Sweerts II

Michiel Sweerts
Portrait of Joseph Deutz
1648-49

The Deutz brothers had been sent on an extended European tour in the 1640s by their wealthy Brussels family. In Rome one of the brothers, Joseph, commissioned his portrait from fellow-countryman Michiel Sweerts. Deutz also purchased the cycle Sweerts was painting to dramatize the Seven Acts of Mercy in terms of contemporary Roman street life. The first of these, immediately below, Refreshing the Thirsty, is set near the Piazza di Spagna.

Michiel Sweerts
Seven Acts of Mercy : Refreshing the Thirsty
1646-49

In the background of Sweert's painting the Roman church of Santissima Trinità dei Monti can be glimpsed, "perched on a steep shoulder of the Pincio" with no direct access from the bottom of the hill it stands on.

François Marius Granet
Santissima Trinità dei Monti
1808

There would be another eighty years to wait before construction of the Spanish Steps in the 1720s linked the church to the Piazza di Spagna far below. The obelisk in front of the church arrived only in the 1780s, sixty years after the completion of the Steps and 200 years after the completion of the church.

Giacomo Brogi (photographer)
Santissima Trinità dei Monti
with Spanish Steps (built 1723-25)

In addition to Refreshing the Thirsty, the Rijksmuseum houses additional canvases from the Roman series of the Seven Acts of Mercy by Michiel Sweerts.

Michiel Sweerts
Seven Acts of Mercy : Feeding the Hungry
1646-49

Michiel Sweerts
Seven Acts of Mercy : Visiting the Sick
1646-49

Michiel Sweerts
Seven Acts of Mercy : Burying the Dead
1646-49

Michiel Sweerts
Painters' Studio, Rome
1646-50

Michiel Sweerts
Wrestling Match, Rome
1649

Michiel Sweerts
Plague in an Ancient City
1652-54

Plague in an Ancient City (above) was a direct tribute by Sweerts to a revered historical fantasia by Nicolas Poussin painted a generation earlier, the Plague at Ashdod (below).

Nicolas Poussin
Plague at Ashdod
1630

By 1655 Sweerts himself returned to Brussels. He obtained a few portrait commissions there, but found little local demand for the large-scale historical dramas that carried such prestige elsewhere.

Michiel Sweerts
Portrait of a Young Man
1656-58

 

Michiel Sweerts
Portrait of a Young Woman
1656-58

Michiel Sweerts
Boy with a Turban
1656-58

In 1659 Michiel Sweerts voyaged to Asia, joining a group of Catholic missionaries. After squabbling with his devout shipmates in the Holy Land, the painter set off on his own solitary adventures. His final wanderings remain a matter of mystery and legend, much like the last desperate wanderings of Caravaggio half a century earlier.

Sweerts died at Goa in 1664, though the circumstances of his death have been forgotten – or were never recorded. His work and even his name fell into obscurity for the next 350 years, not emerging again until a major museum retrospective in 2003 brought him back to public life.