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Nature and History at the Time of Pieter Bruegel and Michiel Coxcie (C

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Nature and History at the Time of Pieter Bruegel and Michiel Coxcie (C Two sides of the same coin? Nature and History at the time of Pieter Bruegel and Michiel Coxcie (c. 1540-1585) A symposium in Museum M Leuven & the Royal Museums of Fine Art in Brussels In collaboration with the Universities of Leuven and Ghent 13 & 14 DECEMBER 2014 Pieter Bruegel (d. 1569) and Michiel Coxcie (1499-1592) were highly successful painters. Both were active among urban and courtly elites in Antwerp and Brussels. Both were trained in the local painting and tapestry milieu. Both went to Italy. Nevertheless, their respective interpretations of early Netherlandish art, Italian Renaissance art and theory, antiquity and nature were utterly different. Although their respective styles and iconographies seem conflicting, they also correspond: each in their own way formulated new imagery based on nature as well as on history. Their diverging attempts to craft new artistic idioms by reworking various sources ultimately concur in the humanist ‘ad fontes’ idea. As such, the work of Bruegel and Coxcie is illustrative of the paradoxical nature of sixteenth century northern art and its art historical assessment. The ambition of this conference is to reassess the astonishing stylistic diversity among Netherlandish painters at the time of Bruegel and Coxcie. Particularly its seemingly contradictory nature will be examined. How did Netherlandish artists, upon their return from Italy, merge the artistic traditions of North and South, the Antique and the vernacular, nature and history? How could common paradigms lead to such divergent outcomes? Conference committee: Tine Meganck (Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels) Sabine van Sprang (Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels) Peter Carpreau (Museum M, Leuven) Katlijne Van der Stighelen (University of Leuven) Koenraad Jonckheere (University of Ghent) Day 1 – Museum M Leuven 9h: Registration and Coffee 9h30: Opening and Status Quaestionis 10h00: Morning session Chair: Dominique Allard Peter Carpreau Brueghel vs. Cocxie, de redenen van het vergeten It is hard to find greater counterparts in the sixteenth century in the Low Countries than Coxcie and Bruegel. One is known for his great altarpieces, the other for his genre scenes. While Bruegel today is part of the canon, Coxcie has been dismissed. Has it always been the case? Based on the analysis of auction records of the past centuries, it is possible to sketch the changes in taste and recognition for both painters. Moreover, mapping the fluctuations in ‘taste’ makes is easier to reconstruct the historiography of sixteenth century art and reconstruct our own canon. A historical- economical analysis of the work Bruegel and Coxcie allows for a re-evaluation of the impact of nationalism and romanticism on our perception of Old Master painting. E. Matt Kavaler Pan-European and Local: Perspectives of Various Media Recent examination of the ‘vernacular’ has stimulated new evaluations of Netherlandish sixteenth-century art. Notions of ‘hybridity’, ‘style’, and ‘place’ are all central to these analyses. So is the concept of artistic medium. Although most scholars have addressed painting, the other media—particularly sculpture and architecture—were equally important references in this discussion. In fact, the modern habit of separating activity according to differing nominal occupations in the arts hardly conforms to sixteenth- century practice. Painters, masons, carvers, and goldsmiths, for instance, all designed architecture and sculpture. This situation raises several questions: How closely was antiquity associated with Italy? How significant was ornament as an index of artistic manner and cultural allegiance? What role did collecting and export play in this discourse, especially abroad? And has attention to urban critics like Ortelius, De Heere, Lampsonius, and van Mander led historians to undervalue the perspective of the court? Through attention to the plastic arts in particular, this paper will address aspects of the ‘Netherlandishness’ of Low Countries art. 12h00: Lunch break 13u30: Afternoon session Chair: Katlijne Van der Stighelen Ed Wouk The Nature of Niclaes Jonghelinck’s Collection The financier Niclaes Jonghelinck boasted one of the most significant collections of contemporary art in mid-sixteenth century Antwerp, yet his practice of collecting has defied convincing analysis. This paper seeks to situate Jonghelinck’s seemingly disparate choice of paintings – specifically those by Frans Floris and Bruegel the Elder – in the context of an emerging discourse on the identity of Netherlandish art in which the ancient concept of Altera natura, the relationship between a people and their environment, was reconfigured to justify and celebrate the harmonious coexistence of diverse modes of representation in northern Europe. Coxcie is noticeable for his absence from Jonghelinck’s collection and from the critical discussion on art that arose in the years it was amassed, a result both of his geographic remove from Antwerp and of his peripheral status in the closely-knit community that sought to define a coherent evolution of Netherlandish art and make its nature a topic of discussion. Tine Meganck Nature, History and Natural History in the Art of Pieter Bruegel and Maerten de Vos In the second half of the sixteenth century the Low Countries was scourged by waves of image breaking, raising questions about the status and role of art after iconoclasm. These same years also experienced an unprecedented synergy of art and of knowledge, as expressed in the emergence of cabinets of art and curiosities, and in innovative scientific and scholarly illustration in such field as antiquity, chorography, geography and botany. The aim of my lecture is to connect recent research on image debates in wake of iconoclasm (cf work of Jonckheere) with new insights on early modern art and knowledge. To do so I will follow the path of two key painters of the period whose artistic output is at first sight stylistically very divergent: Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Maerten de Vos. Taking their common friendship with the Bolognese naturalist Scipio Fabio and the Antwerp geographer Abraham Ortelius as a starting point, I will explore how each in his own way tried to address a multi-confessional audience by sourcing on nature, history and natural history. Marissa Bass Natura Sola Magistra: Bruegel, Hoefnagel, and Humanist Discourse during the Dutch Revolt The desire to align the art of Pieter Bruegel the Elder with the humanist discourse of his time weaves a continuous thread through scholarship on the artist, and yet the connection remains elusive. Although Bruegel famously garnered praise from the great cartographer Abraham Ortelius, it was his fellow Antwerp artist Joris Hoefnagel – a skilled Latinist as well as a gifted painter of naturalia – who engaged far more directly with sixteenth-century humanist enterprise. This paper examines the still neglected inscriptions and drawings that Hoefnagel penned in the alba amicorum of his friends Abraham Ortelius, Emanuel van Meteren, and others. I argue that Hoefnagel explored the boundary between art and nature as a means to comment obliquely and personally on the tumultuous events of the Dutch Revolt, and conclude by reflecting on how Hoefnagel differed from Bruegel in his approach to the natural world and the troubled times in which they lived. 15h30: Coffee & Tour of the Coxcie exhibition (separate registration) Day 2 – Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium 9h30: Morning session Chair: Maximiliaan Martens Eckhardt Leuschner / Giovanna Sapori Coxcie's Italian Sojourn in Context: the Cappella di Santa Barbara and Church Decorations of the 1530s in Rome The paper will explore Coxcie's only extant fresco decoration in Rome, the Cappella di Santa Barbara in Santa Maria dell'Anima, in the context of the painter's activities in Italy and the general artistic situation of the early 1530's in Rome, i.e. the years immediately following the Sacco. We will base our contribution on the results of the recent restoration activities in the chapel which permit to better distinguish between the original substance of Coxcie's art and later additions or reworkings. We will then compare the Cappella di Santa Barbara with the (not too many) other chapel decorations executed in the years immediately after the Sacco di Roma and discuss the stylistic and iconographic profile of "Coxcie Romano". Manfred Sellink Bruegel, Coxcie and the Italian landscape Even for many Bruegel scholars the fact that Pieter the Elder's conception of landscape was profoundly influenced by Italian and notably Venetian artists such as Titian and Campagnola remains little known. Following up on Hans Mielke's observations and insights produced by the Rotterdam/New York 2001 exhibition, this talk aims to cover this subject in the field of drawing as well as painting and to compare Bruegel's reception to Italian landscapes with that of Michiel Coxcie. Do they have more in common than first meets the eye? Stefaan Hautekeete Italianate and vernacular trends in the work of Hans Bol The focus of this talk is the stylistic diversity in the work of the Flemish master Hans Bol (1534-1593), who has often been considered a follower of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Many of Bol’s designs for prints indeed display the style and pen technique that Bruegel formulated in his model sheets of the 1550s. But from the start of his career, Bol combined the Flemish tradition with an interest in the works of Northern masters inspired by Italian Renaissance art. This explains why Bol also developed a more nervous draughtsman’s style and a preference for figures with slim proportions and graceful attitudes that ultimately derived, via Hans Vredeman de Vries, from the example of Frans Floris and Pieter Coecke van Aelst. This lecture will unveil the native and foreign artistic traditions from which Bol drew inspiration and demonstrate how he combined a variety of motifs in highly personal works of art enriched by his keen observation of Nature. 12h00: Lunch Break 13u30: Afternoon session Chair: Anne-Laure van Bruaene Koenraad Jonckheere Plato’s Cave.
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