11. Portrait and History Painters (Rome)

It would be underestimating the wanderlust of the Dutch to imagine that in the period after Pieter van Laer it was only landscape, marine and still-life painters who headed southwards. Portrait and history painters followed in their footsteps in order to learn from the works of past and present masters. In the 1640s we encounter no less a figure than Gerard ter Borch II (1617-1681) in Rome.³¹³ Johannes de Veer I (c. 1610-1662),³¹⁴ Nicolaes van Helt Stockade (1614-1669) and Cornelis de Man (1621-1706) were in the city at the same time. David Beck (1621-1656) came to Rome in 1653 as court painter to Queen Christine of Sweden, while David Klöcker von Ehrenstrahl (1628-1698) from Hamburg, who trained in Amsterdam, worked in Rome under Pietro da Cortona before settling in Sweden [i].³¹⁵ Nicolaes van Helt Stockade painted the portrait of Stefano della Bella in Italy, of which Hollar later made an engraving [i]. Gerard ter Borch II portrayed his friend and patron, Jan Six, when he was in Rome [i].³¹⁶ A delightful drawing shows the two travellers on the Septimius Severus Arch relishing the view of the Forum [i][i][i].³¹⁷

The portrait and history painters who were in Rome after 1650 are of little interest as regards the dissemination of Dutch art. They studied the Franco-Roman Baroque style in frescoes, historical paintings and portraits. A typical example of the career pursued by such artists was Frédéric Kerseboom (1628-1693) from Germany. He was initially taught in Amsterdam, studied under Le Brun in Paris in 1650, was a pupil of Nicolas Poussin for two years after that and then spent 12 years in Rome, reportedly at the expense of the French Chancellor, working under Poussin, whose works he imitated. The academic history painters from The Hague undertook similar studies in Rome. They differed little from one another, irrespective of whether they went by the name of Willem Doudijns (1630-1697), Theodor van der Schuer (1634-1707)³¹⁸ (and his pupil Cornelis de Bruyn [1652-1726/7]),³¹⁹ Daniël Mijtens II (1644-1688) or Robbert Duval (1649-1732) or were members of a younger generation such as Augustin, Elias and Mattheus Terwesten, Domenicus van Wijnen and Daniel Jacobsz, a student of Willem Doudijns.

Working on behalf of the ‘archaeologist’ Bonaventura van Overbeek, van Wijnen made drawings of the life of the ‘Bent’ fraternity which are now only of interest to historians. Matthijs Pool made engravings of these three drawings.³²⁰ Willem Doudijns was also interested in archaeology. He drew Greek and Roman statues which Jan de Bisschop used for his book.³²¹ Willem van Ingen (1651-1708) (whose ‘Bent’ name was ‘The First’, because he was the first to have been christened after the intervention of the Inquisition), painted the portrait of the Vicar Apostolic of the Netherlands, Johannes van Neercassel, when he was in Rome [i]. The Terwestens were also active as art dealers. The eldest of the three brothers endeavoured to acquire the collection of Prince Livio Odescalchi but his efforts were thwarted by an export ban.³²² At the behest of his master, the Elector of Brandenburg, Elias Terwesten bought two extensive plaster cast collections that were intended to grace the newly established Academy in Berlin, where his brother worked.³²³

Jacob Toorenvliet (1640-1719)³²⁴ and Matthijs Naiveu (1647-1726), fijnschilders from Leiden, can be included here together with van Ingen’s pupil, Albert van Spiers (1655-1718), and Cornelis Mebeecq (1662-1690), a successor to Lairesse [i]. Naiveu’s small-figure genre pictures constitute the final flourish, as it were, of the Bambocciate [i].³²⁵ Toorenvliet’s skills as a portrait painter are exemplified by the portrait of Carel Quina, which he painted in Rome in 1669 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) [i]. The steady flow of Dutch artists did not dry up even at the end of the 17th century. None of them were stars in the Dutch artistic firmament capable of promulgating the achievements of the combined Dutch-Italian style within the country itself or beyond its borders. Gerard Wigmana (1673-1741) was dubbed the ‘Friesian Raphael’,³²⁶ while others such as Hendrik van Hulst (1685-1754), Samuel Duval (1697-1732/3, Magnus de Quiter (1694-1744),³²⁷ Augustinus Houbraken, Theodor Hartzoecker (1696-1740/1), Dionys Godijn (born 1652/7), Phillipp Christian Bentum (c. 1690-after 1757)³²⁸ and Jan Anthonie Coxie (after 1650-1720)³²⁹ were certainly no less renowned in their time.