• ©Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo-Bollettino d'Arte THOMAS DACOSTA KAUFMANN READING VAN MANDER ON THE RECEPTION OF ROME: A CRUX IN THE BIOGRAPHY OF SPRANGER IN THE SCHILDER-BOECK In the biography of Bartholomeus Spranger pub­ mains of ancient Rome: his name is found among the lished in Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck of 1604 graffiti in the Domus Aurea.fi) Van Mander gives an exceptional account of the ap­ For these reasons among others this report of a re­ parent absence of any immediate u·ace of Spranger's markable reception of Rome has become a crux in the experiences in Rome. Van Mander tells how this im­ interpretation ofVan Mander's biography of Spranger. portant etherlandish artist resided for nine years in Since interest in Spranger and in what has become Rome, yet brought no visible vestige of it back with known as "Netherlandish Mannerism" have grown in him when he returned north. Because this story con­ the last thirty-five years, art historians have offered trasts with what Van Mander elsewhere relates about varied, even contradictory readings of this passage, Netherlandish artists, it has called forth comment in some of which have indeed bee n crucial for the histo­ the past, and in connection with the continuing discus­ riography of Netherlandish art of the late sixteenth sion of northern artists in Rome during the Renais­ century. In an important lecture delivered to the sance, it deserves furth6 attention here. Van Mander Twenty-First International Congress of the History of reports of Spranger: Art in New York in 1961, Emil Reznicek invoked Van << Noyt en weet ick l dat hy sich selven t'hooft gebro­ Mander's passage on Spranger in a review of Nether­ ken heeft met pet [sic] nae het fraey dinghen (dat te landish Mannerism, and thereby set the agenda for Room overvloedich is, soo Antijcken als Schilderijen l further discussion. Reznicek assimilated Spranger's oft anders) veel te teyckenen. Ick meen hy noyt blat approach to the theory of ut pictura poesis as he says i t papier te dier oorsaeck en heeft vuyl ghemaeckt l een was popularized by Van Mander in the north, and dingen seer te verwonderen: soo dat hy vertreckende hence to art theory. I-le associated Spranger's method van Room nae Oostenrijck l gantsch geen Const in with one of two paths open to northern artists, that of packen te voeren en hadde l met veel meerder creating uyt den geest, as opposed to which working ghemack draghende alles vast in zijnen boesem >> .1> naer het leven, (from nature or the antique) was a side In contrast, in his life of Spranger's contemporary road or byway. Reznicek argued that <<Van Mander's Hendrick Goltzius, Van Mander says that youths in statement that Spranger never drew from the antique great number went around Rome drawing. He thus during ali his years in Rome characterizes that artist as tells how Goltzius, like an ordinary student, steadily a full-blooded Mannerist»J > Reznicek elaborated this and diligently drew after the best and most impor­ thesis in his monograph on Goltzius (published in the tant antiques.2> The evidence from surviving draw­ same year of his lecture), where in reference to the ings indicates that Goltzius did make copies drawn passage in Van Mander he said that to make no studies from the antique; drawings also indicate that like in the academic sense after famed antiques and Re­ many others he also drew after Renaissance works naissance works of art was especially significant for a of art.3> Mannerist like Spranger. Spranger's figure drawings, The account of Spranger may seem ali the more as­ which had nothing to do with study naer het leven, tonishing, to echo Van Mander's diction, if one consid­ were << eine freche Verhohnung der Kunsttheorie der ers what else Van Mander and other evidence suggest Renaissance, der gleichen Theorie, die Van Mander in about Spranger's possible acquaintance, indeed known den siebziger Jahren dazu gebracht hatte, mit Fleiss familiarity with works of art in Rome. Spranger lived und Hingabe antike Skulpturen und Bilder Raffaels for three years in the entourage of the Gran Cardinale, nachzuzeichnen». For Reznicek Van Mander's account Alessandro Farnese.4> In the Palazzo Farnese he could was hence << einen leichten Vorwurf» (a gentle re­ have seen many important ancient and Renaissance proof).S> works.s>He served Pope Pius V for two years; Spranger In publications of the 1970's Hessel Mi edema devel­ even resided for a while in the Belvedere, << recht oped in another direction the theoretical implications boven't beeldt van het Laochon», directly above the of Reznicek's interpretation. In his commentary on sculpture ofthe 'Laocoon', Van Mander says, thus indi­ Van Mander's Grondt der Edel vrij Schilder-const, cating his proximity to this famous work. There is also Miedema also argued that Van Mander's passage re­ clear evidence that Spranger was interested in the re- vealed Spranger's theoretical conceptions. According 295 ©Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo-Bollettino d'Arte J Impigro I u:veTLi Jjnciofo pelle bo-vùui ~m labor & ftwlium ingwuas con.dùcit tdarta1 Cotuluort:Lt caput & lauro 'P~ .Jiiinerva, "Fa11Ulj; eUJTL juper A:therett. & .A1orcnlia tolli.t: .' 1'3tercuri.o duAore , opibii.S' ditaJ:u.r alrwuk Invi.tU,je,j'zÙ, In.ers a.rctu .foe!LII.bere haln nis . .A .Cuai"" . B .Spranger Schid.ia h rec pro themate G . Spran ~CD.D . XClltunc adulefcenti D .D .Q_ui p<? .ftmodum e a divulgans maiori natu B.Lo fu o Math Sprang.C.D.sculptore I.MuJlero.CD.IJ.CXXVm l - LO DON, BRITISH M US EUM-J AN MÙLLER AITER BARTHOLOMEUS SPRANCER: H ERMES, ATHENA ANO T H E INDUSTRI OUS ARTIST (ENCRAVINC) (photo John Freema.n) 296 ©Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo-Bollettino d'Arte to Miedema however, Van Mander's account is to be about these notions in reference to Spranger has been in terpreted in conjunction with the passage that im­ made by Lubomfr KonecnY. For Konecny actually re­ mediately follows in his text, a story of how Spranger versed the application of some of the terms of discus­ could portray a countess totally from his visual recall, sion, especially in regard to Mannerism. In an essay that indicates how good Spranger's memory was. Car­ published in 1992, where Konecny took off from inter­ rying out no copies and carrying none away from pretations offered by the author of the present piece, Rome exemplif)' how an artist should assimilate what he demonstrated how Spranger had utilized ancient he had seen «in ~is bosom •• , that is by making them and Renaissance works of art to make thematic and part of himself. Van Mander's statement that, like formai antitheses in paired paintings. Referering to Spranger, Goltzius carried no drawings back from It~ly the passage in question, Konecny argued that <<Yan with him is to be read in this light, and his comments Mander's rather facile and sycophantic characteriza­ are to be related further to training in studying uyt den tion of Spranger's originality amounts to more than a geest, which Miedema equates with uyt zijn selven doen, mere metaphm~ and actually described his method of as opposed to the method of rapen, that is, making a working». Spranger accordingly << appears to have been composition out of parts that one had copied. Miede­ a classicist in disguise (so to say) or more precisely: an ma also equates geest in this sense with ingenium, in­ artist who masterfully assimilated both the classica! vo­ horn talent or genius.9l cabulary and its syntax without ever directly imitating In an essay on Mannerism and maniera published at them».13l the end of the 1970's Miedema further related the at­ Jiirgen Miiller has raised another important ques­ titude of working uyt den geest, meaning from memory tion about Van Mander's text in his 1993 book Concor­ or the imagination, to working di maniera. Far from dia Pragensis . There Miiller places at issue the literary seeing his comments as a reproof, Miedema says that and rhetorical structure and determination of Van <<Yan Mander expresses his preference for work clone Mander's biographies of the Prague artists.I 4) Repre­ from the imagination». He argues that the << Haarlem senting what can be called the linguistic turn in Van Mannerists tended to deride painters who returned Mander studies also exemplified by Melion and oth­ home from their travels with a mass of drawings».IO) ers, as assessed most recently by Miedema, Miiller In writings of the 1980's on the stylistics and poetics treats the passage about Spranger not as a historical of painting in Rudolfine Prague, the present author source, but as a literary or rhetorical element in the expanded on Reznicek's and Miedema's interpreta­ construction of a biography. 15l He sees i t as employing tions of the theoretical aspects of Van Mander's pas­ themes that in this instance evoke the artist's disposi­ sage, but argued fora different understanding ofwhat tion, his genius. According to Miiller Spranger is said might be meant by "mannerism" (deliberately written not to make drawings from earlier art, because draw­ in minuscule). I tried to explicate the styli stics of ing is neither a support for the memory nor for Rudolfine art by teasing out meaning from other evi­ preparatory study: in neither instance could drawing dence found in the symboli sm of Rudolfine artists' be art.