9.1. Michael Sweerts
Sweerts is probably born in Brussels, where he was baptized in the Church of St. Nicolas on September 29th, 1618.1 His early life and career, including his artistic training remains unknown. In 1646, Sweerts is documented in Rome, where he was living on the Via Margutta, the epicentre of the artists’ community. He was charged with the task of collecting contributions from Northern artists for the feast of St. Luke.2 It is likely that Sweerts was somehow involved with the Schildersbent and the Accademia di San Luca, although no evidence of his membership of either organisation has survived.3 Recent archival finds indicated that Dutch Grand Tourists and merchants were among his most important benefactors during the 1640s, with the Deutz family as key patrons. Documents suggest that Sweerts acted as an art agent, purchasing and shipping paintings to Amsterdam for the Deutz brothers, during their Grand Tour in Italy.4 He also found an important Roman patron, prince Camillo Pamphilj (1622-1666), nephew of Pope Innocent X, who asked Sweerts to paint pictures, to purchase art on his behalf and to be in charge of his Academy for painters.
The Pamphilj account book and two of Sweerts’ paintings place him in Rome in 1652, but by 1656 he had returned to Brussels where he founded an ‘Academy of life drawing’. This drawing Academy, where students could draw from live models and Antique sculptures, was one of Sweerts’ most important undertakings after his return to the Netherlands.5 In 1656, Sweerts produced the Diversae facies in vsvm iuvenvm et aliurvm delineatae, a printed series of head studies for the use of artists in and outside the Academy. A couple of years later, in 1659, Sweerts presented a self-portrait to the painters’ guild of Brussels as a ‘farewell gift’. It is likely that Sweerts departed for Amsterdam soon thereafter.6 In Amsterdam, he joined the Société des Mission Etrangères, a Catholic missionary organization. With the Mission, Sweerts departed for the Near East in 1661, and further to Palestine in 1662. According to his fellow missionaries, Sweerts began to exhibit unacceptable, “contradictory and argumentative” behaviour and was dismissed from the Mission.7 We know nothing of the remaining two years of his life, except that Sweerts died in Goa in 1664.
Michael Sweerts
Self portrait with palet, c. 1656-1658
Oberlin (Ohio), Allen Memorial Art Museum, inv./cat.nr. 41.77