Antwerp – Trade, Reformation and War


Towards the end of the 1400s, the tidal inlet that allowed shipping to get to Bruges began to spilt up, severely damaging the city’s mercantile prospects. At the same time the city rebelled against its overlord, the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian and he punished it by expelling foreign merchants. This encouraged the growth of Antwerp as the next major commercial centre of the Low Countries.

By 1510 different communities of merchants were settling into their own business complexes in the city – the Venetians, the Genoese, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the English all had their own quarters. The members of Antwerp’s ruling councils were drawn from an aristocratic and banking oligarchy, who were not allowed to be merchants. Consequently foreign traders were extremely powerful, creating a highly cosmopolitan centre which became the second largest European city north of the Alps. Spices, sugar, textiles, metalware, wine, salt and wheat were all changing hands here – not to mention diamonds. In 1456 a Bruges jeweller had invented a method of cutting and polishing the surface of a diamond into facets, allowing it to catch the light as it moved and creating the ‘fire and ice’ of what was to become the world’s most popular (and expensive) gemstone. Antwerp was the centre of a whole new form of luxury trade, which included paintings and works of art.

For the Spanish rulers of the Low Countries Antwerp was a gold-mine. It is estimated that, by the mid-1500s, the city was the critical centre of international finance, responsible for approximately 40% of world trade. For the King of Spain the revenues he received from Antwerp were apparently seven times higher than those coming to him from Spain’s colonies in the Americas.

But it could not last. King Philip II of Spain was determined to maintain Catholic rule in all his lands and after religious riots broke out in the Low Countries in 1566, he cracked down viciously on Protestant opposition. A decade of rebellion culminated in The Spanish Fury - a dreadful massacre of the city population in 1576. Despite trying to join the break-away regions of the northern Low Countries (which would eventually become The Netherlands), Antwerp was recaptured for Spain in 1585 and the Protestant population were given two years in which to settle their affairs and leave. Many moved north, taking their mercantile skills to Amsterdam, which would become the centre of a seventeenth century Golden Age. 

Antwerp’s Glory Years lasted barely three-quarters of a century but produced a vibrant world in which painters explored entirely new forms of subject matter, bringing the world of ordinary people into the homes of the rich. Satire became a way of commenting on society’s ills while landscape and still life became ways of showing the riches of the wider world.

Aims 

  • To look at the development of Antwerp as an artistic and financial centre and consider how political events affect the artistic production within the city. 
  • To meet some of the major artists working in Antwerp and the Low Countries during the sixteenth century and see how new forms of subject matter become popular. 
  • To round up what we have been looking at over the past six weeks of the course. 

Who was who

King Philip II – (1527 – 1598) 
We originally met Philip when we explored the world of the Holy Roman Emperor’s court in week three and again when we looked at his marriage to Queen Mary Tudor in week five. A conscientious king, who was a formidable administrator, he tried to keep a tight rein on religious dissent across his realm. In Spain he had few problems with Lutheranism or Calvinism, but in the Low Countries Protestantism rapidly took hold. The tensions between a Catholic monarch and a growing body of literate, prosperous, middle-class Protestant merchants led to calls for independence from Habsburg rule. After a disastrous sack of the city by Spanish troops in 1576 a huge revolt led to the eventual creation of the Dutch Republic. Antwerp, however, was retaken by the Spanish. Despite these political and religious traumas, Philip had a deep and abiding love for the artworks produced in his northern realm. His collection of works by artists such as Bosch, Patinier, Rogier van der Weyden and other Flemish artists, along with his unrivalled collection of works by Titian, still makes The Museo del Prado in Madrid one of the most fascinating collections of Renaissance art in the world. 

Giuseppe Verdi - (1813 – 1901) 
Italian opera composer who has nothing whatever to do with our story, except for his immortalising of both Philip II and his father, Charles V (as a ghost), in his magnificent opera, Don Carlos. Historically inaccurate but compellingly beautiful it uses the religious turmoil of the revolt of the Spanish Netherlands as the backdrop to a doomed love story. Verdi’s portrayal of Philip as a sad, lonely, deeply religious and troubled man, trying to do the right thing, is magnificent.

Hieronymus Bosch – (1450 – 1516) 
Born Hieronymus van Aken, Bosch spent most of his life in his birthplace, the Brabant town of 's Hertogenbosch – a shortened form of which became the common form of his name. Few details are known about his life and practically nothing about his personality. It is possible that, as a teenager, he witnessed the devastating fire that destroyed four thousand houses in the town in 1463 - perhaps this influenced some of the turbulent scenes of hell-fire and devastation that fill his surreal images. Many of his paintings contain fantastical creatures, contraptions and mechanisms and indicate an extraordinarily creative imagination. Not until the surrealist painters of the twentieth century would similar images become mainstream. 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder – (1525/30 – 1569) 
Pieter Bruegel was one of the most important painters of the Flemish Renaissance, creating highly influential works that broke new ground in terms of subject matter. In the early 1550s he travelled to Rome and the south of Italy where he seems to have been much more fascinated by the landscapes he saw than by the classical ruins. He lived in Antwerp from 1555, mixing in lively humanist circles and producing many designs for the printmaker Hieronymus Cock, the most important print publisher of his day. At a time of religious conflict it may have been a wise move for Bruegel to create works that concentrated on landscape and genre scenes, with no apparent religious subject matter. Scenes of peasant weddings and carnivals, work and play, became popular collectors items, with one notable patron – the banker and art collector Nicolaes Jonghelinck - apparently owning sixteen of his works, including The Tower of Babel, The Harvesters and The Hunters in the Snow 

 Slide list


Anon, The Waterfront of Antwerp, c. 1520 (Royal Museum of Fine Art, Angers) 

Jan Provost, detail from A Donor and his Wife with Saints, c. 1525 (Groeninge Museum, Bruges) 

Albrecht Durer, The Antwerp Waterfront, 1520 (Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna) 


Jan Gossaert, Portrait of a Merchant, 1530 (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.) 

Hieronymus Bosch, The Wayfarer, 1500 – 1510 (Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam) 

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, c. 1500 (Museo del Prado, Madrid) 

Hieronymus Bosch, Christ Mocked (The Crowning with Thorns), c. 1510 (National Gallery, London)

Quinten Massys, The Old Woman, c. 1513 (National Gallery, London) 

Quinten Massys, The Old Man, c. 1513 (Private Collection) 

Quinten Massys, The Moneylender and his Wife, 1514 (Musée du Louvre, Paris) 

Quinten Massys, Peter Gillis, 1517 (Private Collection) 





Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Adoration of the Kings, 1564 (National Gallery, London) 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Painter and the Buyer, c. 1565 (Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna) 


Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, 1563 (Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna) 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow (January), 1565 (Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna) 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters (August), 1565 (Metropolitan Museum, New York) 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Census at Bethlehem, 1566 (Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts, Brussels) 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Peasant Wedding, 1567 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape, with the Fall of Icarus, c. 1555 (Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts, Brussels) 


 

Maerten van Heemskerck, Building the new St Peters, 1533 – 5 (Staatliche Museen fur Kunst, Berlin) 

Maerten van Heemskerck, The Forum of Nerva, 1533 – 5 (Staatliche Museen fur Kunst, Berlin) 

Maerten van Heemskerck, The Triumphal Procession of Bacchus, 1537 -38 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) 

Maerten van Heemskerck, Venus and Cupid, 1545 (Wallraf-Richarz Museum, Cologne) 

Jan Gossaert, Hercules and Delinira, 1517 (Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham) 



Pieter Coecke van Aelst, The Temptation of St Anthony, 1543 – 50 (Museo del Prado, Madrid) 


Pieter Aertsen, The Butcher’s Stall (with the Flight into Egypt), 1551 (Gustavianum Museum, Uppsala)


 Joachim Beuckelaer, The Elements, Air, 1569-70 (National Gallery, London) 
Joachim Beuckelaer, The Elements, Earth, 1569-70 (National Gallery, London) 
Joachim Beuckelaer, The Elements, Water, 1569 – 70 (National Gallery, London) 
Joachim Beuckelaer, The Elements, Fire, 1569 – 70 (National Gallery, London) 



Peter Wtewael, Kitchen Scene (The Rich Man and Lazarus), c. 1605 (Staatliche Museen fur Kunst, Berlin)

Pieter Saenredam, Interieur van de Grote Kerk, Haarlem, 1648 (National Galleries of Scotland) 

Hendrick van Steenwyck, Interior of a Gothic Church, looking East, 1615 (National Gallery, London, not on display)

Pieter Bruegel, The Massacre of the Innocents, 1565 – 67 (Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle) 





 Marten de Vos, Antonius Anselmus and his family, 1577 (Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts, Brussels) 


Hans van Aachen, Emperor Rudolf II, 1606 – 08 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Rudolf II as Vertumnus, 1591 (Skokloster Castle, near Uppsala) 

Bartolomaeus Spranger, The Adoration of the Magi, 1595 (National Gallery, London)

Marten de Vos, St Luke Painting the Virgin Mary, 1602 (Koninklijk Museum, Antwerp) 




Catharina van Hemessen, Self Portrait, 1548 (Offentliche Kunstsammlungen, Basel) 







Frans Francken II, The Chamber of Art and Curiosities, 1636 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) 

Frans Francken II, A Visit to the Art Dealer, 1630s (Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm) 


Gerard de Jode, Prints of the Story of David and Bathsheba, published in 1585 (British Museum, London) 

Anon, Needlework panel showing the Story of David and Bathsheba , worked in England, late 17th c. (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)
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