Friday, April 6, 2018

Italianate Art by the Bentvueghels (or Schildersbent)

Anonymous Netherlandish painter
Inauguration ceremonies in Rome for new members of the Bentvueghels
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

"The Bentvueghels is the name of the group of 17th-century Netherlandish artists who banded together in Rome for social and cultural reasons.  This group existed for about 100 years, from around 1620 to 1720.  The meetings were interspersed with meals, drinking bouts and initiation ceremonies.  If one of their number was in need – financial or social – the group provided support.  The group culture was most evident in the rituals that accompanied the inauguration of a new member – known as 'green' or 'novice'.  However, the association was not institutionalized to the extent that they had their own building, committee or written rules.  The meetings were held in a room in an inn.  There was only ever any form of hierarchy at the moment of the initiation and this, like the rituals themselves and the regulations, were intended as parody.  As far as their contacts with the authorities were concerned, there were often clashes, sometimes tolerance, but never recognition.  There is known to have been a conflict with the Roman Academy of St Luke in the 1630s.  The group lived on friendly and hostile terms with their French and German fellow-artists.  As well as confrontation, there was also assimilation, expressed among other things in collaboration with Italian artists and with a permanent establishment in Rome.  . . .  The 'Schildersbent' (painters' clique) as the group was also known, had no characteristic artistic style of its own.  Every current style and subject in paintings was represented in the work of the member artists.  . . .  The Bentvueghels group had at least 480 members spanning the best part of a century.  The numbers reflected a pattern of growth, flourishing, and decline during the time the group was in existence: the number of members in the first quarter of the 17th century doubled in the second quarter, quadrupled in the third quarter, dropped in the fourth quarter to slightly more than the original numbers, and finally, in the first quarter of the 18th century, continued to dwindle until the last Bentvueghel disappeared."

– Judith Verberne, from the catalogue of a 2001 exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, published in English as Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch artists in Italy, translated by Lynne Richards

Below, a cross-section of Italianate images by both well-remembered and by near-forgotten Bentvueghels –

Bartholomeus Breenbergh
Piazza del Popolo, Rome
(showing a fragment of the old city walls, shortly to be demolished)
before 1657
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

attributed to Bartholomeus Breenbergh
Bridge in an Italian town
before 1657
drawing
British Museum
 



Bartholomeus Breenbergh
S. Pietro in Vincola, Rome
before 1657
drawing
British Museum

Pieter Moninckx
Pyramid of Cestius and the Porta San Paolo, Rome
before 1686
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pieter Moninckx
View of Civitavecchia with harbor wall
ca. 1660
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Bartholomeus Appelman
Hilly landscape with a chapel by a bridge

ca. 1650-86
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Herman Breckerveld
Landscape with rider
before 1673
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jan Lapp
Italian travellers halting at a watering-place on a rocky path
ca. 1625
drawing
British Museum

Paul Bril
Landscape with travellers at sunset, near Rome
1606
drawing
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jan Both
Herdsmen with cows on a lakeshore, with ruins in background
before 1652
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jan Asselijn
Mountainous Italianate landscape with rustic bridge and travellers
ca. 1635-50
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Jan Asselijn
View of the Arch of Constantine before full excavation, seen from the Colosseum, Rome
ca. 1635-42
drawing
Harvard Art Museums

Jan Asselijn
View from the Capitol, Rome
(rear of balustrade with Trophy of Marius, the Dioscuri, statue of Constantine, and St Peter's in the distance)
ca. 1635-42
drawing
British Museum