6. The Dutch in Rome , the ‘Bent’ and the Academy

With each year that passed the Dutch became increasingly involved in everyday life in Rome and so it is perhaps opportune to make a few remarks at this juncture about the activities they engaged in. Rome was their main destination. Regardless of whether they arrived overland via France (Paris, Lyon, Mont Cenis), as Wybrand de Geest II, Karel Dujardin, Jan Asselijn and Frederik de Moucheron among others did, whether they took the a boat from Marseilles to Livorno or travelled up the River Rhine to Basle or just to Mainz – in the first instance to proceed on foot over the Graubünden passes and in the second instance to proceed via the Tyrolean passes – all the roads they took ultimately led them to Rome.¹²⁵ We will make a few remarks below about the Dutch artists who settled in Venice, Florence and at other courts in Italy, but it was to the Eternal City that the vast majority headed.

They crossed the River Tiber at Ponte Molle and walked down Via Flaminia before entering the city through Porta del Popolo [i]. Most of the Dutch artists settled in the adjacent quarter, which is bounded by the parish of Santa Maria del Popolo, San Lorenzo in Lucina and Sant’Andrea delle Fratte. Large numbers of them were to be found in Via Margutta, in Via del Babuino (which was called Via Paolina up to around 1625), in the Corso and in the narrow side streets and alleyways. This was the real foreigners’ district where the French painters and non-Romans felt at home.¹²⁶ During the day, however, the young artists could have been seen everywhere in Rome: at the Forum, at the Colosseum, somewhere along the banks of the Tiber, at the Vatican, at Castel Sant’Angelo and outside the city boundaries in the catacombs or in the Campagna. Lake Bracciano [i],¹²⁷ which the artists would have seen on their journey to Rome, was a favourite place for them to visit plus, above all, Tivoli [i] and the villages situated higher up above the River Anio such as Anticoli, Saracinesco and Subiaco. The Alban Hills and Frascati seem to have been frequented less often at that time.

The Dutch mostly made the long journey in pairs or groups and when they arrived in Rome they immediately entered the studio of an older fellow countryman.¹²⁸ In Florence and Venice they quite often worked in the studio of a local artist.¹²⁹ In Rome they preferred their own company, which was in keeping with their different attitude to art. In many cases they took lodgings together: Baburen and David de Haen, who worked together in San Pietro di Montorio, shared an apartment, for instance. Wouter Crabeth II moved in for a lengthy stay with Leonaert Bramer. These examples could easily be extended. Pieter van Laer took up accommodation for a while with the Fleming, Giovanni del Campo (c. 1600-after 1638) (perhaps a Jan van de Velde?),¹³⁰ and was joined there by Gerard van Kuijl (1604-1673)¹³¹ and others. They replaced a tenant who had been obliged to move out because he was leaving Rome. These three even employed their own servant.

It was not long before all the Dutch artists joined together to set up a colony. In the beginning this ‘Bent’ (fraternity) was very probably no more than an informal, sociable gathering, but events led to a consolidation of the artists’ sense of community and the formation of closer ties between them.¹³² An initial circle must have formed in about 1620/1 around Cornelis van Poelenburch, Bartholomeus Breenbergh, Wybrand de Geest and a few less well-known painters. Jan van Bijlert has preserved the portraits of the founders of the ‘Bent’ for posterity in five drawings which are now in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam [i][i][i][i][i]. They all appear with their ‘Bent’ names, which were not exactly flattering. Interestingly enough, Pieter van Laer was not among them – a circumstance which permits us to date the drawings to before 1626, the year in which van Laer arrived in Rome.¹³³

Sooner or later the ‘Bent’ had to come to some sort of arrangement with the official organisation of Italian artists, which needless to say was an academy, the Academia di San Luca, founded in 1593. At first the Dutch artists mocked the rules and ceremonies of the Academia. This took the form of strange customs within the ‘Bent’ involving a wine christening, a knightly accolade and a vow. The ‘Bent’ names also had their origins in a consuming desire to ridicule.¹³⁴ All these customs notwithstanding, there was ultimately no way the Dutch artists could avoid certain demands raised by the Academia or undermine the privileges it enjoyed.¹³⁵ For example, the Academy was entitled to value pictures and, from 1633, it had the right to require a contribution from all the artists living in Rome, including those from abroad who were not affiliated to any organisation.¹³⁶ The Dutch were certainly at a disadvantage here, because the small figure paintings which had become fashionable since the days of Adam Elsheimer and Paulus Bril and which Italian customers were happy to buy could never – in the eyes of the representatives of official art – be placed on a par with great history paintings. Quite correctly from its point of view, the Academy feared a decline in art and its own reputation if it were to allow such common scenes portraying ordinary people into the temple of high art. A hint of professional jealousy may also have played a part. For the Academy no words could be scathing enough to express its repudiation of the paintings by Dutch artists. The conflict came to a head over a trivial matter, the Dutch refusing to pay the modest contribution required of them. From 1634 onwards nothing more was paid. However, despite an authorisation granted to the Academy’s treasurer in 1635 and the issuing of compulsory orders, very little changed and so this can certainly be seen as a defeat for the Academy.¹³⁷ Later on, in the second half of the century, a settlement was gradually reached since there was no longer such a sharp division between the two communities over artistic ideals. The ‘Bent’’s heyday between 1640 and 1660 was followed by a setback and a decline in the creative powers of its members. Life in the ‘Bent’ consequently came to revolve around celebrations and drunken feasts. The christening ceremonies [i][i][i] at the grave of Bacchus (Santa Constanza) prompted the Inquisition to intervene, since it suspected that a Christian sacrament was being ridiculed. In the end, Pope Clement XI unceremoniously banned all celebrations and gatherings in 1720 unless special permission had been given.¹³⁸