5. Brussels Artists in Rome: Friendship, Classicism, and the Academy
Lara Yeager-Crasselt
When Brussels artist Louis Cousin (1606–1667), also called Louis Primo or Luigi Gentile, arrived in Rome in 1626, he was prepared for his start in the city. The Italian biographer Giovanni Battista Passeri (1610-1679) described how Cousin came with ‘the addresses of some of his compatriots', who, accustomed to the practice of the drawing, supported one another with ‘an inseparable union’.1 One of these compatriots was Brussels sculptor François Duquesnoy (1597–1643) [1], who had been living in Rome since 1618. As Passeri wrote, ‘Francesco Fiammingo famoso Scultore’ befriended Cousin, and as fellow countrymen, felt compelled to provide the younger artist with opportunities for advancement.2
Both Duquesnoy and Cousin had traveled south with certain advantages. They received their artistic training in Brussels, a Catholic Habsburg court city in the Southern Netherlands that had strong religious, cultural, and artistic ties to Rome. Not only would they have been familiar with Italian and antique traditions within Brussels’s artistic landscape, but they would have also recognized the rich possibilities Rome offered aspiring artists. Once there, like many of their fellow Fiamminghi, Duquesnoy and Cousin relied on each other for friendship and support, as well as mutual artistic inspiration. With fellow Brussels artists Karel Philips Spierincks (c. 1600–1639), and later, Michael Sweerts (1618–1664), they integrated themselves into Rome’s artistic fabric, particularly around the Accademia di San Luca, and formed a community shaped by shared classicizing and academic interests. This article examines the development and character of this long-overlooked Brussels artistic community in Rome over a period of several decades, from the 1620s to the 1650s. It explores the interrelated careers of Duquesnoy, Cousin, Spierincks, and Sweerts, and considers how their Brussels origins informed and impacted their Roman experience.3
Cover image
Louis Cousin
Venius mourning Adonis, c. 1655-1657
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv./cat.nr. GG 1705
1
Anonymous
Portrait of François Du Quesnoy (1594-1643)
paper, copper engraving 99 x 101 mm
The Hague, RKD
Notes
1 ‘Da giovanetto comparì in Roma con l’indrizzo d’alcuni suoi compatrioti, li quali sogliono di camerata esercitarsi negli studj del disegno, et uno ajuta, e spalleggia l’altro con una unione inseparabile’. Passeri 1995, p. 241.
2 ‘Francesco Fiammingo famoso Scultore, divenuto amico com'era paesano di Luigi, gli procurava dell' occasioni per portarlo avanti’. Passeri 1995, p. 242.
3 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the symposium Going South: Artistic Exchange between the Netherlands and Italy in the Early Modern Period in December 2019. Aspects of this research have also been presented at the Annual Meeting of the College Art Association in 2016 and the conference ‘(Re)building Networks: A Medieval and Early Modern Studies Conference’ held at the University of Maryland in 2015.