Before Rubens: Titian’s Reception in the Habsburg Netherlands, c. 1550-1600

This research aims to retrace the reception of the art of Titian in the Southern Netherlands from about 1550, when his fame reached its peak at Brussels court, to about 1600, before the crystallization of his artistic “canone” and the developments of the XVIIth century that led to the so-called “Europeanisation of Venetian art”. Whereas the Titianism of the XVIIth century painters Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Anton van Dyck (1599-1641) had been thoroughly investigated, the timeframe immediately antecedent presents some gaps and unsolved questions. In particular, did the Flemish artists develop a homogeneous and unequivocal “idea of Titian”, or there were many? And which were the reasons for selecting and using or refusing specific aspects of Titian’s art? In the first chapter, I analyse the court environment of the Brussels court and especially the roles of Charles V (1500-1558), Mary of Hungary (1505-1558) and Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1518-1586) in selecting and directing Titian’s production for the court. Their political necessities, artistic taste, and subscription to a language of power oriented towards an all’antica idiom shaped the idea of Titian in the Netherlands. This idea was inherently classical, dealing with Michelangelism and with the Central-Italian art, and the pictorial style was far from the glazed and polished one of the Flemish masters, but it was also not yet the “pittura a macchia” described in 1568 by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574). The second and the third chapters are devoted to Netherlandish artists who had a direct relation to the Habsburgs, being both court painters for Charles V first and for Philip II (1527-1598) after. The first, Michiel Coxcie (1499-1592), was a history painter who specialised in altarpieces and religious works following the novelties of Roman art, in particular Raphael’s. Being one of the favourite artists of the Brussels court, he was Titian’s peer, and many of their works were hanging next to each other in the Habsburgs palaces. Coxcie used Titian’s motives in his art together with the Central-Italian’s, with no distinction. The second, Anthonis Mor (1520-1577), specialised in portraiture. He adapted the full-length type of portrait that Titian had developed for the Habsburgs for the Flemish-oriented taste of the Netherlandish, German and Spanish aristocracy. His adaptation led to the standardisation of this type as the perfect expression of power through portraiture. After focusing on the court environment under the direct influence of the Habsburgs, I open my view to the artistic production of the city of Antwerp and I identify two macro-themes: the religious paintings and the mythological subjects with the display of naked women. In the fourth chapter, I discuss the issue of Titian’s religious inventions that were adapted and re-invented by the artists in connection to the religious debate. Both Protestants and Catholics expressed their concerns about images, and after the Beeldenstorm (1566) the Netherlandish artists had to experiment and test the boundaries of decorum to find their secure place in the market. Some inventions by the Venetian had particular fortune because of their connection with the Habsburgs (Ecce homo and Mater Dolorosa), but a particular composition had been adapted by painters for its theological implication, namely the engraving of the Adoration of the shepherds (1532/33). The fifth and last chapter studies the reception of the mythological paintings by Titian and of the “Titianesque” mythological themes related to the immense fame of his poesie for Philip II. After discussing the problems of the image debate about lasciviousness and the representation of the nude, I examine how this affected the art market of Antwerp. The depiction of mythologies was not particularly popular in the decades from the 1560s to the 1580s, and few painters specialised in these themes. The artists selected as case studies are Jan Massys (1509-1575), Frans Floris (1517-1570), Jacob de Backer (c. 1555-c. 1585) and Gillis Coignet (1538-1599). These painters worked for circles of rich merchants who collected especially mythological artworks and sold them abroad on the French market and to foreign Princes like Rudolph II (1552-1612). The approaches of these painters to Titian’s art were very sporadic and often too emphasized by the scholars, but they contributed to the process of assimilation of certain themes and compositions into the pictorial language of the end of the century. Gillis Coignet was the first Netherlandish painter who consistently adapted Titian’s inventions and also the first who experimented on the renowned pictorial technique of the Venetian master. In the end, I draw some conclusions on the aspects of Titianisme in the Netherlands before Rubens and the establishment of the Brussels court of Albert VII (1559-1621) and Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566-1633). The research downsized some ideas on the impact of Titian’s art on the Netherlandish painters and revealed the coexistence of different “ideas of Titian” related to the experience of the artists and their intentions. In this study, I also pinpoint some critical issues in the relation between the “idea” of the painter advocated by literature and the one grounded in the practical use of his art.