Dutch Artists in Italy

THE ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST Dutch Landscapes The Dutch artists in Italy In The Foundation of the Noble, Free Art of Painting , 1604, Carel van Mander describes Rome as ‘the city where before all other places the Painter’s journey is apt to lead him, since it is the capital of Pictura’s Schools; but it is also the right place for spendthrifts and prodigal sons to squander their money.’ He goes on to say that ‘one must fall in love with the beauty of that land and with the Italian people … on the whole they are neither treacherous nor thievish but subtle and very polite, even though they are loud- mouthed and tight-fisted.’ Paintings such as Karel du Jardin’s A Muleteer and Two Men Playing the Game of Morra reflect the ambivalent view that many Dutch artists had of their new surroundings. Karel du Jardin, A Muleteer and Two Men Playing the Game of Morra , Most northern travellers experienced a mix of wonder and fear c.1650 -52 when considering Rome and of fascination and disillusionment upon arrival. What initially met those who made the journey to the city was the disabitato , the ‘rubble-belt’, the two-thirds of the area of the ancient city of Rome that was without human habitation. These chaotic surroundings would have offered a stark contrast to the tightly-packed, walled cities of Holland, which were expanding according to careful plans. At the same time, however, Rome was undergoing a process of transformation at the hands of the great ‘town- planning’ Popes – Sixtus V (1585-90), Paul V (1605-21), Urban VIII (1623-44), Innocent X (1644- 55) and Alexander VII (1655-67) – and the creation of the Roman Baroque. This transformation was already remarked upon in a letter from Angelo Grillo to Alessandro Spinaro, c.1590: Here I am in Rome and yet I cannot find the Rome I knew so great are the changes in the buildings, the streets and the piazzas, the fountains, the aqueducts, the obelisks and the other marvels with which the glorious memory of Sixtus has beautified this old and ruinous city, that I cannot recognise or find, so to speak, any trace of that old Rome which I left 10 years ago. Like the resurrection of a dead man at the last trumpet . It was not just the ancient and newly built city and its art that Johannes Lingelbach, attracted artistic visitors; it was also the landscape. It was barren Figures before a Locanda, and under-populated, and often appears so in paintings, but it c.1645 -50 was also open, mountainous and exotic, and warm enough to allow artists to make long expeditions to draw and paint out of doors. This was also the landscape described by Virgil in his Eclogues and Georgics ; this was where Horace had his Sabine farm from which he saw the snow on Mount Soracte. Northern artists flocked to a small quarter immediately inside the Porta del Popolo, the gate into Rome from the North, on a handful streets lying between the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza di Spagna. This is the quarter of Rome shown in many street scenes, including Johannes Lingelbach’s Figures before a Locanda, with a Capriccio View of the Piazza del Popolo. There had been a northern colony here at least since the 1550s. During the first half of 17th century this area of Rome was frequented by artists from France (Nicolas Poussin), from Germany (Adam Elsheimer and Joachim von Sandrart), Lorraine (Claude Lorrain), the Southern Netherlands (Paul Brill and Jan Brueghel), as well as the Dutch Republic. All these separate groups seem to have known each other, bought their paints from the same shops and met in the same taverns. The most tangible expression of this pre-romantic artists’ colony was the Bentveughels (‘Club- Birds’), a group of artists – mostly from the Netherlands – who in 1623 created a semi-formal club with disreputable initiation rituals and club-names. The Bentvueghels met regularly at the Osteria della Fontana in the Via Condotti (then called Trinitatis ) and fell out with the Roman artistic establishment over their refusal to pay dues to the Accademia di San Luca . Among their members were Cornelis van Poelenburgh, nicknamed ‘Satyr’ (perhaps after the satyrs in his paintings) and Karel du Jardin, known as ‘Goat’s-Beard’ ( Bokkebaart ). Their most famous member was Pieter van Laer, whose nickname, Il Bamboccio (‘The Ragdoll’), referred to his hunchback. The name bamboccianti was also used to describe all artists painting the Roman street in Van Laer’s manner, such as Nicolaes Berchem’s Italian Landscape with Figures and Animals: A Village on a Mountain Plateau . There was a considerable market for Bamboccianti painting in Rome, but unsurprisingly there was much hostility to this art that so insulted the city and its inhabitants. The painter Salvator Rosa devoted a section of his satirical poem La Pittura , c.1645, to attacking those who ‘paint swindlers and wretchedness and urchins and pick-pockets’ and the like. Francesco Albani wrote on 28 October 1651 to his pupil Andrea Sacchi attacking ‘Monsù Bamboccio’ and his ilk who show similar scenes of misery and squalor which sell for six to eight scudi. Though probably not unduly stung by such attacks, Dutch artists chose not to settle in Rome. None of the famous ‘Dutch Italianates’ remained for more than a decade, with some only remaining for a matter of months. Of the group of artists sometimes bracketed with the Italianates because of their decorative handling, golden light or occasionally Mediterranean- looking motifs – Philips Wouwermans, Adriaen van de Velde, Jan Wynants and Aelbert Cuyp – not one set Aelbert Cuyp, foot in Italy. An Evening Landscape with Figures and Sheep, 1650s .

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