RKD STUDIES

When Duquesnoy arrived in Rome in 1618, he dedicated himself to the study of antiquity. In addition to making small-scale copies after antique statues, including the Belvedere Torso, the Nile, and the Laocoön, he performed restorations of antique sculpture for the Colonna, Vitelleschi and Rondini families, and thereby gained direct and intimate contact with antique forms.¹ By 1624, he shared this zeal for reviving ancient art with French artist Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665). As Giovanni Pietro Bellori recounted, Duquesnoy and Poussin ‘were very keen to progress, so that together they devoted themselves attentively to ancient things’.² The two artists not only found common ground, but also friendship, sharing a house on the Via Maroniti so that, as Bellori described, ‘friendship and close association with this rare genius [Poussin] were most useful and opportune in raising his [Duquesnoy’s] sights to the most beautiful forms of ancient art’.³ Although Bellori gave more credit to Poussin as a source of inspiration, the artists’ exchange was, in fact, likely mutual, if not motivated even more directly by Duquesnoy, who had already been in Rome for six years at this point.⁴ Nevertheless, the two artists continued to pursue new means of artistic expression together, and closely studied Titian’s Bacchanals, then in the Villa Ludovisi, where they made copies after the Venetian artist’s tender depictions of infant putti [6-7].⁵

This rich period of artistic exchange and discovery must have come to include Spierincks, whose artistic interests aligned closely with both Duquesnoy and Poussin. When Spierincks arrived in Rome in 1624, he settled in the same neighborhood as the two artists, in a house near the Piazza di Spagna, and began his own study of antiquities.⁶ Works such as Venus Sleeping, with Satyrs and Cupids [8] demonstrates Spierincks’ engagement with the mythological and bacchanalian subject matter of his peers—as well as Titian’s Bacchanals—and the development of a classicizing visual language of soft, elongated forms. Not long thereafter, in 1629, German artist and writer Joachim von Sandrart (1606-1668) arrived in Rome and recounted how he, Duquesnoy, Poussin, and Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) often took long walks throughout the city to draw, observe, and discuss ancient monuments. Central to these so-called meetings of the ‘Academy of Antiquity’ (die Antiquität-Academia) was the recovery of a ‘Greek manner’, an aesthetic ideal defined by slender, graceful forms and strong contours, and the ways in which it could be applied to their own artistic practice.⁷ These ideas resonate in the work of Spierincks and Cousin [9], and suggest that the impact of Duquesnoy and his circle’s pursuits was more far reaching than has been previously recognized.

6
François Du Quesnoy
Putti at play with a goat, c. 1626-1630
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. BK-2014-28

7
Nicolas Poussin
Children's bacchanal, 1626
Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica (Rome), inv./cat.nr. 2593

Spierincks’ ties to Duquesnoy were multifaceted. The two artists lived together on the Strada Vittoria from 1630-1639, and collaborated on various projects in this decade, while also assuming a kind of partnership for helping other members of the Flemish community.⁸ Around 1630, they were part of the team of artists involved in the Galleria Giustiniani, the catalogue of prints made after Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani‘s (1564-1637) impressive collection of antique sculpture (the catalogue was published between 1635 and 1638).⁹ Duquesnoy designed the catalogue’s frontispiece [10], while Spierincks was responsible for executing a drawing after Duquesnoy’s restored antique statue of Bacchus, which was made in preparation for an engraving by Michel Natalis (1610-1688) [11].¹⁰ Giustiniani had patronized Duquesnoy on multiple occasions, including a bronze sculpture of Mercury, which was to be the only modern sculpture included in the Galleria Giustiniani. Thus Duquesnoy probably found himself in a favorable position to recommend his friend Spierincks for the project.¹¹ Indeed, the friendship between Duquesnoy and Spierincks included art and business. In 1634, the men shared the responsibilities of executing the will and inventory of Cristiano Stringherlandt, a Flemish tailor active in the art trade in Rome.¹² One year later, they took up a similar duty of administering the will of another Brussels artist, Simon Ardé (ca. 1596-1638), with whom they had also probably enjoyed a previous friendship.¹³

10
Theodor Matham after François Du Quesnoy
The coat of arms of Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564-1637), 1636-1637
Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana, inv./cat.nr. KatP-GIU 7265-180/1 gr raro

For Cousin, Duquesnoy was also more than just a friend.¹⁴ Passeri, whose biography of the artist opened this article, described that Cousin came to Rome with a ‘dry, insipid and far from [a] good manner’, but through the practice of drawing and studying the best masters, arrived at one that was ‘delicate and tender’ with an attention to the depiction of contours.¹⁵ Given the propensity with which Duquesnoy drew from the antique and from life in the 1620s and early 1630s, it is hard to imagine that Cousin had not participated in some of these sessions along with Poussin, and likely Spierincks. Passeri mentioned that Cousin drew regularly from models in the studio — it was one of the reasons that he often got into financial trouble — and it contributed to his eventual success.¹⁶ Cousin’s rendering of the female form with softness and restraint emerges in one of his first major commissions, the Martyrdom of Saint Catherine [12] for the Cesi family in Santa Maria Maggiore. Cousin depicted Catherine with arms and eyes raised towards the heavens, and clinging drapery that emphasizes her graceful contours. These qualities reflect Duquesnoy’s pursuit of a Greek manner in his Saint Susanna in Santa Maria di Loreto [13], for which contemporaries considered to be the fullest expression of a modern antique ideal. Bellori had praised its ‘perfection [...] principally in its draperies [... ] thin and light’.¹⁷ Cousin’s association with his fellow Brussels artists thus provided opportunity, inspiration, and practice, guiding him towards a classicizing artistic approach that met the needs of his Italian patrons.

13
François Du Quesnoy
Saint Susanna, 1629-1633
marble, 200 cm (tall)
Rome, Santa Maria di Loreto