RKD STUDIES

Currently, RKDartists contains 1,604 Northern and Southern Netherlandish artists who travelled to Italy in the early modern period. However, this poll presents a snapshot of information.¹ Researching biographical data of artists from the Low Countries who travelled abroad is a continuous process with no end date, although occasionally certain groups of artists are explored on a project-by-project basis. Art history is simply not 'finished': new puzzle pieces of biographical information keep popping up in the literature, both in new and old publications that were previously not or not fully excerpted for the database. The research attempts to map out as precisely as possible where an artist was and when, citing the relevant source or sources. This not only expands the existing information per artist, but at the same time increases the number of artist names in the database. Occasionally the number decreases, for instance when it is discovered that two names — and thus two biographies — turn out to concern the same artist.² To explain how the data on the artists who travelled to Italy came about, it is necessary to say something briefly about the history of the database.³

RKDartists was set up in 1989 as an index to the RKD's collection (image documentation, library and archives). Therefore, the oldest data in the database concern artists whose work was documented at the RKD. These are: 1) artists whose work is known and whose biographical information has been found in (archival) sources, and 2) artists whose work is known but whose biographical information has not been found in sources; of the latter, biographical information can only be derived from the work(s) (dating, inscriptions, style, subjects). Only in 1999, it was decided to include artists whose work is not known, but who are known from the sources.⁴ Occasionally, a work by such an artist still turns up, as happened recently, for example, in the case of the little-known Johannes Remeeus (1602-1648) from Antwerp, who had worked in Rome for years [7-7a]. Remains of his signature on this work led to the current attribution.⁵

Thirty years later, in 2019, the database had grown in terms of Northern and Southern Netherlandish artists to a total number of 12,653 artists, including 8,494 Northern Netherlanders and 4,601 Southern Netherlanders, barely more than half the number of the Northern Netherlandish artists.⁶ For 442 artists (3.5 %), both 'nationalities' had been assigned. This distorted ratio of Northern and Southern Netherlandish artists in the database, which can be explained both by the original connection with the RKD collections and by the under-representation in the lexicons, was deemed undesirable. Meanwhile (in 2019), it had already become clear that the mobility of the Northern Netherlandish artists was remarkably different from that of the Southern Netherlandish ones.⁷ To ensure that bias in the data was reduced, a significant number of relevant publications were excerpted over the past four years, including the well-known 'Liggeren' by Rombouts and Van Lerius [8].⁸ As a result, the database now consists of 17,427 Northern and Southern Netherlandish artists,⁹ that is, the group increased by 4,774 artists from the Low Countries (= 37.7 %). The dataset of 17,427 now contains 9,228 Northern Netherlandish and 8,905 Southern Netherlandish artists, which is already starting to look pretty much like a 50/50 split; in the case of 705 artists (4 %), both 'nationalities' have been attributed. Incidentally, we will not be surprised if, in the coming years, the number of Southern Netherlandish artists will significantly exceed that of their Northern Netherlandish colleagues.¹⁰

For the Gerson project on Italy, an attempt was made to map the artists who travelled to Italy as completely as possible, both qualitatively and quantitatively. To this end, several relevant publications were excerpted, such as G.J. Hoogewerff's Netherlandish artists at Rome, 1600-1725 with excerpts from parochial archives (in translation), published in 1942 [9]; for 511 artists from the Low Countries, information from this source was incorporated. As shown by several authors, Hoogewerff's identifications of the corrupted names in the archives are not always correct and fully identified.¹¹ Several already published corrections and additions to Hoogewerff have since been incorporated, such as from Rosella Vodret's important 2011 publication (in translation): In search of 'Ghiongrat': studies on Roman parish books (1600-1630), and Laura Bartoni's 2012 publication (in translation): The ways of the artists : dwellings and workshops in Baroque Rome from the registers of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte (1650-1699).¹²

It is still possible to identify names from Hoogewerff's rich 1942 publication that were not previously brought home, which were not recognised by Vodret or Bartoni. In her contribution to this volume, for instance, Maartje Visser was able to trace back the 'Cornelio Denan' cited by Hoogewerff to the Delft painter Cornelis de Man (1621-1706).¹³ While processing the information in RKDartists, some of the other artists Hoogewerff mentioned could also be identified for the first time. One of them is the aforementioned Antwerp painter Jan Remeeus, whose work was unknown until recently. On 12 February 1645, he witnessed the baptism of a child of the also Antwerp painter Jan van Vilvoorden (1606?-1659) and his Italian wife Francesca Campana, together with the midwife Agnes Sermonetana, Hoogewerff writes.¹⁴ Also, the painter 'Edouardo Goedrehevre (Goedehaeve?)' must be identical to the Antwerp painter Eduart van Goedenhuysen (c. 1617-1649), who had been a pupil of Eduard Snayers (1591-after 1661) and became a master in 1635. Previously, it was not known that he had ever been to Italy. After Goedenhuysen suffered an accident and was ill for two days, he died suddenly in the parish of S. Maria Chiesa in the house where he lived in Horto di Napoli, aged 33, on 30 August 1649.¹⁵

As Gert Jan van der Sman noted in his introduction to this volume, from a 17th-century Italian perspective, there was no sharp distinction between artists who came from the Northern and Southern Netherlands. In contemporary sources, they were both referred to as 'fiamminghi' or 'fiamenghi', regardless of their origin. However, the dataset from RKDartists shows that the majority of Netherlandish Italy-travellers did come from the Southern Netherlands. There were 1,075 of them, while 'only' 641 artists came from the Dutch Republic. In the case of 112 artists, both 'nationalities' had to be assigned because the artists either had been active in both regions of the Low Countries, or because it could not be determined from which of the two Netherlands they originated [10].

Due to the processing of 'De Liggeren' in RKDartists, relatively many Southern Netherlandish artists originating from Antwerp appear in the database; of the 1,075 Flemish artists who visited Italy, 307 were born in Antwerp. It is possible that the number of Southern Netherlanders in Italy will become even larger when places like Brussels, Bruges, Mechelen and Ghent will be better processed in the database. The number of Northern Netherlanders in Italy is presumably smaller than the database now indicates, as it is quite possible that many of the artists with 'dual nationality' will turn out to be Southern Netherlandish after all.

7
Jan Remeeus
The Queen of Sheba before Salomo (1 Kings 10:1-2: 2 Chronicles 9:1-2)
London (England), art dealer Giammarco Cappuzzo Fine Art

7a
Detail of fig. 7

8

9
Godefridus Johannes Hoogewerff (1884-1963)
paper, autotype 184 x 129 mm
The Hague, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History

10
Map of Italy with places where artists from the Low Countries were present. Blue dots concern Dutch artists, red dots Flemish artists