The Venus of the Low Countries “Chère amie !…. Tu ne t’appelles pas Vénus, prénom que te donnent les conservateurs des musées et les gardiens des squares ; tu fus ou tu es Sophie, Aglaë, Phillis, Clorinde, Justine, et bien d’autres. Ton état civil, pourtant, porte Vénus à la coquille : une conque à tes pieds posée, un coquillage tenu dans ta dextre, où les francs moineaux se viennent désaltérer. Ton auteur serait Grupello. Mais même de père douteux, la Muse qu’enjamba le sculpteur, cette fois-là était de qualité, une italo-flamande – encore que ton type obsède tout un siècle français, galant à souhait, ce déjà-vu dans les estampes, chez les auteurs libertins : buste étroit et seins menus, les hanches larges et les cuisses puissantes; peu de tête, mais charmante ; chair abondante, mais harmonieuse. En somme, une dissonance charnelle, une nudité baroque. Que n’importe ton passé ! Tu restes la première femme attentivement regardée – j’avais quatorze ans –(…) Et je te suis resté fidèle ; je traverse pour toi ce Parc Royal, où tu règnes, chère amie…” Michel de Ghelderode, in 'Mes Statues' Le Cri édition, Bruxelles, 2001, p.15 (avec dessin par Fernand VAN HAMME) à partir de l’édition du Carrefour, 1943 The Iconography of Venus from the Middle Ages to Modern Times Volume 3.1 The Venus of the Low Countries A topical catalogue of sculptures, reliefs, paintings, frescos, drawings, prints and illustrations of identified artists of the Low Countries Compiled by K. Bender 2010 To C and all my friends who are supporting me Cover illustration: ‘Vénus à la coquille’, 1880, sculpture in the Royal Park in Brussels, copy attributed to Jacques de LALAING, after Gabriel GRUPELLO (b.1644 Geraardsbergen-d.1730 Kerkrade) who made an original one when he was First Sculptor of the City of Brussels; he probably took it with him when he moved to Düsseldorf and it is now lost. A replica attributed to him is in the Brussels’ Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten-Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts/ inv.781. See R4902.381, R3923.396 and R4895.408 in this catalogue. Photo AVdB 2005. A paperback version is available at www.lulu.com A hardbound version is available at http://www.unibook.com/en/home and deposited in the library of the Department of Art History, University Gent http://www.kunstbib.ugent.be A digital pdf version is available for downloading at www.googlesites/sites/venusiconography Copies and a digital pdf version are deposited at the Wettelijk Depot of the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR): D/2010/ K. Bender, uitgever. Copyright © 2010 by K. Bender. The publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ iv Contents Introduction 7 Guideline to the Topical Catalogue 13 Topic Date of work Artist’s/creators’ name(s) Title of work Type of work Medium and material of support Dimension of work and series Owner or auctioneer of work Inventory number of work Source(s) of information about the work Reference and sequential numbers of work Replicas, copies of work and comments Example Catalogue – Table of Topics – Topic–index - List of Abbreviations 21 1. Allegories/Planet Venus 25 2. Apotheosis/Sacrifice/Temple/Triumph/Worship 34 3. Attributes of Venus 39 4. Birth of Venus/Venus Anadyomene/Venus Marina 42 5. Toilet/Bath of Venus/Venus crouching 47 6. Venus and Adonis 50 7. Venus and Anchises, Aeneas 69 8. Venus and Cupid 72 9. Venus and Cupids 87 10. Venus and the Judgement of Paris/Venus, Helen & Paris 90 11. Venus and Mars 103 12. Venus and other Gods, Deities or Heroes 115 13. Venus and Psyche 131 14. Venus and Satyrs 134 15. Venus and Vulcan 138 16. Venus Asleep or Awakening/Venus after Tiziano 144 17. Venus Statues 148 18. Venus Unaccompanied and Abstract 153 Index of Artists 159 Directory of Owners and Auctioneers 179 Selected Bibliography 191 Specific Catalogues Selected References v Introduction This is the third volume in the series of Topical Catalogues of the Iconography of Venus from the Middle Ages to Modern Times, with a compilation of 2636 artworks (sculptures, reliefs, paintings, frescos, drawings, prints and illustrations) of 728 identified artists of the Low Countries. It has the same general organization as the first volume “The Italian Venus” (1840 works of 649 identified Italian artists) and the second volume “The French Venus” (2997 works of 977 identified French artists): the data compiled include the estimated date of creation, the name of the identified artist, the title(s) given to the artwork, the type, medium/support and size of the artwork, present owner and inventory number or auction/exhibition data, sources of information, reference- and sequential numbers. Works of unknown artists are not compiled. General details about the topical categorization and the data gathered are explained in the ‘Guideline to the Topical Catalogue’ following this introduction but specific features of the compilation in this volume are discussed hereafter in the Introduction. Limitations of the compilation are the same as those in the other volumes and are repeated here as follows: artworks representing the prae-historic so-called Venus are not compiled, nor are artworks, bearing the name of Venus/Aphrodite but which do not illustrate the figure of Venus: for instance plants or shells, vessels or ships or other objects bearing her name. However, symbols/places closely related to her worship (e.g. Cyprus, Cythera, temples, etc) and Venus as the symbol of the Planet are included, but works featuring the planet itself or related to astronomy, space exploration or science-fiction are excluded. Abstract art with a title 'Venus' poses a specific problem: was the artist's inspiration the figure of Venus or the planet? A few abstract works are included. Digital painting, an emerging technique, has not yet been included. The catalogues are a resource for further studies. One objective is the quantitative analysis, i.e. ‘counting’ artworks, topics and artists over the time considered, taking into account that the catalogues represent limited samples of the indefinite number of works with the iconography of ‘Venus’ of an unknown number of artists. The research papers reporting about this analysis and available on the website www.googlesites/sites/venusiconography, contribute to the new quantitative approach in art history. A. The regional origin of the identified artists The Low Countries are historically well defined as the region covered by present countries Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg (also called BENELUX) and extended in the south to parts of northern France, which belonged to the Low Countries till mid 17th century (Fig.1). In general, artists born and educated/trained in this region – independently of their later activities abroad - figure in the present volume, with exception of a few who are best known elsewhere, e.g. Jean de BOULOGNE (1529 Douai – 1550 Roma), known as GIAMBOLOGNA who features in Vol. 1.1 “The Italian Venus”. It must be recognized that the term ‘Flemish’ is widely used in art history 7 INTRODUCTION to characterize also artists who were not born in the part of the Low Countries known as ‘Flanders’ (‘Comté de Flandre’ in Fig.1)1. Fig. 1 Map of the Spanish, then Austrian Netherlands. Author: Gochet, Alexis-Marie (1835-1910). Source: Wikimedia. 1 An example is Gilles DEMARTEAU (1722-1776), born in the Bishop-Princedom of Liège, but nevertheless characterized as ‘Flemish’ artist in the Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) of the Getty Research Institute. This artist is best known in France and therefore features in “The French Venus”, but many other artists born in the Princedom of Liège are included in this volume. 8 INTRODUCTION B. Ortography of names and their alphabetical order The Dutch language, like any other language, shows an evolution with time in its orthography of words and names. The preferred name of the artist is used as given in the on-line database of the Rijksbureau voor Kunstdocumentatie (RKD) in Den Haag1 and alternative ortographies may be added in the Index of Artists. The Belgian alphabetical ordering method is applied in this catalogue throughout: name-prefixes ‘DE’, ‘LE’, ‘T’’, ‘VAN’ (and its extensions ‘VAN DE ‘ or ‘VAN DER’) are systematically used in the alphabetical ordering of names. E.g. DE QUADE VAN RAVESTEYN, Dirck and not: ‘QUADE VAN RAVESTEYN, Dirck de’ or VAN DYCK, Antoon and not: ‘DYCK, Antoon van’2. C. Collaboration among artists In the early 17th century many well-known artists in the Low Countries created works in cooperation with other artists: those specialized in painting of landscapes, plants, flowers or animals collaborated with others specialized in painting of the human figure. A typical example of this collaborative work, but not the only one, is the work of the BRUEGHEL family (Jan BRUEGHEL I & II) who collaborated with DE CLERCK, RUBENS, VAN BALEN and others who painted the figures in many of their paintings. Most of these paintings are catalogued in museums and reference works, often exclusively, under the name of BRUEGHEL. In this ‘topical catalogue’, however, dealing specifically with the figure of Venus, the entry of the work is, as much as the information allows for, first under the name of the figure-painter and the ‘collaboration with’ is made clear using the symbol ‘&’. Of course, those artworks are counted only once in the Index of Artists. Among many other paintings, there are for example several replicas of ‘The allegory of fire’ or ‘Venus in the smithy of Vulcan’ by Jan BRUEGHEL(I) & Hendrick VAN BALEN(I): in this catalogue they are entered as Hendrick VAN BALEN(I) & Jan BRUEGHEL(I). For several works of collaborating painters doubt exists about the identity of the ‘figure’-painter.