De Zeventiende Eeuw. Jaargang 13

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An Independent Dutch Art?
A View from Central Europe
Thomas Dacosta Kaufmann
Princeton University

From Eugéne Fromentin to Jakob Rosenberg and Seymour Slive, it has become a cliché of art history to say that as the Netherlands gained its independence through an eighty-year struggle, so it developed independent forms of art, especially a national school of painting.^1. This paper proposes, however, a reexamination of this thesis in the light of the relation of Dutch art to that of other lands, especially those in Central Europe, the locus of much of the armed conflict whose termination, along with Dutch political independence de iure, was determined by treaties in Westphalia in 1648. When aspects of art in Central Europe are considered, another picture may emerge. This image corresponds instead more closely to impressions that are being offered by other papers in this collection, notably on Scandinavia. Far from being segregated from developments elsewhere in Europe, or developing their own independent ‘Art of Describing’, as some practitioners of the ‘new art history’ would have it, Northern Netherlandish artists from the time of the late sixteenth century onward seem rather to have been firmly imbricated in the international scene, in Central Europe as elsewhere.^2.

While the treaties of 1648 and their results were doubtless of great political significance for the Netherlands, and the Dutch also developed their own distinctive society and economy, this paper advances another view of Netherlandish art that may seem somewhat paradoxical, or controversial. First, while the Amsterdam exhibition of 1993-1994, The Dawn of the Golden Age demonstrated quite well among other things how in the period 1580-1620 Northern Netherlandish Art was inflected in a wider European dialogue, from the Central European perspective not much changed in this regard during the subsequent period of the Thirty Years' War.^3. Both before and after the conflict of 1618-48 (and even during it) Netherlanders played a considerable role in the arts abroad, in Central Europe as elsewhere, just as conversely international tendencies were important for what happened in the United Provinces. Second, both the genres and stylistic tendencies that are usually taken to characterize Dutch painting and drawing of the Golden Age are not necessarily to be regarded as indigenous inventions, when Dutch art is placed in a larger context. Third, those tendencies that are often interpreted as predominant in Dutch seventeenth-century painting, namely ‘naturalism’ or ‘realism’, do not seem to figure so greatly in what is here postulated to be most important about the Netherlandish impact abroad at mid-century, and later. Other modes with other associations appear more important characteristics of this influence: the major Netherlandish, or Dutch contribution to the rest of Europe, certainly by the end of the seventeenth century, was one that may have occurred in the media of architecture and sculpture in a classicist vein. Finally, although contemporaries from Central Europe such as J.J. Becher and G.W. Leibniz did re-

1. Fromentin associated the origins of Dutch art with the cease-fire of 1609, which might be said de facto to have recognized the independence of the Northern provinces; I have used the English-language edition of Les maîtres d'autrefois, with introduction by Meyer Schapiro, The Old Masters of Belgium and Holland (New York 1963). Rosenberg and Slive call Fromentin's thesis ‘ingenious’ in their contribution to the often republished Dutch Art and Architecture 1600-1800 (Harmondsworth 1966) 12, and present a similar historical account.

2. I am of course referring to the work of Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing. Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago and London 1983) and of her epigones.

3. See the catalogue Dawn of the Golden Age. Northern Netherlandish Art 1580-1640 (Zwolle [ex. cat. Amsterdam] 1993). The present paper elaborates and expands on some of the points made in a lecture ‘Dutch Mannerism in an International Context’ delivered at a symposium on the occasion of this exhibition, in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, February 14, 1994.

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gard the Dutch as distinctive in other areas, in politics and economics especially,^4. it seems open to debate whether other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century observors clearly distinguished Northern Netherlandish, or Dutch art, as something distinct from the more generically Netherlandish. Dutch art and artists were regarded as Flemish or niederdeutsch in periods before and after the Thirty Years' War.

During the period before the Thirty Years' War, or more specifically before the reentry of the United Provinces into the eighty years' conflict in the year 1621, many names and places can be adduced where Netherlanders were active in Central Europe. The Dawn of the Golden Age mentioned the role of Netherlanders at the Bavarian court, but Netherlanders were important at many other, smaller courts throughout the Holy Roman Empire (of the German Nation). To mention just some of the better known figures who came from the northern Neterlands, Adriaen de Vries (from the Hague) supplied works for Stadthagen, Bückeburg, Dresden, and Wolfenbüttel. In Wolfenbüttel Hans Vredeman de Vries (from Leeuwarden) was town architect, painted, and also designed many different sorts of objects, including picture frames. Paulus Van Vianen (from Utrecht) was among several Netherlanders who worked in Salzburg (and there were others active in Innsbruck, and Trent as well).^5. Apart from serving courts, Netherlanders, including many Dutchmen, also provided works of various kinds in towns and cities.^6. The group of Netherlandish painters in Frankenthal, has long been familiar, but recent exhibitions and essays have called attention to the Netherlandish colonies in Cologne, Nuremberg, and Augsburg.^7. In Augsburg important Northern Netherlandish artists such as Adriaen de Vries, Hubert Gerhard, and Friedrich Sustris (the latter two of Amsterdam stock), among others, found commissions. In the early seventeenth century Netherlanders constituted almost 20% of the population in Frankfurt am Main, where (as in Hanau) they also largely dominated the visual arts, contributing to the development of still life as an independent genre.^8. Although Poland is less familiar territory for western European scholars, there the Netherlandish artistic presence was predominant above all at Gdańsk/Danzig, where architects such as Anthonis van Opbergen and Vredeman de Vries, and painters and sculptors such as Isaac and Abraham van den Blocke were leading figures.^9.

Prague, the imperial residence until 1612, was of course arguably the most important site for the arts in Central Europe in the period before the Thirty Years' War.^10. There from 1583 Emperor Rudolf II assembled one of the largest collections in the history of art, and patronized many important artists, including Netherlanders. Among the artists associated with Prague who either came from the Northern Netherlands, or who later passed or returned north to work can be counted Paulus Van Vianen, Adriaen de Vries, Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn, Paul and Hans Vredeman de Vries, and Roelant Savery.

Yet Prague is usually associated with international court ‘mannerism’, and this connection has often suggested to art historians that a division existed between the international art scene, dominated by ‘mannerism’ of the sort seen in mythologies produced for Rudolf II, on the one hand, and supposedly indigenous Ne-

4. For Becher's and Leibniz's views and connections with Holland, see Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy. Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton 1994).

5. A general guide to such phenomena for the time periods here discussed is provided by Georg Troescher, Kunst- und Künstlerwanderungen in Mitteleuropa 800-1800. Beiträge für Kenntnis des deutsch-französisch-niederländischen Kunstaustauschs. II: Französische und niederländische Künstler in der deutschen Kunst (Baden-Baden 1954), but the issue could be elaborated and interpreted. I have refrained from citing the monographic literature on artists here mentioned, except when making a particular historical point.

6. For a general account of the art history of these places, including reference to many of the figures mentioned here, see my Court, Cloister and City. The Art and Culture of Central Europe, 1450-1800 (London and Chicago 1995) chapters 6-9.

7. For Frankenthal, see most recently Kunst-Kommerz-Glaubenskampf. Frankenthal um 1600 (Worms [ex. cat. Frankenthal] 1995); for Cologne, Ilja M. Veldman, ‘Protestant Emigrants: Artists from the Netherlands in Cologne (1562-1612)’, in: Thomas W. Gaehtgens (ed.), Künstlerischer Austausch/Artistic Exchange. Akten des XVIII. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte Berlin, 1992 (Berlin 1993) I, 163-174, and Eadem, ‘Keulen als toevluchtsoord voor Nederlands kunstenaars’, Oud Holland 107 (1993) 34-58; for Nuremberg, Jeffrey Chipps Smith, ‘Netherlandish Artists and Art in Renaissance Nuremberg’, Simiolus 20 (1990-91) 153-167; for Augsburg, Welt im Umbruch. Augsburg zwischen Renaissance und Barock (3 vols., Augsburg [ex. cat.] 1980).

8. For Frankfurt see Georg Flegel 1566-1638, ed. Kurt Wettengl (Stuttgart [ex. cat. Frankfurt a.M.] 1993).

9. Most convenient access to this material is now available via the brief comments in Court, Cloister and City, 226ff; see further Georg Cuny, Danzigs Kunst und Kultur im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a.M. 1910) and more recently Teresa Grzybkowska, Zloty Wiek Malarstwa Gdanskiego (Warsaw 1990). See also Jan Bialostocki, The Art of the Renaissance in Eastern Europe (Ithaca NY and London 1976) 81-84.

10. The literature on Rudolfine Prague is ever-growing. My own views are laid out in The School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II (Chicago and London 1988), and The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science and Humanism in the Renaissance (Princeton 1993), and summarized in a larger context in Court, Cloister and City, 188ff. For other views and more information on the figures here mentioned see Prag um 1600. Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II. (2 vols., Freren [ex. cat. Essen and Vienna 1988-1989] 1988).

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therlandish innovations in other fields of painting, characterized by ‘realism’, on the other. It is for example still stated, in recent overviews such as The Dawn of the Golden Age, that the turning point in Dutch art can be mapped against a reduction in ecclesiastical commissions, which are replaced by other sorts of painting, where supposedly ‘realistic’ scenes appear. This turning point in Dutch art has been described as either a renewal or a voyage of discovery, that involves the painting of landscape, still life, gallant companies, and peasant scenes, everyday subjects that developed into specializations and that posterity identified with something innately Dutch.^11.

Yet it may also be claimed that many of these supposed innovations of Northern Netherlandish art were also directly sponsored simultaneously, if not even earlier, not just in the Southern Netherlands, but at a place that had an impact on art in Holland and Utrecht, namely at the Prague court. There a comparable decline in commissions for religious works also is evinced. The assemblage of a multinational group and an international collection in Prague meant first of all that artists could indeed draw on more than Netherlandish sources. For example, in Prague earlier works by German artists such as the Ludger Tom Ring and the Cranachs were available as a stimulus for still life painting, just as pictures by Cranach and Dürer were also available to stimulate genre subjects and nature studies.^12. Market scenes with still life elements by Italian artists such as the Campi were also visible in Prague.^13. Accordingly in Prague no less than in the Northern Netherlands the tendency described as ‘naturalism’ appeared, meaning a turn towards innovation in nature painting, that is the painting of naturalia, as seen in the origins of independent still life, animal painting, and landscape based on nature studies. Moreover in this field of nature painting, major works by Jacques De Gheyn, Georg Hoefnagel, and Daniel Fröschel, as well as the supposed Museum of Rudolf in part attributed to the Dutchman Van Ravesteyn were all bought by or made directly for the emperor. Joachim von Sandrart indicates something further of the emperor's personal role in these new artistic developments when he reports that Rudolf II sent Savery out to draw rare wonders of nature.^14.

All this information should suggest that Prague, along with other Central European centers such as Frankfurt am Main (with Hanau), needs to be accorded a greater role in the evolution of what we regard as typically Netherlandish, that is, Dutch specialities. Artistic specialization itself, a feature that has been associated with the artistic scene in the seventeenth-century northern Netherlands, may not only be paralleled in other places with markets including one for art such as Frankfurt, but may also have been anticipated to a degree in Prague. Because a large group of artists was to be found at the imperial court, artists tended to concentrate more on one genre than another. On the other hand, the fact that someone like Goltzius both executed ‘mannerist’ history paintings and natural landscapes does not seem so striking when we know that the same Prague painters also displayed a comparable range of works.^15.

Despite the armed conflict that supposedly created a caesura in artistic production during the Thirty Years' War, Netherlanders, most famously Adriaen de Vries

11. See especially J. Bruyn, ‘A Turning-Point in the History of Dutch Art’, in: Dawn of the Golden Age, 112-121, from which the remarks here are paraphrased.

12. These matters are presented in Fritz Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier- und Pflanzenstudien der Renaissance (Munich [ex. cat. Vienna] 1985). For the Tom Ring see most recently Die Maler tom Ring, ed. Angelika Lorenz (Münster [ex. cat.] 1996).

13. Market scenes by one of the Campi, most likely Vincenzo, are listed in the 1621 inventory of the Prague Kunstkammer: Heinrich Zimmermann, ‘Das Inventar der Prager Schatz- und Kunstkammer von 6. Dezember 1621’, Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 25 (1905) xlii, reg. no. 1042 and 1044. The relationship of the Campi and other Cremonese artists to the Netherlands is quite complicated in regard to givers and takers: see Bert W. Meijer, ‘Cremona e i Paesi Bassi’, in: I Campi e la cultura artistica cremonese del Cinquecento (Milan [ex. cat. Cremona] 1985) 25-32. One might also mention some paintings with still life aspects by Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

14. These phenomena, and the revision of interpretation of Rudolfine art thereby required, are discussed in The School of Prague.

15. There are of course differences between Haarlem and Prague: my reconsiderations of the issue of Rudolfine stylistics are discussed in ‘Prager Perspektiven: Rudolfinische Kunst in neuem Licht’, in: Rudolf II und Prague (ex. cat. Prague 1997) 98-108.

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in the first years of the conflict, continued to play an important role in Central Europe.^16. In the next period, that of the Westphalian treaties and the mid- and later seventeenth century, Netherlanders, among them many Dutchmen, remained important in Central Europe. The continuing impact of Dutch painting on the rest of Europe was already extensively demonstrated five and a half decades ago by Horst Gerson.^17. Although not specifically dealing with the Thirty Years' War and its aftermath, Gerson provided much evidence to suggest how widely and thoroughly Dutch painting spread throughout Europe. Thus even if no center existed in Central or Eastern Europe immediately after the Thirty Years' War that is comparable to Rudolfine Prague, it certainly remained true that Dutch painting continued to be interwoven in the European tapestry. Yet it remains to be seen how as in the instance of Rudolfine Prague influences on the Netherlands and its neighbors may have been reciprocal, or how for that matter Gerson's observations can be refined or expanded to encompass other media, such as sculpture and architecture more fully.

Nevertheless, since Gerson some attention has been devoted to these topics in other regions, and some of it pertains to the subject of this essay. Günther Heinz for instance indicated quite clearly more than thirty years ago just how dominant Netherlandish artists remained at the Habsburg court in Vienna during the midseventeenth century.^18. Many of the Habsburg court painters understandably came from Antwerp or Ghent, places that stayed under Habsburg control, but not all.^19. Some painters such as Adriaen van Lier and Samuel van Hoogstraten hailed from the north. It has recently been emphasized how important the status of a courtier was even for a northerner like Hoogstraten.^20. It has also recently been demonstrated how the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick Wilhelm II, displayed a partiality for Dutch painting. Because he had spent four years in Holland during the 1630's, had married a daughter of Frederick Henry of the Netherlands, and had resided until 1652 in Kleve, the Great Elector was well familiar with Dutch art; he established a model for his successors when he patronized Dutch painters such as Jan Lievens, Willem van Honthorst and Peter Nason.^21. Though not so well studied, Adriaen Hanneman played a similar role for the neighboring territories of Anhalt.^22. In addition, Polish scholarship has also indicated that in the Baltic basin the model of Dutch painting also remained predominant, either through the presence of Dutch paintings, or through their impact on local artists such as Andrzej Stech.^23.

But portraits in the international court style, and history paintings, as they were made by many of the artists just named, are not what are usually associated with the Dutch golden age. It might seem that only a few kinds of Netherlandizing paintings that were favored in a place like Poland, namely portraits of bourgeois sitters, and religious works often in a Rembrandtesque vein, might therefore be taken to correspond to a what is usually identified with chief currents in Dutch painting of the Golden Age.^24. At mid-century international court painting of the sort provided by Hannemann, Lievens, or Willem van Honthorst for the German principalities can not be claimed to have been a European genre that was dominated by Dutchmen.

16. For De Vries in this period the reader may still consult Lars Olaf Larsson, Adrian de Vries. Adrianus Fries Hagiensis Batavus 1545-1626 (Vienna and Munich 1967) 91ff.

17. In his famous book on the Ausbreitung and Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts (Haarlem 1942).

18. Günther Heinz, ‘Studien zur Porträtmalerei an den Höfen der österreichischen Erblande’, Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 59 (1963) 99ff.

19. Some of these artists are also discussed in the contribution by Karl Schütz included in this collection.

20. See Celeste Brusati, Artifice and Illusion. The Art and Writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten (Chicago 1995).

21. See Gerd Bartoschek, ‘Ein Kurfürstliches Gemäldekabinett. Der Große Kurfürst und die Malerei’, in: Der Große Kurfürst 1620-1688. Sammler - Bauherr - Mäzen (Potsdam-Sanssouci [ex. cat.] 1988) 134ff. For the Hague court as a model for Brandenburg, see now in regard to painting of a slightly later date, Götter und Helden für Berlin. Gemälde und Zeichnungen von Augustin und Matthäus Terwesten. Zwei niederländische Künstler am Hofe Friedrichs I. und Sophie Charlotte (Berlin [ex. cat.] 1995).

22. See for example the painting illustrated in Anhaltische Schlösser in Geschichte und Kunst (Niedernhausern 1991) 57.

23. See Teresa Grzybkowska, Andrzej Stech. Malarz Gdański (Warsaw 1979).

24. Beside the work of Stech, see for example the variety of images illustrated in Malarstwo Polskie. Manieryzm. Barok. Intro. Michal Walicki and Wladyslaw Tomkiewicz, cat. Andrzej Ryszkiewicz (Warsaw 1971).

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If we turn to other media, in which Netherlanders and artists trained in the Netherlands can however be said to have constituted a dominant presence in Central and Eastern Europe, the apparent problem or paradox of the character of Netherlandish, of Dutch influence abroad becomes however even more acute. For it can be argued that not painting, but rather sculpture, and to some extent architecture, were fields of activity in which Netherlanders did set a tone throughout much of northern Europe.^25. In this regard it may be recalled that even Louis XIV's court sculptor Desjardins was really a Netherlander from Breda named Martin van den Bogaert.

François Dieussart provides a pattern for a northern sculptor who bridged the period of the Thiry Years' War. Although a native of Hainault, Dieussart worked throughout his career with Netherlanders, including those from north of the Schelt river. Dieussart was active in Rome in the time and probably in the circle of François Duquesnoy, il Fiammingho. Dieussart then served in turn the courts of king of England, the prince of Orange in the Hague, the king of Denmark, Jan Maurits in Kleve, and then Friedrich Wilhelm, the ‘Great Elector’ of Brandenburg. Dieussart's career suggests that much like Italians earlier, Netherlandish sculptors came to epitomize court art and the itinerant court artists, in the midand late seventeenth century.^26.

Netherlandish sculptors came to serve for and at many other Central European residences, as their predecessors had done earlier. For example, the Amsterdamer Bartholomäus Eggers, who had been a member of the team of sculptors that had decorated the Amsterdam Town Hall, succeeded Dieussart not only in working in Kleve, but at the court of the Great Elector. Like Dieussart, Eggers provided many works for Hohenzollern residences in Berlin and elsewhere.^27. Around 1660 Artus Quellinus the Younger, the leading figure active in the decoration of the Amsterdam Town Hall, and a master who had also travelled in Duquesnoy's ambit in Rome, created garden sculpture for the residences in Kleve and Berlin. Quellinus also executed a major monument for Field Marshall Sparr in Berlin's Marienkirche. He also carved splendid works for the duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf in Schleswig cathedral.^28.

At the time of the Westphalian treaties, and shortly thereafter, architects who had been born in the Netherlands, or who had been trained there, played a similar role in several places in northern Germany. The impact on neighboring Westphalia and Kleve, where for instance Pieter Post worked, might be regarded as a special case, but the phenomenon is more widespread.^29. For example, from 1647 the electoral Brandenburg Baumeister Johann Gregor Memhardt, a native of Linz who had however been trained in the Northern Netherlands, designed the Lusthaus in the Berlin Lustgarten, a work with unmistakable accents of Netherlandish buildings, including the Mauritshuis. From the earlier 1650's Memhardt directed the construction of the Landschloss at Oranienburg, another building with reminiscences of Dutch structures such as Honselaarsdijk.^30. Honselaarsdijk (and other Dutch residences) also provided the inspiration for many subsequent sites in Germany, especially in Lower Saxony and Westphalia, for example at Herrenhau-

25. Netherlandish sculpture still remains a step-child of art history, having been treated sporadically since major surveys of some four and five decades ago. A sampling of material related to the southern Netherlands, including some artists presented here, is in La sculpture au siècle de Rubens dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et la principauté de Liège (Brussels [ex. cat.] 1977); for sculptors in Germany, see Barockplastik in Norddeutschland. ed. Jörg Rasmussen (Mainz [ex. cat. Hamburg] 1977). More recent literature and views are presented in the useful survey of works from the Rijksmuseum: Frits Scholten, Gebeeldhouwde portretten / Portrait sculptures (Zwolle 1995).

26. For Dieussart see Charles Avery, ‘François Dieussart (c. 1600-1661), Portrait Sculptor to the Courts of Northern Europe’, Victoria and Albert Museum Yearbook 4 (1974) 85ff., reprinted in Studies in European Sculpture (London 1981) 205-235.

27. For sculpture for the Great Elector, see Saskia Hüneke, ‘Bildhauer am Hofe des Großen Kurfürsten’, in Der Große Kurfürst, 118-126.

28. The sculpture of the Amsterdam Town Hall is treated most recently by Eymert-Jan Goossens, ‘De rol van de beeldhouwkunst’, in: Jacob van Campen. Het klassieke ideaal in de Gouden Eeuw, ed. Jacobine Huisken, Koen Ottenheym, and Gary Schwartz (Amsterdam 1995) 201-226, and Treasure Wrought by Chisel and Brush. The Town Hall of Amsterdam in the Golden Age (Zwolle 1996). The sculpture in Kleve is presented by Goosens and others in De fonteijn van Pallas. Een geschenk van Amsterdam aan Johan Maurits (Amsterdam and Kleve 1994); see further Willy Halsema-Kubes, ‘Die von Artus Quellinus und Bartholmäus Eggers für Johann Moritz geschaffenen Skulpturen’, in: Soweit der Erdkreis reicht. Johann Moritz von Nassau-Siegen 1604-1679 (Kleve 1979) 213-232. Quellinus' other works in Germany are discussed in Barockplastik in Norddeutschland; those mentioned here are illustrated on p. 81 and 211. See further Regina Bartsch-Molden, Artus Quellinus' Grabmal Sparr: der Einfluß der Niederlande auf das Grabmal in Norddeutschland zwischen 1650 und 1725 (Frankfurt a.M. and New York 1993).

29. Post's work in Kleve is discussed recently in J.J. Terwen and K.A. Ottenheyn, Pieter Post (1608-1669) (Zutphen 1993) 76-87.

30. For Memhardt see Georg Skalecki, Deutsche Architektur zur Zeit des Dreissigjährigen Krieges (Regensburg 1989) 240-242.

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sen.^31. Some years afterwards the establishment of Oranienburg was to be echoed at Oranienbaum in Anhalt, another Landschloss with unmistakable Netherlandish echoes. This is a country seat put up by the Dutchman Cornelis Ryckwaert, a student of Pieter Post.^32.

In all these works a direct connection exists with the Dutch court of the Stadholder Frederick Henry, and, it is worth mentioning again, with Kleve. It was for Frederick Henry's daughters Louise Henriette and Henriette Catharina that the eponymously named Oranienburg and Oranienbaum were built. Jan Maurits, the builder of the Mauritshuis, served as the Great Elector's stadholder in Kleve, and it was architects as well as sculptors associated with projects for him there - namely Ryckwaert - who later worked for Brandenburg.

While the Calvinist connection might seem to account for this particular chain of patronage, other factors seem to have affected an even broader dispersion of the stylistic direction represented by works in Kleve, Berlin, Oranienburg, or Oranienbaum. This is the case in regard to Catholic patrons in Poland, where for instance a leading architect of the period after the Thirty Years' War, actually better marked as the period after the northern wars of the 1650's in Poland which were in a way a continuation of the conflict,^33. was the Utrecht-born Tilman van Gameren. Van Gameren served many of the higher aristocrats in Poland, and also the royal court of Jan Sobieski. Van Gameren's designs for palaces and churches may also be compared to that strand of Palladianism that had previously been produced in Holland. Van Gameren's buildings include such important structures as the Krasinski palace, amd the Sacramentarian church in Warsaw.^34.

Furthermore, the sculpture of ‘il Fiammingho’, François Duquesnoy, and his followers also had a huge attraction for Catholic patrons and collectors elsewhere in Central Europe. Prince Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein procured bronze statues by Duquesnoy for his collection.^35. Netherlandish sculptors from the orbit of il Fiammingho, including Jerome (Jeroen or Hieronymous) Duquesnoy, worked for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, who had long resided in Brussels before returning to Vienna after the Westphalian treaties were signed.^36. Later, towards 1700, the Netherlandish wave continued not only at Catholic courts, but at Protestant ones as well. This current is represented by the work of Gabriel Grupello in Düsseldorf and Mannheim, by Guillelmus de Grof in Munich, and by Thomas Quellinus in Denmark and Poland.^37.

A letter written in Polish sent in 1681 by the architect of Wilanów, the Polonized Roman Agostino Locci to King Jan Sobieski, suggests what may have guided this taste. In the letter Locci recommends the famed Danzig-born sculptor Andreas Schlüter to the king. Locci says that the statuarius, meaning Schlüter, can successfully make putti in the manner of Duquesnoy. (Schlüter in fact came out of a sculpture tradition dominated by Netherlanders, and his earlier works are comparable in many details to those of il Fiammingho). As I have remarked elsewhere, it is most likely his ability to make works in the manner of the Netherlandish master that recommended Schlüter to Sobieski, and, given the strong Netherlandish

31. For Honselaarsdijk and other Dutch gardens see Vanessa Bessemer Sellars, ‘Garden Architecture in the Netherlands: the Gardens of Frederik Henrik, Prince of Orange (1584-1647)’, Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University 1992. For their impact, and that of other Dutch buildings on Germany see Barock in Deutschland. Residenzen. ed. Ekhart Berckenhagen (Berlin [ex. cat.] 1966) 23-45.

32. For views of Oranienbaum see Anhaltische Schlösser in Geschichte und Kunst; Reinhard Alex, Oranienbaum (1992) is a guide with reference to earlier literature. Terwen and Ottenheyn. Pieter Post, 240, briefly allude to Ryckwaert's activity in Brandenburg, but do not mention Oranienbaum.

33. Because this period in Polish history has remained until recently little known in western Europe, it may be useful to cite Robert Frost, After the Deluge. Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War 1655-1660 (Cambridge 1993).

34. Stanislaw Mossakowski, Tilman van Gameren. Leben und Werk (2nd, German ed., Munich 1994) provides the most thorough treatment of this figure.

35. See Brite von Götz-Mohr, ‘Der neue Umgang mit der Antike. Merkur und Apollo von François Duquesnoy’, in: Die Bronzen der Fürstlichen Sammlungen Liechtenstein (Frankfurt a.M. [ex. cat.] 1986) 87-95. The provenance of these pieces is discussed in Liechtenstein. The Princely Collections (New York [ex. cat.] 1985) cat. no. 50, p. 83, ill. p. 82.

36. A portrait bust of the archduke by Jeroen Duquesnoy is in the collection of the Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

37. For Grupello see Udo Kultermann. Gabriel Grupello, (Berlin 1968) and Europäische Barockplastik am Niederrhein. Grupello und seine Zeit (Düsseldorf [ex. cat.] 1971); for De Grof: Peter Volk, ‘Bronze-und Bleiplastik am Hof Max Emanuels’, in: Kurfürst Max Emanuel. Bayern und Europa um 1700 (Munich 1976), I, 239-249; for Thomas Quellinus: S.O. Androsov, ‘Prazvedeniya Tomasa Kvellinusa v Letnem Sadu’, [In Russien] Musei 6 (1986) 54-60.

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presence represented by the sculptors Dieussart and Eggers, and by the numerous painters and paintings at the Berlin court, that made him attractive in Brandenburg as well. To work in a vein favored by Fiamminghi was evidently fashionable. Later Peter the Great probably also had occasion to see Schlüter's most Duquesnoy-like works when he sacked sites in Ukraine in 1707. At this time the Russian czar may also have carried off sculpture by Thomas Quellinus. And Peter was later to call Schlüter into his service. So the Netherlandish appeal also seems to have been strong for the Russian ruler.^38.

The problem is that this Netherlandish current, as purveyed particularly by sculptors like Eggers and architects such as Tilman van Gameren, that dominated especially the northern European courts in an are stretching from that of St. James to St. Petersburg, can not be identified with those tendencies that are taken to characterize Dutch painting of the Golden Age. Rather this current again corresponds stylistically to what is usually called classicism in sculpture, to distinguish it from tendencies represented by Bernini; it is associated with what is called Palladianism or classicism in architecture, again to distinguish it from Bernini or Borromini. Although these stylistic terms are to be sure problematic, they nevertheless serve to provide a contrast with the tendencies associated with ‘naturalism’, ‘realism’, or more recently an ‘art of describing’, identified with Dutch painting. At the same time this terminology may be useful, in that in contrast with the ‘art of describing’, it suggests something of the international and Italianate sources of the style.

Furthermore, this style is not only one with international associations, as with court circles in Holland. It is also one that even within the Netherlandish orbit can clearly not be identified as specifically northern Netherlandish. Several of the figures mentioned in this essay came from the southern Netherlands. Consequently I have deliberately elided the origins of artists north and south of the border in this account.

Yet in this respect the situation at mid-century seems again little different from that found before the Thirty Years' War. Before 1620 southern Netherlanders had an impact on art in Holland, to such an extent that it has recently become a theme of Netherlandish art history to say that southern Netherlanders led to many of the contributions of Northern Netherlandish art. Following some comments of Van Mander, and the work of J. Briels, in The Dawn of the Golden Age Professor J. Bruyn accordingly noted the importance of southern Netherlandish immigration for Northern Netherlandish art.^39. But there seems to have been little difference in the period after 1648. Among the sculptors at the Amsterdam Town Hall were to be found Artus Quellinus and Rombout Verhulst, and other figures who came from the south; Jacob Jordaens was of course also active as a painter there. Later another southerner, Erasmus Quellinus, the brother of Artus, painted a major altarpiece for the Jesuits in Amsterdam, an impressive work celebrating St. Francis Xavier that is now in Indianopolis.^40.

38. See my ‘Schlüter's Fate. Comments on Sculpture, Science, and Patronage in Central and Eastern Europe c. 1700’, in: T. Gaehtgens (ed.), Künstlerischer Austausch/Artistic Exchange. Akten des XXVIII. Internationalen Kongress für Kunstgeschichte, 1992 (Berlin 1993) 199-212.

39. Bruyn. ‘A Turning-Point’, especially 119ff.

40. Jean Pierre de Bruyn, Erasmus II Quellinus: de Schilderijen met catalogue raisonné (Freren 1988).

[p. 366]

Professor Bruyn also remarked that Van Mander treated Niederlandtsche artists with no apparent north-south distinction.^41. This observation also seems to pertain to their treatment by ultramontani, that is Italians. As the 1995 exhibition in Brussels and Rome of Fiamminghi a Roma made clear, up through the time of Rubens in Italy the term fiammingho could be applied to any northerner active abroad.^42. Little difference appears to have been made during the time of the Thirty Years' War, when Duquesnoy was called a fiammingho, and for that matter little difference was made after the Thirty Years' War. Thus when the Venetian Boschini wrote about Van Gameren in his Carta del navegar pitoresco of 1660, he apparently regarded this Utrecht native as a fiammingho, since he said that he had come from fiandra.^43. The treaties of 1648 seem to have made little immediate difference for the perception of cultural distinctions between the northern and southern Netherlands, as they were seen from the other side of the Alps.^44.

Although on the other hand the treaties of 1648 did recognize de iure the political independence of the United Provinces, and de facto their distinction from the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, and thinkers called attention to the particularities of Dutch politics, society, and economics, the question may also be posed if it is legitimate to distinguish so clearly between Netherlandish and German art and artists at this time, at least as far as what they did was concerned when they worked in the same or similar milieus, any more than it is proper to distinguish between artists from the southern and northern Netherlands. Before 1620 Van Mander not only failed to differentiate between northern and southern Netherlandish artists: he also treated Niderlandtsche artists together with Hoogduytsche painters. Other seventeenth-century writers also spoke of Netherlandish as niederduytsch.^45. In the northern historiographic tradition surviving through writers in German through Joachim von Sandrart at least until J.F. Christ in the eighteenth century, and perhaps later, Hochdeutsch and Niederdeutsch, that is German and Netherlandish artists, are also still treated together, without much distinction.^46. As much evidence elsewhere, including the activity of Netherlanders in Naples c. 1600 suggests, the time has come to reconsider the question of the Dutchness of Dutch art.^47.

41. Bruyn. ‘A Turning-Point’. One may note here the usage of other contemporary authors cited by Bruyn (120-121) such as Heinsius, who speak of ‘Nederduytsch’.

42. I Fiamminghi a Roma 1508-1608. Artistes des Pays-bas et de la principaute de Liège á Rome á la Renaissance (Brussels [ex. cat.] 1995).

43. As cited in Mossakowski, Tilman van Gameren, 2.

44. In discussion in Nijmegen after the presentation of the paper on which this publication is based, Bernard Aikema mentioned that Italian inventories and other sources do distinguish works as Netherlandish, and identify Netherlandish specialities. My question is if there is a distinction between northern and southern, as opposed to what is generically called Netherlandish.

45. See note 41 above.

46. Joachim von Sandrart, Teutsche Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlery Künste (Nuremberg 1675, 1679) part II, book 3, treats ‘Der Hoch- und Nieder-Teutschen berühmten Mahler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, Leben und Lob’ beginning with Jan van Eyck. J.F. Christ may be the first to make such a clear distinction between the history of Netherlandish and of ‘Alt teutsch’ artists: ‘Leben des berühmten Mahlers Lucas Cranach, als eine Probe und Auszug von dem Künstler-Lexico...’, Fränkische Acta Eruditorum 1 (1726) 339n, 350n.

47. For Netherlanders in Naples see Pierluigi Leone de Castris, Pittura del Cinquecento a Napoli 1573-1606. L'ultima Maniera (Naples 1991) 31-106.