1. Tradition and Significance of Trips to Italy

A whole host of Dutch artists made their way to Italy in the course of the 17th century.¹ There were certainly more than in the 16th century and, even in relation to the larger number of painters, no fewer than at that time.² A trip to Italy was an inherent part of a young artist’s education. That was the case in the 16th century and the practice had lost little if any of its significance in the century that followed.³ Commenting on this in his Great Theatre of Dutch Painters Arnold Houbraken wrote: ‘It seems to me as if that century had no esteem for artists unless they had seen Rome. After all, most of the painters of the time who appear in my writings had already been there in their youth’.⁴ Purchasers of artworks seemed to think along the same lines, as August Terwesten discovered from personal experience: ‘A certain gentleman summoned our painter in order to discuss a work of art he wanted to order from him; then, after some discussion, he asked him if he had already been to Rome. Terwesten was obliged to reply in the negative; immediately after he had said this, he could see that the gentleman thought less of his artistic qualities than before: clearly people can be governed by prejudice’.⁵

Terwesten’s remarks are confirmed by the relatively high prices buyers were prepared to pay for Italianate landscapes. Were they perhaps willing to compensate artists for the training they had undergone abroad? Their parents sometimes had to pay a high price for such trips. The journey undertaken by the painter, Adriaen Arents Gouda (c. 1628/1629-1667), cost his father 3,000 guilders.⁶ Dirk Ferreris (1639-1693), on the other hand, was thriftier. He kept the ‘Bent’ at arm’s length, because the ‘Bentvueghels’ (birds of a feather) ‘were usually only intent on spending money’. He got by on 30 guilders a year.⁷ Abraham Staphorst (c. 1638-after 1671), the son of a predikant (minister of the Dutch Reformed Church), required a larger though not unreasonable sum. After he had learned the basics of painting in Holland his father sent him to Italy, where the exercise of art commanded greater respect. He spent only 110 of his annual grant of 300 guilders, as he knew ‘how to cope adequately and in a rational manner.⁸

Warning voices drew attention to the perils of a journey to Italy, which occasionally resulted in great hardship or loss of life. One need only recall the fate of Andries Both (1611/12-1642), who drowned in Venice,⁹ or of the poor devils who were robbed en route. But there was an ulterior motive behind these warnings. A major objective was to address the threat posed by an excessive cult of Italy. Balthazar Gerbier d’Ouvilly (1591-1663) was quite blunt in this respect. What, he asked, was the use of all this travel if an artist had only limited talent? ‘Start out as a donkey and you will probably not return as a horse!’¹⁰ Samuel van Hoogstraten warned against blindly copying works by Old Masters. Notwithstanding the reputation they enjoyed, they should be studied ‘with seriousness and a defiant attitude, as it were’.¹¹ Had not Holland’s greatest artists refused to go abroad, after all? Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Steen and many others never left their native country.¹² Constantijn Huygens, however, who knew both Rembrandt and Jan Lievens when they were young artists in Leiden, was convinced that a trip to Italy would have been very salutary for both of them. The excuse the young painters offered was that they were at a key stage in their training and so had no time to travel. Moreover, they could study the best Italian works of art in Holland itself.¹³ That this was no empty phrase and that Rembrandt had thoroughly assimilated Italian art [i][i] has recently has become increasingly evident as a result of the more thorough examination of his ‘classical style’ that has taken place in recent years.¹⁴

The aspirations of the artists who went to Italy were not always focused on the same objectives as those pursued since the time of Jan van Scorel (1595-1562) and Maarten van Heemskerck (1498-1574).¹⁵ The study of antiquity remained a crucial part of the education of young travellers to Rome.¹⁶ They made drawings of the main ruins and statues of ancient Rome just as their predecessors had done in previous decades. They even ‘discovered’ the catacombs.¹⁷ However, the genuine interest in antiquity and archaeology that had been boosted by Heemskerck’s sketchbooks waned during the 17th century. While Heemskerck used a quill to carefully render the contours of the monuments [i], the younger generation preferred brush and ink to capture the atmosphere of the sun-drenched south.¹⁸ The Dutch landscape artists who went to Italy in the early part of the century gradually created a romantic image of ancient ruins and devised a kind of urban veduta,¹⁹ both of which were largely unknown in Italy.²⁰ They were the outcome of collaboration between Dutchmen, Flemings and the German artist Adam Elsheimer. Dutch artists enjoyed an outstanding reputation as landscape painters. Even Karel van Mander I (1558-1606), who ranked Italian art higher than that of his native country, was obliged to admit that the Italians ‘ons altijts gissen Daer fraey in te zijn’ [always think we excel in that field].²¹ This is confirmed in the Italian sources, which had sung the praises of Netherlandish landscape painting throughout the 16th century.²² Writing in 1575, Giovanni Maria Cecchi stated that the painters from north of the Alps ‘vagliano più di ogni altra nazione per dipingere paesi ad animali…’ [are better than any other nation in painting landscapes and animals].²³

Other Dutch painters also achieved a certain renown in Italy. They included Gerard van Honthorst, known as Gherardo delle Notti, Pieter van Laer, known as Bamboccio, and Gaspard van Wittel, known as Vanvitelli. But justice can only be done to the extent of Netherlandish influence if account is also taken of the Flemish artists.²⁴ Seen through Italian eyes, the pittori fiaminghi formed a close-knit group which included both Dutch and Flemish artists.²⁵ The towering figure of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) surpassed all his Netherlandish contemporaries as an artist, collector and antiquarian.²⁶ Immensely productive during the eight years he spent in Italy, his influence was felt for a long time especially in Northern Italy. The style of portrait painting developed by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) made a lasting impression in Genoa.²⁷ In addition there were Lucas de Wael (1591-1661) and his brother Cornelis de Wael (1592-1667) [i],²⁸ Vincent Malo I (c. 1600-1642)²⁹ and a few others.³⁰ Paul and Matthijs Bril were among the oldest landscape artists in the Netherlandish colony in Rome. Flemish and Dutch artists were to be found in every Italian town as far south as Naples (Abraham Brueghel) and even in Sicily.³¹ But we will restrict ourselves here to the artists from Holland. As was stated earlier, they made up an impressive number and their presence raises a number of issues, as we shall see.

There is a general question which must be addressed at this point. What was it that prompted so many artists to flock to the south in the 17th century? Most of them found enough work there to make a living.³² In some cases they spent many years in succession away from home. So there must have been a certain ‘market’ for their pictures. They were something of a novelty for Italy, the witty, realistic little paintings proving popular among collectors and sometimes even finding their way into distinguished picture cabinets.³³ We will come back later in more detail to the influx of such works and the opposition they encountered. The success enjoyed by Dutch artists should not lead us to overestimate their influence in Italy, however. It is not as though they were welcomed everywhere with open arms because there was no longer any significant Italian art to speak of.³⁴ Even if we were to regard 16th century Mannerist art as marking the decline of the Renaissance – a view I would not endorse myself – the process of renewal and recovery which took place cannot be attributed to the Dutch artists in Italy. On the contrary, the stimulus to overcome Mannerism came from within Italy itself. The originators of 17th century Baroque painting, such as the Carracci in Bologna and Michelangelo da Caravaggio in Rome and Southern Italy, exerted a tremendous influence which far exceeded that of the Dutch painters in Rome.³⁵ Art historians from the North are all too prone to underestimate the significance of Italian Baroque painting because it does not include any Raphaels, Leonardos or Michelangelos. Given the wealth of talented artists in the various art centres of Italy, it would certainly be an exaggeration to speak of a period of decline. The aristocratic collectors of the 18th century demonstrated a certain shrewdness in acquiring for their galleries some of the 17th century Italian masterpieces that are held in such little esteem today.

The group of Netherlandish artists in Rome certainly developed a distinctive style of their own. They kept to themselves in their ‘Bent’ community,³⁶ however, and effectively made no productive contribution to the advancement of Italian painting. The very marked differences between their fraternity and the host country surfaced in the dispute between the ‘Bent’ and the Academy as the representative of the Italian artistic creed – a matter to which we will return in a moment. If we consider the number of Dutch artists in Italy in the context of the dissemination of Dutch art, it is clear that only a few stood out from the rest. The overwhelming majority can be classed as young enthusiasts who had not yet developed a style of their own and were keen to experience the romantic atmosphere that Italy had to offer. The story of how the foreign artistic ideals they brought back with them helped to enrich and benefit their home country may have a certain attraction, but it is out of place in an account of the spreading of Dutch art to other countries. However, since my task here is to monitor the progress of all the artists migrating abroad without any prior certainty of their significance for the dissemination of Dutch art, we will let those who travelled to Italy file past in our mind’s eye in small groups at least, in which the less important will be disregarded.³⁷ A summary of this kind would have been impossible had not the ground been laid for it by the long-term research of the Dutch Historical Institute in Rome headed by Dr. Godefridus Johannes Hoogewerff (1884-1963) [i].³⁸