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Netherlandish immigrant painters in (1575-1654): Aert Mytens, Louis Finson, Abraham Vinck, and

Osnabrugge, M.G.C.

Publication date 2015 Document Version Final published version

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Citation for published version (APA): Osnabrugge, M. G. C. (2015). Netherlandish immigrant painters in Naples (1575-1654): Aert Mytens, Louis Finson, Abraham Vinck, Hendrick De Somer and Matthias Stom.

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Download date:28 Sep 2021 INTRODUCTION

‘After that they completed their journey to Naples and saw the works of art there, and also the interesting phenomena at Pozzuoli. In Naples, I believe in the palace of the viceroy, Goltzius drew an excellent antique statue, a seated young Hercules; and he and his companions returned to ...’ (Carel van Mander, ‘Life of Hendrick Goltzius’ in: Schilder-boeck, 1604)1

Many sixteenth and seventeenth century artists from the Netherlands visited Naples.2 On his trip to the Southern Italian city in 1591, the engraver and painter Hendrick Goltzius from Haarlem studied the local art, the bizarre natural phenomena at Pozzuoli and an antique sculpture of a seated young Hercules in the palace of the Viceroy. The remarkable drawings that Gerard ter Borch made in 1610 of the spectacular volcanic landscape at Pozzuoli near Naples (Fig. 1), illustrate the fascination visitors had for these natural wonders. Upon approaching the city gates from the Via Appia – if they did not travel by sea – they caught sight of the cupolas of the numerous churches, the towers, the Castel Sant’Elmo and the Certosa di San Martino overseeing the city center from the Vomero hill (Fig. 2). Naples was the second-largest city of Europe, with over 250,000 inhabitants during the last quarter of the sixteenth century and close to half-a-million right before the plague struck in 1656. The narrow streets of the old city center were crowded with people from all over the world. The enchanting metropolis at the bay was admired for its natural and cultural marvels, but because of its complex social tissue – clashes between the government of the Spanish Viceroys, the Neapolitan elite, the Church and the population were frequent – it was characterized as ‘a paradise inhabited by devils’.3 A considerable number of painters from the Netherlands, including Aert Mytens, Abraham Vinck, Louis Finson, Hendrick De Somer and Matthias Stom (the five painters who are at the center of this dissertation) did not just visit the city; they lived and worked in Naples.

1 Van Mander 1604, fol. 283v: “Sy hebben voort hun reys tot Napels voleynt, de const aldaer ghesien, als oock te Puzziola de vremdicheden in der Natuere. Te Napels heeft Goltzius, ick meen in 't Paleys van den onder Coningh, gheconterfeyt een uytnemende Antijck, eenen sittenden en jeughdighen Hercules, en is met zijn gheselschap weder gekeert nae Room,…" (translation MIEDEMA 1994-1999). 2 From a quick survey, it is clear that several Northern artists made a stopover in Naples. Three seventeenth- century biographers (Van Mander, Sandrart and Houbraken) mention a visit to Naples of the following Northern artists: Jan Stephan van Calcar (Van Mander, Sandrart), Pieter Vlerick (Van Mander), Gilles Coignet (Van Mander), Hendrick Goltzius (Van Mander, Sandrart), Ter Brugghen (Houbraken), Otto Marseus van Schrieck (Houbraken), Leonart Bramer (Houbraken), Joachim von Sandrart (Sandrart, Houbraken), Johann Wilhem Baur (Sandrart, Houbraken), Govert van der Leeuw (Houbraken), Willem van Ingen (Houbraken), Jan van Bunnik (Houbraken). In some cases, the artists also produced work in Naples and stayed for a longer period, but they are excluded from the analysis as they fall chronologically outside the scope of this research. For the brief sojourn of Jan van der Straet (Giovanni Stradano) in Naples, see: GOLDENBERG STOPPATO 2005. 3 Benedetto Croce traced the origin of this characterization back to the early-sixteenth and possibly fourteenth century (CROCE 1927).

1 INTRODUCTION

Early modern artists were remarkably mobile. Apart from traveling within their region of origin, many left their home country for months or years on end to visit faraway places. Travel was an important element in the life and artistic development of the early modern artist. was by far the most popular destination for artists from the Netherlands, although they also traveled to England, , , Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe and distant lands like India.4 The objective of the Italian journey was to study antique sculpture and architecture, the works of the great Italian masters of the past and present and for some the unfamiliar landscape on the way. These treasures were not available in the North and studying them was considered an important enrichment of the painter’s visual repertoire. In the Grondt der Edel-vry Schilderconst, the artist and biographer Carel van Mander urged young artists to undertake this journey, while warning them for the many perils they would encounter on the road.5 Throughout the biographies of Netherlandish artists in the rest of the Schilder-boeck, Van Mander refers to the travel experiences of various artists. He mentions the people they met along the way, the art works they studied and sometimes tells an entertaining anecdote to give the reader a taste of the life of the traveling artist. In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, over six hundred Netherlandish artists are documented to have undertaken the journey to Italy, and their experience plays an important role in the development of in the Northern Netherlands.6 Most journeys to Italy consisted of a round trip: after a certain period the artists returned to their home country. Only a few of them stayed and settled in a new city. It is to these artists that this study is dedicated. The difference between an itinerant and immigrant artist is in part related to the duration of the artist’s stay in one place. The five artists whose Neapolitan stay constitute the case studies in this dissertation lived in Naples for seven years or longer. Their social, professional and artistic perspectives changed once they decided to settle, although the initial encounter with Italy was likely quite similar to that of their colleagues who would return home.7 The choice to stop traveling and settle down is often a temporary decision and seldom final. An immigrant has to negotiate between his native background and the culture and conditions of the new environment, whereas itinerant artists are focused on moving-on without truly considering the local circumstances. An adjustment in behavior is implied, although some artists lingered in their itinerant status instead of fully turning into an immigrant. The ambiguous condition of the immigrant was described pointedly in 1908 by the sociologist Georg Simmel in an essay on the status of the stranger in society, called ‘Exkurs über den Fremden’. In his

4 cfr. note 40. 5 ‘Den Grondt der Edel vry Schilder-const: Waer in haer ghestalt, aerdt ende wesen, de leer-lustighe Jeught in verscheyden Deelen in Rijm-dicht wort voor ghedraghen’, forms the introduction to the Schilder-boeck (VAN MANDER 1604, fol. 1r-57v). 6 This number is based on the ECARTICO database. The number was probably much higher, as the emphasis of the database is on the seventeenth century and on artists from the Northern Netherlands. 7 In fact, it is often impossible to reconstruct whether they went to Italy with the intention to settle or that they made the decision along the way.

2 INTRODUCTION influential essay, Simmel described the stranger, in this case in the guise of a traveling merchant, as someone ‘‘…who comes today and stays tomorrow – so to speak the potential wanderer, who, although he did not move on, did not quite outgrow the freedom of coming and going’,8 thus underlining the flexibility of strangers. Despite this implicit continual state of movement, immigrant artists had to position themselves as inhabitants and artists within the new city. The process of integration started when the painters turned from itinerant into immigrant artists. This process will form the focal point of my dissertation. In the four case studies that follow, I will examine the lives and careers of five pittori fiamminghi who settled in Naples. The central question of this research is: What were the different ways in which the five Netherlandish painters integrated socially as well as artistically in Naples? I shall define the social and professional interaction with both compatriots and Neapolitans, the role of local institutions in their integration, their artistic production in Naples and the way in which they positioned themselves as artists on the Neapolitan art scene. The process of integration includes explicit decisions, for example to seek contact with certain people or work in a specific manner. I am reluctant to use the term ‘strategy’, as it implies rigorous planning and the subsequent execution of these plans. Although there is a possibility that the five artists designed strategies to speed their integration, such a hypothesis cannot be proven based on the available sources.9 The selection of painters is based on two criteria. First, a certain amount of visual and documentary source material has to be available to be able to answer the questions that are central to this research. For a thorough analysis, sporadic occurrences in archival sources – which is all that is available for most Fiamminghi in Naples – are not sufficient. Second, I have selected these five painters for the variety of typologies of immigrant artists they represent, which ranges from young first-generation immigrants (Mytens) to highly- skilled cosmopolites (Finson and Stom).10 The period that will be explored extends from around 1574, when Aert Mytens settled in Naples, until the last documented presence of Hendrick De Somer in 1654. In other words, it begins with the first generation of Netherlandish painters in Naples and ends at the moment when fewer Fiamminghi settled, right around the time the Neapolitan school of painting reaches its greatest heights. The temporal framework is important, since it is part of my argument that during this period the position of foreign artists in Naples went through a change.

8 SIMMEL 1908: ‘…der heute kommt und morgen bleibt – sozusagen der potentiell Wandernde, der, obgleich er nicht weitergezogen ist, die Gelöstheit des Kommens und Gehens nicht ganz überwunden hat.‘ 9 In her dissertation ‘Culturele ondernemers in de Gouden Eeuw: De artistieke en sociaal-economische strategieën van Jacob Backer, , Ferdinand Bol en Joachim von Sandrart’, Erna Kok is explicitly using the term ‘strategy’ to analyze the careers of four painters in Amsterdam. Although she admits that we can usually only recognize a strategy, in the sense of a coherent pattern of behavior, in retrospect, she has given the concept a central role in her research (KOK 2013, esp. 16). I have decided not to do this, also because I have a different type of sources at my disposal. 10 See Conclusion.

3 INTRODUCTION

Naples The geographical focus of this research is on the capital of the Viceroyalty of the Spanish Habsburg, a reign which comprised all of Southern Italy. Although many of the questions that are posed are not specific to Naples, the Neapolitan context offers an interesting and understudied case.11 Early modern Neapolitan culture and society were exceptionally protean, constantly adapting to the presence of foreigners. Naples has been ruled by many foreign sovereigns: the French Anjou (1266-1442), the Spanish Aragon (1442-1501) and the Spanish Habsburg (1504-1713) - and before that, Greeks, Romans, Normans and Hohenstaufen. All these different rulers left their mark on the city’s culture and appearance. Moreover, Naples - especially because of its harbour – was a crossroads of merchants coming from all over the Mediterranean, many of whom resided in the city’s national communities (nazioni).12 This foreign presence not only affected the economic, political and social sphere: it deeply and constantly transformed the cultural fabric of the city. The history of early modern Naples is marked by a constant search for balance between the political, religious, economic and social elements within, and indeed outside the city and the Viceroyalty. Questions about a Neapolitan identity, especially in relation to the court of the Spanish Viceroys, have been addressed with some frequency by scholars in recent years.13 The complex social, political and economic tissue of early modern Naples lends itself very well for such an approach. Although it is not the direct focus of my research, I believe that the study of the process of integration of the Netherlandish painters in Naples contributes to questions regarding the nature of ‘Napoletanità’.

Painting in Naples The presence of foreigners also had a great impact on art in Naples.14 In the case of painting, many artists from other regions of Italy and from all over Europe came to work in Naples through the centuries, including Giotto, Polidoro da , Vasari and Cavaliere d’Arpino and, in the seventeenth century, Caravaggio, Domenichino, Ribera, and Lanfranco. The brief visits of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571 – 1610) in 1606-1607 and 1609-1610 had an enormous artistic impact. In fact, it is telling that the arrival of the Lombard painter in 1606 is chosen as a turning point in many art historical surveys.15 The narrative in which Caravaggio took Naples by surprise and changed it irreversibly is recurrent in historiography. In a way, the Spaniard (1591–1652), who settled in Naples, continued along the lines of Caravaggio. In 1616, Ribera arrived from Rome, where he had closely observed

11 The first comprehensive critical overview in English of different aspects of early modern Neapolitan history was published in 2013: ASTARITA 2013. This companion, which includes a comprehensive bibliography, is an excellent starting point for research on Neapolitan history and culture. 12 For an analysis of Naples as a port city, see COLLETTA 2006. 13 PISANI & SIEBENMORGEN 2009, MARINO 2010, GUARINO 2011. John Marino in particular, describes the precarious balance between the rituals in the streets and those at the court of the Viceroys. 14 See, for example: WATERHOUSE 1982; ZEZZA 2010b; CONTE 2012. 15 MARTINEAU & WHITFIELD 1982; LEONE DE CASTRIS 1991; SPINOSA 2009; SPINOSA 2010.

4 INTRODUCTION

Caravaggesque and naturalist developments. Whereas the actual presence of Caravaggio in Naples – both physically and through his art works – was very limited, Ribera became the most influential master in the city for more than thirty years. This difference is significant: Caravaggio instantly ignited a revolution, whereas Ribera immersed himself in the city and its art and changed Neapolitan painting ‘from the inside’. We should connect this shift in the shape of ‘foreign presence in Neapolitan painting’ with the steady development of a strong local interest in painting. In that period a larger number of local men became painters, which in turn led to a more competitive and vital art scene. With the exceptions of (1991)16 and (1992),17 comprehensive monographs on some of the most important Neapolitan painters have only been published during the last decade or so, not in the least because of the emphasis on foreign painting in Naples.18 The reason why more men chose to become painters is connected to the increased demand for painting from the 1570s onward.19 Until the middle of the sixteenth century, there was little work opportunity for painters in this city. In 1568, complained that the city lacked sophisticated patrons who could appreciate good art. Vasari, who had worked in the city himself in 1544, mockingly stated that the Neapolitan elite was more interested in the dressage of horses than in the high art of painting.20 However, the Neapolitan art market evolved rapidly in the years that followed. At first, there was a lack of local painters. Moreover, generations of Neapolitan patrons found it preferable to focus on non-Neapolitan art, consequently dismissing local production. The most striking examples of this ’artistic xenophilia’ can be found in the two most important

16 1991, is an exhibition catalogue rather than a monograph. The excellent exhibition on Battistello Caracciolo, held in Naples in 1991 clearly illustrated the impact of Caravaggio’s presence in Naples. The first monograph on Caracciolo was published by Stefano Causa in 2000 (CAUSA 2000). 17 SCHÜTZE & WILETTE 1992. 18 On Domenico Gargiulo alias Micco Spadaro: DAPRÀ & SESTIERI 1994; Pacecco de Rosa: PACELLI 2008; Girolamo Imparato: DE MIERI 2009; : TUCK-SCALA 2012; : SPINOSA 2013. 19 Francis Haskell was the first to describe the Neapolitan art market, although his study was very preliminary (HASKELL 1982). The historian Gérard Labrot has contributed the most to our understanding of the art market in Naples due to his incredible knowledge of the Neapolitan archives. His publications are numerous and will be mentioned in the following chapters; LABROT 2010 should be considered the magnum opus on the economics of art in Naples and the introduction to LABROT 1992 serves as a good starting point for the history of Neapolitan collections. Whereas Labrot focused on the general movements, Christopher Marshall wrote a number of articles on the position of some individual artists within the Neapolitan art market: MARSHALL 2000, MARSHALL 2003, MARSHALL 2004, MARSHALL 2005, MARSHALL 2006. In 2010, he wrote the chapter on Naples for Painting for Profit by Richard Spear and Philip Sohm (MARSHALL 2010). 20 Vasari describes the hardship experienced by Marco Pino da Siena : ‘Avvenne che stando egli in Napoli, e veggendo poco stimata la sua virtù, deliberò partire da coloro che più conto tenevano d'un cavallo che saltasse che di chi facesse con le mani le figure dipinte parer vive.’ VASARI 1568, vol. IV,476 (Life of Polidoro da Caravaggio. As Aislinn Loconte argues, Vasari may have been influenced by his own negative experiences in Naples in 1544 (LOCONTE 2008). As the engraving after Jan van der Straet (Giovanni Stradano) illustrates (Fig.4), horses from Naples indeed enjoyed great renown abroad. For example, much of the correspondence of the Medici court in and their agents in Naples concerns the purchase and transport of horses (See the online database of the Mediceo del Principato – section of the Archivio di Stato di Firenze: http://bia.medici.org/).

5 INTRODUCTION commissions in the early-seventeenth century: the decoration of the Cappella del Tesoro in the Cathedral of Naples and the project of the Certosa di San Martino.21 In both cases, the patrons explicitly attracted foreign artists.22 This caused some bad blood on the part of local painters, who saw the most profitable commissions go to Bolognese and Roman artists.23 Neapolitan artists even went as far to threaten the Bolognese painters and Domenichino when they began work on the frescoes of the Cappella del Tesoro.24 In the 1630s, Neapolitan painters had caught up with their foreign colleagues and their work was in high demand with patrons and collectors in Naples, as well as abroad.25 Art historians are finally giving Neapolitan painting the attention it deserves, exploring new and compelling angles.26 Ground work has been carried out to an acceptable extent, in the form of solid surveys, monographs and comprehensive archival research.27 Although I was still confronted with large gaps in our knowledge of Naples and Neapolitan painting, a study such as mine, which unavoidably has to build on the work of others, would not have been possible a decade earlier. Some thirty years ago, the only comprehensive study on Neapolitan painting was Wilhelm Rolf’s Geschichte der Malerei Neapels of 1910.28 The two important exhibitions of 1982 and 1984 were the first to address the subject again and pave the way for new research.29

21 Schütze and Wilette also mention these examples to describe the position of foreign and local art in Naples around the time that Massimo Stanzione became active as a painter: ‘La storia della commissione della Cappella del Tesoro rispecchia in maniera eloquente il clima artistico di quegli anni a Napoli. A causa della superiorità della pittura romano-bolognese e della assoluta predilezione da parte dei committenti, proprio per le commissioni napoletane più importante, i pittori locali videro in pericolo considerevoli interessi finanziari e si sentiorno profondamente ferti nell‘orgoglio. Per liberarsi di una sifatta concorrenza, non si indietreggiò neanche di fronte a minacce ed attentati.’ (SCHÜTZE & WILETTE 1992, 109). 22 For the documents on the commission of the Cappella del Tesoro, see: STRAZZULLO 1978 and STRAZZULLO 1994. 23 Cavaliere d’Arpino, Guido Reni and Domenichino were approached by the masters of the Chapel to paint the frescoes. Although many more Neapolitan artists worked in the Certosa from the 1630s onwards, initial fresco commissions went to Cavaliere d’Arpino. The architect and sculptor Cosimo Fanzago from Lombardy oversaw the whole construction and decoration of the Certosa. In his analysis of this large project, John Nicholas Napoli also mentions the rivalry between the foreign and local artists, see: NAPOLI 2003, esp. 102-103. 24 For an account of this famous story, narrated by De Dominici, see: WITTKOWER & WITTKOWER, ED. CONNORS 2007, 251-252. 25 We could think of Andrea del Rosso in Florence (LONGHI 1956) and Lucas van Uffel and Andrea Lumaga in (see Chapter Three and Four). 26 For example: CALARESU & HILLS 2013, which consists of papers presented during a meeting of the Neapolitan Network, a group of international scholars with shared interest in Neapolitan history and art. 27 Overviews: MARTINEAU & WHITFIELD 1982; CASSANI 1984; LEONE DE CASTRIS 1991; ABBATE 2001; ABBATE 2002; SPINOSA 2010. The website of Fondazione Memofonte has digitalized several early modern city guides of Naples: http://www.memofonte.it/. Fiorella Sricchia Santoro and Andrea Zezza (eds.) published a new edition of the Vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani by Bernardo De Dominici (DE DOMINICI, ED. SRICCHIA SANTORO & ZEZZA 2003-2008). Many archival resources will be cited throughout this book. 28 ROLFS 1910. 29 MARTINEAU & WHITFIELD 1982; BELLUCCI 1984.

6 INTRODUCTION

Netherlandish painters in Naples From the 1570s onwards, Netherlandish art had a strong presence in the Neapolitan scene. Circa forty Netherlandish painters were active in Naples for at least a year, between 1570 and 1656.30 As I will discuss in the first two chapters, the number of Netherlandish painters reached its peak between 1570 and 1610. A community or ‘colony’ of Netherlandish artisans existed in that first period, but seems to have dissolved in the 1610s, when many artists had died or left.31 The nature of this congregation –as well as their interaction with local artists still deserves further analysis. Netherlandish painters were a conspicuous presence on the Neapolitan art scene and almost every handbook on Neapolitan painting devotes at least a large paragraph and in most cases an entire chapter to the subject.32 When the handbooks reach the 1620s, the Fiamminghi start to play a less significant role in the narrative. This is partially due to the decreased number of artists from the North, but also to the aforementioned increased importance of local and Roman-Bolognese art. We have very little knowledge about most Netherlandish painters, since their presence is often only testified by sporadic mention of their name in documents. Few or no art works survive in most cases, which makes it hard to come to any conclusions about their artistic integration. For the purpose of this research, those unidentified painters are less interesting and will only be mentioned in passing. We have sufficient source material to discuss the integration process of the five selected artists. Not all the different types of sources are available for all the case studies. Instead of seeing this as an obstacle, I believe the diversity in visual and written source material offers the opportunity to explore how we can reconstruct the life and career of an artist via different routes. I shall shift the focus on different aspects of the process of integration, depending on the possibilities offered by the material. For Chapter One, the widest selection of sources is available. Only three years after Mytens' death, Carel van Mander wrote a comprehensive biography. Furthermore, there is ample archival material and a small oeuvre. No of Abraham Vinck survive, but we do have a long list of bank payments, his processetto prematrimoniale and other documents on his social life. Louis

30 Their names and other information – when available – will be mentioned in the different case studies. The information in this paragraph is very succinct, as most topics will be discussed elaborately in the rest of this book. Also see Appendix 143. 31 PREVITALI 1975; PREVITALI 1980; VARGAS 1991; LEONE DE CASTRIS 1999; LEONE DE CASTRIS 2007; LEONE DE CASTRIS 2010. Discussions have focused on who was the central figure within the group. Leone de Castris believes it was Dirck Hendricksz Centen, whereas Giovanni Previtali and Carmela Vargas argued more convincingly that Cornelis Smet acted as the ‘pater familias‘. Vargas also gave Aert Mytens a more prominent role, which seems correct given that he was the consul of the painter‘s guild twice. Little attention is paid to the ‘external’ network of the Fiamminghi, that is: with which Neapolitan painters and patrons they were connected. 32 One of the first studies on Neapolitan painting of the early modern era, a long article by the renowned scholar Giovanni Previtali (PREVITALI 1975), pays a lot of attention to the presence on Netherlandish painters in Naples at the end of the sixteenth century. Leone de Castris gives the Fiamminghi a prominent place in his overview of Neapolitan painting during the last quarter of the sixteenth century as well; two chapters are devoted to them (LEONE DE CASTRIS 1991). Some comprehensive articles, mainly focusing on attributions, were also published: LEONE DE CASTRIS 1999, CAUSA 1999.

7 INTRODUCTION

Finson signed and dated a small number of paintings and this can be complemented with bank payments and correspondence about him as well as other written sources. Initially, the last two chapters appeared to be most problematic in regard to the availability of sources to reconstruct the social integration of Hendrick De Somer and Matthias Stom. At the start of this research in 2010, only one payment and a (irretrievable) testimony were known for De Somer and no archival documents at all for Stom. Fortunately, I managed to find important documents for both artists. De Somer and Stom are unique, in that they are mentioned in early modern Neapolitan publications such as De Dominici’s biographies and various city guides. With regard to the artistic production of these two artists, we have comparatively comprehensive oeuvres and the information in the published inventories of Neapolitan collections at our disposal.33

Mobility of artists: theoretical framework Confrontation between different cultures – and the subsequent interaction between cultures – is a central concept in the research tradition of Cultural Exchange, which pervades many disciplines of the Humanities.34 The exchange of culture takes place in the form of the exchange of objects, ideas and practices. Cultural transfer and cultural exchange thus become two crucial terms in this context and their distinction is of notable importance against the background of my research. Bern Roeck formulated the difference as follows:

“The former [transfer] simply means that something has been ‘transferred’ from one culture to another – a process with an active giver and a completely passive receiver, something which almost never occurred in historical reality. Cultural exchange, by contrast, describes a much more dynamic process involving an interaction between ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’...”35

Transfer suggests that an idea or a thing is moved and placed into an alien environment without further consequences. In other words, ‘transfer’ does not concern an active process, with choices by individuals and specific circumstances, but the objective movement of objects (of culture) and ideas. I agree with Roeck that transfer is a problematic concept, since there is always a person actively dealing with the foreign object or idea and interpreting it from his own perspective. Closely connected to Cultural

33 The careers of Dirck Hendricksz Centen, François de Nommé, Didier Barra and Loise Croys, other members of the Northern painters in Naples, are well documented and studied. These monographs serve as a reference point for my case studies (VARGAS 1988; NAPPI 1991, the latter for De Nommé, Barra and Croys). 34 The series Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe 1400-1700, with the four volumes: I: Religion and Cultural Exchange in Europe, II: Cities and Cultural Exchange in Europe, III: Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, IV: Forging European Identities, is a great overview of how the different disciplines in the Humanities are working on Cultural Exchange at the moment. The series is a result of a large ERC-project (MUCHEMBLED 2007). 35 ROECK 2007, 3-4.

8 INTRODUCTION

Exchange is the ‘identity’ of both sides of the exchange, as the presence of the other stimulates defining the self. As mentioned above, society and culture in Naples were protean and complex and consequently it is necessary to keep this dynamic and heterogeneous character always in mind when considering the interaction of Netherlandish painters with the city. However, the recognition of Netherlandish painters as different, and more specifically as Netherlandish, is also important for this research.36 In the Conclusion, I shall discuss whether Netherlandish artists were granted a certain artistic identity by Neapolitans, or even constructed it for themselves, which allowed them to position themselves as artists. In the history of art, we study the exchange of art in itself and as a part of culture.37 In the past, the active role of artists in the process, which is implied in the term ‘artistic exchange’, was often ignored. Art historians spoke of an anonymous ‘influence’ to convey the way one art work shaped another in terms of specific elements, style or technique. As a concept, influence is closely related to transfer. Although Michael Baxandall firmly dismissed the concept of ‘influence’ in 1985 and emphasized that similarities between art works always implies intention and an active choice by the artist,38 is still pervasive in much of the research on artistic exchange (and in art historical research in general).39 It is often narrated how a (itinerant) artist encountered an artwork and was subsequently ‘influenced’ by it, without acknowledging the process with which an artist actively chose to use certain elements of the art work, while disregarding others. In this dissertation, I shall always work from the assumption that the way the Netherlandish painters reacted to the society and art of Naples was based on specific individual possibilities and choices. For the early modern period, art historians have investigated artistic exchange between many different regions and cities within Europe and with faraway regions in South America and the East.40 The study of the exchange between the Netherlands and Italy is especially accentuated in historiography, due to the fact that the Italian and

36 For a description of the issue of the identity of Netherlandish art, see: WOODALL & SCHOLTEN 2014, 25-26. 37 In their intelligent assessment of the field of Artistic Exchange, Stephen Campbell and Stephen Milner propagate the concept of translation, involving active choice, as a way to described the interaction between cultures (CAMPBELL & MILNER 2004b, esp. 5-9). The collection of essays of which their essay forms the introduction explores different processes of Artistic Exchange and is therefore an interesting point of reference for the research of Netherlandish painters in Naples. 38 BAXANDALL 1985, esp. pp. 58-62. 39 Tellingly, Stephen Campbell felt it was still necessary in 2004, twenty years after Baxandall dismissed ‘influence’, to state: “In place of a notion of influence based on passive absorption of an exemplary model, I propose a model of selective and deliberate cultural appropriation for which the term ‘translation’ seems most suitable.” (CAMPBELL 2004, 147). Also see SLUIJTER 2006, 18-19. 40 To give but two examples, one for artistic exchange within Italy: CAMPBELL & MILNER 2004a; for exchange between Europe and America: VANDENBROECK 1991; for artistic exchange with Asia: DACOSTA KAUFMANN & NORTH 2014. The RKD (Rijksdienst voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie /Netherlands Institute for Art History) is currently working on the ‘Gerson Digital’ – project, in which it is mapping the activity of early modern Dutch and Flemish artists abroad (www.rkd.nl). This project is based on and named after the influential publication by Horst Gerson of 1942 (GERSON 1942 and GERSON 1983).

9 INTRODUCTION

Netherlandish regions and cities were exceptionally vital centers for economy as well as art.41 In the early-twentieth century, Hoogewerff published on early modern Netherlandish painters in Rome.42 Other important contributions were made by Bert Meijer, Nicole Dacos and Bernard Aikema on Rome, Florence and Venice.43 All these studies show the myriad of ways in which Netherlandish art interacted with Italian art and vice versa, such as the use of prints, the formation of collections with foreign art and the presence of foreign artists.44 My dissertation is the first extensive study on Netherlandish painters in Naples and thus widens our understanding of Netherlandish painters in Italy. Only recently, historians and art historians have started to explicitly differentiate between types of exchange (i.e. of ideas, practice, objects and people) and give significance to each of them in the process of artistic exchange.45 Gradually, a new interest within the art historical tradition of Artistic Exchange has started to take shape, namely that of the study of the mobility of artists. On the one hand, the interest in the mobility of artists takes the form of quantitative research.46 This leads to interesting insights, for example of the push- and pull-factors of certain regions over time and notions about the development of style, regional identity and artistic practice through artistic exchange. However, such quantitative or generalist research does not account for the importance of mobility for the careers and artistic production of individual artists. Until very recently little attention was given to the impact of mobility on the career of the individual artist. In his innovative study, David Young Kim re-evaluates the significance of the biography for our understanding of the mobility of artists by investigating how Giorgio Vasari addresses movement in the Vite.47 In considering such mobility, questions about the nature and

41 Joanna Woodall and Frits Scholten have emphasized once again that early modern Netherlandish artists were more mobile than colleagues from elsewhere in Europe (SCHOLTEN AND WOODALL 2014, 9-10). They also connect this with the attention paid to traveling in Netherlandish art literature of the period (e.g. Van Mander, Hondius). 42 HOOGEWERFF 1912; HOOGEWERFF 1942; HOOGEWERFF 1952. 43 AIKEMA & BROWN 1999, DACOS & MEIJER 1995; MEIJER 2008. 44 The danger of thinking about this interaction in terms of the passive ‘influence’ is present in all these studies. An example of how difficult it is to eradicate ‘influence’ from art historical vocabulary, can be found in the Introduction to ‘Venice and the North’ by Aikema and Brown. Even though the authors are clearly interested in individual interaction between Northern and Venetian art, now and then the concept of ‘influence’ seeps through in their words: ‘Its strategic position between the North and the South as well as between the East and the West made it a cosmopolitan center open to influences of the most varied kind. Within the artistic community members of the Bellini family and Andrea Mantegna (...) proved to be particularly receptive to artistic ideas from across the Alps.’(AIKEMA & BROWN 1999, 21). 45 A good example is the NWO-project ‘Cultural transmission and artistic exchanges in the Low Countries, 1572 - 1672. Mobility of artists, works of art and artistic knowledge’ (2009-2013, conducted by Filip Vermeylen of the Erasmus University Rotterdam and Karolien de Clippel of Utrecht University. The project group organized a conference ‘Art on the Move: Artistic Exchange and Innovation in the Low Countries, 1572–1700’ on 10-11 April 2014. The proceedings of the conference will be published in the journal De Zeventiende Eeuw (forthcoming in 2015). 46 For example: KOOMEN 2014. 47 I am very grateful to David Young Kim for having allowed me to read the manuscript of his book ‘The Traveling Artist in the Italian Renaissance: Geography, Mobility, and Style’ before its publication (scheduled for

10 INTRODUCTION purpose of their travels and, in the case of immigrant artists, the integration process, are on the foreground. In the Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek Art and Migration (vol. 63, 2014), which focuses on the mobility of artists, several case studies are presented next to articles with more general approaches.48 My research contributes to this new approach by concentrating on the process of integration of five individual immigrant artists at different moments in time.49 The issue of artistic innovation will be given special attention, as it is of importance for the artistic integration of some of the artists that are discussed here. It has recently been argued that in the period around 1600 ‘innovation’ became recognized as a criterion of value for art.50 Artists, including some of the five painters discussed in the case studies, started explicitly to pursue and market innovation. Therefore, I shall try to assess whether they were in the forefront of innovations or adhered to the established artistic manner in Naples. Or, in the terminology used by sociologist Everett M. Rogers in his important book Diffusion of innovations, whether they were innovators and early-adapters or belonged to the late majority or even lacked behind (laggards).51

Outline In each chapter, I discuss the career of a different pittore fiammingo in Naples. Chapter Two forms an exception, as two artists whose lives were intricately connected make their appearance. The case studies are placed in chronological order. Chapter One is about Aert Mytens, who was in Naples between circa 1574 and 1598. Many aspects that re-appear in the other chapters are first introduced here, which in a certain way serves as an extension of the introduction. In Chapter Two, I discuss the Neapolitan career of Abraham Vinck and Louis Finson, who are documented in Naples between 1596-1609 and 1604-1612 respectively. In Chapter Three, we jump ahead one decade to the arrival of Hendrick De Somer in 1622, who ended up staying at least until 1654. During the 1630s (c.1632- c.1639), Matthias Stom was active in the city. His relatively brief Neapolitan sojourn forms

December 2014). Although it was too late to incorporate his valuable insights in my dissertation, he contributed greatly to my understanding of ideas on mobility in the sixteenth century (KIM 2014). 48 NEWMAN 2014, NOORMAN 2014. Several young scholars are currently working on dissertations on migrant artists, not surprisingly all from the Netherlands, for example: Erin Downey (Temple University) on a number of Dutch artists in late-17th century Rome; Sander Karst (Utrecht University) on Dutch painters in late-17th century , Abigail Newman (Princeton University) on Flemish painters in 17th century Madrid and Frederica Van Dam (Ghent University) on Netherlandish painters in England (1560-1620). Also see: CURD 2010. 49 By focusing on individual artists, I am by implication largely excluding questions on (national) identities, the development of style and the geography of art, because these larger narratives cannot be satisfactorily addressed by looking at individual careers. 50 PFISTERER & WIMBOCK 2010; CORSATO & AIKEMA 2013. Carlo Corsato and Bernard Aikema focus on the recognition of new genres in art and pay attention to the role played by Netherlandish artists. 51 I will use the sociological framework designed by Rogers with caution, as it was conceived exclusively for studies on the twentieth and twenty-first century (ROGERS 2003, fifth edition). Rogers uses five categories of adopters: Innovators, Early adopters, Early majority, Late majority and Laggards (Rogers 2003, ‘Chapter 7: Innovativeness and Adopter Categories’). In the Conclusion, I will explore how to connect these categories to the artistic decisions of the five painters.

11 INTRODUCTION the subject of the last chapter. The four chapters cover a period of eighty years in total (1574-1654). Although the chronological order suggests a complete and continuous narrative about the Netherlandish painters in Naples, that is not the intention of this book. Instead, I focus on the specific choices of the five individual artists. By studying the different reactions to Naples, which was undergoing rapid social and artistic changes itself, we get further insight on the possibilities and subsequent choices available to these artists. In the conclusion, I shall compare and summarize the different ways in which they integrated socially and artistically in Naples and formulate some thoughts on how to approach immigrant artists in general.

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