Flemish Art and Architecture 1585-1700. - Review - book review

HANS VLIEGHE

of recent origin Haven: Yale University Press, 1998

339 pp; 100 color ills., 306 b/w 1 map. $75

Hans Vlieghe's of recent origin edition in the Pelican History of Art series has mov far from its predecessor, coauthored by the agency of Horst Gerson and E. H ter Kuile. [1] As Vlieghe writes in the foreword, he has cast offed the previous practice of separating the best-known artists from the others. Instead, the material is "organized around pictorial categories of Antwerp specialists." Landscapes by the agency of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck for instance, are now part of the general section upon landscape. This organization makes the unfolding of genres much easier to come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behind Conversely, the scope of artists who worked in more than individual genre becomes harder to grasp--but then, there are numerous volumes devoted to individual artists.

The title of Vlieghe's work substitutes "Flemish" for the previous, historically incorrect regard to Belgium. His organization of material according to specializations is likewise historically appropriate, for it come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behinds the hierarchy of subjects dominant at the time in art theory (though not always in practice). History paintings advance first, followed by other emblems of figural art, landscape, and last of all, still life. Discussing plastic art after painting is likewise consistent with the relative status these sum of two units arts had in the Netherlands. Omitting printmaking as a separate art form while including architecture, however, ignores the Netherlandish prioritizing of painting, printmaking, and statuary in favor of the sweepingly influential Italian a whole of classification popularized in the mid-16th hundred by Giorgio Vasari, the three arti del disegno.

Rubens's figural paintings loom prominently in the sections upon large-scale history production, but receive solitary a mention in the section upon cabinet-size pieces. Monumental scale is what Rubens repeatedly favored, of course, and he said for a like reason explicitly in his letters, as Vlieghe notes. Nevertheless, Rubens was exceptionally conscious of the result of small-size works on a viewer. "As for the control it is best to elect it according to the size of the picture; for there are bring under rules which are better treated in a large space, and others that call for medium or small proportions," he wrote in a alphabetic character dated July 25, 1637. [2] His small works were not simply reduc versions of what he would have done upon a grand scale. Instead, the figures usually appear to be at a greater distance from the viewer, who dioceses them from a higher viewing angle. A representative example would have been the intimately scaled Lamentation of 1614 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 16 by the agency of 20 5/8 inches [40.5 by dint of 52.5 centimeters]).

Organizing material according to specializations has an unacknowledged limitation. In his introductory essay Vliegbe draws attention to the existence of works produc end the collaboration of two or more specialists, a management more common in the Netherlands than elsewhere in Europe however Vlieghe discusses collaboration only cursorily, and without directing the reader to the hardly any included examples, such as figs. 298 or 304 The probable reason is that of the like kind works elude the organizing principle of the volume Yet collaboration existed, and its existence raises various questions. What do we learn from the fact that ignoring collaboration has virtually no consequence on the discussion of certain figural artists, like as Van Dyck, whereas it distorts our understanding of others, among them Rubens, who repeatedly collaborated with landscape or still-life painters, especially in the 1610 and 1620 (for example, figs. 290 304)? What impressed sign of naturalism could accommodate the intriguing but visible inconsistencies of turn of expression that result when two or more professional painters work upon the same picture? On shut inspection, the human figures are painted differently from the animals or the setting, with its vegetation and stones It could be argued that like visual discrepancies were compatible with the accepted view of reality, which interpreted humans, animals, plants, and Inanimate phenomenons as occupying hierarchically different positions in the great chain of being. The place to discuss more [i]or[/i] less implications of collaboration would be prior to the separation of material by means of specialization, namely, in the introduction, where collaboration is introduced. Doing thus however, would unbalance an crack overview packed with contextual information, including the function, patronage, and marketing of works.

The greatest in quantity substantial difference between the original and the not absent edition concerns the relationship between Flemish and Dutch art. Gerson nurseed to focus on what he identified as Flemish characteristics. He described the influence of Dutch innovations upon Flemish art (or the reverse) as the meeting of separate traditions. For instance, Jan Fyt's disclosure showed the change of "an indigenous Flemish extroversion into an imported Dutch introvert art." [3] through contrast, Vlieghe emphasizes the continuities between the art of the sum of two units Netherlands, and he does thus explicitly, especially at the beginning. "Certainly the art of the North and southerly had much in common" (p 1) "It can be said that as the seventeenth hundred progressed, interest in erudite history painting with a significant allegorical easy in mind increased steadily in both the Northern and Southern Netherlands" (p5) "In the two the Netherlands, these types of painting [genre landscape, and still life] went from one side the same kinds of typological and styl istic development" (p 7) It is telling in what manner the two authors interpret the work of Adriaen Brouwer, active in the couple parts of the Netherlands. For Gerson "his early works, i.e., those probably painted in Holland, have a clearly Flemish character, and the later ones, certainly painted in Antwerp, are execut with a Dutch sensitiveness for painterly qualities...." More specifically, "the thick brushwork, the lively action, the faculty of perception of drama, and the radiant glory of the colours [of the early works] are all in the Flemish tradition." [4] For Vlieghe, by dint of contrast, the same early works painted in Holland exhibit "fundamental innovations to the traditional herded and colourful Breugelesque peasant sight as it had survived in the two the Northern and Southern Netherlands," and their painting technique is "similar to the technique of contemporary Haarlem painters" (p 155) Vlieghe's reminders that political separation did not lead to a sharp divide between the art of the sum of two units countries was a needed corrective, especially in view of the lingering traces of the distorted on the contrary vivid contrast between Flemish and Dutch art drawn by the agency of Arnold Hauser in his popular Social History of Art. nevertheless given that Vlieghe's text will be the first introduction to Flemish art for more [i]or[/i] less readers, more attention could be paid to those characteristics that permit the identification of more [i]or[/i] less works as Flemish rather than Dutch