PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen The following full text is a publisher's version. For additional information about this publication click this link. http://hdl.handle.net/2066/206026 Please be advised that this information was generated on 2021-09-25 and may be subject to change. 18 De Zeventiende Eeuw 31 (2015) 1, pp. 18-54 - eISSN: 2212-7402 - Print ISSN: 0921-142x Coping with crisis Career strategies of Antwerp painters after 1585 David van der Linden David van der Linden is lecturer and nwo Veni postdoctoral fellow at the University of Groningen. He recently published Experiencing Exile. Huguenot Refugees in the Dutch Repu- blic, 1680-1700 (Ashgate, 2015). His current research project explores Protestant and Catholic memories about the French civil wars.
[email protected] Abstract This article explores how painters responded to the crisis on the Antwerp art market in the 1580s. Although scholarship has stressed the profound crisis and subsequent emigration wave, prosopographical analysis shows that only a mino- rity of painters left the city. Demand for Counter-Reformation artworks allowed many to pursue their career in Antwerp, while others managed to survive the crisis by relying on cheap apprentices and the export of mass-produced paintings. Emigrant painters, on the other hand, minimised the risk of migration by settling in destinations that already had close artistic ties to Antwerp, such as Middelburg. Prosopographical analysis thus allows for a more nuanced understanding of artistic careers in the Low Countries. Keywords: Antwerp painters, career strategies, art market, guild of St.