Flemish Art and Architecture 1585-1700. - Review - book review

HANS VLIEGHE

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

339 pp.; 100 color ills., 306 b/w, 1 map. $75

Hans Vlieghe's new edition in the Pelican History of Art series has moved far from its predecessor, coauthored by Horst Gerson and E. H. ter Kuile. [1] As Vlieghe writes in the foreword, he has rejected the previous practice of separating the best-known artists from the others. Instead, the material is "organized around pictorial categories of Antwerp specialists." Landscapes by Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck, for instance, are now part of the general section on landscape. This organization makes the development of genres much easier to follow. Conversely, the scope of artists who worked in more than one genre becomes harder to grasp--but then, there are numerous books devoted to individual artists.

The title of Vlieghe's book substitutes "Flemish" for the previous, historically incorrect reference to Belgium. His organization of material according to specializations is likewise historically appropriate, for it follows the hierarchy of subjects dominant at the time in art theory (though not always in practice). History paintings come first, followed by other types of figural art, landscape, and last of all, still life. Discussing sculpture after painting is likewise consistent with the relative status these two arts had in the Netherlands. Omitting printmaking as a separate art form while including architecture, however, ignores the Netherlandish prioritizing of painting, printmaking, and sculpture in favor of the sweepingly influential Italian system of classification popularized in the mid-16th century by Giorgio Vasari, the three arti del disegno.

Rubens's figural paintings loom prominently in the sections on large-scale history production, but receive only a mention in the section on cabinet-size pieces. Monumental scale is what Rubens repeatedly favored, of course, and he said so explicitly in his letters, as Vlieghe notes. Nevertheless, Rubens was exceptionally conscious of the effect of small-size works on a viewer. "As for the subject, it is best to choose it according to the size of the picture; for there are subjects which are better treated in a large space, and others that call for medium or small proportions," he wrote in a letter dated July 25, 1637. [2] His small works were not simply reduced versions of what he would have done on a grand scale. Instead, the figures usually seem at a greater distance from the viewer, who sees them from a higher viewing angle. A representative example would have been the intimately scaled Lamentation of 1614 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 16 by 20 5/8 inches [40.5 by 52.5 centimeters]).

Organizing material according to specializations has an unacknowledged limitation. In his introductory essay Vliegbe draws attention to the existence of works produced through the collaboration of two or more specialists, a procedure more common in the Netherlands than elsewhere in Europe. Yet Vlieghe discusses collaboration only cursorily, and without directing the reader to the few included examples, such as figs. 298 or 304. The probable reason is that such works elude the organizing principle of the book. Yet collaboration existed, and its existence raises various questions. What do we learn from the fact that ignoring collaboration has virtually no effect on the discussion of certain figural artists, such as Van Dyck, whereas it distorts our understanding of others, among them Rubens, who often collaborated with landscape or still-life painters, especially in the 1610s and 1620s (for example, figs. 290, 304)? What type of naturalism could accommodate the subtle but visible inconsistencies of style that result when two or more professional painters work on the same picture? On close inspection, the human figures are painted differently from the animals or the setting, with its vegetation and rocks. It could be argued that such visual discrepancies were compatible with the accepted view of reality, which interpreted humans, animals, plants, and Inanimate objects as occupying hierarchically different positions in the great chain of being. The place to discuss some implications of collaboration would be prior to the separation of material by specialization, namely, in the introduction, where collaboration is introduced. Doing so, however, would unbalance an excellent overview packed with contextual information, including the function, patronage, and marketing of works.

The most substantial difference between the original and the present edition concerns the relationship between Flemish and Dutch art. Gerson tended to focus on what he identified as Flemish characteristics. He described the influence of Dutch innovations on Flemish art (or the reverse) as the meeting of separate traditions. For instance, Jan Fyt's development showed the change of "an indigenous Flemish extroversion into an imported Dutch introvert art." [3] By contrast, Vlieghe emphasizes the continuities between the art of the two Netherlands, and he does so explicitly, especially at the beginning. "Certainly the art of the North and South had much in common" (p. 1). "It can be said that as the seventeenth century progressed, interest in erudite history painting with a significant allegorical content increased steadily in both the Northern and Southern Netherlands" (p.5). "In both the Netherlands, these types of painting [genre, landscape, and still life] went through the same kinds of typological and styl istic development" (p. 7). It is telling how the two authors interpret the work of Adriaen Brouwer, active in both parts of the Netherlands. For Gerson, "his early works, i.e., those probably painted in Holland, have a clearly Flemish character, and ... the later ones, certainly painted in Antwerp, are executed with a Dutch sensitiveness for painterly qualities...." More specifically, "the thick brushwork, the lively action, the sense of drama, and the radiant glory of the colours [of the early works] are all in the Flemish tradition." [4] For Vlieghe, by contrast, the same early works painted in Holland represent "fundamental innovations to the traditional crowded and colourful Breugelesque peasant scene, as it had survived in both the Northern and Southern Netherlands," and their painting technique is "similar to the technique of contemporary Haarlem painters" (p. 155). Vlieghe's reminders that political separation did not lead to a sharp divide between the art of the two countries was a needed corrective, especially in view of the lingering traces of the distorted but vivid contrast between Flemish and Dutch art drawn by Arnold Hauser in his popular Social History of Art. Yet given that Vlieghe's text will be the first introduction to Flemish art for some readers, more attention could be paid to those characteristics that permit the identification of some works as Flemish rather than Dutch.