Two sides of the same coin?
Nature and History at the time of Pieter Bruegel and Michiel Coxcie (c. 1540-1585)
A symposium in Museum M Leuven & the Royal Museums of Fine Art in Brussels
In collaboration with the Universities of Leuven and Ghent
13 & 14 DECEMBER 2014
Pieter Bruegel (d. 1569) and Michiel Coxcie (1499-1592) were highly successful painters. Both were
active among urban and courtly elites in Antwerp and Brussels. Both were trained in the local painting
and tapestry milieu. Both went to Italy. Nevertheless, their respective interpretations of early
Netherlandish art, Italian Renaissance art and theory, antiquity and nature were utterly different.
Although their respective styles and iconographies seem conflicting, they also correspond: each in their
own way formulated new imagery based on nature as well as on history. Their diverging attempts to craft
new artistic idioms by reworking various sources ultimately concur in the humanist ‘ad fontes’ idea. As
such, the work of Bruegel and Coxcie is illustrative of the paradoxical nature of sixteenth century northern
art and its art historical assessment.
The ambition of this conference is to reassess the astonishing stylistic diversity among
Netherlandish painters at the time of Bruegel and Coxcie. Particularly its seemingly contradictory nature
will be examined. How did Netherlandish artists, upon their return from Italy, merge the artistic traditions
of North and South, the Antique and the vernacular, nature and history? How could common paradigms
lead to such divergent outcomes?
Conference committee:
Tine Meganck (Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels)
Sabine van Sprang (Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels)
Peter Carpreau (Museum M, Leuven)
Katlijne Van der Stighelen (University of Leuven)
Koenraad Jonckheere (University of Ghent)
Day 1 – Museum M Leuven
9h: Registration and Coffee
9h30: Opening and Status Quaestionis
10h00: Morning session
Chair: Dominique Allard
Peter Carpreau
Brueghel vs. Cocxie, de redenen van het vergeten
It is hard to find greater counterparts in the sixteenth century in the Low Countries than Coxcie and
Bruegel. One is known for his great altarpieces, the other for his genre scenes. While Bruegel today is part
of the canon, Coxcie has been dismissed. Has it always been the case?
Based on the analysis of auction records of the past centuries, it is possible to sketch the changes in taste
and recognition for both painters. Moreover, mapping the fluctuations in ‘taste’ makes is easier to
reconstruct the historiography of sixteenth century art and reconstruct our own canon. A historicaleconomical analysis of the work Bruegel and Coxcie allows for a re-evaluation of the impact of nationalism
and romanticism on our perception of Old Master painting.
E. Matt Kavaler
Pan-European and Local: Perspectives of Various Media
Recent examination of the ‘vernacular’ has stimulated new evaluations of Netherlandish sixteenth-century
art. Notions of ‘hybridity’, ‘style’, and ‘place’ are all central to these analyses. So is the concept of artistic
medium. Although most scholars have addressed painting, the other media—particularly sculpture and
architecture—were equally important references in this discussion. In fact, the modern habit of
separating activity according to differing nominal occupations in the arts hardly conforms to sixteenthcentury practice. Painters, masons, carvers, and goldsmiths, for instance, all designed architecture and
sculpture. This situation raises several questions: How closely was antiquity associated with Italy? How
significant was ornament as an index of artistic manner and cultural allegiance? What role did collecting
and export play in this discourse, especially abroad? And has attention to urban critics like Ortelius, De
Heere, Lampsonius, and van Mander led historians to undervalue the perspective of the court? Through
attention to the plastic arts in particular, this paper will address aspects of the ‘Netherlandishness’ of Low
Countries art.
12h00: Lunch break
13u30: Afternoon session
Chair: Katlijne Van der Stighelen
Ed Wouk
The Nature of Niclaes Jonghelinck’s Collection
The financier Niclaes Jonghelinck boasted one of the most significant collections of contemporary art in
mid-sixteenth century Antwerp, yet his practice of collecting has defied convincing analysis. This paper
seeks to situate Jonghelinck’s seemingly disparate choice of paintings – specifically those by Frans Floris
and Bruegel the Elder – in the context of an emerging discourse on the identity of Netherlandish art in
which the ancient concept of Altera natura, the relationship between a people and their environment, was
reconfigured to justify and celebrate the harmonious coexistence of diverse modes of representation in
northern Europe. Coxcie is noticeable for his absence from Jonghelinck’s collection and from the critical
discussion on art that arose in the years it was amassed, a result both of his geographic remove from
Antwerp and of his peripheral status in the closely-knit community that sought to define a coherent
evolution of Netherlandish art and make its nature a topic of discussion.
Tine Meganck
Nature, History and Natural History in the Art of Pieter Bruegel and Maerten de Vos
In the second half of the sixteenth century the Low Countries was scourged by waves of image breaking,
raising questions about the status and role of art after iconoclasm. These same years also experienced an
unprecedented synergy of art and of knowledge, as expressed in the emergence of cabinets of art and
curiosities, and in innovative scientific and scholarly illustration in such field as antiquity, chorography,
geography and botany. The aim of my lecture is to connect recent research on image debates in wake of
iconoclasm (cf work of Jonckheere) with new insights on early modern art and knowledge. To do so I will
follow the path of two key painters of the period whose artistic output is at first sight stylistically very
divergent: Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Maerten de Vos. Taking their common friendship with the
Bolognese naturalist Scipio Fabio and the Antwerp geographer Abraham Ortelius as a starting point, I will
explore how each in his own way tried to address a multi-confessional audience by sourcing on nature,
history and natural history.
Marissa Bass
Natura Sola Magistra: Bruegel, Hoefnagel, and Humanist Discourse during the Dutch Revolt
The desire to align the art of Pieter Bruegel the Elder with the humanist discourse of his time weaves a
continuous thread through scholarship on the artist, and yet the connection remains elusive. Although
Bruegel famously garnered praise from the great cartographer Abraham Ortelius, it was his fellow
Antwerp artist Joris Hoefnagel – a skilled Latinist as well as a gifted painter of naturalia – who engaged far
more directly with sixteenth-century humanist enterprise.
This paper examines the still neglected inscriptions and drawings that Hoefnagel penned in the alba
amicorum of his friends Abraham Ortelius, Emanuel van Meteren, and others. I argue that Hoefnagel
explored the boundary between art and nature as a means to comment obliquely and personally on the
tumultuous events of the Dutch Revolt, and conclude by reflecting on how Hoefnagel differed from
Bruegel in his approach to the natural world and the troubled times in which they lived.
15h30: Coffee & Tour of the Coxcie exhibition (separate registration)
Day 2 – Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
9h30: Morning session
Chair: Maximiliaan Martens
Eckhardt Leuschner / Giovanna Sapori
Coxcie's Italian Sojourn in Context: the Cappella di Santa Barbara and Church Decorations of the 1530s in
Rome
The paper will explore Coxcie's only extant fresco decoration in Rome, the Cappella di Santa Barbara in
Santa Maria dell'Anima, in the context of the painter's activities in Italy and the general artistic situation of
the early 1530's in Rome, i.e. the years immediately following the Sacco. We will base our contribution on
the results of the recent restoration activities in the chapel which permit to better distinguish between the
original substance of Coxcie's art and later additions or reworkings. We will then compare the Cappella di
Santa Barbara with the (not too many) other chapel decorations executed in the years immediately after
the Sacco di Roma and discuss the stylistic and iconographic profile of "Coxcie Romano".
Manfred Sellink
Bruegel, Coxcie and the Italian landscape
Even for many Bruegel scholars the fact that Pieter the Elder's conception of landscape was profoundly
influenced by Italian and notably Venetian artists such as Titian and Campagnola remains little known.
Following up on Hans Mielke's observations and insights produced by the Rotterdam/New York 2001
exhibition, this talk aims to cover this subject in the field of drawing as well as painting and to compare
Bruegel's reception to Italian landscapes with that of Michiel Coxcie. Do they have more in common than
first meets the eye?
Stefaan Hautekeete
Italianate and vernacular trends in the work of Hans Bol
The focus of this talk is the stylistic diversity in the work of the Flemish master Hans Bol (1534-1593),
who has often been considered a follower of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Many of Bol’s designs for prints
indeed display the style and pen technique that Bruegel formulated in his model sheets of the 1550s. But
from the start of his career, Bol combined the Flemish tradition with an interest in the works of Northern
masters inspired by Italian Renaissance art. This explains why Bol also developed a more nervous
draughtsman’s style and a preference for figures with slim proportions and graceful attitudes that
ultimately derived, via Hans Vredeman de Vries, from the example of Frans Floris and Pieter Coecke van
Aelst. This lecture will unveil the native and foreign artistic traditions from which Bol drew inspiration
and demonstrate how he combined a variety of motifs in highly personal works of art enriched by his keen
observation of Nature.
12h00: Lunch Break
13u30: Afternoon session
Chair: Anne-Laure van Bruaene
Koenraad Jonckheere
Plato’s Cave. The reception of the Renaissance and Antiquity in the Low Countries.
Of one the highlights of the Michiel Coxcie exhibition is a painting of Plato’s Cave, which can, cautiously, be
attributed to the artist. More than the depiction of a famous and influential myth, the painting is a
comment on the reception of Antiquity in Italy and the Low Countries. As such, the painting was arguably
the first art theoretical ‘treatise’ in the Low Countries.
Mattijs Ilsink
Pieter Bruegel and the Cripples from Croton, a case of 'inversive emulation'
The art of Pieter Bruegel the Elder is arguably all about imitation. The imitation of Nature and the
imitation of Art. Already in his lifetime was Bruegel called the second Jheronimus Bosch. One of his print
designs even mentions Bosch as inventor instead of Bruegel. This talk deals with Bruegel’s little painting of
a group of cripples in the Louvre. It can be discussed as part of a small group of bagatelles, more or less
amusing paintings that are seemingly without pretension. It will be argued that in the Cripples Bruegel is
not so much acting as a second Bosch but is painting like – emulating - the great Greek painter Zeuxis.
Although little in size this painting is an important moment in sixteenth century artistic discourse in the
Netherlands because it discusses the relation between Art and Nature and does so in a way that is
pretentious indeed.
David Freedberg
Concluding Remarks