors of the ducal court, the family Micault-van Cats highlighted their status as local power brokers among the visitors of the Lazarus chapel and the local community.200 Yet another panorama from the terrace of the Coudenberg Palace is incorporated in the lower panel of the Fifteen Mysteries and the Virgin of the Rosary, made around 1515-1520 by Goswin Van der Weyden (Metropolitan Museum, New York, Figure 3.22 – Plate 12). The patron, possibly Philip of Cleves, Lord of Ravenstein, kneels in an enclosed garden that borders on the pleasure grounds of the Coudenberg Palace. On the left, the Church of Saint Gudula emerges

199 For further information on Jan Micault, see Damen, ‘De schenkers van Scheut’, pp. 89-90. 200 Damen stresses that Micault’s social network stretched to the highest echelons of Habsburg society, including the Order of the Golden Fleece (Damen, ‘De schenkers van Scheut’, p. 90).

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Figure 3.22: Goswin Van der Weyden, The Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, 1515-1520, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

once more. The focus, however, lies on the pond and the hunting grounds of the Warande: once again the ducal perspective has been used to signal the status of the patron as – literally – an insider of the central power.201

201 In 1520 Albrecht Dürer visited Brussels and made a drawing of the Warande from an almost identical position: Guy Bauman, ‘A Rosary Picture with a View of the Park of the Ducal Palace in Brussels, possibly by Goswin Van der Weyden’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 24 (1989), pp. 135-151.

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4. Idealisation and theatricalisation: towards a conclusion This chapter has discussed an eclectic cluster of early Netherlandish city views that picture the city as a stage. By their focus on particular features of the urban architecture they epitomise the city as a monumental arena for religious, political, or social performances. Within this very heterogeneous group of painted cityscapes some general characteristics filter through. A first observation concerns an unequivocal tendency towards idealisation from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards. This idealisation was not confined to the representation of the city, but applied as well to landscapes and portraits (cf. Chapter IV). While the first generation of early Netherlandish painters (with the exception of some works of Jan Van Eyck) preferred a cross-section or oblique view of an ordinary Flemish city, later generations favoured pristine and monumental cityscapes. Immaculately paved, empty streets and ravishing skylines become the norm. Gerard David’s Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor in the London National Gallery (ca. 1510) comprises one of the most compelling variants of the città ideale in early Netherlandish painting (Figure 3.23). Behind the brick wall that encompasses the enclosed garden in which the patron Richard de Visch van der Capelle202 and a host of saints are set, looms a monumental sampling of secular Bruges architecture. The sturdy brick mansions with twisted chimneys and sober Gothic tracery convey the impression of hollow life-size scale models. An almost unnatural calm hangs over the city. Well hidden in the dark void of a window, a mysterious female peeks at the scene in the foreground. In the far background, to the left of the central figure of the Virgin with Child, a robust circular tower, topped by what appears a figure of Saint Georges or Saint Michael, appears as a token of the conspicuous private and semi-private city palaces that were erected by various urban elites, exclusive societies, and foreign nations in late medieval Bruges. A couple of years later the Antwerp Master of Frankfurt painted a very similar Virgin and Child Enthroned (ca. 1515), set in fanciful sculptural ensemble that draws upon motifs from Roman architecture, such as the shell motif behind the Virgin, then popular in Italy (Plate 13). Behind the walls of the enclosed garden looms the architectural mirage of the ideal city, which might have been itself an Italianate motif. Unlike its Italian counterparts, however, the idealised Flemish townscapes were as a rule embedded in a religious narrative. They never developed into an autonomous genre, as was the case in quattrocento Italy, where the città ideale became a humanistic trope reproduced in iconography, literature and urban planning. Several scholars have noticed the subdued mood that emanates from late fifteenth-century and early sixteenth-century Bruges painting. Hans Van Miegroet even suggested a correlation between the idealizing nature of Bruges painting around 1500 and the political and economic turmoil that distressed Bruges society towards the end of the century. Van Miegroet defines escapism as one

202 A canon and cantor of Saint-Donatian in Bruges.

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Figure 3.23: Gerard David, Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor, 1500-1510, National Gallery, London.

of the key features of Bruges painting at that time, in the sense that it offered a distraction from the socio-political disorder that puzzled both the urban elites and the lower ranks of society.203 However, this stereotype of the languorous Bruges-la-Morte applies as an overstatement. The economic and political malaise was not of such a nature that the general mood in late fifteenth-century Bruges turned into defeatism. Moreover, a similar tendency towards idealisation also appears simultaneously in other places, such as Leuven204 and Brussels. Especially the urban economy of the latter benefited at that very moment from the increasing presence and consumption of the court (cf. infra). Therefore, rather than political turmoil or economic decline, the shifting social stratification of the urban societies of the medieval Low Countries seems to have triggered an idealisation of urban iconography in early Netherlandish panel painting, ranging from the series of monumental skylines of Bruges as an aristocratic city, to the very selective ‘ducal’ vistas of the city of Brussels. As in the course of the fifteenth century processes of social mobility and oligarchisation among social elites and the middling artisan class accelerated, the city was increasing represented as an

203 Van Miegroet refers to the uprising of Bruges against Maximilian of Austria and the (partially temporary) retreat of the foreign merchant nations to Antwerp: Van Miegroet, Gerard David, pp. 102-105. 204 See Maurits Smeyers’s characterization of Dirk Bouts as ‘the painter of silence’.

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arena for social distinction and architectural ostentation. Monumental private residences, socially exclusive clubhouses, and a sporadic representation of a city hall – real or generic – constituted a very elitist view of the city. What is more, the strict religious dichotomy between the celestial sphere in the foreground and the terrestrial city in the background seems to have lost its rigidity in the second half of the fifteenth century. As already discussed in Chapter I, the primary function of the strong spatial duality between a heavenly and earthly domain, omnipresent in fifteenth century altarpieces, would underscore the devotee’s spiritual retreat from the profane world (an idea that is very present in e.g. Petrus Christus’s Exeter Madonna, see Figure 1.1). However, as the number of references to the monumental and elitist topography of the city grew, the primary dissociation between the patron and the world was supplemented by an additional, much more affirmative association with the city, whether as a specific place or as a generic socio-spatial category. For instance all devotional panels with Bruges towerscapes isolate the portrayed donor in a celestial landscape, while at the same time they suggest a positive affiliation of the patron with the city of Bruges, whether as a member of the local urban elite or as a foreign merchant with significant commercial interests in the harbour city. More or less simultaneously, ever more panels started to blur foreground and background into one continuous setting; very often a highly idealised countryside in which the city has been banished to the margins. This shifting focus from the city towards the rural hinterland reflects the same degree of elitism and aristocratisation as the ‘monumentalised’ cityscapes discussed above. The next chapter of this book will pursue this development in greater depth. The idealised nature of many painted cityscapes goes hand in hand with a second remarkable feature discussed in this chapter: the theatricalisation of the urban space. An increasing number of panels started to imbed the central narrative and incidental episodes into a unifying urban architecture. By doing so, they conceived of the city as a stage for religious and social theatre. Not only did the city function as the setting for the key scenes of a saint’s life or the Passion of Christ, a considerable number of paintings represented the city also as an arena for social expression and distinction. These panels preferred an idealised and selective representation of the city to a realistic and topographically accurate city view. During the second half of the fifteenth century an increasing number of early Netherlandish town views gravitated towards the more stylised and polished mise en scène of the city that dominates quattrocento fresco and panel painting. The latter in essence is a narrative art. The very influential artist, architect and writer Leon Battista Alberti, for instance, conceived of the painting as a framed stage on which human figures perform a literary story, ranging from an antique legend to a biblical account or a hagiography.205 The viewer of the painted

205 The primacy of the narrative is intrinsically linked to the ubiquitous doctrine ut picture poesis, which legitimises images through their relation to prior texts.

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surface looks at a substitute world. As a consequence, the city in many Italian Renaissance paintings functions as a piece of scenery in which the enacted story is embedded. Many of these ‘Albertian’ city views and architectural ensembles are designed according the principles of linear perspective and show a striking resemblance to the theatre settings (scena tragica and scena comica) canonised in Sebastiano Serlio’s Second Book of Architecture (1545). Late medieval Italy led the way in both the spatial development206 and the pictorial representation of the city as a theatrical space. Paradoxically, the mastery of linear perspective, pioneered by Giotto (1266-1337) and fully developed by Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), did not result in a straightforward triumph of physical realism. As pointed out by Kim Veltman, the advance of linear perspective in the course of nearly four centuries enabled the parallel development of both ‘ideal’ and ‘realistic’ city views. Besides a powerful tool that allowed artists to persuasively mimic the surrounding, three-dimensional reality, linear perspective was as much used to conjure up completely fictitious – and often idealised – spaces. In a predominantly narrative art like Italian painting, depictions of architecture and landscape first of all frame the narrative, rather than record physical places. One of the reasons why linear perspective is so clearly linked with idealised cityscapes is its close relationship with theatre and stage-building. Many quattrocento and cinquecento artists were also active as stage designers (and, as discussed earlier in this chapter, also many Northern painters were actively involved in the design and decoration of tableaux vivants).207 Perspective was often used to turn an existing physical space into a ludic space, as for instance in Baldassare Lanci’s theatrical perspective of Florence from 1567.208 In the sixteenth century Low Countries, Hans Vredeman de Vries used linear perspective for similar theatrical purposes.209 In its most rigid and pure guise of the città ideale, the city itself becomes the central narrative, extracted from the literary treatises written at the Italian Renaissance courts. In some cases both quattrocento and early Netherlandish city views show an extreme reduction of the city to its monumental dimensions, by isolating a compilation of the town’s major monuments in a sea of generic ‘filling’ architecture, anonymous ruins, or even emptiness. In particular for Rome, many ‘plans’ or portraits were limited to the monumental highlights of the Eternal City.210 Netherlandish examples are the Bruges ‘towerscapes’ by the 206 An inspiring study of urban development and spatial manipulation in late medieval Florence is Marvin Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye. Urbanism, Art, and Power in Early Modern Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 207 Kim Veltman, ‘Paradoxe of Perspective: Ideal and Real City’, in Imago Urbis. L’immagine della città nelle storia d’Italia, ed. by Francesca Bocchi and Rossa Smurra (Roma: Viella, 2003), pp. 89-100 (93-94). 208 Baldassarre Lanci, Prospettiva Teatrale, 1567, Firenze, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi. 209 Christopher Heuer, The City Rehearsed: Object, Architecture, and Print in the Worlds of Hans Vredeman de Vries (London/New Yerk: Routledge, 2009). 210 Nicole Dacos, Roma quanta fuit ou l’invention du paysage de ruines (Paris: Somogy Éditions d’Art, 2004). Examples are Taddeo di Bartolo’s Veduta of Rome in the Palazzo Publico, Siena (1406-1414), Benozzo Gozzoli’s Departure of Saint Augustine from Rome in San Gimignano (1465) or Piero di Massaio’s View of Florence (ca. 1472) in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome.

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Lucia Master discussed in this chapter and – a couple of decades later – Pieter Claeissens’s Septem Admirationes Civitatis Brugensis (ca. 1560) which highlights the seven architectural wonders of Bruges in a landscape of ruins.211 Several scholars, especially Svetlana Alpers, have contrasted the predominantly narrative and idealizing nature of Italian painting with the fundamentally descriptive disposition of Netherlandish visual arts. According to Alpers, seventeenth-century Dutch painting, preceded by the landscapes and anecdotal city views of early Netherlandish painting, was essentially geared towards the mere description of a tranquil reality, rather than telling a story or making use of a hidden symbolism: “In these images the seventeenth century appears to be one long Sunday, as a recent Dutch writer [ Johannes van Regteren Altena] has put it”.212 Alpers opposes the iconological approach of art historians, working in the wake of Erwin Panofsky (such as Eddy De Jongh), who tend to discern behind the ‘apparent realism’ of the pictorial surface a deeper symbolism. She discards this approach as essentially Italo-centric (derived from the Albertian conception of painting) and at odds with the Netherlandish predilection for descriptive realism. Also Brigitta Zülicke-Laube contrasts the vivid, almost accidental evocations of urban daily life in the Northern art with the rigidly staged character (‘kullisenartig’) of the Italian Renaissance cityscapes.213 Art historian Martin Julian reproduces a similar dichotomy, by contrasting the stylised architecture of Fra Angelico (the tranquil city) with the detailed, almost photographic image of the city in Jan Van Eyck’s Madonna with Chancellor Rolin (the vibrant city).214 However, as has been demonstrated by the various patterns discussed in this chapter, this strict contrast between ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ art should not be exaggerated.215 In the second half of the fifteenth century many early Netherlandish painters seem to have abandoned their obsession with the illusion of a spontaneous urban reality and increasingly to conceive urban space to function with the central narrative or representation strategy (e.g. Memling’s Simultanbilder or the Bruges ‘towerscapes’). The other way round, some Italian painters (such as Domenico Ghirlandaio and Ambrogio Bergognone) experimented with the insertion of very ‘descriptive’ anecdotal snapshots of urban daily life in religious frescoes and panel paintings.216 Furthermore, Italian 211 The Seven Wonders of Bruges is clearly inspired by the iconographic tradition of Roma quanta fuit ruin landscapes, developed by artists such Maarten Van Heemskerk. For this painting, see Maximiliaan Martens (ed.), Bruges et la Renaissance: de Memling á Pourbus: notices (Gent: Ludion, 1998), cat. 117. 212 Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing. Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. xxi-xxii. 213 Zülicke-Laube, ‘Die “flandrische Manier”’, pp. 429-430. 214 Martine Jullian, ‘La ville d’après Van Eyck et Fra Angelico. Description d’une réalité ou vision idéale?’, in Représentations et forms de la ville européenne. Le Patrimoine et la Mémoire, ed. by Sandra Costa (Paris: Editions Harmattan), pp. 27-51. 215 On the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century recuperation of early Netherlandsih art as ‘Germanic’ art, see Krul, ‘Realism, Renaissance and Nationalism’, p. 260. 216 Patrizia Dragoni, ‘Le città dell’Umanesimo: paesaggi urbani nella pittura italiana del quattrocento e del primo cinquecento’, in La rappresentazione della città, ed. by De Vecchi et al., pp. 106-107.

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painting paradoxically witnessed a much earlier fervent representation of the topographical reality of identifiable cities than the allegedly ‘descriptive’ art of the Low Countries (cf. Chapter V). The partial transformation of early Netherlandish city views form the middle of the fifteenth century onward cannot be treated monocausally. Art historians, such as Maryan Ainsworth, have warned about the reduction of the analytic framework to the socio-political sphere. She points to the pertinence of other processes that were at play, such as changing devotional practices, the changing art market, the development of new themes and genres, and the cross-fertilisation from other artistic media. Indeed, the theatricalisation and monumentalisation discussed in this chapter cannot be fully understood without also taking into consideration the growing popularity of devotional concepts, such as the ‘mental pilgrimage’, the increased prominence of religious drama in the urban landscape, and the development of new pictorial genres, which were sometimes closely related to the latter, such as the Ecce Homo theme. Some compositional particularities, such as the spatial compartmentalisation of the Simultanbilder, were at least partially indebted to other artistic media, such as manuscript illumination, graphic arts, carved retables, and tapestries. One might be tempted to discard the theatricalisation of the city into a rigid piece of scenery as the legacy of a generation of anonymous and artistically less gifted painters, but this would fundamentally wrong – these artists’ savvy allowed them to capitalise on major socio-political and devotional changes that affected the Low Countries in the second half of the fifteenth century.

Chapter IV

Looking Away from the City. Urban Depictions of a Rural Ideal

Landscape is the perspective of an ideal citizen contemplating the good order of the immediate zone of intensively cultivated land, most of which he and his fellow citizens own.1

In the course of the 1460s the workshop of Rogier Van der Weyden in Brussels delivered a remarkable altarpiece with the Lamentation of Christ (currently in the Mauritshuis, The Hague; Figure 4.1 – Plate 14) as central theme.2 This reasonably large panel painting is one of the numerous workshop productions that recycles the famous composition of Rogier’s Descent from the Cross in the Prado (Madrid), converting the original gold background into a scenic panorama. Even though the deploration of Christ is traditionally set on Golgotha, a hilltop directly outside the walls of Jerusalem, this composition has literally marginalised the city to the far background of the central image. Not the city of Jerusalem – as is common in this type of iconography – but a stately castle with imposing moat, set in an idyllic landscape unfolds strikingly between the mourning figures of Mary and Nicodemus. However, a closer look at the preparatory drawing of this particular landscape motif with the help of infrared reflectography3 reveals that the scene was initially placed against a townscape that unmistakably referred to Jerusalem. In fact, the underdrawing shows the distinct features of a cupola and temple-like structure at the very spot where eventually the castle and arcadian landscape were painted (Figure 4.2).4 This deliberate modification suggests that the prominent landscape motif was far from a meaningless decorative pattern, but an intended feature of the overall iconographical program. What urged the artist to shift the focus of the background from the city towards the countryside remains a matter for conjecture, even though it is compelling to





1 Denis Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, p. 101. 2 Campbell and Van der Stock, Rogier Van der Weyden, cat. 76, pp. 511-513. 3 Infrared reflectography is a scientific technique used to study preparatory drawings beneath the paint layer. Infrared reflectography registers patterns of absorption and reflection of infrared light, which can penetrate most thinly painted oil paints, except black, such as the charcoal used for the underdrawing. For an introduction on this technique, see Jeltje Dijkstra, ‘Technical Examiniation’, in Early Netherlandish Paintings. Rediscovery, Reception and Research, ed. by Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne van Buren and Henk van Veen (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005), pp. 292-328. 4 J. R. J. Van Asperen de Boer, J. Dijkstra and R. van Schoute, Underdrawing in Paintings of the Rogier Van der Weyden and Master of Flémalle Groups (Zwolle: WBooks, 1992), p. 179.

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Figure 4.1: Workshop Rogier Van der Weyden, Lamentation with Pierre de Ranchicourt, bishop of Arras (detail central panel), 1462-1465, Mauritshuis, The Hague (before restoration in 2018). © Mauritshuis, Den Haag.

consider the role of the patron in this remarkable pentimento. Was it a matter of spiritual retreat or escapism from the worldly city, or did a more secular agenda and representation strategy incite the patron, Pierre de Ranchicourt, bishop of Arras from 1463 to 1499, to intervene in the original composition? This telling case elucidates the pertinence of the central issue of this chapter, namely the remarkably peripheral or even absent city in many early Netherlandish panel paintings from the second half of the fifteenth century. In a period when the economic, social, and mental boundaries between the city and the countryside became increasingly permeable, this remarkable shift towards the urban hinterland raises the question of the proliferation among urban elites and middle groups of a cultural and mental paradigm that was very much geared to country life and landed property. This chapter will delve deeper into the significance of (natural) landscape in late medieval art, the entanglement of city and countryside, and the economic, social, cultural, and symbolic value of rural property in the heavily urbanised Low Countries. A glance at Graph 0.1 suffices to clarify that the distinct preference of The Hague Lamentation for a rural landscape was far from an isolated case. In 55 per cent of all 550 panels the central – almost exclusively religious – narrative is placed against a landscape, often in combination with a cityscape. In 25 per cent of the cases, however, the background motif was almost exclusively rural or natural, remarkably lacking any significant reference to the urban landscape. Landscape motifs were especially well represented in the oeuvre of some late fifteenth century masters, such as Dirk Bouts (described by the sixteenth-century

look i n g away f rom the city. ur b an  depictions of a rura l idea l

Figure 4.2: Workshop Rogier Van der Weyden, Lamentation with Pierre de Ranchicourt, 14621465, Mauritshuis, The Hague, The initial underdrawing as revealed by the infrared reflectogram (emphasis of the structures by Jelle De Rock).

chronicler Jan Molanus as the ‘inventor of rural descriptions’5), Gerard David, Hans Memling, and anonymous masters like the Master of the Embroidered Foliage. No less than 47 per cent of the oeuvre of Memling, who is renowned for his portraits with a rural fond, uses a plain landscape as background. The majority of early Netherlandish painted landscapes consists of paradisical panoramas: a sun-drenched patchwork of lush vegetation, woods, fields, orchards, rivers, rocks, an isolated farmstead, parish church, or castle. In most of these placid countryside views the city is reduced to a remote skyline or even remains completely absent. Even though these delicate vistas ooze fertility and abundance, explicit allusions to the agricultural function of the countryside are notably avoided. Especially from the middle of the fifteenth century onward, the landscape is essentially represented as a non-productive space, an evolution that parallels the ‘idealization’ of the cityscape, discussed in Chapter II and Chapter III. Graph 2.5 indicates how the urban hinterland is increasingly represented as a tranquil and unspoilt countryside, devoid of traffic and productive labour.



5 Molanus (1533-1585) nominates in his Historiae Lovaniensium Dirk Bouts as ‘inventor in describende rure’ (Périer-d’Ieteren, Dirk Bouts, p. 18).

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The highly idealised nature of the painted landscapes was fundamentally intertwined with the primary religious function of the altarpieces or devotional diptychs, even though many secular portraits were also set against a refined natural scenery. For many years, traditional art historical research has given precedence to a strictly theological reading of early Flemish landscapes. Rather than challenge this valuable iconological research tradition, this chapter aims to explore an additional, secular layer of meaning of the idealised countryside motifs. This socio-semiotic approach will investigate their mental and social significance for the patron and late medieval beholder. Many of these landscapes seem to have functioned as a sign-system that not only underpinned a spiritual experience, but that was equally designed to signal the patron’s social status. Whether some of these landscapes might have had a topographical value (by accurately depicting a specific place or property) is only of secondary importance. The shifting focus of religious Flemish panel painting from an urban setting towards an idealised countryside has already been remarked by Alarich Rooch in a study from 1988 on donor portraits in fifteenth-century Flemish painting. Rooch noticed that around 1450 the reference points used by donors for self-staging (Inszenierungsideal) gradually inclined towards the countryside, and more particularly landed property.6 The growing marginality of cityscapes, in favour of landscape motifs is so significant that it is worth devoting an entire chapter to this phenomenon. A re-investigation of the landscape motifs that form the backdrop of many donor wings and religious scenes might reveal some telling clues about the contemporary appraisal of town and countryside and the place these spheres took in the habitus of the social elite. 1.

Landscape in early Netherlandish art

Towards the end of the fourteenth century, landscape motifs gained momentum in Northern Europe, as they rapidly evolved from a virtually non-existent pictorial category or highly stylised parergon towards an object of increasing sophistication and artistic proficiency. At the courts of the Valois princes various miniaturists, many of them originating from the Rhine-Meuse region, gradually converted the traditional uniform gold or geometric background into increasingly expansive landscapes. Netherlandish artists, such as Jean Malouel (or Jan Maelwael), Melchior Broederlam, and the Boucicaut Master ( Jacob Coene?) were the first north of the Alps7 to design a scenic backdrop and variegated blue sky, even though these landscapes were still clumsy experiments that lacked any sense 6 “Seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts wurde die Landschaft als neues Inszenierungsideal für das Selbstdarstellungsprogram Stifterbild ausformuliert” (Alarich Rooch, Stifterbilder in Flandern und Brabant, p. 258). 7 Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s mural paintings of 1338-1340 in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena are an early but isolated highlight in medieval landscape painting ( Jack Greenstein, ‘The Vision of Peace: Meaning and Representation in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Sala Della Pace Cityscapes’, Art History, 11:4 (1988), 492-510).

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of perspective.8 The true pioneers of the realistic portrayal of natural space were the Limbourg Brothers, famous for their truthful depictions of castles and country life in Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1411-1416), and the Van Eyck brothers. Many art historians endorse the identification of one of the major miniaturists active in the so-called Turin-Milan Hours with Jan Van Eyck. Some of these miniatures, most likely made during Van Eyck’s stay at the court of the count of Holland in The Hague in the early 1420s, betray a great mastery in the evocation of scenic, optical, and atmospheric effects. The high degree of detail and realism – even on the small scale of the miniature – indicates that Van Eyck aspired to counterfeit the surrounding natural environment with the utmost accuracy. The stunning veracity of these images recently impelled Hugo Van de Velde to identify the exact spot in the Scheveningen dunes where the master might have drawn the sea and landscape that figure in his famous depiction of the count of Holland and his retinue.9 In the course of the 1420s, Van Eyck, the Tournai Master of Flémalle, and his fellow townsman Jacques Daret extended these innovations to panel painting, setting the standard for generations of Flemish artists to come. During the second quarter of the fifteenth century, most landscapes were conceived as a picturesque vista framed by a window or doorway of an interior. Towards the end of the century natural landscapes gained further prominence, as artists such as Dirk Bouts and Hans Memling made every effort to let the central subject and depicted donor blend into an all-encompassing and increasingly idealised landscape or garden.10 Around 1520 painted landscapes emerged from the shadow of the religious narrative and evolved into a quasi-independent genre. The innovative Antwerp art market of the early sixteenth century attracted such painters as Joachim Patinir, who turned fanciful panoramic views or ‘world landscapes’ into the main subject of the image.11 Even though this constituted an important step in the emancipation process of the pictorial landscape, Catherine Reynolds puts the inventiveness of Patinir’s specialization into perspective by underscoring the pre-existence of a strong tradition of landscape iconography in other artistic media in the late medieval Low Countries, such as book illumination, tapestry, and cloth painting. Already in the fifteenth century, these media had developed secular and independent representations of countryside activities and hunting scenes. 8 Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures, pp. 175-185; Bakker, Landscape and Religion, pp. 5-7. On pre-Eyckian painting, see Cyriel Stroo (ed.), Pre-Eyckian Panel Painting in the Low Countries, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009). On the role of the Low Countries in the development of landscape as an artistic category, see Paul Philippot, ‘Réel et imaginaire. Réflexions sur la naissance du paysage dans l’art occidental et l’apport des Pays-Bas’, Annales d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie, 27 (2005), 7-47. 9 Hugo Van der Velde, Jan Van Eyck in Holland (Zwolle: WBooks, 2012). 10 See for instance Catherine Reynolds, ‘Memling’s Landscapes and the Influence of Hugo van der Goes’, in Memling Studies. Proceedings of the International Colloquium (Bruges, 10-12 November 1994), ed. by Hélène Veroustraete, Roger Van Schoute and Maurits Smeyers (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), pp. 163-170 11 For the development of landscape as a pictorial ‘genre’ see Larry Silver, Peasant scenes and landscapes. The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). For Patinir see Alejandro Vergara (ed.), Patinir. Essays and Critical Catalogue (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007).

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Book miniatures and tapestry were particularly favoured by the traditional social elite of princes, nobility and high clergy, for whom landed property and rural life were a key feature to their social status. Cloth painting, on the other hand, seemed to have thrived among lower social strata as a cheap medium to mimic the expensive tapestries.12 The prominence of landscape in early Netherlandish art (and specifically painting) did not go unnoticed by contemporary art critics. By the middle of the fifteenth century the ability to render a landscape skillfully in oil had become a real topos in the characterization of the art of the fiamminghi by Italian humanist authors, such as Bartolomeo Fazio and Ciriacus of Ancona. The early Netherlandish landscape motifs were highly praised and much copied throughout Renaissance Europe, even though some Italian artists scorned this prominent feature of Flemish art. Michelangelo for instance was anything but a devotee of Flemish landscape painting, as it was made ‘without any reason, nor artistic feeling […] without any content, nor power of expression’.13 Even though Michelangelo’s adverse opinion on Netherlandish landscape painting is at odds with the huge success of Northern landscape painting as an autonomous artistic genre in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the tendency to reduce landscape to a mere decorative and meaningless parergon persisted among art critics and historians. Moreover, the presumed ‘descriptive realism’ of early Netherlandish landscapes prompted many scholars to interpret them as mere skillful reflections of the surrounding nature; commercial inventions of the artist who wanted to stand out on the competitive art market. As a result, the often highly selective and idealizing nature of landscapes was often overlooked. During recent decades, however, a growing number of scholars have acknowledged the spiritual, intellectual or social function of landscape motifs – other than merely bringing delight.14

12 Catherine Reynolds, ‘Patinir and Depictions of Landscape in the Netherlands’, in Patinir. Essays and Critical Catalogue, ed. by Alejandro Vergara (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007), pp. 97-115. For book miniatures, see Otto Pächt, ‘La Terre de Flandres’, Pantheon, 36 (1978), 3-16; Goehring, Space, Place and Ornament. For tapestries: Brigit Franke, ‘Domäne und Aristokratische Repräsentation. Bauerndarstellungen in Frankoflämischen Tapisserien des 15. Jahrhunderts’, in Porträt – Landschaft – Interieur. Jan Van Eycks Rolin-Madonna im Ästhetischen Kontext, ed. by Christiane Kruse and Felix Thürlemann (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1999), pp. 73-90. For the nearly preserved fifteenth-century Netherlandish cloth painting and its relation to tapestry, see Catherine Reynolds, ‘The function and display of Netherlandish cloth paintings’, in The Fabric of Images: European Paintings on Textile Supports in the 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. by Caroline Villers (London: Archetype Publications, 2000), pp. 89-98. 13 Manfred Sellink, ‘A New Look on the World. The Invention of Landscape’, in The Age of Van Eyck, the Mediterranean World and Early Netherlandish Painting , 1430-1530, ed. by Till-Holger Borchert (Ghent: Ludion, 2002), p. 215. Luciano Bellosi, ‘The Landscape alla fiamminga’, in Italy and the Low Countries. Artistic Relations. The Fifteenth Century. Proceedings of the Symposium Held at Museum Catharijneconvent, ed. by V. M. Schmidt and others (Florence: Cento Di, 1999), pp. 97-108. 14 For the traditional historiography and the response of the 1970-80s by Josua Bruyn, Reindert Falkenburg and Boudewijn Bakker, see Bakker, Landscape and Religion, pp. 202-211. See also Margaret Goehring, Space, Place and Ornament: the Function of Landscape in Medieval Manuscript Illumination (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), p. 150.

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2. The exegesis of landscape motifs The recent monograph by the Amsterdam scholar Boudewijn Bakker Landscape and Religion from Van Eyck to Rembrandt (2004) offers one of the most comprehensive studies of Netherlandish landscape painting.15 In addition to its spatial and aesthetic function, Bakker interprets early Netherlandish landscape painting in light of the contemporary intellectual climate and Weltanschauung. By taking into account various philosophical, theological and artistic treatises Bakker tries to reconstruct the late medieval and early modern attitude towards landscape and the representation of landscape. Pivotal to his analysis is the traditional Christian ‘analogical’ world view (or ‘universal analogism’), which assumes a fundamental analogy between the visible nature – the Book of Nature – the Holy Scripture and the Divine Creation. According to Bakker, the landscape settings in late medieval painting, sixteenth-century ‘world landscapes’ or seventeenth-century Dutch painting enabled the beholder to study and contemplate the created world, in order to elevate his mind to the Divine Creator. He advocates a multi-layered interpretation model or ‘exegesis’ of the landscape. In this way, the meditative landscapes of the Flemish Primitives did not only refer to an actual or historical landscape (e.g. Palestine or the Flemish countryside), they could also contain an allegorical meaning (e.g. by referring to the Heavenly Jerusalem, the chastity of Mary, the Eucharist), convey a moral message (e.g. the harmony of the landscape referring to the desired peace among people), and finally fulfil an anagogic function (e.g. in helping the viewer to gain a union with God). Landscape settings, however, did not function as a rebus that unmistakably conveyed a clear-cut message. Rather they relied on the depicted characters and general message of the piece of art by way of association.16 Bakker did not pioneer this theological reading of landscape motifs, as this approach has been ubiquitous in the art historical research on the heavenly panoramas of Jan Van Eyck, Dirk Bouts or Gerard David since the paradigm shift initiated by Erwin Panofsky and his iconological method.17 Often recurring constituents of early Netherlandish landscapes such as the hortus conclusus, castles, farmsteads or water mills have been predominantly associated with Marian iconography and accordingly interpreted as emblems of Marian chastity, the Virgin’s fertility and as a symbol of the Eucharist. Likewise, Reindert Falkenburg has recently challenged the assumption that by the beginning of the sixteenth century specialised painters such as the Antwerp artist Joachim Patinir had emancipated 15 Boudewijn Bakker, Landscape and Religion from Van Eyck to Rembrandt (Burlington: Ashgate, 2012) is an English translation of Landschap en Wereldbeeld van Van Eyck tot Rembrandt (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Thoth, 2004). 16 Bakker, Landscape and Religion, esp. pp. 19-35. 17 See Chapter I on the city as religious space. See also Kruse and Thürlemann, Porträt – Landschaft – Interieur; Jean Arrouye, ‘Les paysages anagogiques de Dirk Bouts’, in Bouts Studies, ed. by Bert Cardon and Maurits Smeyers (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), pp. 179-190. Maryan Ainsworth interprets Gerard David’s background sceneries as ‘landscapes for meditation’ (Ainsworth, Gerard David, pp. 207-255).

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landscape from the religious rationale of medieval panel painting, and made it into an independent aesthetic category. Rather, Falkenburg views the world landscapes of Patinir and his epigones as devotional pictorial devices that had to facilitate the mental or spiritual pilgrimage of the beholder (very much in the tradition of older medieval iconography).18 Even though these interpretations of late medieval and early modern landscapes are very much in keeping with the almost exclusively devotional character of early Netherlandish panel painting (i.e. altarpieces and devotional diptychs or triptychs), this approach has been critiqued for its tendency to ‘over-interpretation’.19 This present chapter, however, does not seek to assess the validity of a religio-semiotic analysis of landscape. The following pages will rather focus on the possibility of additional, more secular, layers of meaning, linking specific landscape motifs to the social status of the patron. Even though Bakker acknowledges the ‘poly-interpretability’ of pictorial landscapes, he is hardly concerned with the reading of its ‘language’ in more secular terms. He only briefly discusses the political-territorial claims made by some early modern topographical landscapes. Other scholars have been more inclined to understand landscapes from a more worldly perspective. An important contribution to a political reading of landscape representations was made in 1994 by Martin Warnke. Covering nearly a thousand years of Western art history, he discusses how man appropriated and transformed the landscape over time, and how its representation played an important role in this process. Warnke, for instance, refers to the Limbourg Brothers’ renowned depictions of castles and stretches of countryside in Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1411-1416) as conveying a sense of property and territory.20 Also Margeret Goehring discusses the visualization of a ‘property landscape’ from the thirteenth century onwards in documents that were used for estate management (such as rent books), primitive maps, and books of hours.21 The final chapter of this book will examine this remarkable relation between representation and territory/ property in greater depth. As opposed to Bakker’s approach, Larry Silver minimises the spiritual and intellectual dimension of the scenic backdrops in the portraits of Hans Memling or Quinten Metsys by interpreting them principally as direct reflections of the surrounding reality, which might obliquely allude to the peacefulness and piety of the virtuous patron.22 Dirk De Vos, for his part, understands recurrent

18 Reindert Falkenburg, Joachim Patinir: Landscape as an image of the Pilgrimage of Life (Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1988). 19 An extensive critique has been published in the review by Jeroen Stumpel in Simiolus, 31:1-2 (20042005), 115-123. 20 Martin Warnke, Political Landscape. The Art History of Nature (London: Reaktion Books, 1994), pp. 9-38. 21 Margaret Goehring, Space, Place and Ornament: the Function of Landscape in Medieval Manuscript Illumination (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 135-150. 22 Silver, Peasant scenes and landscapes, p. 29. I checked this, and it does not say what is claimed. Wrong page? Or idea?

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landscape elements in some of the Memling portraits, such as the castle or the farmstead, as generic secular symbols that refer to the male steadfastness and female fertility of the donors.23 Even though the reading of these motifs as gendered allegorical attributes becomes highly questionable when applied to the oeuvre of other early Flemish artists, De Vos’s approach contains a very valuable line of argument, namely the very idea that particular landscape motifs could operate as an identity marker on behalf of the person portrayed.24 3. Landscape motifs in early Netherlandish painting revisited 3.1.

Town versus countryside: dichotomy or symbiosis?

Until the 1970s the historiography on the Low Countries predominantly treated the relations between town and country as essentially antagonistic or hierarchical. The ‘Pirennian’ idée fixe of the medieval city as an island of early capitalism and modernity in a hostile feudal world conditioned generations of historians to think of the city as rigidly separated from the countryside.25 Only in the last decades has the relationship of the premodern city with its hinterland been redefined in terms of a symbiosis. Despite the distinct physical boundary between both spheres, both demographic mobility, economic transactions, land-holding patterns, social contacts, cultural exchange, and the mental horizon of citizens and countrymen alike spilled over the city walls. In the late medieval Low Countries a growing number of citizens – from the mercantile elite up to the most well-off artisans – purchased or inherited landed property outside the city, ranging from a modest plot of farmland to a substantial estate, including a farmstead and a posh residence.26 It has been estimated that around the middle of the sixteenth century roughly one-fifth of the Low Countries (the densely 23 As for instance in Memling’s Portrait of an Aged Couple (1470-1472, Staatliche Museen, Berlin) or the Jacob Floreins Altarpiece (ca. 1490, Musée du Louvre, Paris). See De Vos, Hans Memling, p. 310 (note 2), p. 318. 24 Depictions of castles and farms as background motifs were not intrinsically linked to a male or female donor. In Gerard David’s Sedano Triptych (1490-1495, Musée du Louvre, Paris), for instance, the donatrix is set against an impressive castle, whereas the donor is depicted in front of an empty landscape. A similar configuration appears in Gerard Horenbaut’s Pottelsberg Triptych (ca. 1525, Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent). 25 See Henri Pirenne’s pivotal Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1925). For a general historiographical discussion see Stephan Epstein (ed.), Town and Country in Europe, 1300-1800 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 5-6. 26 Some case studies for respectively fifteenth-century Antwerp, Namur and Ghent are: Francine De Nave, Antwerpen, stad en land (1394-1402): de innerlijke vervlechting van stedelijk en landelijk milieu in de late middeleeuwen op basis van privé-bezit aan gronden en ander soorten van goed (unpublished PhD dissertation, Brussels, 1978); Isabelle Paquay, Gouverner la ville au bas Moyen Âge. Les élites dirigeantes de la ville de Namur au XVe siècle (Turnhout : Brepols, 2008), pp. 180-191; Joris Vanderhaeghen, Het buitenstedelijk bezit van de Gentse burgerij in het begin van de 15de eeuw: 1400-1410 (unpublished MA thesis, Ghent University, 2004).

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afforested Ardennes excluded) was in hands of citizens.27 Burghers resorted to the acquisition of extra-urban property for a variety – and often a combination – of reasons: economic investment, recreation, or as a status-symbol (cf. infra). In the opposite direction, an increasing number of rural noblemen – at least periodically – settled in the city, allowed common citizen to marry their daughters, and were elected as municipal aldermen. Many rural landlords had maintained long-standing economic ties with the city, before they eventually integrated into urban society. In fact, the rural hinterland provided the urban economy of a constant flow of foodstuff, fuel (wood and peat), raw materials (wool, flax, dyestuff …) and construction materials (limestone, bricks …).28 A recent study of Paulo Charruadas, for instance, demonstrated that already in the high Middle Ages noble landlords acquired burgess status and were actively involved in the political organization and urban development of pre-modern Brussels.29 In sum, there no means neat distinction between town and country, nor there was a clear-cut dichotomy between ‘noble’ rural landlords and ‘bourgeois’ urban elites.30 At first sight, the high degree of integration of town and countryside barely resonates in late medieval iconography. Most manuscript illuminations, tapestries, and city seals depict the city as a monolithic architectural volume, stressing its insularity, while the vast majority of early Netherlandish panel painting also tends to represent the city and the surrounding hinterland as two distinct spheres, separated by a clear-cut city wall. This highly idealised spatial segregation of town and countryside might have been occasioned by the predominantly religious nature of late medieval panel painting, staging the unspoiled nature that encompasses the city as a place of spiritual retreat. By encapsulating the patron and religious scene in a plain landscape, in splendid isolation from the city, the artist fully underscored the devotional purpose of the images. Depictions of constructions extra muros are rare, even though in reality many late medieval cities physically fanned out into the countryside.31 Notwithstanding the fact that spatial expansion of most Flemish towns had stalled towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, leaving large stretches of land within the urban fortifications 27 Bas Van Bavel, Piet Van Cruyningen and Erik Thoen (eds), ‘The Low Countries, 1000-1750’, in Social relations: property and power (Rural economy and society in north-western Europe, 500-2000), ed. by Bas Van Bavel and Richard Hoyle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 175-176. 28 Marc Boone, ‘Les villes de Flandre et leurs campagnes: état de la question et pistes de recherches’, in I paessagi agrari d’Europa (secoli XIII-XV) (Centro Italiano di studi di storia e d’arte Pistoia, Ventiquattresimo Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Pistoia, 16-19 maggio 2013) (Roma, 2015), pp. 523-529; Michael Limberger, Sixteenth-century Antwerp and its Rural Surroundings. Social and Economic Changes in the Hinterland of a Commercial Metropolis (ca. 1450 – ca. 1570) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). 29 Paulo Charruadas, ‘Urban Elites and Traditional Lords in Brussels (12th-14th c.): Opposition or Convergence?’, in Town and Country in Medieval North Western Europe. Dynamic Interactions, ed. by Alexis Wilkin, John Naylor, Derek Keene et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 287-312. 30 For the shifting paradigm towards a town-countryside symbiosis, see also Alexis Wilkin, John Naylor, Derek Keene and Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld (eds), Town and Country in Medieval North Western Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). 31 A recent volume on suburban space is Peter Johanek (ed.), Die Stadt und ihr Rand (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008).

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vacant for farming and horticulture, a myriad of residential, agricultural, logistical, and industrial structures had popped up just outside the town walls and along the major arteries leading towards the city gates. Some market places (e.g. the cattle or wood market) or professions (e.g. butchers or tanners) were eccentric to the town centre and occasionally developed outside the urban precinct. In fourteenth-century Ypres even a whole neighbourhood of textile-workers was located outside the city walls.32 Another well-documented case is Oudenaarde, where a booming tapestry industry provoked a rapid population growth from circa 5700 inhabitants in 1458 to more than 8500 in the middle of the sixteenth century. This resulted in the expansion of four suburban neighbourhoods that comprised both small houses (often rented to spinners) and larger properties, including farmsteads and bleaching fields.33 Very few painters, however, paid attention to the buildings and activities that spilled over from the urban precinct. Only the Master of Flémalle, the early Rogier Van der Weyden, and Gerard David occasionally paid some attention to suburban space.34 With an astonishing sense of reality, the Master of Flémalle incorporated in his Dijon Nativity (ca. 1435) what must be without doubt one of the oldest depictions of suburban Flemish lintbebouwing (ribbon building) (Figure 2.4 – Plate 4). The road that leads to the city gate is alternately bordered by agrarian structures (a farmstead, a barn, perhaps an inn) and a brick residential building. Farther along the road is located what appears to be a convent. Gerard David, in turn, distinctly contrasted in several Nativity scenes the suburban use of ephemeral construction materials, such as loam and wood, to the exclusively brick and stone edifices of the city. This stereotyping dichotomy between town and countryside was not in keeping with the actual appearance of the late medieval Flemish town. The petrification of the urban interior in the late medieval Low Countries was still an ongoing process. Despite the municipal policy to ban combustible building materials from the city centre, it still counted many wooden structures.35 Suburbanisation reached new heights with the galloping expansion of Antwerp in the course of the sixteenth century. Villages such as Borgerhout, Berchem, and Hoboken gradually came into the orbit of the metropolis. An increasing number of migrants settled along the main approach roads, among which a lot of innkeepers, brewers, butchers (Borgerhout), and brickmakers (Hoboken). These villages were popular among Antwerp citizens for a holiday excursion. A fair amount of paintings and drawings that were made by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and

32 David Nicholas, Town and countryside: social, economic and political tensions in fourteenth-century Flanders (Bruges: De Tempel, 1971), pp. 65-66. 33 Tineke Van de Walle, ‘Suburbane bewoning in de pre-industriële periode’, Agora, 2 (2015), 19-21. The socio-economic and cultural features of suburban Oudenaarde are the subject of a current research project by Tineke Van de Walle (University of Antwerp). 34 See for instance David’s Nativity, 1485-1490, Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio or Rogier Van der Weyden’s, Saint George Fighting the Dragon, ca. 1430, Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. 35 Rutger Tijs, Tot Cieraet deser Stadt. Bouwtrant en bouwbeleid te Antwerpen van de Middeleeuwen tot heden. Een cultuurhistorische Studie over de bouwtrant en de ontwikkeling van het stedebouwkundig beleid te Antwerpen van de 13de tot de 20ste eeuw (Antwerpen: Mercatorfonds, 1993), pp. 39-43.

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his contemporary artists are situated in this kind of suburban setting. Some fine examples are Bruegel’s Children’s Games (1560) and the Fair at Hoboken (1559), and Frans Hogenberg’s etching of The Battle between Shrovetide and Lent (1559).36 The numerous sixteenth-century depictions of the gluttony of the peasant hinterland – to which many citizens threw themselves over at fixed moments, such as carnival and kermis – continue to provoke debate among art historians. Whereas some lay great store on the moralising overtone of these scenes as negative exempla, others are inclined to place them in a much broader tradition of comic imagery.37 Without going further into this discussion, one should stress that despite their antithetical nature, some of these images still attest to the intense cultural entanglement of the town and countryside. In Bruegel’s drawing of the Fair at Hoboken (1559) for instance, the intemperate festivities of the inhabitants of this suburban village are accompanied by a shooting contest and a rhetorician’s play. These two cultural phenomena originated from the city, but had since the late fifteenth century been appropriated by those rural communities that witnessed an intense agrarian commercialisation (such as Coastal Flanders), proto-industrialisation (for instance the Oudenaarde region), or suburbanisation (the Antwerp hinterland).38 3.2.

The countryside a as a place of recreation and mental retreat

A few late medieval panel paintings oppose town and country in a very distinct manner, foreshadowing a particular vision of rural life that would flourish in the sixteenth century. These panels overtly allude to the antithesis between the city as a locus of exertion (negotium) and the countryside as the province of leisure (otium). In the so-called Saint Ivo, attributed to the Van der Weyden workshop (ca. 1450, National Gallery, London), for instance, the window behind the reading man overlooks an unclouded landscape (Figure 4.3). In an orchard next to a farmstead with an idyllic pond a company of elegantly dressed figures disport themselves, while in the background the industrious city looms.39 It is as if the artist wanted to contrast the state of utmost concentration of the reading man (perhaps a lawyer) with the suburban countryside as a place of recreation. This antagonism between town and hinterland is even more clear-cut in a recently restored Trinity Triptych that was produced during the last quarter of the fifteenth century in the circle of Dirk Bouts and which is now kept in the Church of Saint

36 Katrien Lichtert, ‘The artist, the city and the urban theatre: Pieter Bruegel’s Battle between Shrovetide and Lent (1559) reconsidered’, in Portraits of the City. Representing Urban Space in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Katrien Lichtert, Jan Dumolyn and Maximilaan Martens (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 83-96. 37 Katrien Lichtert, Beeld van de stad. Representaties van stad en architectuur in het oeuvre van Pieter Bruegel de Oude (unpublished PhD dissertation, Ghent University, 2014), p. 22. 38 Van Bruaene, Om beters wille, pp. 103-111 (see also the map on p. 88). For Coastal Flanders, see Kristof Dombrecht, Plattelandsgemeenschappen, lokale elites en ongelijkheid in het Vlaamse kustgebied (14de-16de eeuw). Case-study: Dudzele ambacht (unpublished PhD dissertation, Ghent University, 2014), pp. 296-317, p. 427 (annexe 15). 39 De Vos, Rogier Van der Weyden, pp. 407-408.

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Figure 4.3: Workshop of Rogier Van der Weyden, A Man Reading (Saint Ivo?), ca. 1450. © National Gallery, London.

Servatius in Berg (near Brussels).40 The two windows on the right wing with the donatrix give access to the two opposing worlds on either side of the city

40 Jochen, Vranckx, Het drieluik van de Heilige Drievuldigheid in de Sint-Servatiuskerk van Berg. Een integrale benadering (unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Leuven, 1999).

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Figure 4.4: Epigone Dirk Bouts, Trinity Triptych (detail right panel), 1475-1500, Saint Servatius Church, Berg (Kampenhout). © KIK-IRPA, Brussel.

wall (Figure 4.4 – Plate 15). The left vista comprises a Flémallesque depiction of daily city life: a porter is bowed down with a heavy load, a well-dressed burgher crosses the path of a mendicant friar, while a mother is keeping an eye on her frolicsome child riding a hobbyhorse. The setting of this marvelous tableau is an ordinary street with shops, and in the foreground a stately town palace, hinting at the relatively limited spatial segregation of elite residences within the topography of the late medieval city. As indicated in Chapter 2, this kind of view inside the city had become exceptional in late fifteenth-century Flemish painting. Conversely, the opposing window frames a view of a pleasant countryside as the playground of both wealthy urbanites and the traditional rural elite. An armed horseman – perhaps a hunter – returns to a small moated castle. Along the winding road that leads to the castle four refined men with noble posture – one of the characters carries a walking stick and is accompanied by a pet – play a ball game, while farther down the path a servant girl rushes back toward the chateau. Even though it is impossible to tease out the exact significance of these two divergent vistas,41 it is obvious that they accorded with the social 41 It has been suggested to identify the streetscape as the Bergstraat, with the tower at the left being a remote impression of the Brussels Town Hall. The castle in the right vista has been associated with the chateau of Lelle. However, there is no hard proof for this whatsoever. For this hypothesis, see: http://blog.seniorennet.be/triptiek.

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practice of late medieval elites alternately to dwell on either side of the town wall. Notwithstanding the fact that the patrons of the Trinity Triptych cannot be identified with absolute certainty, there are clear indications that they were entrenched in both the city of Brussels and the surrounding countryside.42 The altarpiece was originally installed in the demolished Chapel of Saint Lambert in Lelle near Berg. The seigniory of Lelle repeatedly changed hands throughout the fifteenth century. It was acquired in 1430 by Johanna Boote, daughter of Sir Everard Boote and Clara de Florentville.43 The Boote family originated from the Brussels commercial elite and was subject to a process of ennoblement.44 In 1474 Johanna Boote founded a chaplaincy in the Saint Lambert’s Chapel, making her the most likely candidate to have commissioned the Trinity Triptych, which is perfectly in keeping with the donatrix being accompanied by Saint John as patron saint. In 1483 the seigniory descended to Philip Hinckaert, maître d’hôtel of Philip the Fair and descendant of a bastard branch of the dukes of Brabant that had been part of the Brussels political elite since the fourteenth century and that had invested in the expansion of a seigniorial power base in the vicinity of Brussels and elsewhere.45 In this way, the apparently antithetical vistas of town and countryside in the Trinity Altarpiece actually capture two complementary spheres of one single elite residential system on one panel: namely the city palace on the left and the country residence on the right. It is evidence of the fact that both traditional nobility and the upper echelon of urban society strove to establish a social and spatial network that reached across the urban precinct.46 Whereas in late medieval panel painting the representation of the countryside as a place of recreational delight remains an exception, sixteenth-century secular painting will turn this theme into a genre on its own. Especially early modern Antwerp witnessed a true rush of wealthy urbanites to landed property in the immediate vicinity of the city. In the second half of the sixteenth century the demand for suburban residences soared to the extent that the allotment of rural estates just outside the city became economically viable. The Antwerp entrepreneur Gilbert Van Schoonbeke developed in the 1550s an entire quarter of circa hundred courts of pleasure (hoven van plaisantie) around the Markgravenlei. In Berchem the Papenmoer encompassed in 1575 over 60 residential villas. Around the middle of the sixteenth century the Antwerp Liberty counted approximately 370 suburban villas in total, ranging from modest farmsteads, newly built 42 For the close entanglement of local noble landlords and the urban community in medieval Brussels, see Charruadas, ‘Urban elites and traditional lords’. 43 Alphonse Wauters, Histoire des environs de Bruxelles ou description historique des localités qui formaient autrefois l’ammannie de cette ville, II (Brussels: Vanderauwera, 1855), pp. 709-710. 44 A key figure in this process of social promotion was Almeric Boote (° circa 1340), who was a successful Brussels cloth and silk merchant. He added to the prestige of the family through military service and seigniorial property. 45 Paul De Win, De adel in het hertogdom Brabant in de vijftiende eeuw (inzonderheid de periode 1430-1482) (unpublished Master’s thesis, Ghent University, 1979), pp. 373-374. 46 John Dunne and Paul Janssens, ‘Introduction: Urban Elites and Their Residences in Europe from the Renaissance to Industrialization’, in Living in the City: Elites and Their Residences, 1500-1900, ed. by John Dunne and Paul Janssens (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), esp. p. 24.

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playhouses to veritable castles.47 On a more modest scale a similar suburban development could be witnessed in Bruges, Ghent, and Brussels. For instance, a detailed map of the Liberty of Ghent made in 1619 by Jacques Horenbault depicts no less than 65 pleasure courts and moated sites within a radius of six kilometres around the city. In Brussels a high concentrations of suburban residences could be found in the Zenne Valley and along the Maalbeek.48 By the sixteenth century, a heterogeneous top layer of society had appropriated a dual residence pattern. This corresponded to a sojourn in city for the most part of the year, alternated with a stay at the countryside during the weekends, on feast days and in the summer. This practice was once the prerogative of princes, noblemen, and the high clergy, yet witnessed a certain ‘democratization’ during the sixteenth century. Simultaneously, the periodic retreat to the countryside was eloquently propagated in contemporary humanist literature as an antidote for the worries of urban life.49 The massive appeal of the suburban residence coincided with the breakthrough of landscape painting and drawing as a fully autonomous genre on the Antwerp market from circa 1540 onwards. Most remarkably, the majority of these topographical landscapes did not depict the monumental rural properties of the rich citizens, but sketched bucolic scenes of ragged farmsteads and sheds. Jan Muylle dismisses a direct correlation between both phenomena, but argues that they sprang from the same cultural background, namely the typically urbane/humanist vision of the countryside as a locus amoenus, or a place that gives pleasure.50 Also Alexandra Onuf argued that the pastoral prints and paintings of the middle of the sixteenth century offered “a visual surrogate for the privileges and pleasures of the actual countryside at a time when these were amongst the most current and prevalent interests of the urban citizenry”.51 Catherine Reynolds refers to an intriguing engraving, designed circa 1520 by the Augsburg artist Hans Weiditz for the German translation of Petrarch’s De Remediis utriusque fortunae (published in 1532), to illustrate this specifically urban attitude towards landscape (Figure 4.5). Preceding a dialogue in which Sorrow complains to Reason about the chore of daily life, the image depicts an assiduous merchant who is burdened with the responsibilities of running a business. As he struggles with his bookkeeping in his urban workplace, his thoughts wander off to an idyllic countryside, depicted at the far left.52 This kind of mental, social, and eventually physical escapism from the urban world 47 Roland Baetens (ed.), Hoven van plaisantie : het ‘soete’ buitenleven in de provincie Antwerpen 16de-20ste eeuw (Antwerpen, Pandora, 2013); Leen Heyrman, De ‘villa rustica’ en de verkavelingen rond Antwerpen midden 16de eeuw (unpublished Master’s thesis, Ghent Univeristy, 2007). 48 Leen Charles, Marie-Christine Laleman, Daniel Lievois et al., Van walsites en speelhoven: het Vrije van Gent bij Jacques Horenbault (1619) (Ghent: Stadsarchief, 2008). 49 Jan Muylle, ‘Het genot van de locus amoenus : de villa rustica rondom Antwerpen en het topografische landschap circa 1545-1585’, Stadsgeschiedenis, 4: 2 (2009), pp. 118-120. 50 Muylle, ‘Het Genot van de Locus Amoenus’, passim. 51 Alexandra Onuf, ‘Local Terrains: Imaging the Vernacular Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp’, in The Transformation of Vernacular Expression in Early Modern Arts, ed. by Joost Keizer and Todd Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p. 257. 52 Reynolds, ‘Patinir and Depictions of Landscape’, pp. 101-103 (Figure 44).

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Figure 4.5: Hans Weiditz, Dialogue between Sorrow and Reason, in Francesco Petrarca, ‘Von der Artzney bayder Glück’, Augsburg, 1520, London, British Library, ms. C39 H25 fol. 64.

seems to have been key to the appreciation of landscape and countryside by early modern elites. Perhaps the most sophisticated harbour of refuge from the day-to-day worries of the city was the garden. The cultural geographer Denis Cosgrove describes the Renaissance garden as a “pastoral rejection of the city […] a secret precinct, a fantasy place where both the political or commercial activities of the city and the productive work of the countryside may be avoided and where labour […] is intellectual and contemplative”.53 Both for Bruges and Antwerp the development of small-scaled, secluded gardens within the city walls is relatively well documented. In Bruges they were often called heesters, while in Antwerp the archival sources refer to these gardens as a zomerhuys (‘summer house’). Besides a place of personal retreat, they functioned as focal points of elite sociability, hosting banquets, receptions, literary meetings, and most likely also all kinds of games and gambling.54 As open terrains within the city walls grew scarce and the demand for a fully fledged rural residence increased, an rising number of these leisure activities were organised on rural properties outside the city. These country estates and suburban villas formed islands of urbanity in the hinterland. They incarnated the countryside as viewed by the early modern urbanite: a well-orchestrated ensemble of gardens, orchards, ponds and ditches, with a central complex of predominantly residential and recreational buildings.

53 Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, pp. 96, 99. 54 A well-known example is the so-called makelaarsheester in Bruges, a walled green space adjacent to the chapel of the powerful brokers’ guild in the Sint-Jorisstraat (Anne-Marie Delepiere and Martine Huys, ‘Heesters ofte huyzekens van plaisance te Brugge’, Monumenten en Landschappen, 9:2 (1990), pp. 56-57). For Antwerp see Baetens, Hoven van plaisantie, p. 28.

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The social ideal of the seigniorial countryside

As pointed out in Chapter 2, the majority of late medieval panel paintings do not tend to contrast the active city life to a untroubled country living. On the contrary, in many paintings both town and countryside exude a sense of calm and idealization. Rather than conjuring up a locus of distraction and mental retreat, most landscape motifs seem to express a broader social order for the patron. Many portraits and altarpieces evoke a serene landscape, scattered with distinctive features that add to the social status of the patron, such as a moated castle, a ditch with swans, a farmstead with a dovecote, a horseman or hunter, a water-mill … All these elements were attributes of a noble lifestyle. Rooch saw a new mindset filtering through the way donor portraits were increasingly framed by a landscape setting, rather than by the city. He interpreted this shift as a reorientation of burgher elites towards one of the cornerstones of noble status, namely landed property.55 According to Rooch this changing representation strategy can be explained by the growing group of citizens who entangled in a process of nobilisation: “The donor images after 1450 document the claim burghers laid to court culture”.56 Also Jean Wilson, in her monograph on the social meaning of panel painting in Bruges at the close of the Middle Ages, argues that Flemish panel painting constituted an important tool for the pursuit of vivre noblement, aspired to by a diverse, predominantly non-noble elite. According to Wilson, panel painting offered patrons an affordable instrument to mimic typical noble virtues, such as ‘ostentation’ and ‘magnificence’, and to visualise family lineages (i.e. marriages and affiliation through portraits and coats of arms).57 By the end of the Middle Ages, however, these features had been appropriated by a growing number of citizens, including craft guild elites. Having lost much of its exclusivity, they barely contributed to a ‘noble’ lifestyle. Buylaert, Dumolyn, and Declercq recently exposed the concept of vivre noblement in late medieval Flanders to close scrutiny. They argued that, besides ducal office, military service, knighthood, marriage, landed property, fief-holding, hunting, the bearing of (heraldic) arms, and the observation of a particular dress code and material culture, the most decisive ennobling attribute was the ownership of a seigniory, i.e. a landed property – whether a fief or allodium – with seigniorial rights attached to it. The tenure of multiple seigniories – a fortiori a village seigniory with high justice – generated undisputable social prestige. Not landholding per se, but the exercise of public power enhanced noble status. Nevertheless, even if

55 “Die landschaft als repräsentative Umgebung der Stifterfigure, die Ausrichtung der Erzählung der stifterbildlichen Themen auf eine Landschaft, ist die Vorstellung eines neues Wertesystems. Mit der Inanspruchnahme der Landschaft bedienten sich die Stifter dessen, was als Attribut und inhaltliche Bedeutsamkeit vormals Adel bezeichnete: Landbesitz” (Rooch, Stifterbilder in Flandern und Brabant, p. 258). 56 “In den Stifterbildern nach 1450 ist ein Anspruch der bürgerlichen Stifter auf Teilhabe an der courtoisen Kultur dokumentiert” (Rooch, Stifterbilder in Flandern und Brabant, p. 259). 57 Jean Wilson, Painting in Bruges at the Close of the Middle Ages: Studies in Society and Visual Culture (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), pp. 13-84.

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one satisfied all these criteria of noble life, acceptance by established noblemen and society at large ultimately remained of overriding importance to gain access to nobility. Noble status was foremost a matter of public perception.58 Frederik Buylaert has recently argued that the trajectory to nobility in late medieval Flanders – and by extension large parts of the Low Countries – was clearly distinct from other regions in Europe due to differences in the power balance between the central state and the city. In fifteenth-century France the central monarchic power had gained a firm grip on the allocation of local status, turning princely service into the bedrock of nobility. This eventually resulted in the inflation of a noblesse the robe. Also in England royal government came to have a decisive impact on the composition of nobility, which became restricted to the most powerful lords of the kingdom (the so-called ‘peers’). At the sub-top of the social pyramid, in between the actual nobility and the commoners, a group of ‘gentlemen’ thrived. This ‘gentry’ was originally composed of long-established knights and squires who had been excluded from nobility, but evolved in the fifteenth century into a heterogeneous class open to municipal aldermen, merchants, lawyers, and administrators. Also here rural lordship and military service was no longer a defining criterion. On the Italian peninsula the situation was different, since a central princely power was virtually non-existent in Northern and Central Italy. As in Flanders, noble lords were increasingly compelled to safeguard their ruling position by merging into the prospering urban elites. Within the institutional framework of the citystate – of which Florence, Venice, Milan, and Genoa were the most resounding examples – urban political office could eventually bestow true nobility. Here lies a fundamental difference with the Low Countries. Even if the city played a pivotal role in determining and sustaining nobility in late medieval Flanders, rural estate and the traditional exercise of seigneurial power remained the cornerstone of nobility. At least to the end of the sixteenth century neither the city nor the state could gain complete ascendancy over the other. Only until 1600 was the Habsburg state able to redefine nobility more or less according to the French model, primarily based on state service.59 The urban elites of the late medieval Low Countries increasingly invested economic capital in the purchase of landed property and – to a lesser extent – seigniories. The latter predominantly came into the hands of burghers through marriage with a noble family. This extra-urban expansion actually followed an economic logic and was not – as has been often stated – the outcome of a

58 Frederik Buylaert, Wim De Clercq and Jan Dumolyn, ‘Sumptuary legislation, material culture and the semiotics of vivre noblement in the county of Flanders (14th-16th centuries)’, Social History, 36 (2011), 393-417.Buylaert, Eeuwen van Ambitie, p. 15. Jan Dumolyn and Filip Van Tricht, ‘Adel en Nobiliteringsprocessen in het Laatmiddeleeuwse Vlaanderen: een Status Quaestionis’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 65 (2000), 197-222. 59 Frederik Buylaert, ‘Lordship, urbanisation and social change in late medieval Flanders’, Past and Present, 227 (2015), 31-75.

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mercantile defeatism or trahison de la bourgeoisie. In 1914 Henri Pirenne advanced the thesis that after a generation or two many merchant families abandoned commerce for a quiet life on a rural estate in pursuit of noble status.60 This thesis provoked discussion, which led, amongst others, Hugo Soly to state that the massive investment in rural property of the sixteenth-century Antwerp commercial elite fitted within a well-balanced, rational economic strategy in order to spread risks and increase profits.61 Landed property constituted a relatively safe investment, which could be used for speculation, the acquisition of credit through the selling of annuities, and as collateral for a mortgage. Moreover, the strategic acquisition of landed property ensured entrepreneurs of direct access to food stocks, raw materials, and industrial facilities, such as mills, breweries, and brick ovens.62 Even if the pursuit of noble status were not the prime motivation for purchasing or acquiring property outside the city, the status-enhancing power attached to the ownership of extra-urban land endowed with seigniorial rights or with distinct topographical features, such as a moated site, a castle, or a fortified farmstead generated significant symbolic capital, much sought after by both noblemen and non-noble elites.63 A telling passage from the Chroniques of court chronicler Jean Molinet (1435-1507), who of course represented a very top-down vision of late medieval society, contrasts the comfortable and secure urban residences of the new ‘bourgeois’ elites with the perils of noble military duty, outside the safety of the town: Pensez un petit, vous riches bourgeois, et aultres hongnars qui murmurez sur l’estat de noblesse, qui vivez en tranquillité pacifique et repos délectables, avironnés de tours murées et de fors propugnacles, pensez un petit et considérez que les nobles chevalereux n’ont pas tant d’avantaige […] Vous menez le bon temps en paisible asseurance, Et ils sont aux hutins en mortelle souffrance; Vous dormez ès cites, bien couvers et repos, Et ils couchent aux champs toujours le fer au dos. Vous vivez en espoir d’augmenter vostre estage, Et ils meurent pour vous et vostre heritage.64 (Do think a bit, you rich burghers, and other soreheads who grumble about the Estate of nobility, you who live in tranquility and delightful calm, surrounded by towers, walls and strong ramparts, do think and consider that the chivalrous nobles do not enjoy that benefit […] You live a nice

60 Buylaert, ‘Lordship, urbanization and social change’, pp. 31-32. 61 Hugo Soly, ‘The “Betrayal” of the Sixteenth-Century Bourgeoisie: A Myth? Some Considerations of the Behaviour Pattern of the Merchants of Antwerp in the Sixteenth Century’, Acta Historiae, 8 (1975), 31-49. 62 Peter Stabel, ‘Het Grondbezit van Stedelingen op het Platteland. Enkele Bedenkingen bij het Onderzoek in het Graafschap Vlaanderen in de Late Middeleeuwen’, Handelingen van de Geschied- en Oudheidkundige Kring van Oudenaarde, 42 (2005), 11-30. Buylaert, Eeuwen van Ambitie, pp. 15 and 261. 63 Landscapes around seigneurial residences were often carefully designed to convey messages about power and control. See Oliver Creighton, Designs upon the Land. Elite Landscapes of the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2009). 64 Jean Molinet, Chroniques, ed. by J.-A. Buchon (Paris: Verdière, 1827), I, pp. 83-84.

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life in peaceful safety, and they are on the battlefield in mortal suffering; You sleep in cities, well protected and secure, and they sleep in the fields, always their sword at the ready; You live in the hope of enhancing your status, and they die for you and your heirs’).65 Not only does Molinet judge military service to be one of the key criteria of nobility, but he also describes a climate of social antagonism within which the ownership of landed property, and a fortiori a (pseudo-)fortified rural estate, was a conditio sine qua non for social prestige. The ownership of a castle, with its impressive morphology, its martial architecture of stone or brick walls, crenellations, fortified gates and towers, and its eye-catching location in the local landscape was undoubtedly one of the most powerful status symbols: “Unambiguously, the castle was a highly visible, physical manifestation of seigniorial authority; in an ‘imitative age’, when lordship was reinforced by mechanisms of patronage and display, a castle represented a means of conspicuous consumption as well as a military strongpoint”.66 The moated site is typologically related to the castle, with this distinction, that the former is by definition unfortified. Its characteristic shallow moat fulfilled a primarily hydraulic and symbolic function. Some moated sites adopted (pseudo-)military features, such as a tower, an entrance gate, or loopholes, while the agricultural constructions outside the residence could be arranged in such a way that they entirely enclosed a lower ward. In written sources this type of semi-fortified building is sometimes named maison forte.67 Towards the end of the Middle Ages the Flemish countryside was studded with a wide variety of status-enhancing dwellings. A recent survey by Andy Ramandt of 145 late medieval castles and moated sites that were held in fief in the Franc of Bruges demonstrated that these sites were more or less equally distributed among nobles and non-nobles (with a slight majority of nobles). This proves that the occupation of these sites was key to the lifestyle of the late medieval Flemish nobility, even though an increasing group of wealthy burghers and clerics started to imitate this practice. To give just one example: the Bruges patrician Jan Van Nieuwehove68 owned a country estate called Waerhem (Warren) in Sint-Kruis, roughly a kilometer outside the city walls. The property of 21 hectares comprised a moated site with a typical dual structure of a slightly elevated and fortified mansion or castle (opperhof) and a farmstead (neerhof). At the end of the fifteenth century the Van Nieuwenhove family, which

65 Translation by Jelle De Rock. 66 Oliver Creighton, Castles and Landscapes: Power, Community and Fortification in Medieval England (London/New York: Continuum, 2005), p. 65. 67 Frans Verhaeghe, ‘Moated sites in Flanders. Features and significance’, in Liber Castellorum. 40 variaties op het thema kasteel, ed. by T. J. Hoekstra, H. L. Janssen and I. W. L. Moerman (Zutphen: Walburg, 1981), pp. 98-121 (110-111). For the status-enhancing capacity of moated sites in high medieval coastal Flanders, see Dries Tys, ‘Medieval moated sites in coastal Flanders: the impact of social groups on the formation of the landscape in relation to the early estates of the Count of Flanders’, in Exchanging Medieval Material Culture. Studies on archaeology and history presented to Frans Verhaeghe, ed. by Koen De Groote, Dries Tys and Marnix Pieters (Brussels: VIOE, 2010), pp. 289-302. 68 A close relative of Maarten Van Nieuwenhove who was immortalised in 1487 by Hans Memling in a devotional diptych.

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in the meantime had attained noble status, sold the properly to the Bruges broker Oste de Lescluse, who used the castle as a country house, while renting out the farm.69 Unfortunately, the sources (the feudal registers of the Burg of Bruges) do not allow us to make a clear distinction between true castles and moated sites (only ten are explicitly called a ‘castle’). Ramandt was able to show that the size, the number of subfiefs, and the kind of seigniorial rights attached to the moated site or castle were indicative of the noble status of the fiefholder. In 1501, more than 75 per cent of all seigniories with high justice were in the hands of noblemen, while the remainder was held by families in a process of ennoblement. Also the sites with non-judicial seigniorial rights, such as the right to operate a windmill or water mill, the privilege to keep swans or pigeons, and the right to shoot partridges or to catch fish, were almost exclusively possessions of the nobility.70 When one considers the tremendous social weight attached to landed property and the exercise of seigniorial power, the significance of the idealised landscape motifs in the social framing of the portrayed donor becomes obvious. The careful juxtaposition of the patron and an iconic ‘seigniorial countryside’ might have signalled and ‘stretched’71 the social status of the benefactor. Many urban and ecclesiastical patrons possessed extra-urban property, even though there are very few indications that they actually exercised seigniorial power. A couple of case studies will corroborate this socio-semiotic interpretation, while at the same time disclaiming a too far-fetched identification of these landscape motifs as true topographical portraits, referring to the actual property of the patron. 3.4.

The seigniorial countryside in early Flemish painting

One of the oldest and most refined depictions of the countryside as a locus of seigniorial power and ostentation can be found in the background of a four-part altarpiece that was painted in 1433-1435 by the Tournai artist Jacques Daret (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; Figure 4.6 – Plate 16). The altarpiece was commissioned by Jean du Clercq, abbot of the prestigious Abbey of Saint Vaast in Arras (Artois), and installed in the Chapel of Our Lady as part of a large-scale renovation campaign. This chapel was situated behind the choir and functioned as the personal mausoleum of the abbot.72 The Berlin wing shows the abbot, clearly identifiable by means of his heraldic arms, kneeling in front of a scene depicting the Visitation of the Virgin Mary to Elisabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist. It seems to have

69 A depiction of the estate can be found on Pieter Pourbus’s map of the Liberty of Bruges (1561-1571, Groeningemuseum, Bruges). Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed 2017: Omwald kasteel Warren, Inventaris Onroerend Erfgoed [online], https://id.erfgoed.net/erfgoedobjecten/77479 (consulted on 8 February 2017). 70 Andy Ramandt, ‘Kastelen en walsites in het Brugse Vrije tijdens de late middeleeuwen (ca. 1350-1500)’, Handelingen van het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis, 148:1 (2011), 87-138. 71 For the concepts of ‘signaling’, signposting and ‘stretching’ (based on the work of Nelson & Zeckhauser), see the Introduction of this book. 72 On this renovation campaign, see Henri Loriquet, Journal des travaux d’art exécutés dans l’abbaye de Saint-Vaast par l’abbé Jean du Clercq (1429-1461) (Arras: Répessé-Crépel, 1889).

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Figure 4.6: Jacques Daret, The Arras Altarpiece (detail of the wing with the Visitation), 1433-1435, Gemäldegalerie Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Photo: Jörg P. Anders.

been a late medieval artistic convention to set the Visitation in a landscape with a castle.73 The typically generic Romanesque construction undoubtedly referred to the residence of Elisabeth’s husband, the priest Zacharias, who is stereotypically depicted in the doorway of a castle or palace.74 In the Berlin panel, however, a

73 A fine example is Rogier Van der Weyden’s Visitation (ca. 1435) in the Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig. See Borchert, Van Eyck and het Zuiden, p. 218 (Figure 246). On the use of landscapes as attributes of saints and religious imagery, see Gerhard Jartiz, ‘Late Medieval Saints and the Visual Representation of Rural Space’, in Promoting the Saints: Cults and their Contexts from Late Antiquity until the Early Modern Period. Essays in Honor of Gábor Klaniczay for his 60th Birthday, ed. by Ottó Gecser and others (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2012), pp. 227-243. 74 Joshua 21:11 locates the house of Zacharias in the city of Hebron, ‘in the hill country of Judah’.

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textbook evocation of a late medieval castle conspicuously floats above the portrait of the donor, obviously linking the landscape to the patron, rather than to the Visitation scene.75 The castle is far from the stereotypical building traditionally depicted in Visitation scenes, but a massive dual settlement, consisting of a lofty residence with an impressive chapel, surrounded by an enceinte and wide moat with swans, and supplemented by a lower court with agricultural constructions in wood and loam, such as a farm, stable, and pigeon tower. Only in the far-right corner of the tableau emerges the hazy skyline of the city. This focus on an archetypical seigniorial countryside was not coincidental and obviously highlighted the social status and personal achievement of the donor. It was not uncommon for an abbey to build a lofty country estate. A well-documented example is the so-called Prelaatshof in Beerschot near Antwerp, which was transformed in 1459 into a pleasant country residence by Jan Fierkens, abbot of the Antwerp Saint Michael’s Abbey.76 Many high-placed clerics purchased or inherited landed property that they fitted with a prestigious residence or pleasure ground.77 During his abbacy, Jean du Clercq, who descended from a Douai family of jurists, also intensively invested in landed property and suburban residences. A eulogy written down in 1462 by the chronicler Jacques du Clercq (1424-1469) – most likely a nephew of the abbot – mentions some of his accomplishments: Il [Jean du Clercq] avoit faict faire aussy à Ennencourt, ès faulxbourgs d’Arras, une fort belle maison de plaisance et gardin, et avoit accaté la place de ses deniers; et estoit pour s’en aller esbattre, et aulcune fois y mener son couvent esbattre […] Il avoit aussy faict refaire la maison de Hervain, à demylieue près d’Arras, laquelle avoit esté ardse au siège d’Arras, et y avoit faict une moult noble place pour pareillement y mener son couvent, ou par adventure soy tenir en temps de mortalité.78 He [ Jean du Clercq] also had built at Ennencourt, in the suburb of Arras, a very beautiful house of pleasure and a garden, which he had bought with his own resources and where he sought diversion, and sometimes he brought his convent there for recreation […] He also had renovated the house of Hervain, located half a mile from Arras, which had been burned to the ground during the siege of Arras, and there he had a very 75 In the past, the depicted settlement has been carelessly identified as the abbatial buildings of Saint Vaast: Kemperdick and Sander, The Master of Flémalle, p. 250 (note 3). 76 Roland Baetens, ‘Geschiedenis van het Prelaatshof, ook genoemd het St.-Michielshof op het Kiel’, in Het Turnhoutse geheugen van Brabant: opstellen over de geschiedenis van Turnhout, de Antwerpse Kempen en het Hertogdom Brabant, aangeboden aan Harry de Kok, ed. by Guido Stevens et al. (Turnhout: Taxandria, 2009), pp. 83-108. 77 A good example is Charles de Croÿ, abbot of the Abbey of Affligem (near the city of Aalst) and scion of a high noble family Hainaut family, who ordered the construction of a castle in the nearby seigniory of Moorsel in around 1520. Even though conceived as a court of plaisance, the site had a fortified appearance, including a moat and towers (Lieve De Mecheleer, ‘Het Waterkasteel van Moorsel’, Land van Aalst, 1 (1998), 63-70). 78 Jean Alexandre Buchon, Choix de Chroniques et Mémoires sur l’Histoire de France (Paris: Auguste Desrez, 1838), p. 200. On the possible family relationship between Jean and Jacques Duclercq see p. x.

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noble place made where he also brought his convent, or where he was sometimes forced to stay during times of pestilence.79 This passage reveals that at the time of his death, the development of a pleasure ground in Ennencourt80 and especially the construction of a residence in Hervain had provided Jean du Clercq with some fame. The development of a suburban estate with a primary recreational purpose (‘pour s’en aller esbattre’) seemed to have been already well established in the first half of the fifteenth century. Most interestingly, the text makes a clear distinction between the two types of property. The suburban villa in Ennencourt has been quite trivially labelled as ‘beautiful’ (‘une fort belle maison de plaisance’), whereas the more prestigious residence in Hervain is described as a ‘noble’ place (‘moult noble place’). The estate in Hervain had been a property of the Abbey of Saint Vaast since the Carolingian era and was situated a kilometre to the east of Arras, along the marshy banks of the Scarpe.81 During the siege of Arras by the Armagnacs in 1414 the site had been largely demolished.82 Jean du Clercq rebuilt the place into a ‘noble’ residence, which seems to have occasionally functioned as a sort of refuge house for the Benedictine monks. This indicates the fortified character of the estate. Unfortunately, no traces of this site remain, which makes it impossible to identify it with certainty with the landscape and castle in the Visitation panel. In any event, whether as an exact depiction of one of the abbot’s edifices, or as a more generic evocation of a seigniorial countryside, the landscape motif on the Berlin wing functioned to underscore the prestige and status of the abbot. This might also explain the unusual juxtaposition of the portrait of the donor with a Visitation scene, instead of the Adoration or Nativity on the other panels (which was a much more common practice). As the castle was a traditional attribute of the Visitation imagery, the inclusion of such a distinct structure close to the donor could be easily justified. Moreover, there are some clear indications that Jean du Clercq involved the altarpiece in a sophisticated self-representation strategy, of which also the renovation of the abbey church and construction of a personal chapel were part. In the summer of 1435 the pick of European diplomacy gathered in the Abbey of Saint Vaast to negotiate the Treaty of Arras and put an end to the hostilities between England, Burgundy, and France.83 This event offered an ideal opportunity for Jean du Clercq to present himself to the ‘high society’ of clerics

79 Translation by Jelle De Rock. 80 Also known as Imercourt. Of old, the Abbey of Saint Vaast held many properties in Imercourt, a hamlet in the vicinity of Arras. There were diverse fortified and moated sites that were held in fief from the abbey, such as the barony of La Brayelle (Adolphe de Cardevacque, ‘Saint-Laurent-Blangy’, in Dictionnaire Historique et Archéologique du Département du Pas-de-Calais. Arrondissement d’Arras, I (Arras, 1873), pp. 138-141). 81 de Cardevacque, ‘Saint-Laurent-Blangy’, p. 145. 82 During the summer of 1414 the Armagnacs and the royal army launched an attack on John the Fearless. Large parts of the city were heavily damaged during this campaign (Richard Vaughan, John the Fearless. The Growth of Burgundian Power (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002), pp. 197-199). 83 For the Treaty of Arras, see Richard Vaughan, Philip the Good. The Apogee of Burgundy (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002), pp. 98-101.

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and noblemen who had descended on the city as the benefactor of the renovated abbey church and as an adherent to a proper aristocratic lifestyle. The provost of the abbey, Antoine de la Taverne, who kept a diary of the peace negotiations, noted that a delegation of high-placed clerics and theologians, among whom cardinal Niccoló Albergati (1373-1443), the papal legate immortalised in a portrait by Jan Van Eyck, paid a visit to the abbey church and the Chapel of Our Lady “pour veoir une table painte que avoit fait faire nouvellement monseigneur l’abbé de ladite église” [“to see a painted panel that the abbot of this church had recently ordered”].84 But also for the ordinary laymen who regularly visited the church, the obvious social discourse of the Visitation panel must not have passed unnoticed.85 Returning to the The Hague Lamentation, already discussed at the beginning of this chapter, we see that the actual meaning of the prominent landscape and castle imagery that eventually replaced the original cityscape now becomes more clear. In contrast to, for instance, a Visitation scene, the Deposition, or Lamentation of Christ was traditionally set against a very confined landscape (placing the focus completely on the religious narrative) or before a remote depiction of Jerusalem. By the explicit choice to place his portrait in front of an eye-catching depiction of an aristocratic countryside, consisting of a lofty castle and an impressive pigeon tower,86 the patron was able to assume an elite status and underscore his noble birth. Indeed, Pierre de Ranchicourt, bishop of Arras from 1463 to 1499, was born around 1424 in the castle of Ranchicourt as a son of Jean le Besgue de Ranchicourt. The latter was maître d’hôtel of Jan II of Nevers and was knighted after the battle of Gavere in 1453.87 At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century the Ranchicourt family provided various high-ranking officials at the ducal court and the Great Council of Mechelen. Pierre de Ranchicourt was closely connected with the aristocratic countryside to the southwest of the town of Béthune in the county of Artois. Around 1465 the bishop ordered the renovation of the chapel of the castle of Vieux Fort, a seigniory in the village of Divion.88 Not only ambitious abbots or noble-born bishops favoured aristocratic countryside motifs, but also ducal officers and successful merchants commissioned paintings in which landscapes and highly conspicuous features, such as castles, water mills, swans and pigeon towers, held an important place. The (presumably Brussels) Master of the Embroidered Foliage recurrently used highly idealised landscapes, characterised by a remarkably tedious rendering of vegetal motifs

84 As cited in Châtelet, Robert Campin, pp. 319-320. 85 On the reception of this altarpiece among the common audience, see Penny Howell Jolly, ‘Learned Reading, Vernacular Seeing: Jacques Daret’s Presentation in the Temple’, The Art Bulletin, 82:3 (2000), 428-452. 86 On the pigeon tower as emblem of seigniorial power, see Oliver H. Creighton, Designs upon the Land: Elite Landscapes of the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), pp. 106-107. 87 Erwin Panofsky, ‘Two Roger Problems: The Donor of The Hague “Lamentation” and the Date of the Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments’, The Art Bulletin, 33:1 (1951), 33-40 (p. 35). 88 In 1466 he also dedicated an altar to Saint Martin in the chapel of the castle (Dictionnaire Historique et Archéologique du Département du Pas-de-Calais. Arrondissement de Béthune, II (Arras: SueurCharruey, 1878), p. 35).

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Figure 4.7: Master of the Embroidered Foliage, Portraits of Louis Quarré and Barbe Croesinck, 1481, Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel.

and the insertion of a stereotyped depiction of a castle or a farm.89 On the wings of a now dismantled triptych the donor portraits of Louis Quarré, seigneur of La Haye en Hainaut and at that time receiver-general in Mechelen, and Barbe Croesinck are complemented respectively by a moated and walled rural residence, and a fortified farmstead with a pigeon tower (Figure 4.7). Even though these prominent constructions can easily be understood as emblematic components of Marian iconography (The castle and farm refer respectively to the chastity and fertility of the Virgin), they definitely also functioned as markers of the patrons’ social status. By being so prominently incorporated in the wings of the altarpiece, they become largely detached from the central religious narrative (most likely

89 On the oeuvre of the Master of the Embroidered Foliage, see Florence Gombert and Didier Martens (ed.), Le Maître au Feuillage Brodé. Secrets d’ateliers (Paris: RMN, 2007).

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a Madonna with Child90), which makes them at least as much attributes of the benefactors as of the Virgin. Louis Quarré presents a typical example of a ducal officer who was caught up in a social flux towards nobility and for whom the ownership of seigniorial property was an essential feature of his identity.91 Various other patrons with a similar social profile opted for a comparable scenic background. Hippolyte de Berthoz, clerk in the Chambre du Trésor et des Généraux of Charles the Bold and treasurer of Margaret of York, ordered a triptych from Dirk Bouts (Museum of the Sint Salvator’s Cathedral, Bruges) in around 1475.92 On the left wing, which was presumably completed by Hugo Van der Goes, he and his first wife Elisabeth de Keverwyck are depicted in front of a solid brick country house with a moat. This time, there is no link whatsoever with traditional Marian iconography, as the central narrative is the gruesome quartering of Saint Hippolytus. The same applies to the imposing retable of the Passion of Ambierle, made in 1466 in the entourage of Rogier Van der Weyden for the Burgundian official Michel de Chaugy, counsellor, chamberlain and first maître d’hôtel of Philip the Good, and his spouse Laurette de Jaucourt. The donors are set in one continuous hilly setting, with a very prominent castle set within a pond on the outer left wing, behind the portrait of Guillemette de Montaigu, the mother of the patron.93 Yet another example is Jean Wauters, once again a typical social climber who after a long career was appointed president of the Chambre des Comptes in Lille in 1513 and who had married Jossine de Beste, a woman of noble descent.94 The couple commissioned a triptych with a central theme of the Adoration of the Holy Name of Jesus, in which the male portraits on the left wing are set against a landscape with a castle (ca. 1480, Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama).95 At that time Jean Wauters had become lord of Brouck and Hallebast (in Dikkebus), the latter a seigniory with full judicial rights that 90 Max Friedländer identified the central panel with a Madonna and Child in Munich. This hypothesis has been recently rejected (most likely the Munich panel is a copy of the lost central panel): Albert Châtelet and Nicole Goetghebeur, Le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lille. Corpus de la peinture du XVe siècle dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et la Principauté de Liège (Brussels: Centre national de recherches Primitifs flamands, 2006), pp. 115-116. 91 Louis Quarré was the son of Simon Quarré, seigneur de la Motte and captain in the guard of Charles the Bold. He was appointed treasurer of the Golden Fleece in 1486 and became maître des comptes of the duchy of Luxembourg in Brussels. Eventually he was knighted in 1506 (Châtelet and Goetghebeur, Le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lille, pp. 109-110). 92 Jean Mireille, La Chambre des Comptes de Lille (1477-1667): l’institution et les hommes (Paris: Ecole des Chartes, 1992), pp. 284-285. For the Hippolytus Altarpiece, see Périer-d’Ieteren, Dirk Bouts, pp. 284-285. 93 The retable since 1476 is located in the abbey church of Saint Martin in Ambierle, Département de la Loire(De Boodt, Vlaamse Retabels, p. 267). 94 His epitaph in the Saint Martin’s Church in Ekkergem near Ghent describes Jean Wauters as ‘in zijne leven dienaer ende officier des hertoghen Philips, Kaerel, ende vrau Marie van Bourgoignen, ende oock raedt der coninghe van Romanien ende Castillien […] ende meester in huerlieden Rekencaemer te Ryssele’. He had married in 1488 Lady (‘joncvrauwe’) Jossine de Beste (Veronique Despodt, ‘“Dat du best, was ic ende wat ic bem, dat sal tu werden…”: Gentse Grafmonumenten en Grafschriften tot het Einde van de Calvinistische Republiek’ (1584) (unpublished Master’s thesis, Ghent University, 2001), III, Repertorium, 1.5./008). 95 For a reproduction, see Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools excluding Italian (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1977), pp. 69-71.

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Figure 4.8: Anonymous Flemish Master, Saint Amandus and Saint Quirin, 14751500, Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille. © KIKIRPA, Brussel.

comprised a castle.96 Unfortunately, a comparison with a seventeenth-century engraving of the castle in Antonius Sanderus’s Flandria Illustrata (1641-1644) does not reveal a significant resemblance to the edifice on the triptych. Also in the background of a panel made by an anonymous Flemish master at the end of the fifteenth century appears a landscape with, immediately above the portraits of the unidentified patrons, a typical moated site, consisting of an unfortified residence, a ditch with swans and a wooden bridge and entrance gate. Just outside the gate a modest building, most likely a farm, can be seen (1475-1500, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille; Figure 4.8 – Plate 17). The central subject of this panel is the Ascension of Christ, with a very prominent place for the patron saints Amandus and Quirin. The coats of arms of the patrons could only partially be identified as those of the Van der Delft family, a noble family that had branches in Flanders, Brabant, and Hainaut, and the Ghent Van Caudenburch family.97 Also in the oeuvre of Hans Memling the evocation of an aristocratic countryside is an often-recurring theme. More than his autonomous portraits, often set against

96 Mireille, La Chambre des Comptes de Lille, p. 357. 97 Châtelet and Goetghebeur, Le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lille, pp. 175-183. For the Van der Delft family, see Frederik Buylaert, Repertorium van de Vlaamse adel (ca. 1350 - ca. 1500) (Ghent: Academia Press, 2011).

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Figure 4.9: Hans Memling, Triptych of Willem Moreel (detail left wing), 1484, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Photo Hugo Maertens. Source Wikimedia Commons.

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an idyllic and hazy rural scene with a very low horizon,98 various altarpieces include references to landed property and seigniorial power. Characteristic of Memling’s oeuvre is the water mill,99 which as a token of lordship strongly contributed to the topos of the seigniorial countryside. Without a doubt one of the most famous examples is the so-called Moreel Triptych, made circa 1484 for the Bruges merchant Willem Moreel (Figure 4.9). The triptych was originally installed in the Bruges Church of Saint James. The left wing immortalises Willem Moreel and his male heirs against the backdrop of a castle on the one hand, and a parish church and farm or barn on the other. Also the female right wing contains a similar landscape with a fortress. Willem Moreel had accumulated a fortune and boasted a considerable social network through trade and banking activities,100 which enabled him to hold a variety of local and ducal offices. Especially from 1477 onward Moreel fully engaged in the politics and finances of Bruges. He was alternately alderman, burgomaster, and sheriff of the city. In 1479 he took up service as superintendent of Burgundian finances, but gradually he lost the confidence of Maximilan of Austria. During the 1480s he remained active as financial advisor to the ducal court and counselor to the two regency councils that governed the county of Flanders for the minor Philip the Fair. After a period of fierce internal struggle and revolt (1488-1492) against the regime of Maximilian of Austria Moreel was banished from the city. When he returned from exile in 1493 his political role seems to have been played out.101 The landscape motifs of the Moreel Triptych can be considered as textbook examples of ‘signposting’ and ‘stretching’. Given the political turmoil and volatility of late fifteenth-century Bruges society, it makes perfect sense that Moreel (like many of his peers) preferred a plain landscape setting, which endorsed a traditional and stable social order, to a cityscape.102 Likewise, another portrait of Willem Moreel and Barbara Van Vlaenderberch, made by Memling a couple of years earlier, has a tranquil countryside as backdrop.103 Moreover, Willem Moreel possessed substantial landed property in the Franc of Bruges, including various fiefs, such as Oostcleyghem in Zuienkerke. This important property, inherited 98 Till-Holger Borchert, Memling’s Portraits (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005). Some telling examples of ‘aristocratic landscapes’ are the presumed portrait of Bernardo Bembo (cat. 10) and the portrait of a man with prayer beads (plate 32). 99 A water mill appears on at least five panels. James S. Pierce interpreted this motif as a metaphor for the sacrament of the Eucharist. We do not exclude this significance, but want to draw attention to the strong secular sign value of the motif as an expression of the seigniorial monopoly to exploit a windmill or water-mill ( James S. Pierce, ‘Memling’s Mills’, Studies in Medieval Culture, 2 (1966), 111-119). 100 Moreel was involved in the Bruges spice trade and was a shareholder of the Banca di Roma. 101 Willem Moreel was alderman in 1472 and 1475, burgomaster in 1478 and 1483, bailiff in 1488 and treasurer in 1489. Jelle Haemers, ‘Moreel, Willem (III)’, Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek, 18 (2007), col. 681-691; Albert Janssens, ‘Willem Moreel en Hans Memling. Bijdrage tot het onderzoek naar de schilderijen van Memling in opdracht van de familie Moreel’, Handelingen van het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis, 140 (2003), 66-110. 102 This might also explain why Willem Moreel did not opt for a Bruges towerscape like those of the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy or the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula. 103 These portraits are dated circa 1482 and are kept at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels (Borchert, Memling’s Portraits, cat. 18).

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from his father, comprised the homestead or ‘hof ’ De Bonte Poort. Unlike what has often been assumed, Oostcleyghem was apparently not (yet) a seigniory at the end of the fifteenth century.104 It should be noted, however, that on numerous occasions Willem Moreel did exercise seigniorial power and administer justice in his capacity as alderman, burgomaster, or bailiff of the city of Bruges. Still, it remains very uncertain if the impressive residence in the Moreel Triptych has to be understood as a truthful representation of the patron’s property, or as a slightly exaggerated (‘stretched’) or generic allusion to the status to which he aspired. The ownership of this kind of heavily fortified castle seems to have been the privilege of the high nobility and was probably beyond Moreels’s reach. Also late medieval German painting frequently contains representations of seigneurial landed property (or Herrensitz), often in relation to Marian iconography. A telling example is Michael Wolgemut’s altarpiece with Mary and Saint Anna in the Germanisches National Museum in Nürnberg. The painting, dated around 1510, shows the Nuremberg patrician Nikolaus Gross and his family in front of a conspicuous countryside Turmhaus and village, even though it is impossible to tell whether Wolgemut painted here an exact representation of Gross’s Herrensitz in Markt Wendelstein.105 Only for some isolated cases are serious clues available for the topographical accuracy of the landscape (or at least of some components). All of them are confined to the sixteenth century and synchronise remarkably well with the development of identifiable city views (see Chapter V). The tendency to discern a specific place in these motifs seems to be largely an anachronistic projection.106 In a sixteenth-century Book of Hours in the so-called Ghent-Bruges style there a rare illumination (dated around 1560) connects the patron to the scenic backdrop with any certainty. The miniature shows Viglius Aytta (1507-1577), the mitred provost of the chapter of Saint Bavo in Ghent, kneeling before a faithful representation of the castle of Tillegem (near Bruges) (Figure 4.10). Aytta was closely related to the Spanish Matanca family that at that time possessed the seigniory and castle of Tillegem.107 Another possible example of a topographical landscape that relates to a patron can be found in the Pottelsberghe Triptych (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), attributed to Ghent master Gerard Horenbaut and dated circa 1524. Recent in-depth research conducted by an interdisciplinary team of Ghent researchers revealed various pieces of circumstantial evidence that

104 I would like to thank Andy Ramandt for this information. 105 Susann Kretschmar, Burgen in der Kunst (Nürnberg: Verlag der Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 2012), pp. 82-83. For the typology of the Turmhaus, see also pp. 76-79. 106 A nineteenth-century portrait of the Bruges nobleman Charles van Caloen and his wife Sevina de Gourcy Serainchamps (1881, private collection, Castle of Loppem) remarkably mimics early Netherlandish portraiture. In the background of the devout portraits figures a very accurate image of the castle of Loppem (Véronique van Caloen, Jean F. van Cleven and Johan Braet, Het Kasteel van Loppem (Oostkamp: Stichting Kunstboek, 2001)). 107 Luc Devliegher and others, Het kasteel van Tillegem te Brugge (Brugge: Van de Wiele, 1989), p. 33; Peter De Baets, ‘Opgang en verval van een Spaanse koopliedenfamilie in Vlaanderen: de Matanca (16de-18de eeuw)’, Handelingen van het Genootschap voor geschiedenis te Brugge (2001), 235-324 (p. 282).

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Figure 4.10: Anonymous Miniaturist, Abbot Viglius Aytta and the Castle of Tillegem, illumination in a book of hours, 1562, private collection.

point towards an identification of the site in the background of the right wing as the castle of Wissekerke. The patron of the triptych, the nobleman and royal officer Lieven Van Pottelsberghe, had purchased the vast seigniory of Wissekerke in the castellany of the Land of Waas in 1516.108 Even if the hypothesis of the Ghent team that the panoramic view on the panels functioned as a marker of lordship is quite convincing, it should be noted that the majority of the early

108 This research comprised the technical examination of the panels, the analysis of the underdrawing, the archeological investigation of the site of Wissekerke, and the analysis of cartographical and genealogical data: Frederik Buylaert, Annick Born, Jan Dumolyn and others, ‘The Van Pottelsberghe-Van Steelant Memorial by Gerard Horenbout: Lordship, Piety and Mortality in Early Sixteenth-Century Flanders’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 77:4 (2014), 491-516.

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Netherlandish castle and countryside motifs (such as the farm on the left wing of the Pottelsberghe Triptych) are highly stereotyped emblems. When we look in detail at the oeuvre of Memling as a whole, the serial character of its landscape components becomes apparent. The fact that the master repeatedly used nearly exact copies of the same castle with a drawbridge in various panels points towards the intensive use of model books within the Memling workshop. Especially the composition of the Enthroned Madonna and the accompanying landscape were recycled over and over again.109 Almost identical landscape motifs appear, for instance, in an altarpiece made for the wealthy Bruges merchant Jacob Floreins (ca. 1490, Museé du Louvre, Paris) and an Enthroned Madonna in Florence of which the patrons are unknown (ca. 1491, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence).110 This reuse of scenic templates is even more obvious in the oeuvre of the Master of the Embroidered Foliage. Apparently, some models of farmsteads and castles even circulated among various Brussels masters.111 4. Conclusion The majority of early Netherlandish landscapes consisted of a limited number of variations on the same theme. Even if the original religious significance of these stereotyped scenes cannot be refuted, they undeniably expressed the topos of the seigniorial countryside. The selective and idealised representation of an aristocratic countryside endorsed both an orthodox Christian discourse and a God-ordained social order that were intrinsically entwined. Rather than an allusion to the ownership of a specific property, most landscape motifs in early Netherlandish panel painting embodied an ideal that was both religious and profane. Not only was the countryside the province of a spiritual and mental retreat from the daily worries and the volatility of the city, but it also defined elite identity and operated as a locus of social distinction. The growing importance of idealised landscape motifs in Flemish panel painting towards the 109 Jan Crabbe and Christiaan de Hondt, both abbots of Abbey of The Dunes, are portrayed on two nearly interchangeable panels with an Enthroned Madonna. On the oldest panel, the original image of Jan Crabbe has been painted over by the portrait of the new (lay) proprietor (De Vos, Hans Memling, cat. 53). See also John Marciari (ed.), Hans Memling. Portraiture, Piety and a Reunited Altarpiece (New York: Morgan Library, 2016). 110 De Vos, Hans Memling, cat. 32 & 86. On the Jacob Floreins panel, see Lorne Campbell, ‘Memling and the Netherlandish Portrait Tradition’, in Memling’s Portraits, ed. by Till-Holger Borchert (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), pp. 49, 52. 111 For instance the castle in the Madonna with Child by the Master of the Embroidered Foliage in Lille (1492-1498, Palais des Beaux Arts) also appears on the wing of an altarpiece attributed to the Brussels Master of Saint Barbara (1490-1500, Poesjkin Museum, Moscou). See Dirk De Vos, ‘À propos du retable des Saints Crépin et Crépinien. Les deux volets méconnus du Musée des BeauxArts de Moscou’, Annales d’Histoire de l’Art et d’ Archéologie, 13 (1991), 33-42; Didier Martens, ‘Un témoin méconnu de la peinture Bruxelloise de la fin du Moyen Âge: le triptyque de Saint Hippolyte au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Boston’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Oudheidkunde en Kunstgeschiedenis, 69 (2000), 79-81.

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end of the fifteenth century indicates how much the mind-set of the urban and ecclesiastical elites was geared towards court culture and a conservative social order, in which a noble lifestyle, landed property, and the exercise of public power ultimately defined social status. As already discussed in Chapter III, a large share of princely illuminated manuscripts cultivated a chivalric dream world that seems to have largely passed over the fact that by the late Middle Ages court and city had become inextricably intertwined. Most portraits of high noblemen and members of the ducal family were set against a plain dark background or – to a lesser extent – an idyllic landscape. The portrait of the young Margaret of Austria by the Master of Moulins (ca. 1490, Metropolitan Museum, New York City), for instance, places the princess before a hilly countryside with a castle that very much resembles the landscape motifs in early Flemish altarpieces discussed earlier in this chapter. Furthermore, the numerous tapestries depicting agricultural scenes, hunting activities, and pleasure gardens that adorned the palaces of princes and nobles indicate how much the habitus of the nobility was still deeply entrenched in rural society.112 In the sixteenth century the further democratization of extra-urban property among citizens, combined with the Italianate humanist cultivation of the countryside as a locus amoenus would eventually foster the development of the ‘vernacular’ landscape as a new category of visual imagery. These landscapes propagated a much more urbane vision of the countryside as a place that offers delight or where one could gape at the curiosities of peasant life. As a consequence, sixteenth-century landscape painting focused much more on the humble rural setting and the ordinariness and frivolity of country life.113 It is important to keep in mind that the predilection for landscapes by no means equaled an escape from the city or a ‘trahison de la bourgeoisie’. City and countryside were not strictly separated worlds, especially from an elite perspective. In spite of the dichotomous image that persists to this day in the traditional historiography in the vein of Henri Pirenne, the city was not a communal island in a feudal landscape. The municipal bench of aldermen and burgomasters was essentially a princely institution that was created and legitimised by the counts of Flanders. Urban political elites and ducal officers such as the municipal bailiff were very aware of the fact that they actually exercised authority and jurisdiction in the name of the prince. Members of the Ghent patriciate, for instance, were from the thirteenth century onward increasingly denominated as ‘dominus’ or ‘her’ (‘lord’).114 This explains why many non-noble 112 Aby Warburg, ‘Peasants at Work in Burgundian Tapestries’, in The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, ed. by Aby Warburg (Los Angeles: Getty Museum, 1999), pp. 315-323; Birgit Franke, ‘Domäne und aristokratische Repräsentation: Bauerndarstellungen in franko-flämischen Tapisserien des 15. Jahrhunderts’, in: Kruse and Thürlemann (ed.), Porträt, Landschaft, Interieur, pp. 73-90. 113 Alexandra Onuf, ‘Local Terrains: Imaging the Vernacular Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp’, in The Transformation of Vernacular Expression in Early Modern Arts, ed. by Joost Keizer and Todd Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 229-270. 114 For this discussion of municipal aldermen as princely officers, see Buylaert, Eeuwen van Ambitie, pp. 263-264.

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worthies availed themselves of a repertory of signs that was linked to lordship and nobility. Moreover, one of the most ambitious projects of ennoblement in late medieval Flanders encompassed the development of a seigniorial city. In 1440, Pieter Bladelin, a financial officer and ducal councilor of humble origin, purchased various properties in Middelburg-in-Flanders, which in 1444 were merged into a fief with seigniorial rights.115 In 1458, this newly created seigniory received civic liberties and became a true miniature city. During the following decade Bladelin provided the city with an earthen enclosure, a collegiate church, a city hall, a convent, a hospital, a windmill, a shooting guild, a small-scale copper and cloth industry, and from 1465 onward, an annual fair. He also built a castle, which became his major residence in addition to his urban palace (Hof Bladelin) in Bruges. This small seigniorial city seems to have been developed as an ultimate showcase of seigniorial power and the noble aspirations of its benefactor. Eventually, at the end of the 1460s Bladelin was knighted by Charles the Bold.116 According to some scholars the Middelburg Triptych, which was made by Rogier Van der Weyden around the time that the castle in Middelburg was completed (ca. 1450), had to highlight Bladelin’s personal achievements and future plans symbolically (Figure 0.2). In the background of the central panel, behind the kneeling Bladelin, a large castle and streetscape immediately catch the attention of the viewer. It has been the subject of conjecture whether this cityscape should be considered as a faithful representation of the town of Middelburg-in-Flanders, a symbolic reference to Bladelin’s project, or as a mere generic setting for the Nativity.117 The Romanesque architecture of the castle, the scale of the urban infrastructure and the fact that the cityscape was recycled in later works of the Van der Weyden workshop (Figure 2.5) make it very unlikely that Bladelin really intended to evoke his urban project topographically.118 On the contrary, the exceptionally open outlook of the city – as if the city gate has been removed – seems to emanate an ideal vision of town and countryside as two corresponding parts of one continuous microcosm.

115 Pieter Bladelin (ca. 1408-1472) was the son of a wealthy Bruges craftsman. In 1436-1438 he was treasurer of the city of Bruges. In 1438 he entered ducal service as tax collector; in 1447 he became treasurer of the Golden Fleece and ducal councilor in the Grand Conseil of Philip the Good and Charles the Bold. At the end of the 1460s he was knighted by the latter (Wim De Clercq, S. Mortier and M. Martens, ‘Middelburg in Vlaanderen, de vergeten stad van Pieter Bladelin’, Monumentenzorg en Cultuurpatrimonium, jaarverslag van de provincie Oost-Vlaanderen (2003), pp. 135-144). 116 Jonas Braekevelt, Pieter Bladelin, de Rijselse Rekenkamer en de stichting van Middelburg-in-Vlaanderen (ca. 1444-1472): de ambities van een opgeklommen hofambtenaar versus de bescherming van het vorstelijke domein (Brussel: Koninklijke Commissie voor Geschiedenis, 2012). 117 Wim De Clercq, Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers, ‘Vivre Noblement: Material Culture and Elite Identity in Late Medieval Flanders’, Journal of Interdisciplnary History, 38:1 (2007), 1-31 (especially p. 13). 118 The cityscape of the Middelburg Triptych has been more or less copied in the Columba Altarpiece (ca. 1450-1456, Alte Pinakothek, München). Also the background of the Nativity in the Bopfinger Altarpiece by Friedrich Herlin (ca. 1472) is inspired by the Middleburg Triptych (Kemperdick and Sander, The Master of Flémalle, cat. 33; De Vos, Rogier Van der Weyden, p. 282).

Chapter V

Towards an Identifiable City. Town Portraits of the Sixteenth Century

For the first time, Ptolemy prevailed over Heredotus.1

Around 1495 a monk of the Benedictine abbey of Affligem commissioned the Brussels Master of the Joseph Sequence to create a large-scale altarpiece with a variety of scenes from the Passion of Christ (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels).2 As was a common practice in early Netherlandish painting since Jan Van Eyck, the tableaux of the suffering Christ are set against the background of an anonymous town, in which various monuments and architectural features of Northern-European cities were combined into a fictitious collage. At least three panels of the Affligem Altarpiece referred to existing urban architecture, as the Brussels master unmistakably portrayed the Cologne Churches of the Holy Apostles and Saint Severin, the Brussels Halle Gate, and the Bruges Belfry (Figure 3.1 – Plate 9). The high degree of architectural accuracy indicates the use of sketches drawn from life. These painted city views are a textbook example of what Craig Harbison calls the ‘descriptive realism of particulars’ and ‘model-book mentality’ of early Netherlandish painting.3 The Affligem Altarpiece stands out because of its very sophisticated treatment of space that foreshadows the innovations of the sixteenth century. With an extraordinary feel for topography the Joseph Master skillfully rotates the city as the Passion story continues on the consecutive panels. He depicts the town – which is supposed to evoke the historical Jerusalem – from three different angles, carefully calibrating and adjusting the spatial configuration of the major monuments according to the shifted viewpoint. This remarkable spatial accuracy – as if the artist used a rotating city model as an aid – is without precedence in early Netherlandish

1 “Zum ersten Mal hat Ptolemäus den Vorrang vor Heredot” (Cesare de Seta, ‘Eine Deutscher Städteikonographie in Europäischer Perspektive’, in Das Bild der Stadt in der Neuzeit (1400-1800), ed. by Wolfgang Behringher and Bernd Roeck (München: C. H. Beck, 1999), p. 11). 2 Henri Pauwels, ‘Het retabel van de Meester van Affligem. Enkele nieuwe gegevens’, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België. Bulletin, 43-44: 1-4 (1994-1995), 9-43; Pascale Syfer-d’Olne, Roel Slachmuylders, Anne Dubois and others (eds), The Flemish Primitives IV. Masters with Provisional Names (Catalogue Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 26-67. 3 Harbison, ‘Fact, Symbol, Ideal’, p. 23.

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Figure 5.1: Anonymous artist / Anton Woensam?, Civitatis Lovaniensis (detail), woodcut, ca. 1540, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, Print Room, Inv. no. S.I.23172. © Royal Library of Belgium.

painting.4 The Affligem Triptych heralds a nascent awareness of the city as a quantifiable and manipulable spatial object.5 Furthermore, the Joseph Master was associated with the portraits of Philip the Fair and Joanna of Castile on the wings of the so-called Zierikzee Triptych (ca. 1500, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels), in which appears a relatively accurate representation of the garden of the Brussels Coudenberg Palace.6 Perhaps more than any other late medieval Flemish artist, this anonymous Brussels master attests to the growing importance attached to the accurate and individualised portrayal of the city. This development would eventually lead to the first fully autonomous city portraits of the early sixteenth century, a process in which the new artistic medium of print would play an important role (Figure 5.1).



4 On a much smaller scale Hans Memling had already meticulously duplicated a stable in a Nativity and Adoration panel from an opposite angle: Hans Memling, Adoration Triptych, 1470-1472, Prado, Madrid (De Vos, Hans Memling, cat. 13). 5 Likewise, the increased focus on the architectural framework and monumental dimension of the city, as discussed in Chapter III, can be linked to this process. For a similar observation on the objectification of the city in Italian representations of the città ideale, see Eaton, Ideal Cities, p. 50. 6 Dubois and Fransen, ‘Zierikzee Triptych’, pp. 93-94. See also Chapter III.

towards an identifiable city. town portraits of the sixteenth century

This final chapter discusses the phased development of early modern ‘chorography’ (the textual or pictorial description of a region or locality) in the Low Countries. The focus shifts from the predominantly religious panel painting of the fifteenth century to the secular and mostly printed city portraits of the sixteenth century. This excursion falls within the scope of this book, as many ‘innovative’ city portraits developed during the sixteenth century were partially rooted in the rich tradition of late medieval city views. As lifelikeness and optical accuracy turned into criteria of growing importance, the ‘art’ of picturing the city became increasingly entangled with the blossoming ‘science’ of geometry and cartography. However, this relationship turns out to be not as straightforward as has often been assumed. Hybridity – that is, wielding new measuring techniques in a traditionally pictorial and accessible manner – remained key to early modern chorography. This chapter tells a story of continuity and change that lies at the basis of a new genre of urban iconography, and sketches the historical context that enabled its tremendous popularity. 1.

The hesitant development of identifiable city views

By the fifteenth century the naturalistic depiction of landscapes and city views became normative in narrative painting throughout Europe.7 Many scholars have drawn a parallel between the development of the human portrait as an autonomous artistic genre and the emancipation of the pictorial city view. Jessica Maier, for instance, states that at the dawn of the sixteenth century, cities, just like people, ‘were increasingly thought of as unique entities and were represented as such, with much greater emphasis on their individual features’.8 This parallel evolution, however, did not by any means develop synchronically. While the first individualised human portraits appeared around 1430, the majority of early Netherlandish painted city views were completely fictitious paste-ups, assembling all kinds of fragments of urban architecture drawn from life. Many modern scholars confuse realism with what Roland Barthes called the ‘reality-effect’, aimed at by artists when they insert realistic details of person, places, and actions in order to give the depicted story a certain atmosphere, making it feel real.9 Misled by the stunning degree of detail that characterises many early Netherlandish streetscapes and city views, historians and art historians have often erroneously projected the realistic outlook of particular buildings onto the level of an entire city. This has resulted in highly contrived identifications. The panoramic river city depicted down to the smallest detail by Jan Van Eyck



7 Schulz, ‘Jacopo de’Barbari’s View of Venice’, pp. 461-467. 8 Jessica Maier, ‘A “true likeness”: the renaissance city portrait’, Renaissance Quarterly, 65:3 (2012), 711-752 (p. 720). See also Jan Grieten and Paul Huvenne, ‘Antwerp portayed’, in Antwerp, story of a metropolis, 16th-17th century, ed. by Jan van der Stock (Gent: Snoeck-Ducaju, 1993), pp. 69-77. 9 See the review of Thomas F. Mayer of Chiara Frugoni’s A Distant City. Images of Urban Experience in the Medieval World in Speculum, 68:4 (1993), p. 1122.

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in the famous Madonna of Chancellor Rolin (Figure 0.1 – Plate 1) is possibly the most schizophrenic of all fifteenth-century city views: it has been successively identified as Bruges, Ghent, Liège, Lyon, Maastricht, Prague and Stein-am-Rhein.10 The towerscape in the central panel of the Ghent Altarpiece too has been the subject of wild speculation, while the streetscape in the Annunciation panel has been – not totally devoid of a certain local chauvinism – dubiously identified as the Kortedagsteeg or Brabantdam in Ghent (Figure 1.15 – Plate 3).11 Very often the starting point for these interpretations has been the identity of the artist or benefactor portrayed, as is the case with Rogier’s Middelburg Triptych (Figure 0.2) and the presumed representation of the town of Middelburg-in-Flanders as an overt allusion to the patron’s patrimony.12 Likewise, the Valenciennes origin of Robert Campin prompted some scholars to identify this very city on the right wing of the Merode Triptych, while others were inclined to associate the cityscape with Liège (Figure 1.16).13 All of these identifications – which spring from a very positivist approach to Flemish realism – lack, however, substantial evidence. James Snyder correctly remarks: “The background landscape in the Rolin Madonna has been identified as Bruges, Autun, Liège, Maastricht, and Geneva. But as with his architectural interiors, Van Eyck is his own architect and city planner here”.14 This does not mean that early Netherlandish artists did not sporadically venture to faithfully depict a specific place. Hugo Van der Velde, for instance, convincingly identified the landscape in one of the lost miniatures in the TurinMilan Hours, attributed to the young Jan Van Eyck, as the dunes and beach near the current village of Scheveningen. He stresses though the exceptionality of this topographical accuracy within the oeuvre of Van Eyck.15 In some cases, the artist endeavoured to conjure up a foreign place to the best of his abilities on the basis of a textual description, an oral testimony, or second-hand sketches. Circa 1440, for instance, an anonymous Brussels master

10 R. Maere, ‘Over het Afbeelden van Bestaande Gebouwen in het Schilderwerk van Vlaamsche Primitieven’, De Kunst der Nederlanden, 1 (1931), 201-212; George Lafenestre and Eugène Richtenberger, Le Musée National du Louvre (Paris: Société française d’éditions d’art, 1893), p. 287; Félix Rosen, Die Natur in der Kunst (Leipzig, 1903), pp. 94-96; Peter Schwarzmann, ‘La ville de Stein am Rhein à I’arrière plan dans "La Vierge au Chancelier Rolin" de Van Eyck?’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 115 (1990), 104-108. 11 Armand Heins, ‘La plus ancienne vue de Gand: le carrefour de la rue courte du Jour’, Bulletijn van de Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 14 (1906), 115-126. Amateur historian Guido Deseijn, however, suggests the view looked to another direction, into the Brabantdam (see http:// users.telenet.be/gerda.guido/LamGods/). The Ghent writer Karel van de Woestijne (1878-1929) recognised in the central panel Pamel-in-Ledeberg, which was a property of the donor Joos Vijdt (Stefan Van den Bossche, Op zoek naar gestalten: artistieke verkenningen in literair-historisch perspectief (Antwerpen/Apeldoorn: Garant, 2006), p. 22). 12 On this erroneous identification, which goes back to an illustration in Antonius Sanderus’s Flandria Illustrata (1641), see also Chapter IV. 13 Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin, ‘On the Cityscape of the Merode Altarpiece’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 11 (1976), 129-131; Links, Townscape Painting, p. 49. 14 Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, p. 109. 15 Hugo van der Velde, Jan Van Eyck in Holland (Zwolle: Wbooks, 2012).

towards an identifiable city. town portraits of the sixteenth century

Figure 5.2: Anonymous Brussels Master / Van der Weyden workshop?, The Dream of Pope Sergius, late 15th century, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

incorporated the Story of Pope Sergius in a deserving evocation of the topography of late medieval Rome, based on diverse sources (Figure 5.2). The artist, who most likely never had visited Rome, interpreted the scarce topographic data that were available to him with a flight of imagination. Various monuments, such as the Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican obelisk, the largely ruined Borgo Leonino,16

16 Based on this element, Van Miegroet dated this panel to the end of the fifteenth century, as pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) largely demolished the Borgo Leonino in order to build the Via Alessandrina (Hans Van Miegroet, ‘The puzzling underdrawings in the Dream of Pope Sergius in the J. Paul Getty Museum at Malibu: a problem of attribution and date’, in Géographie et chronologie du dessin sous-jacent, ed. by Roger Van Schoute and Hélène Verougstraete-Marcq (Leuven: KULeuven,

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the Aurelian Wall, the circular Castel Sant’Angelo, and a bridge on the Tiber are depicted in a simplified, largely schematic way. The remainder of the Eternal City is filled in by an imaginary, distinctly Northern cityscape. In his famous Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial representation (1960) Ernst Gombrich refers to a German woodcut of the Castel Sant’Angelo from 1557 to illustrate the mechanism of how an artist depicts a site which he did not eye-witness, nor used a faithful drawing. Departing from familiar architecture (a German-styled castle), he fits the edifice with the few distinguishing characteristics he knows (a circular shape, topped by a statue of an angel, close to a bridge).17 Towards the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, Flemish artists occasionally incorporated clearly identifiable city views in their paintings. Hans Memling inserted a fairly accurate veduta of the Bruges Kraanplaats in his St John Altarpiece (Figure 1.2), while the Masters of the Legend of Saint Lucia and the Legend of Saint Ursula regularly used a selection of Bruges towers as backdrops for their portraits and religious scenes (see Chapter III). An anonymous panel dated around 1500 exceptionally depicts the Visitation against an architectural ensemble that obviously refers to the house of the German Hansa in Bruges (Oosterlingenhuis).18 Furthermore, the Master of the View of Saint Gudula employed various Brussels churches and street views as settings for his hagiographical and biblical scenes19 (Figure 3.14), while Dirk Bouts’s Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament offers a glimpse of the Leuven city hall (Plate 6).20 Around 1500, the members of the Mechelen Guild of Saint George were portrayed against the skyline and hinterland of their home city (Figure 5.3). The same town also figures in the background of a panel representing a stage in the life of Saint Rombouts (ca. 1500), the city’s patron saint.21 Furthermore, around the turn of the century, the burgeoning Antwerp art market produced a handful of altarpieces that incorporated a realistic portrait of the Antwerp skyline and harbour infrastructure (see also Chapter II). As we will argue later in this Chapter, this local and fairly modest iconographic tradition stood at the basis of the first fully autonomous printed and painted city views to be fabricated in the Low Countries (see Chapter II and further in this Chapter). In the Northern

17 18 19

20 21

1989), pp. 9-23). See also Diane Wolfthal and Catherine Metzger (eds), The Los Angeles Museums, Corpus of 15th-Century Painting in the Former Southern Netherlands, Volume 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). Ernst Gombrich, Art and illusion: a study in the pshychology of pictoral representation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 70-71. This little-known panel is part of the collection of the Kunsthaus in Zürich (Inv. nr. 1638-1640). The master’s provisional name is based on a panel with The Preaching of Saint Géry (1475-1500, Musée du Louvre, Paris) which contains an accurate depiction of the Brussels Church of Saint Gudula. The same master also depicted the southern porch of the Brussels Church of Our Blessed Lady of the Sands and a part of the city wall in The Betrothal of Mary (1490-1500, Royal Museum of Fines Arts, Brussels). See Dyfer-d’Olne and others, The Flemish Primitives, IV, n° 19. de Patoul and Van Schoute, Les Primitifs flamands et leur temps, pp. 386-387, 539-543. Pieter Verhoeven, ‘Repertoires of Involvement and Distinction. Elite Identity in Mechelen ca. 1500’, in L’identité au pluriel. Jeux et enjeux des appartenances autour des anciens Pays-Bas, XIVe-XVIIIe siècles, ed. by Violet Soen, Yves Junot and Florian Mariage (Lille: Revue du Nord Hors-Série. Collection Histoire n° 30, 2014), pp. 165-178.

towards an identifiable city. town portraits of the sixteenth century

Figure 5.3: Master of the Guild of St. George, Detail of Guild members with Mechelen towerscape, ca. 1500, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel.

Netherlands, the iconic bell tower of Utrecht cathedral sporadically adorns– otherwise generic – painted townscapes, while the Haarlem town hall figures in the background of a late fifteenth-century Ecce Homo panel. Already well into the sixteenth century, around 1520, an anonymous Dutch master located a scene of Christ and the Woman of Samaria in front of a fairly accurate profile view of the city of Breda.22 Nevertheless, all this does not take away from the fact that the total number of early Netherlandish topographical urban views – especially before 1475 – remains rather scanty. Scholars, such as Dirk De Vos and Walter Prevenier, were actually amazed by the remarkable reticence of early Netherlandish painting to refer to the specific urban environment in which its creators and patrons thrived.23 This restraint is even more striking when compared to the abundance of town portraits in fifteenth-century German and Italian paintings and prints. As early as 1280 Cimabue had evoked in the Basilica of San Francesco in

22 Monogrammist AM, Ecce Homo, ca. 1480, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. See Lammertse and Giltaij, Vroege Hollanders, pp. 127-129. For the Utrecht cathedral tower, see Marieke van Vlierden, Utrecht. Een hemel op aarde (Utrecht & Zutphen: Clavis, 1988). For the Breda view, acquired in 2013 by the Breda Museum, see Jeroen Grosfeld, ‘Christus en de Samaritaanse vrouw bij de stad Breda’, Bulletin Vereniging Rembrandt, 23:3 (2013), 16-19. 23 De Vos, Hans Memling, pp. 39-40; Prevenier, ‘Culture et groupes sociaux’, p. 358.

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Figure 5.4: Taddeo di Bartolo, San Gigmignano, 1395, Museo Civico, San Gimignano. Source Wikimedia Commons.

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Assisi the idea of ‘Italia’ by depicting distinct Roman landmarks, such as the Colosseum, the Pantheon, Saint Peter’s Basilica, and the Torre delle Milizie. About a decade later Giotto decorated the same church with a series of frescoes of the Life of Saint Francis, among which the Homage of a Simple Man is set against a clear-cut reference to the Temple of Minerva and the Municipal Palace of Assisi.24 From the Trecento onward, numerous Italian towns were portrayed as small scale-models in the protective presence of the Virgin or a patron saint (the so-called città dei santi; Figure 5.4). One of the oldest of these ritratti, or city portraits, shows the city of Florence in 1342, reduced to its major monuments, at the feet of the Madonna della Misericordia in the Loggia del Bigallo.25 From 1257 onward, the magistrates of the Biccherna and Gabella (the fiscal offices) of the city of Siena, who were responsible for state expenditures and indirect taxation, started to illustrate the covers of the account books with the portrait of the chief financial officer, accompanied by the coats of arms of the four leading citizens charged with the audit of the accounts. From the middle of the fourteenth century onward, these decorations became increasingly elaborate, often comprising an image of Siena’s skyline. In 1460 the paintings ceased to function as book covers and henceforth operated as independent wall decorations. A panel from 1467 shows the city of Siena between the arms of the Nove (The Nine, i.e. the city rulers) and a safeguarding host of angels and saints (Figure 5.5).26 In quattrocento painting city views were depicted with varying degrees of topographical accuracy by painters, including: Benozzo Gozzoli (Arezzo, Montefalco), Domenico Ghirlandaio (Florence, San Gimignano), Andrea Mantegna (Mantova), Jacopo de Sellaio (Florence), Sandro Botticelli (Florence), Pinturicchio (Ancona, Siena), Benedetto Bonfigli (Perugia), and Francesco Francia (Bologna).27 These city views were still imbedded in an essentially religious theme (Figure 5.6). From circa 1470 onward Italian engravers, such as Francesco Rosselli (active in Florence, Rome, and perhaps Naples) and Jacopo de’ Barbari (active in Venice), would play a crucial role in the promotion of city portraits as an autonomous pictorial category. In 1472, a large-scale, fully independent oil-on-wood painting of Naples (the so-called Tavola Strozzi) was presumably made by Francesco Rosselli for the Florentine merchant Filippo Strozzi. The portrait commemorates the triumphal return of the Aragonese fleet to Naples. With Jacopo de’ Barbari’s dazzling bird’s-eye

24 Felicity Ratté, Picturing the city in medieval Italian painting ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), esp. pp. 91-117. 25 Lucia Nuti, Ritratti di città. Visione e memoria tra Medioevo e Settecento (Venice: Marsilio, 1996). 26 Luke Syson (ed.), Renaissance Siena. Art for a city (London: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 85-91. 27 Graziano Alfredo Vergani, ‘Tra simbolo e realtà: immagini di città dal Duecento all’inizio del quattrocento’, in La rappresentazione della città nella pittura italiana, ed. by Pierluigi de Vecchi and Graziano Alfredo Vergani (Milano: Silvana, 2003), pp. 51-77; Judith Steinhoff, ‘Reality and Ideality in Sienese Renaissance Cityscapes’, in Renaissance Siena. Art in Context, ed. by Lawrence A. Jenkens (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2005), pp. 21-45.

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Figure 5.5: Anonymous Artist, The Virgin Protecting Siena from the Earthquake of 1466, 1467. Oil on panel. Archivio di Stato, Siena, Italy. © The Bridgeman Art Library.

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Figure 5.6: Andrea Mantegna, Death of the Virgin, ca. 1460, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado.

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Figure 5.7: Jacopo de’Barbari, Venetii MD, 1500, woodcut, Museo Correr, Venice.

view of Venice (woodcut, 1500) the sophistication of the Italian chorography reached its apex (Figure 5.7).28 Also late medieval German painting boasted a particularly strong tradition of urban iconography and recognisable town portraits (see for instance Figure 5.8). Stefan Kemperdick noticed this as a remarkable point of difference with contemporary Flemish painting. An artist such as Hans Bornemann, who was strongly influenced by early Netherlandish painting, distinguished himself from the latter by the incorporation of delicately detailed city portraits of Lüneberg in three of his religious panel paintings and one miniature.29 In the course of the fifteenth century a myriad of German-speaking towns were immortalised by various artist in the background of religious altarpieces: Lüneberg (1445), Nördlingen (1462), Rothenburg (1466), Vienna (1469-1480), Passau (1475), Nuremberg (circa 1480), Lübeck (1463, 1481), Bamberg (circa 1483), Würzburg (circa 1490) and Zürich (circa 1500).30 Many illuminated manuscripts, ranging

28 Giulio Pane, La Tavola Strozzi tra Napoli e Fiorenze. Un’immagine della città nel quattrocento (Napoli: Grimaldi, 2009); Jürgen Schulz, ‘Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice: Map Making, City Views, and Moralized Geography before the Year 1500’, The Art Bulletin, 60:3 (1978), 425-474. On Rosselli’s view of Florence (ca. 1480-1485), see David Friedman, ‘“Fiorenza”: Geography and Representation in a Fifteenth Century City View’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 64:1 (2001), 56-77. 29 Stefan Kemperdick, ‘The impact of Flemish art on Northern German painting around 1440’, in Flanders in a European Perspective. Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad, ed. by Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), pp. 606-633, esp. p. 610. 30 Wolfgang Behringer and Bernd Roeck (ed.), Das Bild der Stadt in der Neuzeit 1400-1800 (München: C. H. Beck, 1999), pp. 125-423; Hartmut Boockman, Die Stadt im Späten Mittelalter (München: Beck, 1986). Examples are in Lüneberg (Hans Bornemann, The punishment of Aegeas, 1445, St. Nicolaskirche), Nördlingen (Friedrich Herlin, High Altar, 1462, St. Georgkirche), Lübeck (Bernt Notke, Lübecker Totendanz, 1463, Marienkirche, destroyed in 1942); Rothenburg (Friedrich Herlin, The St. Jacob’s wing of the High Altar, 1466, St. Jacobskerk), Vienna (Anonymous, Flight into Egypt, Altarpiece of the Virgin, 1469, Schottenkirche), Melk (H. Eckl, St. Catherine, 1475, Abbey of Melk), Nuremberg (Anonymous, Krell Altar, before 1483, St. Lorenzkirche), Tallinn (Hermen Rode,

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Figure 5.8: Hans Bornemann, The Punishment of the Governor of Ageas, ca. 1445, Sankt Nicolaikirche, Lüneberg. Source Wikimedia Commons.

Altarpiece for the confraternity of the Schwarzhaüpter, 1481, St-Nicolaikerk); Bamberg (Wolfgang Katzheimer the Elder, The Parting of the Apostles, ca. 1483, Historisches Museum), Zürich (Hans Leu the Elder, Series of Panels with Patron Saints, ca. 1500, Schweizerisches Landesmuseum).

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Figure 5.9: Anonymous Master, Predella with the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (detail), 1411-1414, Wallraf-Richardz-Museum, Cologne. Source Wikimedia Commons.

from codices of customary law, such as the Sachsenspiegel, to the vita of local saints were sporadically decorated with topographical portraits of a specific city.31 The latter images are very similar to the theme of the città dei santi in Italian painting, depicting a miniature version of the city under the protection of a patron saint.32 In particular Cologne, characterised by its unfinished cathedral tower, the Great Saint Martin Church, the Bayenturm, and the Rhine, has been portrayed numerous times. As early as 1411 the Master of the Small Passion complemented a predella depicting the martyrdom of St Ursula with a compressed view of the city (Figure 5.9). Furthermore, the Cologne cityscape was one of the oldest to be registered in a woodcut. In 1476 its skyline decorated the first edition of Werner Rolevinck’s Fasciculus Temporum. The city also figures several times in the 1499 Koelhoffschen Chronik.33 It seems that the strong, yet highly fragmented civic culture of the Holy Roman Empire stimulated the development of both manuscript and printed urban and world chronicles with town portraits. One of the oldest, though strongly simplified town views of the Bavarian city of Augsburg figures in a handwritten copy by the local merchant Hector Mülich of Sigismund Meisterlin’s Stadschronik (Figure 5.10). Hartmann Schedel’s famous Liber Cronicarum or Weltchronik, first printed in Nuremberg in 1493, contains no fewer than 123 printed city views, designed by the Nuremberg painters Wilhelm 31 See for instance Hans Bornemann’s miniature of Lüneberg in Sachsenspiegel, Lüneberg, Ratsbücherie, ms. Jur. 1 fol. 5v. 32 A good example is the portrait of Braunschweig at the feet of the protective effigy of Saint Auctor in the Legend of Saint Auctor, ca. 1457, Hannover, Kestner-Museum, Inv. no. 3931, frontispiece (see Kemperdick, ‘The impact of Flemish art on Northern German painting’, Figure 6). 33 Yvonne Leiverkus, Köln. Bilder einer spätmittelalterlichen Stadt (Cologne, Weimar & Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), illus. 1-13.

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Figure 5.10: Anonymous Miniaturist, Saint Lucius preaches to the people of Augsburg (with the Augsburg skyline in the background), in Hector Mülich, ‘Sigismund Meisterlin’s Stadschronik’, 1457, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg Codex Halder 1, fol. 65r. Source Wikimedia Commons.

Pleydenwurff and Michaël Wolgemut (even though some generic cityscapes are repeatedly used to evoke divergent cities).34 Apparently, the increasing number of printed city portraits was closely entangled with the growing popularity of urban chronicles and civic encomia. Also in Italy, Bernardino da Firenze’s printed poem of praise in ottava rima, Le bellezze et chasati di Firenze (circa 1500), contains a woodcut of Florence’s major monuments that functioned as a ‘visual encomium’.35 It is a communis opinio that the cities of fifteenth-century Germany, Switzerland, and Italy embraced this literary genre the most fervently by far, even though this observation might be at least partially biased by the extremely favorable scientific description and publication of the German chronicles since the nineteenth century.36 Certainly, the Netherlandish cities produced a wide array of historiographical

34 Jonathan P. Green, The Nuremberg Chronicle and its readers: The reception of Hartmann Schedel’s ‘Liber cronicarum’ (Urbana/Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003). 35 For the term ‘visual encomium’, see Thomas Frangenberg, ‘Chorographies of Florence. The use of city views and city plans in the sixteenth century’, Imago Mundi, 46 (1994), p. 44. 36 Robert Stein refers to the impact of the extraordinary repertory Chroniken der deutchen Städte already initiated in 1859. See Robert Stein, ‘Selbstverständnis oder Identität? Städtische Geschichtsschreibung als Quelle für die Identitätsforschung’, in Memoria, Communitas, Civitas. Mémoire et conscience urbaines en occident à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. by Hanno Brand, Pierre Monnet and Martial Staub (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003), pp. 181-202.

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works, such as regional chronicles and individual memory books, but the urban auto-historiographical tradition of Ursprungschroniken, Ratschroniken, and other official historiographical annotations appears to have been remarkably feeble in the late medieval Low Countries. It is revealing that the only detailed portrait of a specific city in late medieval Netherlandish manuscript illumination (a miniature of Bruges in the background of the Battle of Beverhoutsveld) figures in a copy of Jean Froissart’s regional Chroniques, commissioned circa 1464 by Anthony of Burgundy, bastard son of Philip the Good (see Figure 3.2).37 Despite the explicit urban particularism of the major Brabantine and, especially, Flemish towns, municipal governments and local elites were hardly inclined to support an original historiography of their own city. The majority of Netherlandish chronicles largely surpassed the local level in favour of the regional or dynastic history of the county or duchy.38 However, this does not preclude the existence a large and disparate body of urban historiography in the Low Countries, ranging from personal memory books, eyewitness reports, and cartulaires-chroniques (containing many records from the city administration). Still, these expressions of urban historiography were largely private initiatives that rarely gain the public exposure of the lavishly decorated manuscript and printed town chronicles that were omnipresent in Italy and Germany. Only recently has this diverse, often bottom-up practice of urban memory in the Low Countries attracted proper scholarly attention.39 The political constellation in which the Netherlandish cities were embedded differed considerably from the relative autonomy of the German Freie Städte and Reichstädte or the de facto independence of the Italian city-states. It seems that, owing to emergent ducal centralism, the mental and political radius of the Netherlandish urban elites increasingly expanded towards the regional level. This might explain the limited presence of the cities of Flanders, Brabant, and Holland in late medieval urban iconography and literature. The political volatility of the Netherlandish towns and the expansion of local social networks to other cities and the ducal court made the city an unreliable and inadequate identity marker of local elites.40 For that matter, it is significant that some of the rare individualised city views in the late medieval Low Countries depict the small town of Mechelen, an isolated

37 This is the so-called Breslauer Froissart, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Handschriftenabteilung, fol. 287r. 38 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘S’imaginer le passé et le présent: conscience historique et identité urbaine en Flandre à la fin du Moyen Âge’, in Brand et. al., Memoria, Communitas, Civitas, pp. 167-180. This observation inspired Robert Stein to state that urban historiographical production did not necessarily correspond with a strong local self-awareness, not even in German towns (Stein, ‘Selbstverständnis oder Identität?’, p. 200). 39 An interdisciplinary conference Towards New Thinking in Urban Historiography. Old Texts, New Approaches. A Reconsideration of Urban Historical Consciousness in Northwest Europe was organised in Bruges on 20-21 May 2015. The proceedings of this conference are going to be published in the SEUH series. 40 In the course of the fifteenth century, the successful de Baenst family, for instance, gradually expanded its powerbase from Bruges and the Franc of Bruges to the city of Ghent (Frederik Buylaert, ‘Sociale mobiliteit bij stedelijke elites in laatmiddeleeuws Vlaanderen. Een gevalstudie over de Vlaamse familie De Baenst’, Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis, 8 (2005), 201-251).

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urban seigneury trapped between the county of Flanders and the duchy of Brabant, where also one of the earliest ‘genuine’ urban chronicles41 in the Low Countries was composed (Figure 5.3).42 Apparently, the complex socio-political and institutional character of the city, combined with its status as judicial capital of the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands from 1473 onwards, inspired urban elites to embed their identity and status – at least partially – on a local level. Another exceptionally rich tradition of urban portraits flourished around 1500 in Antwerp. Here, the emergent mercantile elite showed little political ambition and remained fairly separated from the ruling class for a long time.43 For these merchants the city with its harbour was the quintessential feature of their existence and identity (see Chapter II). 2. Between continuity and change: towards an ‘urban cartography’? Towards the end of the fifteenth century the city had gradually evolved into a fully-fledged iconographical subject, detached from a central religious or historiographical narrative.44 Early modern Europe massively embraced the pictorial representation of its cities. Whereas roughly thirty stand-alone Western city portraits have survived from the period before 1490 (all of them specimens produced outside the Low Countries), their number grew exponentially during the following decades.45 The flourishing art of printing substantially contributed to an increase in scale and a functional diversification, even though painted town portraits also were particularly sought after during the first decades of the sixteenth century. The descriptive mode and growing degree of accuracy that marked these images inspired modern scholars to discern the birth of a proper ‘urban cartography’ around 1500. Renaissance Europe increasingly conceived of space as a particular and measurable category.46 This was largely due to intellectual and technical innovations, such as the Ptolemaic revival, the development of triangulation, and other surveying and projection techniques, the discovery of the New

41 By a ‘genuine’ urban chronicle we mean a (chronological) historiographical description that focuses on local, urban events and persons. 42 For ‘Die cronike van die scoone ende heerlijke stadt van Mechelen’, see Bram Caers, ‘Layered Text Formation in Urban Chronicle Manuscripts. The Case of Late-Medieval Mechelen’, in Between Stability and Transformation. Textual Traditions in the Medieval Netherlands, ed. by Youri Desplenter, Renée Gabriël and Johan Oosterman (Hilversum: Verloren, 2016). 43 Soly, ‘Het “verraad” der 16de-eeuwse burgerij: een mythe?’, pp. 261-280. 44 Bernd Roeck, ‘Die Säkularisierung der Stadtvedute in der Neuzeit’, in Bild und Wahrnehmung der Stadt, ed. by Ferdinand Opll (Linz: Österreichischer Arbeitskreis für Stadtgeschichtsforschung, 2004), pp. 189-198. 45 Hilary Ballon and David Friedman, ‘Portraying the City in Early Modern Europe: Measurement, Representation, and Planning’, in The History of Cartography, ed. by David Woodward, 3/1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 680-705. 46 Paul Zumthor, La mesure du monde: représentation de l’espace au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1993).

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World, and socio-political transformations such as the emergence of a central state and an increasingly rigid legal definition of landed property and territory. Moreover, the increasing authority of the visual had enhanced the attractiveness of pictorial descriptions as a reliable representation of the surrounding reality and, more specifically, the city.47 These developments prompted Cesare de Seta, one of the pioneers of modern research on Italian urban iconography, to state that for the first time since Antiquity Ptolemy (geography) was given precedence over Herodotus (historiography).48 The rapid advancement of urban iconography has been commonly associated with a linear and ongoing process of rationalisation.49 Nevertheless, this revolutionary ‘cartographic turn’ and the widespread assumption that early modern ‘chorographies’ express an intrinsically novel way of perceiving and envisioning urban space have been questioned by an increasing number of scholars. The majority of early modern city views remained predominantly pictorial. Advanced ichnographic views, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s plan of Imola (ca. 1502) or Leonardo Bufalini’s Pianta di Roma (1551) remained an intellectual tour de force, even in sixteenth-century Italy.50 Early town portraits are often confusingly denoted as ‘city maps’, even though the majority are hybrid artefacts that contain few ‘hard’ cartographic features – a semantic confusion that already troubled early modern writers.51 In 2007 David Woodward significantly nuanced the well-founded idea of a Renaissance ‘cartographic revolution’ by stressing the considerable degree of continuity between medieval and early modern ways of representing and surveying (urban) space. Traditional medieval techniques of surveying and delineating the city orally, textually, and ritually remained in vogue throughout the early modern period, whereas ‘qualitative’ pictorial city views continued to outnumber ‘quantitative’ planimetric maps.52 Particularly in some rural areas of the early modern Low Countries, such as the Campine region, one can observe a remarkable persistence of the ceremonial demarcation of spaces, such as the

47 Lyle Massey, ‘Framing and mirroring the world’, in The Renaissance World, ed. by John Jeffries Martin (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 51-68; Martin Jay, ‘Scopic regimes of modernity’, in Modernity and identity, ed. by Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1992), pp. 178-195. 48 ‘Zum ersten Mal hat Ptolemäus den Vorrang vor Herodot’ (Cesare de Seta, ‘Eine Deutscher Städteikonographie in Europäischer Perspektive’, in Das Bild der Stadt in der Neuzeit (1400-1800), ed. by Wolfgang Behringher and Bernd Roeck (München: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1999), p. 11). 49 A classic example is Paul D. Harvey, The History of Topographical Maps: Symbols, Pictures and Surveys (London: Thames & Hudson, 1980). This linear model is also endorsed by Naomi Miller, Mapping the City. The Language and Culture of Cartography in the Renaissance (London & New York: Continuum, 2003), esp. p. xv. 50 Marco Folin, ‘Piante di città nell’Italia di antico regime. Uno strumento di conoscenza analiticooperativa’, in Rappresentare la città. Topografie urbane nell’Italia di antico regime, ed. by Marco Folin (Rome: Diabasis, 2010), pp. 10-36. 51 The very similar perspective plans of Bruges (Marcus Gheeraerts, 1562) and Ypres (Thévelin and Destrée, 1564) are respectively called ‘charte’ (‘map’) and ‘pourtraicture ende descriptie’ (‘portrait and description’). See below. 52 David Woodward, ‘Cartography and the Renaissance: Continuity and Change’, in The History of Cartography, ed. by David Woodward, 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 7-9.

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ritual circumambulation by a bishop (circumitio) or a feudal officer on horseback (equitatio), the annual pacing out of boundaries by local officials, or textual cartographies such as Ommelopers.53 Moreover scholars like Keith Lilley and Nathalie Bouloux have pointed at the existence of remarkably advanced geometrical skills and a well-developed cartographic awareness in fourteenth-century England and Trecento Italy, debunking the historiographical orthodoxy of a rapid and accumulative cartographic revolution in the sixteenth century.54 Dan Smail has pointed out the co-existence of a variety of ‘imaginary cartographies’ in fourteenth-century Marseilles, even if these were only rarely pictorial. He distinguished various linguistic templates that arranged and represented urban space in a predominantly oral or textual manner. Only gradually did the more rational notarial template, based on the urban street grid, prevail, enabling planimetric town plans to grow in popularity.55 Marco Folin, for his part, has drawn attention to a long-term functional continuity, stating that the majority of Italian Renaissance city views continued to serve a predominantly ideological or commemorative purpose that did not fundamentally differ from that of trecento frescos, such as Lorenzetti’s Buon Governo in the Sienese Palazzo Pubblico. Reassessing De Seta’s metaphor, one could conclude that Herodotus was by no means superseded by Ptolemy. According to Folin, most early modern ‘chorographers’ did not pursue a geometrical representation per se, but applied scientific measuring techniques as a welcome aid in constructing a moralised depiction of the city.56 In most cases, the main objective was not a mathematically sound reproduction of the cityscape, but the commemoration of a civic event or the highlighting of specific urban characteristics and virtues. The revival of classical geography actually contributed to the legitimation of the town portraitist as an artist, rather than a surveyor. Ptolemy had distinguished the artistic skills needed by the ‘chorographer’ – literally the describer of places – from the mathematical abilities of the geographer. In the sixteenth century this professional dichotomy was corroborated by such humanist scholars as Petrus Apianus, who stated in his Cosmographicus Liber (1533) that ‘the aim of chorography is to depict a particular place, just as an artist paints an ear or an eye or other parts of a man’s head’.57 53 In other rural regions, such as coastal Flanders, Maïka De Keyser, Iason Jongepier and Tim Soens, ‘Consuming maps and producing space. Explaining regional variations in the reception and agency of mapmaking in the Low Countries during the medieval and early modern periods’, Continuity and Change, 29:2 (2014), 1-32. 54 Keith Lilley, ‘Geography’s medieval history: a forgotten enterprise?’, Dialogues in Human Geography, 1:2 (2011), 147-162. For Italy, see Nathalie Bouloux, Culture et savoirs géographiques dans l’Italie du XIVe siècle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002). 55 Dan L. Smail, Imaginary cartographies: possession and identity in late medieval Marseille (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999). 56 Marco Folin, ‘De l’usage pratico-politique des images de villes (Italie, XVe-XVIe siècle)’, in Villes de Flandre et d’Italie (XIIIe-XVIe siècle). Les enseignements d’une comparaison, ed. by Élisabeth CrouzetPavan and Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 259-280. 57 Richard Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World (1493-1793) (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 11. On this issue see also David Buisseret, ‘Art and Cartograpy as two Complementary Means of Description in Central Europe. 1400-1700’, in Met passer en penseel. Brussel en het oude hertogdom Brabant in beeld (Brussels: La Renaissance du Livre, 2000), pp. 13-19.

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Figure 5.11: Marcus Gheeraerts, Perspective Plan of Bruges, 1562, later coloured print of the original copper engraving, Collection Musea Brugge / Groeningemuseum. Source Wikimedia Commons.

The majority of late medieval and early modern Netherlandish surveyors and chorographers were pictorial artists proficient in the mathematical perspective needed to depict landscape and architecture in a convincing way. A document drawn up in Brussels in 1462 mentions a painter called ‘Gheert the Surveyor’.58 Marcus Gheeraerts – most famous for his perspective plan of Bruges (1562) – had registered with the Bruges guild of painters and image-makers in 1561 and became a very polyvalent artist, gifted with the skills of painting, etching, and drawing (Figure 5.11). After his exile from Bruges in 1568, he achieved the status of respected portraitist at the English court. Likewise, the Amsterdam painter and printmaker Cornelis Anthonisz., who in 1538 fashioned the first bird’s-eye view of his city, was a versatile artist, who for instance also designed a series of woodcuts portraying the counts and countesses of Holland (Figure 5.12). One of the few exceptions was Jacob van Deventer, imperial geographer and author of over 250 Netherlandish town views, who around 1520 studied medicine and mathematics at the University of Leuven and soon took great interest in surveying and cartography. Yet, even his essentially orthogonal plans contain pictorial elements. Only towards the seventeenth century do the pictorial and cartographic approaches had gradually drift apart and eventually grow into separate specialisations.59

58 Bakker, Landscape and religion, pp. 115-118. 59 Bram Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Les plans de villes de Jacques de Deventer (XVIe siècle). État de la question et pistes de recherche’, Revue du Nord, 94:396 (2012), 613-633.

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Figure 5.12: Cornelis Anthonisz., Perspective Plan of Amsterdam, 1544, woodcut, University of Amsterdam Library, Special Collections.

Even if it cannot be ignored that the dissemination of scientific measuring techniques, such as polygonometry and trigonometry, enabled the creation of daring bird’s-eye views and increasingly accurate orthogonal plans,60 most early modern chorographies still contained many elisions and inconsistencies. According to Hillary Ballon and David Friedman, however, this did not necessarily affect their persuasiveness: ‘Absent an objective standard of verisimilitude or any possibility of verification, the authority of a map was ultimately based on its fidelity to the pictorial tradition […] rather than on the accuracy with which it registered

60 Bram Vannieuwenhuyze georeferenced and compared, for instance, Jacob van Deventer’s orthogonal plan (circa 1555) and Braun-Hogenburg’s perspective plan of Brussels (1572) with the parcel plan of W. B. Craen (1835) and concluded that the early modern rendering of the street grid does not necessarily have to yield dramatically to the nineteenth-century standard of accuracy (Vannieuwenhuyze, Brussel, pp. 50-52).

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the physical reality of the city itself ’.61 Save for a small circle of humanists and technicians, the majority of sixteenth-century patrons and buyers still preferred the familiar city ‘portrait’ to the more abstract town ‘map’. The slow transmission of a ‘cartographic literacy’ among a wider audience resulted in a gradual raising of the viewpoint. The early modern Netherlandish town portraits basically evolved from the pictorial profile view at the beginning of the sixteenth century to the immensely popular perspective plan from ca. 1550 onwards. 3. The first Netherlandish profile views and the primacy of Antwerp As the rising economic gateway of the Low Countries and a flourishing centre of humanist print culture, the Brabantine city of Antwerp played a pioneering role in the creation and dissemination of both painted and printed town views.62 By the beginning of the sixteenth century Antwerp had become what Peter Burke has called a ‘heterogenetic’ centre par excellence: a place that both abandons and reinvents traditions, absorbs exterior influences and generates new ‘states of mind’.63 At the close of the Middle Ages Antwerp already boasted a relatively strong tradition of urban iconography. The first more or less ‘realistic’ image of the town appeared in 1468 on a map of the river Scheldt that had been created to settle fiscal conflicts between the city of Antwerp, Zeeland and Flanders (Figure 5.13).64 As discussed in Chapter II, the iconic image of the busy wharfs and the robust dock crane, observed from the left bank of the river Scheldt, had become around 1500 a recurrent theme in several Antwerp panel paintings, book illuminations, and even a wood carved altarpiece. It comes as no surprise that exactly this panorama occurs in the oldest preserved printed town view in the Low Countries. In 1515 the successful publisher Jan De Gheet issued the laudatory book Unio pro conservatione rei publice to celebrate the Joyous Entry of Charles V into Antwerp (Figure 5.14). This printed book, of which only four copies are preserved, contains two motets that were composed by Benedictus de Opitiis in honour of the visit of Charles and his grandfather, emperor Maximilian, seven years earlier. It features four fine images of the festive events and of the host

61 Ballon and Friedman, ‘Portraying the city’, p. 691. 62 For the period 1500-1540 a total of 2,254 different works were produced by 66 Antwerp printers. This is 55 per cent of the total production of the Low Countries (Leon Voet, ‘De typografische bedrijvigheid te Antwerpen in de 16e eeuw’, in Antwerpen in de xvide eeuw (Antwerpen: Mercurius, 1975), p. 235). 63 Peter Burke, Antwerp: a metropolis in comparative perspective (Gent: Snoeck-Ducaju, 1993), p. 12; Peter Burke, ‘The historical geography of the Renaissance’, in A companion to the worlds of the Renaissance, ed. by Guido Ruggiero (Oxford: Wiley, 2007), pp. 88-103, esp. pp. 90-91. Burke derives this terminology of ‘orthogenetic’ and ‘heterogenetic cities’ from Robert Redfield and Milton B. Singer, ‘The cultural role of cities’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 3:1 (1954), 53-73. 64 In 1468 a dispute between on the levying of tolls on the Honte (Western Scheldt) was taken to the ducal court: Willem Unger, ‘De oudste kaarten der waterwegen tussen Brabant, Vlaanderen en Zeeland’, Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, 67 (1950), 146-164.

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Figure 5.13: Anonymous Artist, Map of the Scheldt (Detail of the City of Antwerp), 1468, ink on paper and linen, States Archives of Belgium, Brussels, Collection Kaarten en Plannen, Inventory no. 351.

city. The city view consists of a compressed profile view of the city, containing individualised topographical elements, such as the unfinished Church of Our Lady, Saint Michael’s Abbey, and the wharf with the city crane. Shortly after De Gheet’s initiative, a much larger, multi-sheet woodcut of the Antwerp skyline was conceived. Surtitled Antwerpia Mercatorum Emporium, the image once again highlights the primacy of trade that typified the Antwerp mind-set (Figure 5.15). The river is packed with commercial vessels, while high above the city Mercurius (god of trade) and Vertumnus (god of the seasons and fertility) keep an eye on the bustling city.65 The two-meter-wide image merges northern and southern iconographic traditions into one harmonious unity. The references to antique deities and maritime transport are closely affiliated with the breath-taking bird’s-eye view of Venice by Jacopo de’Barbari (1500), whereas, on the other hand, the profile view, the horizontal alignment of buildings, and the use of banderoles were indebted to the woodcuts that were made in 1486 by the Utrecht artist Erhard Reuwich in Bernard von Breydenbach’s Peregrinationes in terram sanctam.66 Even if these highly mobile artists were not directly involved in its creation, the masterful View of the Roads of Antwerp bears witness to the privileged position of the city on the crossroads between Northern and Southern Europe.67

65 Van der Stock (ed.), Antwerp, cat. 9 & 10; Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski, Group Identity in the Renaissance World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 131-133. 66 Both Barbari and Reuwich remained in the Low Countries, but died either before or around 1515 (O. Buyssens, ‘Antverpia Mercatorum Emporium Actum 1515 (?). Wie schiep de grote houtsnede en andere gezichten op de rede van Antwerpen uit omstreeks die tijd?’, Mededelingen van de Academie van Marine van België, 6 (1952), 171-202). 67 Elisabeth Ross, ‘Mainz at the crossroads of Utrecht and Venice: Erhard Reuwich and the Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam (1486)’, in Cultural exchange between the Low Countries and Italy (1400-1600), ed. by Ingrid Alexander-Skipnes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 123-144.

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Figure 5.14: Anonymous artist, Salve Felix Andwerpia, woodcut in ‘Unio pro conservatione rei publice’ (ed. Jan de Gheet), Antwerp, 1515, University Library, Leuven, Inv. no. 2B 2529. © University Library Leuven.

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Figure 5.15: Anonymous artist, Antwerpia Mercatorum Emporium (detail), woodcut, ca. 1515-1518, Museum Plantin Moretus / Prentenkabinet, Antwerpen, Inv. no. 20839. Photo credit: Peter Maes.

The printed Antwerp profile views from around 1515 heralded the beginning of a rich tradition of chorographies in the early modern Low Countries. Still, the pictorial language and viewpoint of these early woodcuts showed a high degree of continuity with the late medieval Antwerp tradition of urban iconography. What did change was the medium, the function, and the message. As they were cut loose from the central religious narrative of altarpieces and devotional portraits, early modern town portraits witnessed a gradual process of secularisation that obviously changed its meaning and function.68 Many early Netherlandish chorographies can be considered as typical products of a ‘northern humanism’, as they combined profane city praise (laus urbium) with conventional Christian overtones. The Antwerp town view in the 1515 laudatory book is for instance topped by two angels holding a banderole that says: Salve felix Andwerpia conservatur divina favente gratia (‘Hail fortunate Antwerp. May it, with God’s favour, preserve its grace’). Also the oldest printed view of Ghent, published in 1524 by Pieter de Keysere, merges the profane and the religious into a multifaceted artefact (Figure 3.3). This sophisticated, threefold representation of the city consists of an image of the Ghent skyline, the allegorical figure of the

68 Bernd Roeck, ‘Die Säkularisierung der Stadtvedute’, pp. 189-198.

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City Maiden, and a heraldic representation of the Three Members of the political administration, who had shared power since the 1360s – the patricians (poorterie), the textile guilds (weverij), and the remaining ‘small guilds’. In the middle, above the predominantly ecclesiastic cityscape69 sits the Holy Trinity, accompanied by a banderole with the appropriate psalm: ‘Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman wakes but in vain’. This sanctification of the urban community bears a close resemblance to practices of ‘civic religion’ that underpinned social cohesion in medieval Italian city states like Florence and Venice.70 While in some regions of the Low Countries civic ideology was as strong as in Italy, it was not, however, the exclusive product of the ruling elites. The De Keysere prints demonstrate that the ordering of urban society through the fusion of religious and civic discourses was not the exclusive prerogative of the urban authorities, as has been stressed in the traditional, Italocentric literature on ‘civic religion’. Most likely, the Ghent woodcuts came into being as a private initiative on the part of an individual printer, even though they might have been inspired by official practices as the annual Corpus Christi procession or the illumination of the registers of the aldermen. By capitalizing on a grassroots civic ideology, De Keysere targeted a broad local audience, ranging from the patriciate to well-to-do craft guild members.71 To this end, he developed a sophisticated, polyphonic product that draws on various semantic fields, ranging from the traditional aristocratic (lineage and heraldry), corporate (the Three Members), humanist (the Latin references to antique sites), and Christian (the ecclesiastic towerscape, the biblical inscription). The intriguing denomination of the Belfry as capitolium,72 for instance, illustrates the multi-layered discourse of the print series, as it can be understood as an obvious allusion to both the city of Rome as the capital of Latin Christianity – the earthly Jerusalem – and the antique Rome – epicentre of the Italian Renaissance. Perhaps, the artist was aware of a rich tradition of Renaissance city plans and surveys of Rome that took the Capitoline hill as the central point of reference, both topographically and symbolically.73 The description of the Castle of the Counts as arx julii (‘Caesar’s castle’) clearly places the prints within a northern humanist setting. 69 The panoramic city view mainly consists of the main churches and chapels of the city. The image as a whole is closely related to a late fourteenth-century poem by Boudewijn van der Luere, which tells the story of a Maiden that invokes the protection of all the patron saints of the Ghent parish churches (see Joris Reynaert, ‘Boudewijn van der Luere en zijn Maghet van Ghend’, Jaarboek van de Koninklijke Soevereine Hoofdkamer van Retorica ‘De Fonteine’ te Gent (1980-1981), 109-130. 70 See in the first place the work of André Vauchez. For a critical discussion of the ‘civic religion’ concept, see Pierre Monnet, ‘Pour en finir avec la religion civique?’, Histoire Urbaine, 27 (2010), 107-120. 71 Frederik Buylaert, Jelle De Rock and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘City portrait, civic body and commercial printing in sixteenth-century Ghent’, Renaissance Quarterly, 68:2 (2015), 803-839. 72 Remarkably, the capitolium frequently figures as the very centre of Rome on both the very schematic thirteenth-century mappaemundi and the topographical city plan as descriped in Alberti’s Descriptio Urbis Romae (1443-1455). See John A. Pinto, ‘Origins and Development of the Ichnographic City Plan’, Journal the Society of Architectural Historians, 35:1 (1976), 35-50 (pp. 36-37). 73 This tradition of urban surveying goes back to Leon Battista Alberti’s Decriptio Urbis Romae (14331455). Alberti discusses a technique that implies the measurement of the distance of a series of points to the centre of the city, the Capitolium (Nicholas Temple, Disclosing Horizons: Architecture,

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In the View of the Road of Antwerp of 1515 the discourse is predominantly profane. The panoramic vista celebrates the metropolis as a commercial gateway for commodities from all over the world. The city is described as Antverpia Mercatorum Emporium (‘Antwerp market of merchants’), while Venetian galleys and various other vessels float on the Scheldt. Furthermore, the image makes some clear allusions to the various commercial journeys to the Holy Land undertaken by the Antwerp ship-owner Dierick Paesschen. The much anticipated return of these expeditions was celebrated by the entire urban community.74 It seems plausible that the giant woodcut was created to recall one of these joyful events, just as De Gheet’s laudatory book ultimately functioned as a memento of Charles’s entry into Antwerp. As in the rest of Europe, many early sixteenth-century Netherlandish town views served a laudatory and commemorative function.75 Their main purpose was to praise the beauty, particular virtues, and power of the city, often on the occasion of a special event. In Cologne (Germany, 1531), Amsterdam (1538), and Ghent (1550) as well, a princely entry or jubilee seems to have provoked the creation of a town view.76 Pieter de Keysere’s Ghent print might also have been distributed on a specific occasion, such as the move of de Keysere’s workshop to another location.77 It is striking that most early chorographies bear little reference to the official municipal authorities. No particular prominence is given to the city hall, and typical expressions of the urban governmental discourse, such as adaptations of the classical ‘SPQR’, are lacking.78 Many – though certainly not all – early chorographies did contain the city’s coat of arms, often in combination with the Habsburg arms, yet this type of sign was far too general and widespread to function as the exclusive symbol of the municipal government. Even if the precise conditions of their development are often opaque, it seems that most of the first printed town portraits were private, commercial initiatives, rather than the product of an official, top-down representation strategy. They capitalised on a culture of (cartographic) consumerism that thrived throughout early modern Europe, even in regions with a strongly developed civic self-consciousness, such as Venice or the cities of Southern Germany. According to Bronwen Wilson, sixteenth-century commercial printmakers played an active role in the self-pro-

Perspective and Redemptive Space (London/New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 133. 74 Roger Degryse, ‘De Palestinaschepen van Dierick van Paesschen (1511-1521)’, Marine Academie. Mededelingen, 23 (1973-1975), 15-45. 75 Folin, ‘De l’usage pratico-politique’; Thomas Frangenberg, ‘Chorographies of Florence. The use of city views and city plans in the sixteenth century’, Imago Mundi, 46 (1994), 41-64. 76 Leiverkus, Köln, p. 22. For Amsterdam and Ghent see below. 77 The central figure of the Ghent Maiden was repeatedly used by De Keysere as his printer’s mark. 78 On the adaptation of the ‘SPQR’, see Nicolai Rubinstein, ‘Classical themes in the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 50 (1987), 29-43. For Ghent, see Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, De Gentse memorieboeken als spiegel van stedelijk historisch bewustzijn. 14de tot 16de eeuw (Ghent: Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde, 1998), p. 322.

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motion of Venice.79 With regard to late medieval Germany, Carla Meyer has similarly stated that ‘city branding’ was much more a private and market-driven phenomenon than has often been assumed. Even a textbook example of a relatively stable ‘patrician’ city with a high degree of political autonomy, such as late fifteenth-century Nuremberg, did not develop a straightforward policy for creating a recognizable municipal identity. The majority of the very rich local urban iconography, chronicles, civic encomia, and poetry of Nuremberg was produced for exterior patrons (such as neighbouring nobles and foreign visitors) or ‘middle-class’ figures, such as lower officials in the municipal administration (typically scribes).80 4. A rising viewpoint: towards the perspective plan Soon, the low viewpoint of the traditional profile view was going to rise. This ‘axial shift’ constituted a major evolution, for an elevated viewpoint had been very uncommon in fifteenth-century Netherlandish painting. A quantitative analysis of a corpus of 220 early Netherlandish town views made in the period 1420-1520 revealed that in total 78 per cent of the panel paintings depict the city in profile, whereas 21 per cent opt for an oblique views, while hardly 1 per cent use a bird’seye perspective (see also Graph 2.2). The representation of three-dimensional space on a flat surface constituted a crucial development in Renaissance art. The correct application of linear perspective, as empirically and theoretically fine-tuned by Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti in the 1420-30s, led to a new conceptual formulation that involved the mathematical abstraction of reality. Originally restricted to an observation from one single point at eye level, the perspective depiction of cities soon entailed oblique projections (e.g. Francesco Rosselli’s view of Florence, 1480s) and bird’s-eye views (e.g. Jacopo de’Barbari’s view of Venice, 1500),81 which permitted the illusion of total vision. Town views of this type show the city from one single elevated viewpoint, from which the projected line of sight meets the earth’s surface at an oblique angle.82 The elevation of the viewpoint was initiated south of the Alps, perhaps instigated 79 Carlton, Genevieve, Worldly Consumers. The Demand for Maps in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015); Bronwen Wilson, ‘Venice, print, and the early modern icon’, Urban History, 33:1 (2006), 39-64. 80 On early German printed town views as a market-driven phenomenon, see Carla Meyer, ‘“City Branding” Im Mittelalter? Städtische Medien der Imagepflege bis 1500’, in Stadt Und Medien: Vom Mittelalter Bis Zur Gegenwart, ed. by Clemens Zimmermann (Köln: Böhlau, 2012), pp. 19-48 (esp. pp. 46-47). For Nuremberg see Carla Meyer, Die Stadt als Thema. Nürnbergs Entdeckung in Texten um 1500 (Ostfildern: Thorbeke Verlag, 2009). For some further comments, see Joseph Morsel, ‘Sociogenèse d’un patriciat. La culture de l’écrit et la construction du social à Nuremberg vers 1500’, Histoire Urbaine, 35:3 (2012), 83-106. 81 On the slight difference between ‘oblique views’ (angle 30°) and ‘bird’s-eye views’ (angle 45°) see Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, p. 5. 82 Pinto, ‘Origins and Development of the Ichnographic City Plan’, p. 35. On the difference between ‘oblique views’ (angle 30°) and ‘bird’s-eye views’ (angle 45°) see Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, p. 5.

towards an identifiable city. town portraits of the sixteenth century

Figure 5.16: Anonymous artist, Antwerpia in Brabantia, 1524-1528, copper engraving, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Print Room, Inv. no. RP-P-OB-4318. © Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

by the hilly geography of the Italian peninsula, and from ca. 1530 rapidly spread throughout Europe.83 In its most radical application, this evolution led to yet another representational mode, namely the ichnographic or orthogonal plan, involving the mathematical abstraction of reality by means of a plurality of hypothetical viewpoints, each perpendicular to the earth’s surface. But even if Leonardo da Vinci succeeded already in 1502 to construct a true ichnographic plan of Imola, and even if the theoretical basis and the instruments that enabled the design of an ichnographic plan were perfected in the course of the sixteenth century, the orthogonal projection was no match for the perspective plan. The latter increasingly benefited from the improved surveying techniques that stood at the basis of the ichnographic plan (particularly for the representation of the street grid and the relative position of the major monuments), yet by the isometric perspectival projection of the city’s principal attractions and major building blocks, the perspective plan appealed to a much larger audience of pilgrims, tourists, merchants, and armchair travellers. Well into the eighteenth century ichnographic plans were only occasionally made for urban planners, military engineers, and civic administrators. The immediacy and versatility of the bird’s-eye view served the needs of travellers and collectors better than the highly sophisticated orthogonal plans.84 The oldest printed oblique view in the Low Countries is an anonymous copper engraving entitled Antwerpia in Brabantia, dated between 1524 en 1528 (Figure 5.16). While retaining the traditional viewpoint from the left bank of the Scheldt, it offers an innovative vista of the urban fabric, setting, and forma urbis, including the old city walls and the hinterland.85 Once more, innovation and continuity went hand in hand: an oil painting dated around 1540 and equally 83 Lucia Nuti, ‘The Perspective Plan in the Sixteenth Century: The Invention of a Representational Language’, The Art Bulletin, 76:1 (1994), pp. 105-128. 84 Pinto, ‘Origins and Development of the Ichnographic City Plan’, p. 50. 85 Marc Hendrickx, ‘Aspecten van het vroeg zestiende-eeuw stadsbeeld van Antwerpen: het belang van het volgelvluchtplan uit 1524-1528’, HistoriAnt (2015), pp. 1-22.

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Figure 5.17: Anonymous artist, Antwerp from the Southeast, engraving in Lodewijck Van Cauckercken, ‘Chronicle of Antwerp’, 1545, City Archives Antwerp. © Felixarchief, Antwerpen.

entitled Antwerpia in Brabantia opts for a (slightly) raised viewpoint while recycling a large part of the maritime and architectural detail of the View of the Roads of Antwerp.86 In 1543, the Antwerpia in Brabantia engraving was largely recycled in La Grand Cita di Anversa by the Venetian artist Fabio Lucinio, who had made a great effort to adjust the old print to the changed physical appearance of the city, such as the new, bastion fortifications.87 Another print from circa 1545 that appeared in Lodewijck Van Cauckercken’s Chronicle of Antwerp shows the urban precinct in full transformation: while large stretches of the old city wall are still in place, the new Saint Georges Gate (now Emperor’s Gate) and the boundaries of the urban expansion to the North are already visible (Figure 5.17). In order to optimally capture the expansion and modernisation of the urban perimeter, the Van Cauckercken print was the first to depict the city from the

86 The painting is part of the collection of the MAS Museum in Antwerp. For an illustration, see Rutger Tijs, Antwerpen. Historisch portret van een stad (Tielt: Lannoo, 2001). 87 The image actually projects the future plans of the new fortification, as in 1543 the large-scale building campaign had just been started. The engraving by Lucinio is part of the collection of the Print Room of the Royal Library in Brussels (Inv. no. S.II 63445). For a reproduction, see Van der Stock (ed.), Antwerp, cat. 11.

towards an identifiable city. town portraits of the sixteenth century

Figure 5.18: Anonymous artist, Ganda Gallie Belgice Civitas Maxima, painting on linen, 1534, City Museum STAM, Ghent. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Hugo Martens.

Southeast, away from the riverside.88 This rapid succession of new engravings indicates the importance attached to the circulation of a topical representation of the fast-changing city. In the case of Antwerp, the printing of city portraits certainly did not result in an iconographic sclerosis.89 The spatial expansion of the metropolis, combined with its massive market (and selling potential), fostered a neophilia that was vital for the pioneering role of the city in the development of urban iconography in the Low Countries. Still, even if the oblique and bird’s-eye views were by far the most fit to grasp the city’s outline, profile views were not completely abandoned. In 1557, a couple of years after the completion of the new city walls and gates, Hieronymus Cock published an engraving by Melchisedech van Hooren, representing the urban skyline and its fortifications from the West, East, and South.90

88 For a detailed chronology of the construction of the new fortifications, see Piet Lombaerde (ed.), Antwerpen versterkt. De Spaanse omwalling vanaf haar bouw in 1542 tot haar afbraak in 1870 (Antwerp: UPA Press, 2009), pp. 28-31. 89 In some cases, a particular woodcut or engraving could be reprinted time and again, for instance in world chronicles or atlases, even if the spatial reality of the city had drastically changed. 90 For a good reproduction, see Lombaerde, Antwerpen versterkt, p. 8.

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In the case of Ghent the profile view of 1524 was soon eclipsed by a much more comprehensive vista. In 1534 an anonymous master painted a bird’s-eye view of the town and its surroundings, probably commissioned by Lieven Hughenois, abbot of the Abbey of Saint Bavo (Figure 5.18). This city portrait, which is arguably the oldest surviving ‘perspective plan’ in the Netherlands,91 bears a close resemblance to earlier bird’s-eye depictions such as Jacopo de’ Barbari’s view of Venice (1500) and Jorg Seld’s image of Augsburg (1521).92 The painting succeeds in registering both the city’s major monuments and its complex shape, hydrography, and street grid in one image, even though it still contains many inaccuracies when compared to the perspective plans of the 1560s. A relatively similar, but less orthogonal bird’s-eye view was commissioned in 1538 by the Amsterdam aldermen from the painter and printmaker Cornelis Anthonisz. The painted panel adorned the Amsterdam town hall until it was damaged by a fire in 1652. In 1544 Anthonisz commercialised an almost identical print version of the portrait of the ‘renowned merchant city of Amsterdam’ (Figure 5.13).93 The transposition from drawing into a commercial print also occurred in Ghent. In 1550 the urban authorities engaged Johannes Otho94 to make a ‘map and portrait of the city, in a proper scale and geometric proportion, including the rivers and structure of buildings’, which was shortly thereafter downsized to a woodcut version and marketed (Figure 5.19). Unlike the Amsterdam portrait, Otho’s city view combined an orthogonal projection of the street grid with a perspective rendering of the urban building volumes. As stipulated in the city accounts, he merged a city plan (‘quaerte’) and a town portrait (‘protracture’) into one image.95 From the middle of the sixteenth century onward, these hybrid ‘perspective plans’ set the tone throughout Europe. A concise overview of early perspective plans makes clear the relatively synchronic and international dimension of this phenomenon: Augsburg (Seld, 1521), Ghent (Horenbault?, 1534), Amsterdam (Antoniszoon, 1538/44), Calais (Petit?, ca. 1545), Strasbourg (Morant, 1548), Lyon (anonymous, 1548-1553), Basel (Manuel, 1549), Cairo (Pagano/Zorzi, 91 In 2011, a staff member of the Ghent City Archives questioned the authenticity of the painting (or at least its current appearance). However, a thorough material and stylistic investigation conducted by the Belgian Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK/IRPA) in 2014 confirmed the authenticity of the artifact. 92 For Barbari’s view of Venice, see above. For Seld’s view of Augsburg, see Peter Barber and Tom Harper, Magnificent Maps. Power, Propaganda and Art (London: The British Library, 2010), pp. 54-55. 93 Ariane Van Suchtelen and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Hollandse stadsgezichten uit de Gouden Eeuw (Zwolle: W Books, 2008), pp. 14-15. 94 A learned humanist and rector of a Latin school in Ghent (from 1545 onward), Johannes Otho was definitely more of a scholar than an artist. For more biographical information, see Johan Decavele, De dageraad van de Reformatie in Vlaanderen (1520-1565) (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1975). 95 The 1551-1552 city accounts refer to a quaerte ende protracture […] up de behoirlycke ende gherechtighe mate ende proportie geometrique […] insghelijcx metten rivieren ende structuren van edificiën binnen der selvre wesende [‘a plan and portrait […] in a proper and geometric way […] equally including rivers and edifices within the city’] (Ghent City Archives, 400, n° 40, fol. 153v). See Decavele, Panoramisch gezicht op Gent, pp. 14-15; André Capiteyn, Leen Charles, and Marie Christine Laleman, Historische atlas van Gent. Een visie op verleden en toekomst (Amsterdam: SUN, 2007), p. 25.

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Figure 5.19: Jan Otho, Plan of Ghent (down-scaled version of the plan of 1550), woodcut, 1551, Ghent University Library, Muntenkabinet en Kaartenzaal, Inv. no. BRKZ.KRT.0777. © Ghent University Library.

1549), Ghent (Otho, 1551), Frankfurt (von Kreuznach, 1552), Paris (Truschet and Hoyau, ca. 1552), Genoa (Van de Wyngaerde, 1553), London (‘Copper Plate Map’, 1553-1559), Rome (Pinard, 1555), Antwerp (Cock/Bononiensis?, 1557), Norwich (Cunningham, 1559), Bruges (Gheeraerts, 1562), Ypres (Thévelin and Destrée, 1564).96 Towards the middle of the sixteenth century chorography increasingly embraced the ‘scientific’ techniques of geography, both practically and rhetorically. With the help of printed treatises and manuals, surveying techniques such as triangulation became commonly used, while diverse textual inscriptions and the depiction of scientific instruments, such as a compass or a transit, conspicuously referred to the geometrica ratio of the perspective plan. In 1562 the Bruges aldermen hired the painter and printmaker Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder to make a ‘map’ (charte) of the city. By the insertion of a pair of compasses Gheeraerts clearly alludes to the (semi-) cartographic

96 See Nuti, ‘The perspective plan’, pp. 105-128; Jean Boutier, ‘Cartographies urbaines dans l’Europe de la Renaissance’, in Le plan de Lyon, 1548-1552. Édition critique des 25 planches originales du plan conservé aux archives de la ville de Lyon (Lyon, 1990), pp. 25-27; Idem, ‘L’affirmation de la cartographie urbaine à grande échelle dans l’Europe de la Renaissance’, in Per un atlante storico del Mezzogiorno e della Sicilia, ed. by Enrico Iachello and Biagio Salvemini (Naples: Liguori, 1997), pp. 107-127.

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Figure 5.20: Jan Thévelin, Perspective plan of Ypres (detail), woodcut printed by Jacques Destré, 1564. © Collectie Stedelijke Musea, Ypres.

features of the large-scale perspective plan.97 Two years later, the waning town of Ypres equally commissioned a ‘portrait and description’ made by the obscure painter Jan Thévelin and printed by Jacob Destré (Figure 5.20).98 Many other Netherlandish towns followed suit, even though the original chorographies are often lost and are only known through copies, adaptations, or archival documents. In 1566 the Leuven city council invited the goldsmith Hendrick van Diependaele, who already had portrayed (bewerpen) the city in five different ways, to design a comprehensive image of the town and its street grid (in huere rondde metten straten). Regrettably, no trace of such a plan survives.99 In The Hague a perspective plan was conceived around 1570 (preserved by means of a copy from 1658 by Cornelis Elandsts).100 In Mechelen the surveyor Jan van Hanswijck created a refined perspective plan of the city, most likely shortly

97 Albert Schouteet, Marcus Gerards: zestiende-eeuws schilder en graveur (Bruges: Koninklijke Gidsenbond Brugge en West-Vlaanderen 1985). 98 Marieke Moerman, Diepgaande analyse van twee Ieperse kaarten: het stadsplan van Thévelin-Destrée (1564) en de gravure over het beleg van Ieper van Guillaume du Tielt (1610) (unpublished Master’s thesis, Ghent University, 2010), pp. 17-20. 99 Van Even, Louvain dans le passé, p. 181, n. 2. 100 Steven van Schuppen, Historische atlas van Den Haag. Van Hofvijver tot Hoftoren (Amsterdam: SUN, 2006), p. 14.

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Figure 5.21: Virgilius Bononiensis, Urbs Antverpia, 1565, coloured woodcut, Museum Plantin Moretus / Prentenkabinet, Antwerpen, Inv. no. MPM.V.VI.01.002.

before the city was heavily damaged by an outbreak of the Spanish Fury in 1572. Unfortunately, the aquarelle rapidly deteriorated to such an extent that a detailed copy from 1812 tells us more than the original.101 A detailed perspective plan of Courtrai was made by Pierre Le Poivre shortly after the Spanish troops had reclaimed the city in 1580. The plans clearly shows all kinds of military activity outside the city.102 In Antwerp, the oldest preserved perspective plan was printed in 1557 by Hieronymus Cock, most likely as a commercial venture.103 A much more elaborate and large-scale version of this view was designed by the Italian chorographer Virgilius Bononiensis – who had presumably started his survey around 1550 – and printed in 1565 by Gillis Coppens van Diest with the inscription Urbs Antverpia (Figure 5.21). Also here, the hybrid character of the view as both portrait and plan is clearly indicated by an inscription stating that Bononiensis had made the image of the city ad vivam similitudinem geometrica ratione (‘from life and in a geometric manner’).104 This enterprise was made possible by the private investment of two – probably Italian –partners. Nevertheless, it is very likely that earlier public commissions had facilitated the development of this hybrid, semi-cartographic image of Antwerp, as the ex-novo production of a perspective

101 Johan Waes, Mechelen in panoramische gezichten en plattegronden. Proeve tot inventarisatie (Mechelen, 1992), cat. 7. 102 The drawing is now part of a private collection. For a reproduction, see the digital image repository of the city of Courtrai (https://www2.kortrijk.be/beeldbank/beeldbank). 103 Joris Van Grieken et. al. (ed.), Hieronymus Cock. The Renaissance in Print (Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 2013), cat. no. 1, pp. 72-73. 104 On the term ad vivum and the mimetic relation between image and reality, see Claudia Swan, ‘Ad vivum, naer het leven, from the life: defining a mode of representation’, World & Image, 11 (1995), 353-372.

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plan was extremely time-consuming and formed a high-risk investment for private entrepreneurs.105 The Antwerp city accounts reveal that Bononiensis was already active in Antwerp as of 1545 at least and carried out various assignments of the municipal authorities. In 1547-1549 he drafted large stretches of the new fortification and in 1552 the city’s treasurers engaged him to ‘paint and illuminate a certain map of this city’. Without a doubt, these public commissions enabled Bononiensis, denominated in the accounts as a ‘painter’, to master various geographical techniques and to develop a clear sense of the Antwerp forma urbis and urban morphology. In the 1550s the Italian artist tried to capitalise upon his skills and knowledge by applying for a patent for the printing and selling of ‘portraits’ of Antwerp.106 Unlike the printed profile views of the early sixteenth century, perspective plans seem to have chiefly sprung up from public initiatives. Around the middle of the century, public authorities, local, regional, and central, began to acknowledge the potential of city portraits as a discursive instrument and marketing tool that could reach a large audience. The geographic bestsellers of Sebastian Münster (Cosmographia, 1544) and Braun-Hogenberg (Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1572) offered an ideal platform for the self-imaging of cities throughout Europe and the New World. Already in the early sixteenth century many chorographies were conceived as ‘pictorial encomia’ or city tributes, highlighting both visually and textually the qualities of the city.107 Urban governments started to actively commission chorographies, to function as gifts, as commemorations, or as marketing instruments. One of the finest illustrations of such a public representation strategy is the perspective plan of Bruges made in 1562 by Marcus Gheeraerts. The city accounts clearly indicate the intention of the urban authorities to overstate the navigable connections between the city and the sea, in order to attract merchants to the waning port of Bruges. The effectiveness of this strategy is illustrated by the testimony of a Bruges citizen who saw the print for sale in 1564 at a Seville market.108 The perspective plan formed a medium well-suited to promote the city. It made it possible to capture the major monuments of the city, the layout of its (new) fortifications, its favourable logistic setting (waterways, quays), and recent urban expansion. Many cities faced major spatial rearrangements 105 It took Jacopo de’ Barbari three years to make his bird’s-eye view of Venice, a venture that was exceptionally sponsored by the private Nuremberg entrepreneur Anton Kolb, who sought exemption from export duties, because of the high production costs (Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice. Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), p. 23). 106 Voet, Asaert and Soly, De stad Antwerpen, pp. 134-136. 107 The term ‘visual encomia’ is used by Frangenberg, ‘Chorographies of Florence’, p. 44. 108 The city accounts literally state: ten fine dat men mercken mach de goede navigatie [‘in order that the good navigation may be noticed’] (Schouteet, Marcus Gerards, p. 42). On the visual propaganda used in the sixteenth century by the Bruges aldermen to stress the maritime potential of the city, see Brecht Dewilde, Jan Dumolyn, Bart Lambert and Bram Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘“So One Would Notice the Good Navigability”: economic decline and the cartographic conception of urban space in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Bruges’. Urban History, 45:1 (2016), 2-25.

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throughout the sixteenth century. In Antwerp, for instance, the old medieval walls were gradually replaced by new fortifications (the so-called trace italienne), urban water management was rearranged, and new buildings (town hall, stock exchange) and quarters were created. It is revealing that during this phase of intense spatial transformation the viewpoint of the Antwerp perspective plans shifted towards the east and ultimately the south, emphasizing, respectively, the new fortifications and the Spanish citadel (1567). Hieronymus Cock’s view (1557) clearly indicates the northern expansion (Nieuwstad) as Antverpia postremum amplificata (‘Antwerp after its enlargement’), whereas an adaption of this engraving by Pauwels Overbeke (1566) was updated in 1568, including the ‘new citadel and accretion’.109 This phased growth of the metropolis was perceived by contemporaries as illustrative of the Antwerp success story. During the 1561 Landjuweel, a contest of Brabant rhetorician chambers, the prologue of the Mechelen chamber De Lisbloem trumpeted the successive stages of Antwerp’s growth and the corresponding extensions of its urban territory.110 Also the legend of the Bononiensis view clearly praises the triple expansion of the city walls.111 Even in the seventeenth century, after a phase of demographic and spatial contraction, this fascination with the spatial genesis of the city incited the production of drawings and sketches that documented the consecutive phases of urban growth.112 Furthermore, the circulation of orthogonal plans that had been stimulated by municipal governments for organizational, hydrographical, urban, military, or judicial purposes undoubtedly contributed to the development of the perspective plan, as the latter benefited from the critical mass of topographical data and knowhow accumulated by these technical plans.113 Already in the late Middle Ages urban governments regularly engaged surveyors to measure or map certain features of the urban topography, such as the course of (navigable) waterways, the outline of the city walls, the judicial perimeter of the city, or the boundaries of urban seigneuries and parishes. In the sixteenth century, these predominantly textual or schematic records increasingly turned into pictorial descriptions of urban space. In 1510-1511, for instance, the Ghent aldermen asked the painter Gerard Horenbout to supply an ‘extract and description’ of a specific city quarter.

109 The legend of the 1568 woodcut says: ‘La villa d’Anversa co[n] la nova Citadella & acrecimento’ (De Brabander, Na-kaarten, pp. 52-53). 110 Jeroen Vandommele, Als in een spiegel. Vrede, kennis en gemeenschap op het Antwerpse Landjuweel van 1561 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2011), pp. 306-307. 111 ‘Habet in murorum ambitu, cum nova ad Boream Civitate (quandoquidem iam tertium amplificata est) quinquies mille decentos ac XII […]’ (L. Voet, G. Asaert and H. Soly, De stad Antwerpen, p. 145). 112 An anonymous pen drawing titled De stadt van Antwerpen. Haer beghinsel ende vermeerderingen (‘The city of Antwerp. Its origin and accretions’) made around 1610 indicates the various phases of Antwerp’s spatial expansion. Also the chronicle of Louis van Cauckercken (1688-1696) contains some aquarelles that depict the consecutive stages of Antwerp’s spatial development (Tijs, Antwerpen. Historisch portret, pp. 28-29, 32). 113 On the orthogonal plan in the Low Countries, see Peter Jan Margry, ‘De ontwikkeling van de stadsplattegrond’, in Stadsplattegronden. Werken met kaartmateriaal bij stadshistorisch onderzoek, ed. by Peter Jan Margry, Paul Ratsma and B. M. J. Speet (Hilversum: Verloren, 1987), pp. 9-18.

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Figure 5.22: Anonymous artist, Detail from a plan of the city of Antwerp, 16th century, ink on paper, City Archives Antwerp, Inv. no. 12 # 11667. © Felixarchief, Antwerpen.

The Bruges government ordered many maps and sketches of the hydrology of the city and its hinterland throughout the sixteenth century.114 Due to their intensive practical use and because of the constantly changing urban reality many of these plans turned obsolete after a couple of decades, with the result that few of these early hand-drawn plans have survived. A rare specimen of an ‘ichnographic’ plan that encompasses the entire city was recently rediscovered in the Antwerp City Archives (Figure 5.22). The artefact shows many traces of a very dynamic use and constant modification, as it comprises both the outlines of the old medieval city wall, the new fortification of 1542-1553 and the Spanish citadel of 1567. The plan consists of a orthogonal representation of the urban street grid, combined with a two-dimensional depiction of the house fronts orthogonal to the streets. In a later phase, a few monuments built in the second half of the sixteenth century were added in perspective. The exact function of 114 Decavele, Panoramisch gezicht, p. 14; Jan Parmentier, ‘The struggle to maintain the Zwin’, in Bruges and Zeebrugge. The city and the sea (London: Lloyd’s of London Press, 1995), pp. 64-69. See various illustrations in Marc Ryckaert, Historische stedenatlas van België. Brugge (Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1991), pp. 15, 36, 52.

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the document remains opaque. Whether it was used for urban planning or as a tool to settle judicial disputes remains a matter of conjecture.115 Without any doubt, the replacement of the medieval town walls by a completely new fortification system – the result of the so-called ‘military revolution’ – strongly fostered the need for accurate measurements, designs, and detailed drawings. In Vienna, for instance, Augustin Hirschvogel, who designed the first ichnographic plan of the city (1547), was intensively involved in the construction of the new fortifications, while Konrad Faber von Kreuznach’s oldest perspective view of Frankfurt (1552) shows the city under siege.116 Also in Antwerp, the famous chorographer Vergilius Bononiensis drafted in 1547-1549 large drawings of the new fortifications, before specializing in more ‘artistic’ town views. His famous perspective plan of 1565 projects the urban fortifications as a fully completed structure, erasing the few still existing medieval city gates.117 Also the central government played an important role. One of the pioneers of the orthogonal town plan in the Netherlands was the royal cartographer Jacob van Deventer. From around 1559 to his death in 1575, he produced over 250 plans of Netherlandish towns for the Habsburg government in Madrid. Given their high degree of accuracy, their remarkable eye for the surrounding countryside, their largely orthogonal viewpoint, and their systematic use of colours, these chorographies are often interpreted as military tools (with a practical value, for instance, in the siege of a city). Nevertheless, Laurens Vollenbronck has recently stressed the political objective behind the Deventer plans: the compilation of nearly all the cities in the Habsburg Netherlands.118 The much more pictorial drawings of Netherlandish and Spanish towns made by the Antwerp artist Anthonis van den Wijngaerde clearly served a political representation strategy, as they lay at the basis of thirty painted canvasses that decorated the entrance hall of the Alcazar in Madrid.119 Also regional governments acknowledged the political appeal of large-scale town portraits. In 1566, the State of Brabant commissioned four tapestries with the views of the four major cities of the

115 Felixarchief, Antwerp, Inv. n° 12#11667. See the contributions of Joos Depuydt and Marc Muylle in HistoriAnt, 4 (2016). 116 David Buisseret showed how the military revolution heavily relied on new mapping techniques. See David Buisseret, The mapmaker’s quest: depicting new worlds in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 103-151. See also Pinto, ‘Origins and Development of the Ichnographic City Plan’, pp. 46-49. 117 Petra Maclot, ‘A Portrait Unmasked: The Iconology of the Bird’s-Eye View of Antwerp by Virgilius Bononiensis (1565) as a Source for Typological Research of Private Buildings in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Antwerp’, in Portraits of the City. Representing Urban Space in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Katrien Lichtert, Jan Dumolyn and Maximilaan Martens (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 33-47 (p. 34); Voet, Asaert and Soly, De stad Antwerpen, pp. 135-136. 118 Bram Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Les plans de villes de Jacques de Deventer (XVIe siècle). État de la question et pistes de recherche’, Revue du Nord, 94:396 (2012), pp. 613-633; Laurens Vollenbronck, ‘De stadsplattegronden van Jacob van Deventer. Geen militaire maar een territoriaal-politieke functie’, Historisch-geografisch Tijdschrift, 27 (2009), 73-83. 119 Richard Kagan, Spanish Cities of the Golden Ages. The Views of Anton van den Wijngaerde (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

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duchy (Brussels, Louvain, Antwerp, and ‘s Hertogenbosch) to be hung in the States assembly hall.120 Recently, some authors have referred to the growing urge for ‘territorial self-entitlement’ as another major impetus for the involvement of official authorities in the perspective plans of the second half of the sixteenth century. Already in the fifteenth century, a considerable amount of urban iconography (usually pen drawings) saw the light in the context of judicial conflicts and lawsuits, yet these primitive plans and maps were as a rule restricted to a particular neighbourhood or contested stretch of boundary line.121 Elaborated plans that carved out the territory of the city as a whole were very rare in the late Middle Ages, yet gained momentum in the course of the sixteenth century. The elevated viewpoint of the perspective plane enabled the viewer to discern the urban boundaries in a larger landscape. Preceded by the central state,122 regional institutions and large-scale rural landholders, urban authorities were eager to define their territories in a more compelling and legal manner as a ‘bounded space’. Often supported by the central state, they succeeded in countering the jurisdictional claims of local ecclesiastical and seigniorial enclaves and in defining a more or less continuous territory.123 As Ellen Wurtzel stated: ‘Representations of European cities were not solely the efforts of state and imperial authorities to accurately describe and thus possess them more assuredly, nor were they necessarily the visual expression of a political will already exhausted or nostalgia for a holistic medieval past. Instead, I want to suggest that these images promoted urban political authority’.124 Wurtzel understands early modern city maps as ‘immutable mobiles’ – a concept coined by Bruno Latour – that enabled the propagation and fixation of the urban territory. Nevertheless, even though sixteenth-century perspective plans were occasionally used in lawsuits,125 they were not primarily created to function as legal evidence or to support a territorial claim. Rather they supported and 120 Bakker, Landscape and religion, p. 103. 121 Juliette Dumasy-Rabineau, ‘La vue, la preuve et le droit: les vues figurées de la fin du Moyen Age’, Revue Historique, 315:4 (2013), 805-831. 122 Ingrid Baumgärtner and Martina Stercken (eds), Herrschaft verorten Politische Kartographie im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Zürich: Chronos, 2012); James R. Akerman, The Imperial Map. Cartography and the Mastery of Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Edward Muir, ‘Governments and bureaucracies’, in A companion to the worlds of the Renaissance, ed. by Guido Ruggiero (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), p. 112; Lauren Benton, A search for sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Nate Probasco, ‘Cartography as a Tool of Colonization: Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s 1583 Voyage to North America’, Renaissance Quarterly, 67:2 (2014), 425-472. 123 Ellen Wurtzel, ‘City limits and state formation: territorial jurisdiction in late medieval and early modern Lille’, in The power of space in late medieval and early modern Europe: the cities of Italy, Northern France and the Low Countries, ed. by Marc Boone and Martha Howell (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 29-42. For a critical approach to the medieval and early modern perception of ‘territory’ as a continuous space, see Bouloux, ‘Culture géographique et représentation du territoire au Moyen Âge’, pp. 89-112. 124 Ellen Wurtzel, ‘Legal Space and Urban Identity. The Shaping of the City of Lille from 1384 to 1667’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 2007), pp. 396-399. 125 An oblique view of Ghent painted in 1534 for the abbot of Saint Bavo’s Abbey was used by the city aldermen to settle property conflicts (Decavele, Panoramisch gezicht, p. 17).

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proclaimed the identity of the urban community and framed the city within the larger landscape of the emerging central state. Many perspective plans reserved a prominent position for royal or imperial heraldry and abundantly referred to the principality to which they belonged. They were by no means expressions of urban navel-gazing or communal autonomy, but depicted the city as a precious asset within the greater realm.126 Only towards the end of the sixteenth century were a growing number of paintings and prints created in order to establish the boundaries of urban jurisdictions. In 1541 Evert van Schayck painted a panel with the boundaries of the Utrecht jurisdiction or vrijheid after Governor Mary of Hungary had settled a dispute between the city and Count Philip de Lalaing (Figure 5.23).127 A map to scale of the Bruges region, made by Pieter Pourbus in 1561-1571 for the magistracy of the Franc de Bruges, delineates the urban territory by means of a distinct red line.128 In 1582 Christopher Plantin illustrated an edition of the Antwerp customary law with an orthogonal projection of the city and the surrounding vrijheid. Also in Ghent (1592) and Bruges (1690) a detailed drawing or painting of the urban jurisdictions was made.129 There are indications that such representations of the entire city and hinterland – often transposed to painting on canvas – were as a rule on display in one of the public rooms of the city hall. For instance, the ‘figurative chart of Ghent’, made by Jan de Buck and François Horenbault in 1590, was eventually installed in the ‘major long chamber’ of the house of the alderman of the Keure.130 However, it should be noted that the cartographic demarcation of territorial boundaries was not an invention of the sixteenth century, nor did it became a hegemonic manner for negotiating space. REPFor many decades, elementary maps had been drawn to settle jurisdiction and property conflicts,131 whereas the textual description of borders by means of verbal maps and highly geometric inventories (the so-called ommelopers) were already a common practice in the late medieval Low Countries, and continued to be so throughout the Ancien Régime. As has recently been demonstrated,

126 Maclot, ‘A Portrait Unmasked’, p. 46. 127 Renger De Bruin, ‘Een paradijs vol weelde’. Geschiedenis van de stad Utrecht (Utrecht: Matrijs, 2000), p. 51. 128 Ryckaert, Historische Stedenatlas, p. 46. 129 Voet, Asaert and Soly, De stad Antwerpen, pp. 62-63. In the seventeenth century more detailed maps of the marquisate of Antwerp were produced (Tijs, Antwerpen, pp. 84, 105). In 1592 Jan de Buck and François Horenbault made a plan of the suburban boundaries of Ghent (Charles et al., Van walsites en speelhoven, p. 35). A painting made in 1690 by Jan Lobbrecht shows the limits of the Bruges territory or the so-called ‘paallanden’ (Ryckaert, Historische Stedenatlas, pp. 76-77). In 1661 a painted map of the Limburg town of Hasselt with the boundaries of the municipal territory was made by a local painter, based on a map from 1549 ( Jan Van der Stock (ed.), La ville en Flandre: culture et société 1477-1787 (Brussels: Crédit Communal, 1991) cat. 3). 130 “in de groote langhe camere” (Charles et al., Van walsites en speelhoven, p. 36). 131 François de Dainville, ‘Cartes et contestations au XVe siècle’, Imago Mundi, 24 (1970), 99-121. For various late medieval Netherlandish maps that were drawn to settle territorial disputes, see Peter van der Krogt, ‘Lokale kaarten van Nederland uit de late Middeleeuwen’, Caert Thresoor, 2 (2008), 2-42 (see especially no. 7 for a sketch made in 1472 in order to pin-point the boundary between the city of Utrecht and the Gooi).

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Figure 5.23: Evert van Schayck, Plan of Utrecht and its judicial territory (‘vrijheid’), oil on panel, 1541, Collectie Centraal Museum, Utrecht. © Image & copyrights CMU / Ernst Moritz.

certain regions in the Low Countries boasted a strong tradition of ‘textual maps’ (such as coastal Flanders), leading to a rapid consensus on the use of cartography as a major tool for representing material reality, whereas other areas (such as the Campine area) showed a prolonged competition between alternative means of spatial representation. In the latter region, consisting of up to 80 per cent of common wastelands, space continued to be defined much longer in terms of vague and flexible boundary zones, rooted in everyday practice, customs, and recurrent spatial performances, such as processions.132 Unfortunately, very little is known about the exact places where perspective plans or other forms of urban cartography were displayed and to what extent they really served a practical purpose. Nevertheless, the scarce clues we have available suggest – once again – the very polyvalent character of these 132 De Keyzer, Jongepier and Soens, ‘Consuming maps’, pp. 25-26.

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artefacts. An inventory of the Antwerp Town Hall dating from 1571 (before a fire heavily damaged the building in 1576) mentions, for instance, the presence of a map (‘carte’) of the city of Antwerp and the expansion of the New Town in the chamber where the lesser taxes were received (‘de camer daer men de cleyne chynssen is ontfangende’).133 Besides its representative, encomiastic function – framing the fiscal recovery that buttressed the management of urban public space – it is conceivable that this plan was actively consulted by the municipal officers and thus that it supported the day-to-day administrative practices of the city. Besides a public disposal in the representative spaces of the municipal government, a much larger amount of printed city views must have been displayed within a private setting. By the early sixteenth century, city views were recorded in the collections of affluent merchants like the Fugger of Augsburg. An inventory made in 1527, shortly after the death of Jacob Fugger, documents the existence of a printed view of Antwerp that was displayed in the residence of the Antwerp branch of the family. Classified under the category of ‘wooden furniture’, it appears that the print – perhaps the View of the Roads of Antwerp (ca. 1518) – was pasted to a panel. What’s more, the inventory specifies that the image was bought on the open market, which corroborates the hypothesis that most early chorographies were the result of commercial ventures. In the house of Anton Fugger on the Weinmarkt in Augsburg, various city views were displayed along with many painted panels and a pair of globes representing the celestial and terrestrial realms. In 1569, a post-mortem inventory of the wealthy household of the Bruges patrician Jean Baptiste Lommelyn mentions a ‘map of Ghent’. The image was kept in a wooden frame, which again suggests that the map was exhibited rather than actively used. The Ghent goldsmith Frederik de Bucq kept anno 1567 a portrait of his hometown in the vestibule (voorvloer) of his house.134 Based on the analysis of a large corpus of sixteenth-century Venetian household inventories and decoration manuals, Genevieve Carlton came to a very similar observation, namely that maps were often displayed in the most public places in the house.135 Further research of other probate inventories throughout sixteenth-century Europe might yield a better understanding of the dynamics of (urban) cartography in early modern material culture.136

133 Cited in Maclot, ‘A Portrait Unmasked’, p. 46. 134 See also Jozef Scheerder, ‘Documenten in verband met de confiscatie van roerende goederen van hervormingsgezinden te Gent (1567-1568)’, in Handelingen van de Koninklijke Commissie voor Geschiedenis, 157 (1991), 125-242 (pp. 143, 159). 135 Genevieve Carlton, ‘Making an Impression: The Display of Maps in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Homes’, Imago Mundi, 64:1 (2012), 28-40. 136 For some additional data, see Jelle De Rock, ‘From Generic Image to Individualized Portrait: The Pictorial City View in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries’, in Netherlandish Culture of the Sixteenth Century: Urban Perspectives, ed. by Ethan Matt Kavaler and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), pp. 3-30.

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5. Conclusion During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the visual representation of urban space experienced a gradual evolution towards a more realistic, autonomous, secularised, and multifunctional image. Renaissance Europe increasingly conceived of space as a continuous, particular, and measurable category.137 Nevertheless, it is too far-fetched to confine the development of early modern urban iconography uniquely to a furor cartographicus. The rediscovery of Ptolemy and other classical geographers influenced the creation of city views not only by its technical and mathematical impact, but just as much by legitimating the position of the chorographer as an artist, rather than a surveyor. This is why the first chorographies of the sixteenth-century Low Countries were still largely indebted to the painted cityscapes of the fifteenth century. Our modern idea of a map as an abstract diagram is epistemologically removed from many sixteenth-century maps, where the divisions between drawing and plan remained porous. Only gradually did predominantly cartographic or orthogonal city plans gain popularity. Throughout the sixteenth century several ‘representational styles’ coexisted, often resulting in highly hybrid images, described by Joseph Monteyne as ‘map-like objects’.138 The burgeoning reproductive arts gave a major impetus to the development of urban iconography, as printed city views began to attract the interest of shrewd entrepreneurs and, eventually, urban governments. The latter played a decisive role in the development of the perspective plan from the middle of the sixteenth century onward. Re-evaluating De Seta’s statement cited in the introduction of this chapter, we need to conclude that Ptolemy did not at all surpass Herodotus. Many early modern chorographers did not simply ‘map’ the physical space of the city (urbs), but rather intended to describe a specific event, urban expansion, the particularities of the city and, ultimately, to grasp its identity (civitas). Most sixteenth-century city views tell subjective stories about the city.139 It remains difficult to discern the precise phenomena that inspired these narratives. They range from the military revolution, a blossoming humanist and civic culture, a dedication to the particular, individual and visual, the ascending central state, the legal discourse on property to an on-going process of bureaucratisation. Notwithstanding the increasing cartographic ‘sensitivity’ that pushed the viewpoint of drawn, printed, and painted city portraits ever higher, the majority of city views in the background of sixteenth-century religious paintings continued to be highly picturesque and generic. With the development of a range of new 137 Zumthor, La mesure du monde, passim. 138 Joseph Monteyne, The printed image in early modern London: urban space, visual representation, and social exchange (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 20. 139 Richard L. Kagan, ‘Urbs and civitas in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Spain’, in Envisioning the city: six studies in urban cartography, ed. by David Buisseret (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 75-108. On the narrative of chorographies, see the pioneer study of Schulz, ‘Jacopo de’ Barbari’s view of Venice’, pp. 425-474.

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genre paintings in Antwerp, city and street views increasingly diversified, often depicting the anecdotal and daily town life of the market, tavern, or kermis with a moral overtone. Also here, the images of urban space remained largely anonymous.140

140 Honig, Painting and the Market.

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City views and urban architecture in late medieval panel painting could serve various functions: from a distant, nearly visible pictorial element, enhancing the illusion of perspective in a background landscape, to a compositional instrument that structures the central narrative – whether as part of an earthheaven dichotomy, or as the architectural setting of the episodes of the Passion of Christ or a Saint’s Life. Sporadically, painted city views could also function as personal attributes of the donor or donatrix, referring to his/her place of origin, profession, or urban property. In most cases, however, representations of cities signalled in a much subtler way how artist and patron perceived the city. The ‘image of the city’ is always a selective representation. By investigating the distortion of ‘reality’, by scrutinising which elements of the medieval urban space were highlighted and which were hidden or smoothed over, this study probed the social dynamics that underpinned or challenged the self-image of city-dwellers as members as an urban community. Already in the twentieth century (art) historians acknowledged the potential of pictorial city views as a primary source for a history of mentality, yet the focus of the research largely remained within the field of religious iconology, architectural history, and local topography. The thematic chapters of this book generated new insights, based on a more quantitative approach. This exercise ultimately led to a better understanding of the function of panel painting, the dynamics of cultural creativity, and the social configuration of urban society in the Burgundian and early Habsburg Low Countries. The serial approach of this book revealed various patterns that led to the revision of some art historical orthodoxies, such as: (1) the one-sided fixation on the ‘hidden’ religious symbolism in the vein of Erwin Panofsky; (2) the tenacious socio-historical categorisation of Flemish panel painting as an essentially ‘bourgeois’ form of art; and (3) the strong tendency to identify painted cityscapes with a specific place. It is striking that all three notions are strongly preoccupied with the notorious realism of early Netherlandish painting, ascribing this remarkable feature of Flemish art respectively to: (1) the growing impact of nominalism and the Modern Devotion; (2) the rise of a typically ‘bourgeois’ or ‘merchant’ taste for detail and pragmatism; and (3) the advancement of geographical skills and techniques (a ‘cartographic revolution’) that affected both the abilities of the artist and the expectations of the audience. The manifest naturalism of early Flemish painting misled many art historians to attribute a topographical verisimilitude to its landscapes and cityscapes. One should, however, distinguish the alleged ‘realism’ of many early Netherlandish

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paintings from the intended ‘reality-effect’, a term coined by Roland Barthes for the small details of persons, places, and actions that, while contributing little or nothing to the narrative, give the story its atmosphere, making it feel real. The non-topographical character of most Flemish city views contrasts with the widespread insertion of detailed city portraits in German and Italian religious painting. The divergent political configuration of the different regions might count as an explanatory factor. In Italy the city often developed into a state, governed by a particular dynasty or by a consorteria of powerful families. In the late medieval signoria the seigneurial power of the urban rulers was rooted in the city-state as territorial entity. Also in the Holy Roman Empire many cities attained a relatively high level of autonomy or evolved into the capital of a city-state. In the Low Countries, by contrast, the central state and the city did not coincide: at set times during the fifteenth century they even violently collided. This might explain why in the Low Countries the city did not figure as an effective and trustworthy identity marker for urban elites, and they often steered away from the portrayal of a specific city. Given the primary devotional function of early Netherlandish panel painting, it goes without saying that the majority of the painted city views discussed in this book have a religious significance. The analogy with the Earthly and Heavenly Jerusalem (the Apocalypse) and the Augustinian notion of the City of God as metaphor for the community of true Christians is obvious. This does not take away from the fact that for the medieval man the symbolic value of the city was highly ambiguous. The city could refer to both the sacral ( Jerusalem) and the sinful (Sodom/Babylon/pre-Christian Rome). This explains the equivocal attitude of late medieval society towards the urban phenomenon. On the one hand, one embraced the advantages and wonders of the city (its productivity, harmony and splendour), while at the same time rejecting the excrescences of urban life (usury, extravagance, immorality, criminality). This ambiguity is distinctive for a traditional Christian society that did not yet come fully to terms with the proto-capitalist society that fermented in the cities of the Burgundian Low Countries. In fifteenth-century panel painting the ideal image of the city prevails: a peaceful and prosperous town, free from poverty, disease, and pollution. Many early Netherlandish painted city views picture the city as a place of refuge, of social opportunities and prosperity, a space of justice and (good) government. In the oeuvre of the first Flemish Primitives (roughly before 1450) the depiction of ordinary street life is as a rule separated by a physical barrier or a difference in altitude from the celestial scene in the foreground. Whether the cityscape in the background of these dual compositions symbolised the prospect of the New Earth or rather the unredeemed profane world, the donor portrait is almost always isolated from the urban setting in the background. This pictorial composition clearly evoked a detachment from the secular world, suggesting the patron’s full spiritual focus on the religious Andachtsbild that stood at the core of many altarpieces and devotional diptychs. Given the important commemorative function of most altarpieces, the renunciation of the profane urban life that underlies many of these early Netherlandish panel paintings comes as no great

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surprise. These artefacts served their patrons at least as much in the hereafter as during his/her life. One should not forget that, besides being devotional objects, panel paintings were also social artefacts. The religious overtones of early Netherlandish painting did not exclude the possibility of a more secular discourse. Both were certainly not mutually exclusive. The religious meaning constituted a legitimate primer to which diverse profane layers could be added. In the second half of the fifteenth century the compositional duality within panel painting weakened. In broad terms one could state that the relation between foreground and background mutated from profoundly oppositional (i.e. a strong dissociation or retreat from the profane world) to a more positive association. The countryside and city views in the background increasingly functioned as an attribute or continuation of the religious scene and donor portraits in the foreground, rather than as a counterpoint in an oppositional composition. This evolution was paralleled by an idealisation and monumentalisation of the cityscape, and by a growing prominence of rural landscapes. One major observation of this book is the transition around 1450 from an almost surreptitious observation of daily urban life to a much more distant, idealised vision of the city. While the first two generations of ‘Flemish Primitives’ ( Jan Van Eyck, the Master of Flémalle, Petrus Christus, and the young Rogier Van der Weyden) usually pictured the city as an economic entity, the artists from the second half of the fifteenth century largely ignored this fundamental feature of urban society. This shift becomes apparent when looking at the growing prevalence of profile views, which reduced the city to its skyline and virtually ignored daily life at the surface level. The few times when the urban interior came into the picture, the emphasis remained on the architectural splendour of the city: the anecdotal images of the market and streets as a place of production and exchange had cleared the way for static depictions of the square as a socio-political arena. Even the landscape in which these tranquil city views were embedded turned into a nearly deserted, pastoral idyll that shows little or no interaction with the town. Idealisation and monumentalisation became the dominant representational modes in the second half of the fifteenth century. The image of the city transformed into that of a religious, social or political theatre, framing episodes of a hagiographical story or hosting architectural expressions of good government and personal status (such as town halls and city palaces). Parallel to what Denis Cosgrove described for quattrocento Italy, one could state that the city had become a ‘landscape’: “No longer the city is an organic and promiscuous collectivity of buildings, spaces and human activities […]. Here the city is ‘landscape’, a formal geometrical and monumental order – a product of the eye”.1 Even though the early Netherlandish town views of the late fifteenth century never reached the degree of architectural abstraction as the città ideale, many of them shared a focus on the city as a place of administration

1 Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, p. 92.

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and justice and as an arena of social and architectural ostentation with their Italian counterparts. There is no monocausal explanation for this remarkable transition. Without a doubt, the functional and thematic diversification of panel painting in the second half of the fifteenth century must have played a role. The development of new themes prompted novel compositions and ultimately also affected background motifs like city views. A good example is the growing incidence of Ecce Homo scenes and exemplae justitiae, which demanded a particular urban setting with an obvious focus on the political architecture of the city. Likewise, the large number of altarpieces that depicted the episodes of a saint’s life, made by a myriad of anonymous masters towards the end of the century, logically induced a theatralisation of the depicted city. However, this does not alter the fact that also hieratic compositions, such as the Enthroned Madonna – a common theme in the Van Eyck workshop – and themes such as the Adoration and Visitation, witnessed an idealisation of cityscapes and landscapes. Another explanatory factor is the Italianate nature of the strong narrative and theatrical character of many late fifteenth-century Flemish cityscapes. There certainly was a stylistic and thematic cross-pollination between the Low Countries and the Italian peninsula, but especially in the fifteenth century early Netherlandish painting retained much of its singularity. Also the traditional art historical arguments of a simple Stilwandel or changing taste pattern, or else the influence of other media, such as book illumination and tapestry (for instance with regard to the growing popularity of Simultanbilder), certainly make sense, yet are not adequate. In this book we have argued for associating the increasingly idealised and monumental character of pictorial city views with a process of aristocratisation and social polarisation that reshuffled urban society in the Southern Low Countries with unprecedented intensity from the 1450s onwards. The Burgundian Netherlands witnessed the rise of a very heterogeneous social aristocracy, ranging from the craft guilds’ elites, the old ‘patrician’ families of the city, foreign and local merchants, court officials, the increasingly urbanising local and regional nobility, and a wide variety of clerics, from petty canons to bishops and abbots. This wide variety of worthies shared to a large extent a common material culture and mindset. A multitude of exclusive urban confraternities and venues of elite conviviality, such as the Bruges Poortersloge, constituted an interface between these social elites and fostered a creative environment critical for the development of early Netherlandish art. The city was the place where the supply of and demand for affordable and flexible artistic media, including panel painting, met. It is this essentially urban character of early Netherlandish painting and illumination that has often been misinterpreted as a ‘civic’ or ‘bourgeois’ feature. Many scholars have suggested a straightforward correlation between the characteristic verisimilitude of Flemish painting and bourgeois patronage. However, by doing so, they largely ignored the complex social dynamics that triggered artistic creativity in the late medieval Low Countries. Very few fifteenth-century city views alluded to the professional achievements of the donors. Not only the primary religious and commemorative functions of most of these paintings,

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but also the social stigma about commerce, especially hand-labour, meant that painted images of urbanity rarely reflected the economic opportunities of the city. Notwithstanding the growing integration of the nobility and mercantile elites, a persistent substrate of noble-chivalric culture prevailed, maintaining a traditional binary state of mind, according to which the nobleman was superior to the commoner or ‘burgher’. This explains the appeal of a noble lifestyle among commoners. Likewise, the increasing share of landscape motifs in religious panel painting – often at the expense of city views – resonated with the lure of country life for the urban elites. The growing prominence of landscape not only served a devotional function (the spiritual isolation of the patron and religious scene in an intense Andachtsbild); it equally reproduced a very aristocratic or ‘genteel’ vision of a seigneurial countryside as the traditional resource of public authority, power, and (noble) status. Of course, this conclusion about the predominantly ‘aristocratic’ discourse of early Netherlandish panel paintings is by far a complete novelty. In 1919, no one less than Johan Huizinga had already judged late medieval Flemish art (including panel painting) to be an essentially aristocratic art, as opposed to the contemporary Haarlem School of the Northern Netherlands and the ‘bourgeois’ art of the Dutch Golden Age in the seventeenth century. And we can only agree with him, as our study demonstrates that early Netherlandish painting largely emanated a mindset that was still strongly oriented towards the traditional medieval social order. Only in the sixteenth century did a more modern artistic conception of the city as a particular, measurable place, or as an economic entity take root. Nevertheless, the processes of social polarisation and oligarchisation, combined with an increasingly Italianate approach to painting and spatial representation, are only a few factors in a much more complex social and artistic dynamic that drove the idealisation and theatricalisation discussed in this book. Maryan Ainsworth warns about the reduction of fifteenth-century Bruges art to the socio-political climate of the city. She draws attention to a myriad of factors that were at play, ranging from shifting devotional practices, the development of new iconographic themes and genres, the changing art market, the cross-pollination from other artistic media, and the stylistic dissemination and persistence of certain influential workshops in large geographical regions and across several generations.2 Indeed, the transformation of a large share of painted city views into purely architectural ensembles cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the growing popularity of concepts like the ‘mental pilgrimage’, as well as the prominence of religious drama in the urban landscape and the growing popularity of specific iconographic themes, such as Examples of Justice, saints’ lives, and the sacra conversazione. In short, it remains hard to pinpoint the factors that induced the remarkable shift in how the city was represented in early Netherlandish painting.

2 Ainsworth, Gerard David, p. 4.

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One main issue remains, namely how to discriminate pure stylistic change or Stilwandel (driven by the cyclical mutation of taste, in which the compositions of some masters or workshops were ‘trending’ and emulated by others) from a deliberate representation strategy pursued by the donor. The former mainly concerns aesthetics and fashion, whereas the latter touches upon the solicitudes of social self-esteem and self-staging. Both are certainly not mutually exclusive. In fact, the display of good taste often functioned as a powerful token of status. In the burgeoning market economies of the Low Countries paintings increasingly turned into consumer goods. A growing number of readymade paintings were bought as such or else customised with donor portraits. In particular less fortunate buyers easily opted for this cheaper type of product. On spec production compelled painters to imitate those compositions and styles that were in fashion, thus establishing the trickle-down of high-end compositions (commissioned by the most wealthy patrons) to a variety of middle class consumers. Alongside this process of emulation, landscape and cityscape motifs could easily transform from deliberately devised representational attributes into mere decorative motifs, losing much of their initial significance. Here we come across one of the major caveats of the socio-semiotic interpretation of late medieval iconography. In a visual culture that was not particularly fond of originality and in which compositions and motifs were swiftly copied or appropriated, original meanings and intentions could easily fade. The intentionality of iconographic motifs is a crucial factor here, one which unfortunately is not easy to discover fully.

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Annex 1

List of panel paintings with Bruges towerscapes (1475-1510)

Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, The Legend Saint Lucy, ca. 1480, Bruges, Saint James’s Church. Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Saint Nicholas Altarpiece, ca. 1501, Bruges, Groeningemuseum. Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Lamentation, ca. 1485, Minneapolis, Institute of Arts. Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Virgin and Child Triptych, ca. 1480-1483, Los Angeles, County Museum of Art. Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Lactating Madonna, 1475-1500, Williamstown, Sterling and Francine Clark Institute. Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Enthroned Madonna, after 1493, Private Collection (sale Boskovitch, Genova). Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Enthroned Madonna, 1486-1493, Private Collection (sale Richard Green, London, 2004). Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Virgin and Child with Saints (Virgo inter Virgines), before 1486, Detroit, Institute of Art. Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Saint Catherine, ca. 1482, Philadelphia, Museum of Art. Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Saint Catherine, end 15th century, Pisa, Museo Nazionale di San Matteo. Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Saint Jerome, after 1501, National Trust, Upton House. Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Saint Jerome, 1475-1500, Oslo, Lund Collection (private). Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Christ in the Garden of Olives, 1493-1499, Private Collection (Sale Sotheby’s, London, 8 December 2004). Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Virgin and Child Enthroned with two angels, 1475-1500, Modena, Galleria Estense. Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Virgin and Child Enthroned with two angels, 1475-1500, Private Collection (sale Lempertz, Cologne, 1972). Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Virgin and Child Enthroned with two angels, after 1501, Private Collection (formaly Collection Pietro Monastero). Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Lamentation with Arma Christi, 1475-1500, Messina, Museo Nazionale.

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Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Lamentation Triptych with Baskish shipowner, 1480-1490, Private Collection (sale Subastas XXI, Bilbao, 21 March 2012). Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, Enthroned Madonna, 1475-1483, University of Rochester, Memorial Art Gallery. Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, Nativity Triptych (central panel), 1490-1500, Detroit, Institute of Art. Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, Epitaph of Anna De Blasere, 1479-1483, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, Portrait of Ludovico Portinari, ca. 1479, Philadelphia, Museum of Art. Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, 1475-1500, Hamburg, Kunsthalle. Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, Crucifixion with patron, 1480-1490, Birmingham, Barber Institute. Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, Madonna and Child, 1475-1500, Private Collection (New York). Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, Annunciation Triptych, ca. 1483, Indianapolis, Museum of Art. Gerard David, Portrait of a clergyman, 1510-1520, London, National Gallery. Gerard David, Wrightsman Madonna, 1515-1520, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

colour plates

Plate 1: Jan Van Eyck, The Madonna with Chancellor Rolin (details of the cityscape in the background), ca. 1435, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

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Plate 2: Master of the Life of Saint Catherine (Brussels), The Life of Saint Catherine (detail), 14801495, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel.

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Plate 3: Jan Van Eyck, The Ghent Altarpiece: detail of the Annunciation on the exterior wings, ca. 1432, Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Dominique Provost.

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Plate 4: Master of Flémalle / Robert Campin?, Nativity (detail), 1433-1435, Museé des BeauxArts, Dijon. Source Wikimedia Commons.

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Plate 5: Rogier Van der Weyden, Miraflores Altarpiece, ca. 1440, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. © Photo Christoph Schmidt.

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Plate 6: Dirk Bouts, Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament (details of the Last Supper and of Abraham and Melchisedech), 1464-1468, Museum M, Leuven. © KIK/IRPA, Brussels.

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Plate 7: Master of the View of Saint Gudula (Brussels), Clothing the Naked, ca. 1470, Museum Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid. © Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

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Plate 8: Jan Provoost, Saint Nicholas and Saint Godelieve with Donors, 1515-1521, Groeningemuseum, Bruges. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW, photo Hugo Maertens.

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Plate 9: Master of the Joseph Sequence, Affligem Altarpiece (panel with Deploration and Entombment), ca. 1495, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Source Wikimedia Commons.

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Plate 10: Anonymous Bruges Master, A Miracle of Saint Anthony of Padua (detail), ca. 1500, Prado, Madrid. © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado.

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Plate 11: Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy, Lamentation (detail), ca. 1485, Institute of Arts, Minneapolis. © Bridgeman Art Library.

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Plate 12: Goswin Van der Weyden, The Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary (detail of donor), 15151520, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

Plate 13: Master of Frankfurt, Virgin and Child Enthroned (detail), ca. 1515, Institute of Art, Detroit.

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Plate 14: Workshop Rogier Van der Weyden, Lamentation with Pierre de Ranchicourt (detail), bishop of Arras, 1462-1465, Mauritshuis, The Hague (before restoration in 2018). © Mauritshuis, Den Haag.

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Plate 15: Epigone Dirk Bouts, Trinity Triptych (right panel), 1475-1500, Saint Servatius Church, Berg (Kampenhout). © KIK-IRPA, Brussel.

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Plate 16: Jacques Daret, The Arras Altarpiece (detail of the wing with the Visitation), 1433-1435, Gemäldegalerie Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Photo: Jörg P. Anders.

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Plate 17: Anonymous Flemish Master, Saint Amandus and Saint Quirin, 1475-1500, Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille. © KIK-IRPA, Brussel.