The Haarlem Mannerists: Mannerism above the dividing line

I have previously covered the benefits that accrued to the city of Harlem as a result of the migration of businessmen and artists out of Antwerp in the years prior, and subsequent, to the surrender of Antwerp to the Duke of Parma. This inflow of human capital transformed Haarlem into one of the leading artistic centers of the young Netherlands. Haarlem Mannerism, unique to the city, was a key element of the Haarlem artistic scene; I trace its origins and development in this post.

Hans Speckaert
Mannerism's journey into Haarlem is somewhat convoluted, with its origins rooted in the works of Hans Speckaert (1540 - 1577). Speckaert was a Flemish Renaissance painter who had travelled to Rome sometime after 1566 and was prominent among the small group of Flemish artists working therein. He had closely studied the works of Michelangelo, Raphael, and other Renaissance artists, as well as the Mannerist painters Parmigianino and Jacopo Bertoja, resulting in a style "characterized by tall, elongated figures in highly expressive poses" as seen in his The Assumption of the Virgin and The Crucifixion of Christ.

The Assumption of the Virgin, c. 1570
Hans Speckaert

The Crucifixion of Christ, c. 1577
Hans Speckaert

Speckaert died in Rome in 1577 and management of his estate passed to his friend Anthonie van Santvort. Van Santfort came into possession of Speckaert's drawings shortly after upon the death of Cornelis Cort, Speckaert's former print publisher, and opened his house such that artists visiting Rome could study them. As a result of van Santfort's generosity, Speckaert's "fluid and elegant" drawing style was exposed to, and exerted significant influence on, Northern contemporaries such as Bartholemus Spranger, Hans von Aachen, and Karl van Mander.

Bartholemus Spranger
Bartholemus Spranger (1546 - 1611) was a Flemish painter and etcher who, upon completion of his landscaping apprenticeship in Antwerp, taught himself the formal idiom of Mannersim by copying engravings after Frans Floris and Parmigianino. He traveled to Paris in 1565 then onto Rome via Milan and Parma. He gained Cardinal Alessandro Farnese as a patron in 1567 and was later appointed painter at the Vatican by Pope Pius V.

Following the death of Pope Pius, Spranger was summoned to the court of Emperor Maximillin II in Vienna in 1575 and, six years later, to the court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague where he gained the Emperor's favor and attained great fame and fortune.

Spranger's body of work is comprised of "mythological and allegorical pictures as well as erotically tinged scenes in the Mannerist style." His nudes were built around mannered poses, slender, elongated bodies..." and inviting smiles. Two of his works -- Venus in Vulcan's Forge and Venus and Adonis -- are shown below. Note the monumentality and expressive poses a la Speckaert.

Venus in Vulcan's Forge
Bartholemus Spranger

Venus and Adonis
Bartholemus Spranger

Spranger exerted significant influence on the younger generation of painters at the court as well as on German, Flemish, Dutch, and French art. From the early 1580s, Hendrik Goltzius, whom I will discuss later, made engravings of Spranger's paintings, further spreading his fame around Europe.

The Haarlem Mannerists
Karel van Mander (1548 - 1606), better known for his history of the Northern European painters of the 1400s and 1500s than for his own works, resided in Italy from 1573 to 1577 and, while there, met Giorgio Vasari, who by that time had completed his work on the Lives of the Italian Artists. Giorgio also operated a large art school at that time. Van Mander was impressed by the school, Vasari's book, and his Mannerist paintings.

When van Mander returned to Holland, he brought along some Spranger's drawings and they had a significant impact on Dutch art. Spranger moved to Haarlem in 1583 and founded an academy with Hendrick Goeltzius and Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem.

Hendrick Goeltzius (1558 - 1616), a German-born copper-engraver and publisher, learned his trade under the Dutch master Dirck Volckertszoon Coomhert and moved with him to Haarlem in 1577. At the age of 21, Goeltzius married an older widow and was able to establish an independent and successful business.

The academy founded by the three men was responsible for development of the Haarlem Mannerist style, a style characterized by "complex compositions and figures with exaggerated physiques and comparatively small heads." Another source describes the works as depicting "exaggeratedly brawny musclemen, violent drama, with fantasy and a rare richness of detail." Works from each of the founding members are shown below.

Icarus
Hendrick Goltzius

Before the Flood
Karel van Mander

The Fall of the Titans, 1588 - 90
Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem

In 1585 Goltzius had gotten in touch with Spranger and developed a copper plate method suited to translating his "elegant, affected, and figure-oriented mannerism." Distribution of these works aided in the popularization of Spranger and established Haarlem as the center of Mannerism in the Dutch Republic. Goltzius' workshop and publishing house were focal points of activity for Haarlem Mannerists and his students included Jan Saenredam, Jan Muller, Jacob Matham.

Goltzius eventually traveled to Rome in 1590 and, upon his return, deserted the Spranger Mannerism for a "calmer, clearer language of forms informed by antiquity and the Italian Renaissance." The contradt can be seen in the two Hercules works below, The Great Hercules done prior to his trip to Rome and the other done on his return.

The Great Hercules, 1589
Hendrick Goltzius

Farnese Hercules, 1592
Hendrick Goltzius

Even though Goltzius had moved on, his student Jan Muller continued with the Mannerist tradition well into the following century.

Cain violently kills Abel
Engraving by Jan Muller after Cor

Cleopatra, c. 1598
Engraving by Jan Muller, after Adriaen de Vries

Unconstrained by the religious considerations bounding Flemish Mannerists, Haarlem Mannerism was free to develop along the lines pursued by the artists and demanded by the patrons. First, there were multiple sources of influence, to include the court at Prague, artists returning from trips to Italy, and communications with artist communities active in Rome. Second, the Haarlem Mannerist figures seem to evolve from elegant to more "brutish" over the course of the movement's life.

In any case, the end of the Flemish and Haarlem Mannerist strains at the end of the century signals the end of the Northern Renaissance and the beginning of the Baroque period.

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Northern Mannerism: The Flemish Experience (1560 - 1600)

Artists from the Low Countries had been traveling to Italy since the early part of the 16th century -- Jan Gossaert was the first to make the trip in 1509 -- but, to a large extent, the Netherlandish painting style remained aloof from Italian Renaissance influences. Those artists who did reflect some Italian influence in their work in the first half of the 15th century became known as Romanists. The Italianate influence was reflected in: (i) a greater emphasis on human form; (ii) the addition of classical myths and legends to the artist's repertoire; and (iii) inclusion of Classic Roman architecture in the painted scene. The works of these artists were primarily religious and mythological and included anatomically correct human beings in contrived poses.

Mannerism arose in Florence towards the end of the High Renaissance but came into full flower in Rome from whence it was exported to points north. This "Northern Mannerism" had unique individual flavors depending on the geographic region in which it took root. For example, the French strain of Northern Mannerism was referred to as the Fontainebleau School and was characterized by an innate elegance.

The type of Mannerist expression encountered in Antwerp prior to the religious troubles differed from the Counter-Reformation-compliant art in evidence during the re-furnishing of places of worship which, in turn, differed from the Haarlem Mannerism with its Prague-infused roots. I will examine Northern Mannerism on both sides of the post-1585 Low-Countries-dividing line beginning, in this post, with the Flemish experience.

Frans Floris (1520 - 1570)

Floris, known in his day as the Flemish Raphael, is a clear link between the Romanist and Mannerist styles in that his works done around 1545 were Romanist while those done post-1560 were Mannerist.

Frans Floris

Floris studied in Rome from 1541 to 1545, and upon his return established a large successful school (over 120 graduates) while also cornering the market for drawings for engravers. All printmakers active in the Netherlands between 1550 and 1570 worked from his designs.

Floris primarily painted religious works and Classical allegories in a "rather artificial style that borrowed heavily from Michelangelo and the Italian Mannerists in its elegant rhetoric and cool eroticism" (Vlieghe).

In his transition to Mannerism he took a less sculptural approach to the figures in his paintings  and his palette became more monochromatic. His later Mannerist style evidenced some influence from the Fontainebleau School in that his figures became more elegant and his output more refined.

Banquet of the Gods, 1550
Frans Floris

The awakening of the Arts, 1560
Frans Floris

The Mannerist style that Floris evolved remained dominant in Flanders until the end of the 16th century. Floris never recovered from seeing his paintings destroyed during the furies and virtually stopped painting after 1566.

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A great number of altarpieces had been destroyed or disappeared during the iconoclastic furies and a major effort was undertaken to replace them. Frans Floris had ceased painting but a large number of young painters (who had either been trained by Floris, or had made the trip to Italy and so was familiar with the Mannerist style, or both) were available to take up the task. Application of these learnings to the production of the new art varied widely, however. Some artists went back to their Netherlandish roots, while others fully applied the Mannersist idioms, while still others implemented a hybrid approach.  One of the painters in the highest demand during this period was Marten de Vos.

Marten de Vos (1532 - 1603)
De Vos was trained by his father and Frans Floris and traveled to Rome in the company of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. He resided in Italy from 1550 to 1558 and worked in Tintoretto's studio in Venice. When de Vos returned to Antwerp in 1558, Floris was the leading history painter in Flanders and it was very difficult for young painters to gain commissions.

His paintings in the 1560s and 1570s clearly reflected his Floris training and the time that he had spent in Italy. His early paintings, according to Hans Vlieghe (Flemish Art and Architecture, 1585 - 1700), "... can easily be recognized by the gracefully stylized and elongated poses of the figures, with their sometimes emphatic distortions as well as in the typical Raumflucht effects of foreshortening and perspective." His Mannerist styling is displayed in The Dream of Pilate's Wife.

The dream of Pilate's Wife
Marten de Vos

Withe the passage of time, and an increase in commissions and fame, the Mannerist idioms began to slip out of de Vos' compositions. In the altarpiece Christ showing his wounds to Thomas, "a tempered Mannerism is combined with a preference for narrative that is more in line with Netherlandish tradition" (Vlieghe). In Saint Luke painting the Virgin, the Mannerist elements are almost totally missing.

Christ showing his wounds to Thomas, 1574
Marten de Vos

Saint Luke painting the Madonna, 1602
Marten de Vos

Ambrosius and Frans Francken
The Francken brothers exhibited a similar painting style to Marten de Vos. Born into a successful painting family, Hieronymus, Ambrosius, and Frans Francken trained under Frans Folis. Ambrosius and Hieronymus went to Fontainbleau upon completing training in 1570, with Ambrosius returning to Antwerp in 1573. Ambrosius, like de Vos, capitalized on the need for large altar pieces post the Reformation. His style is characterized as "descriptive realism with reminiscenses of the Early Netherlandis traditions ... combined with the portrayal of Mannerist physical contortions derived from the late-16th-century Tuscan-Roman art."

Frans Francken exhibited a similar style in his works.

The Martyrdom of St. Crispin and St. Crispinian
Ambrosius Francken

Christ among the Scribes, 1586
Frans Francken

Hendrik de Clerck (1570 - 1630)
Hendrik de Clerck, the foremost artist in Brussels in his day, was a student of De Vos and the teacher's work served as his starting point. He served as the Court painter to Ernest, Archduke of the Netherlands as well as his successors, Albert and Isabella.

Self-Portrait
Hendrik de Clerck

De Clerck painted a significant number of altarpieces to replace those damaged in churches and monasteries. As did De Vos, he sought a Netherlandish-tradition-based realism but his "weak and sometimes apparently elongated poses, together with the more sentimental facial expressions of his characters, also betray knowledge of the style of Parmigianino, with which De Clerck must first have become familiar in Italy" (Vlieghe).

Vlieghe sees De Clerck's emotionally charged Mannerism as akin to the Haarlem Mannerists but subordinated to "clear and well organized composition." His general characteristics include hard, rather metallic linearity and boniness of the male face, starkly accentuated by the sculptural effect of light.

The Judgment of Midas, c. 1600
Hendrik de Clerck

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It was almost a rite of passage for a Flemish painter to travel to Italy upon completion of his apprenticeship and, while their, to study the masters, the Classics, and, in the latter part of the 16th century Mannerism." But these painters were also schooled in the Netherlandish traditions and we see that, when called upon to deliver the large numbers of religious paintings required after the Reformation, they employed a watered-down Mannerism in the eventual solution. In the case of Marten de Vos, his later paintings contained no Mannerist idioms.

I will treat the Haarlem Mannerists in my next post.

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Transmission of Bruegel's techniques and topics into the Dutch Republic

The fall of Antwerp to the Duke of Parma in 1585 signaled the effective partition of the Low Countries into the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces and precipitated the flight of non-Catholics to the north, the Pfalz region of Germany, and England.

Migration actually began with the iconoclastic riots in 1566, intensified when Spain secured strongholds in Flanders and Brabant in the late 1570s, and became a flood with the fall of Antwerp in 1585 and the years immediately after. In the years following 1585, about 38,000 refugees left Antwerp for other shores.

In this post we will focus on the refugee situations in Haarlem and Amsterdam as they were the main beneficiaries of the Brugelian legacy.

Haarlem
A devastating fire in 1576 had destroyed over 400 homes, leaving large spaces open for development. When refugees flowed out of Flanders beginning in the late 1570s, Haarlem had available space on which to resettle them. Further, a treaty signed with William the Silent in 1981 allowed the city to repurpose the property of former monasteries, thus providing additional capacity for refugee support.

The first wave of refugees were drawn from the linen and cloth industries in the south and were followed by the professional class beginning in 1578. The City Magistrate offered subsidies and other perks to lure professionals to set up shop within the city gates.

Flemish artists were among the professionals who made their way to Haarlem. The iconoclastic wars of the summer of 1576 had introduced challenges to the Antwerp artistic community and many had packed their bags and headed for Amsterdam, Middleburg, and Haarlem.

The inflow of artistic talent helped to jump-start the Haarlem art market:

• Local artists were exposed to new genres
• These new entrants set up workshops in their new homeland
• Talented local youth were taken under the wings of these refugee masters.

Amsterdam
Going to Amsterdam was a risky decision for an Antwerp painter as it was still a relative backwater in 1585. From 1585 onwards Amsterdam rapidly caught up with Antwerp thanks to the steady stream of refugees arriving from Flanders and Brabant. What had been a modest provincial town became a bustling metropolis with population rising from 27,000 to 60,000 between 1585 and 1600. This increase in population had a significant positive effect on Amsterdam's economy and as purchasing power grew, so did the demand for art.

The Antwerp painter population decreased by 50% after 1585. One of the beneficiaries, Amsterdam, saw its painter population grow rapidly such that, by 1990, the painter population in both cities was almost equal. Between 1585 and 1600 there were 112 painters registered in Amsterdam, 31 of whom had been born in Antwerp and 24 of the 31 had been active in Antwerp before settling in Amsterdam.

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It is within this environment, and under these conditions, that the Brueghel techniques and topics made their way into the painting scene in the North. The chart below shows the painters who were primarily responsible for the transfer of the Bruegelian themes and techniques from the Spanish Netherlands to the United Provinces.

This group of painters, sometimes referred to as the Amsterdam Circle of Flemish Painters, remained faithful to Bruegelian model and traditions.

Landscape Painting
In the United Provinces, landscapes were primarily done in the Mannerist style. An example from the Utrecht artist Abraham Bloemaert is shown below.

Niobe mourning her children, 1591
Abraham Bloemaert

With the arrival of the Flemings, some of Bruegel's formulas for landscape painting -- especially his thick-forest wilderness -- begin to make their presence felt.

Alongside Jan Bruegel the Elder, Gillis van Coninxloo (1544 - 1607) is the painter usually credited with making the greatest contribution to the development of images in forest settings. Van Coninxloo studied under Pieter Coecke van Aelst (Bruegel the Elder's teacher and father-in-law); taught Pieter Bruegel the Younger; and strongly influenced the works of Jan Bruegel the Elder, Roelandt Savery, and David Vinckboons. Van Coninxloo's early landscapes were influenced by Bruegel the Elder. Note the thick-forest landscape in the painting below.

Forest landscape, 1591
Gillis van Coninxloo

Landscape with a hunting party and an overturned wagon
David Vinckboons

Jacob Savery (1545 - 1603) was a student of Hans Bol and himself taught his brother Roelandt Savery (1576 - 1635). All of his landscape paintings in the 1584 - 1586 period show strong Brueglian influences.Unfortunately Savery is also known for forging a number of works by signing Bruegels name to the paintings and ascribing them dates during which Bruegel was still alive. These forgeries have been discovered and the paintings re-assigned to Savery.

Landscape with the story of Jephte's Daughter, 1585
Jacob Savery

Mountainous Landscape with the return of Jacob from Canaan, 1595

Hans Bol

Hendrick Goeltzius (1558 - 1616) is usually given pride of place in the establishment of an independent Dutch landscape style because of his drawings of panoramic views in the vicinity of Haarlem. His indebtedness to Bruegel is twofold. First, the dot-and-stipple technique that he used to render light and atmosphere derives from Bruegel. Second, Goeltzius was a Spranger-level Mannerist prior to his own trip to Rome in 1590. Upon his return, he began paying fresh attention to Flemish landscapists such as Hans Bol (and Bol, as we know, was one of the foremost Bruegel the Elder disciples).

Mountainous Coastal Landscape, 1558 - 1617

Hendrick Goltzius

Winter Landscape with Skaters
Hans Bol, Coninxloo, the Savery brothers, and Vinckboons all transmitted this style to a new generation in 17th-century Holland.

Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap, 1565

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Winter, 1570
Hans Bol

Winter Landscape
David Vinckboons

The Season of Winter, c. 1565 - 1603
Jacob Savery

Traditional Funfair
Hans Bol

Peasant Subjects
This is a crucial part of Bruegel's contribution and a major staple of the emigré community. David Vinckboons, along with Hans Bol and Roelandt Savery, was instrumental in the development of genre painting in the Netherlands. His Kermis and other village vistas were influenced by Bruegel and he is considered second only to Pieter Bruegel the Younger as a paradigmatic Bruegel follower.

Country Fair
David Vinckboons

A Blind Hurdy-Gurdy Player
David Vinckboons

A Group of Peasants Merrymaking
Jacob Savery

Jan Steen (1610 - 1690) was one of the most famous of the 17th-century peasant-life painters. He ewas born in Antwerp and enjoyed immense popularity during the course of his life. He is linked to Bruegel through the peasant scenes -- a more refined version of Brouwer's efforts -- and his marriage to the daughter of Jan Brueghel the Elder. He was eventually hired by Archduke Leopold William as the Court Painter and the Keeper of the Art Collections.

Peasants before an Inn
Jan Steen

The Dancing Lesson, c. 1660 - 1679
Jan Steen

Revelry at an Inn, 1674
Jan Steen

With the turn of the century the Netherlandish style of painting began to recede in the face of the Baroque onslaught but the techniques and topics associated with Pieter Bruegel the Elder were seamlessly incorporated into this new art expression.

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The Legacy of Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Spanish Netherlands

Merriam-Webster defines legacy as "something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past." Pieter Bruegel the Elder's legacy is clearly the distinctive combination of techniques and subjects which formed the compositional framework for his body of work.

That legacy was elevated and propagated by the market and the commentariat and was reflected in the work of later artists on both sides of the Low Countries dividing line.

The fall of Antwerp to the Duke of Parma in 1585 signaled the effective partition of the Low Countries into the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces and precipitated the flight of non-Catholics to the north, to the Pfalz region of Germany, and to England. Many of those fleeing Flanders were artists and, as the figure below shows, were the conduits for the transmission of Bruegel's influence across the Schildt-Meuse-Rhine line and into the genesis of the art of the Dutch Golden Age.

I treat the observed Bruegel artistic influence in the Spanish Netherlands in this post.

Hans Bol
Hans Bol (1534 - 1593) played  a major role in the further development and spread of Bruegel the Elder's motifs and themes on both sides of the Low Countries dividing line. I will cover his contributions in the United Provinces in a future post.

Bol was born in Mechelen but eventually made his way to Antwerp. He was acclaimed as a painter, print artist, miniaturist, and draftsman who produced works in the areas of landscapes, genre paintings, and allegorical and biblical scenes.

In the area of landscapes, Bol sought to depict the naturalness that was a hallmark of Bruegel's work but told the tale from a lower perspective. Bol produced a Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, as did Bruegel the Elder, but his rendition took up the tale earlier in the cycle and provided the viewer the aforementioned lower perspective. Note also the technique of brown tones to the front, green in the mid-ground, and icy blue in the background.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Hans Bol

Bol showed a preference for producing "months-of-the-year" series, a genre which had been resurrected by Bruegel the Elder in his series done for his patron Jongelinck in 1565.

December
Hans Bol

Bruegel The Elder had begun a series of "seasons" drawings for Hieronymus Cock prints but had only completed the Spring and Summer installations prior to his death. Bol was approached by Cock in 1570 with a request that he complete the designs for Autumn and Winter. The designs were completed and the series engraved by Pieter van de Hayden. Through the completion of this commission, Bol had become the literal and figurative successor to Bruegel the Elder.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder
Bruegel still served as a model for Flemish painters, driven in no small part by the works of his sons (Pieter the Younger and Jan the Elder). Most of Pieter the Younger's work was comprised of copies of his father's compositions (both drawings and paintings) while Jan, who sometimes collaborated with Ruebens and other contemporaries, was much more innovative.

The Alchemist, 1558, original etching
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Copy of The Alchemist
Pieter Bruegel the Younger

Bath of the Nymphs
Jan Bruegel the Elder

Peter Paul Rubens
Rubens occasionally used Bruegel the Elder as a model for scenes of peasant festivity and panoramic landscapes with peasant laborers. Rubens was known to have owned eight of Bruegel the Elder's works.

Landscape with Milkmaids and Cattle, 1618
Peter Paul Rubens

Adriaen Brouwer
Brouwer was born in Flanders in 1605 but had moved to Amsterdam by 1625 and, therein, had studied under the tutelage of the great Dutch painter Frans Hals. Brouwer was somewhat dissolute, spending a lot of his time smoking and drinking in taverns. Brouwer returned to Flanders around 1631 and worked for a few days in the Rubens workshop but the relationship was short-lived as his drunkenness quickly became a problem.

Brouwer painted mostly peasant scenes and his work was well regarded by his peers. Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a major influence on the work of Brouwer (artble.com):

• Informed the bold and clear coloring of his early works
• Informed his choice of subject matter -- painting the daily life of beggars and peasants
• He copied the Bruegel style of non-facial detail and bare outline which gave a general impression of the individual
• His early tavern scenes contain the same simplicity of forms and coloring as does Bruegel's.

The Bitter Draught, c. 1635
Adriaen Brouwer

The Smokers, c. 1637
Adriaen Brouwer

Peasants Brawling over Cards, c. 1636
Adriaen Brouwer

Youth making a face, c. 1636
Adriaen Brouwer

David Teniers the Younger
David Teniers the Younger (1610 - 1690) was the most famous of the 17th-century painters of peasant life, providing a much more "refined" version of Brouwer's peasant scenes. Teniers was born in Antwerp and was most likely taught by his father. Unlike his father, Teniers enjoyed international popularity during his lifetime and, by 1651, was employed by Archduke Leopold William as the Court Painter and Keeper of the Art Collection.

Teniers the Younger links back to Bruegel the Elder through his marriage to Jan Bruegel the Elder's daughter Anna and through his hewing to the Brouwer line in his early works (Wikipedia):

• Similarity of subject matter, technique, color, and composition
• Similar gross types placed in smoky, dimly lit taverns
• Similar monochrome tonality.

Peasants playing cards in an interior, 1630 - 45
David Teniers the Younger

Smokers in an interior, c. 1637
David Teniers the Younger

The Alchemist, c. 1650
David Teniers the Younger

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his gallery in Brussels, 1650 - 52
Dvid Teniers the Younger

Monkeys smoking and drinking, c. 1660
David Teniers the Younger

Joos de Momper
Joos de Momper (1564 - 1635) was one of the leading Flemish landscape painter of his day. Taught by his father Bartholomew, he entered the Antwerp Guild of St Luke at 17 years of age. All indications are that he travelled to Italy in the 1580s.

In addition to the large number (500) of works credited to him (suggesting extensive workshop participation), de Momper also worked collaboratively with other artists to include Jan Brueghel the Elder and Jan Brueghel the Younger. Joos utilized the Flemish landscape coloration schema wherein the shades of the image follow the passage of the sun through the atmosphere, resulting in warm tones in the foreground and cold hues towards the rear.

"De Momper's works are chiefly inspired by the steep craggy alpine slopes and high rock masses depicted in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's work. His closeness to Jan Brueghel the Elder could have played a role in his exposure to the Bruegel idiom. This is also seen in some of the motifs of de Momper's work which go back to Pieter Bruegel inventions such as winter landscape and grain harvests."

Extensive Mountainous Landscape with Travellers, c. 1620
Joos de Momper

Winter Landscape
Joos de Momper

The Tower of Babel
Joos de Momper

Sebastian Vrancx
Sebastian Vrancx (1573 - 1647) was a Flemish painter known primarily for battle scenes, a pioneer of this genre in the Netherlands. His linkage to Breugel the Elder is through his series of paintings representing the Four Seasons of the year. Bruegel had "founded this genre as an independent category of painting with his influential cycle of the Months painted for the home of his patron Nicolaes Jongelinck."

Spring
Sebastian Vrancx

Summer
Sebastian Vrancx

Autumn
Sebastian Vrancx

Winter
Sebastian Vrancx

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder combined the landscape principles of Patinir and Bosch with his knowledge of the deployment of the mountains in the Alps to create a unique mountain landscape style. That landscape style is reflected in the work of de Momper 60 years later.

Bruegel established painting of the peasantry as "a thing" and Brouwer and Teniers the Younger ran with it deep into the heart of the Baroque period. Brouwer's renditions of the peasantry was the most brutal of the ones that we have encountered and might be the rationale behind the relative elegance of the Teniers renditions.

I have shown Vrancx replicating Bruegel in his painting of the series The Seasons and de Momper providing his rendition of the Tower of Babel.

There can be no doubt that the works of Bruegel the Elder influenced the efforts of many high-level, 17th-century Flemish artists. I will examine the influence on the Dutch painters in my next post.

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