1.1 Introduction
One of the aims of the Gerson Digital : Italy project was to enrich the art-historical information in the RKD's database on Netherlandish art and artists in Italy. This paper discusses how this enrichment came about in RKDartists. It is a follow-up to my publication in Masters of Mobility : Cultural Exchange between the Netherlands and the German Lands in the long 17th Century, which dealt with mobility of artists from the Low Countries to the German lands (present-day Germany) using data from RKDartists from February 2019.1 According to current information from the RKDartists database, as many as 1,604 Dutch and Flemish artists travelled to Italy [1].
After focusing on the various routes to Italy chosen by artists from the Low Countries, I will discuss the composition of the dataset of the 1,604 travellers, focusing on the Netherlandish artists from the 16th and 17th centuries. They were painters, draftsmen, printmakers, sculptors, architects and tapestry weavers, although the majority were painters. Finally, visualisations of the data are used to illustrate patterns in their mobility.
1
Map of Italy with places where artists from the Low Countries were present. Blue dots represent Northern-Netherlandis artists, red dots Southern Netherlandish artists
Notes
1 Gerson/Van Leeuwen/Van der Sman 2019.
2 Van Leeuwen 2020. Also published in Tacke/Münch et al. 2020, p. 145-165.