Art and Migration

Since the Middle Ages artists from the Low Countries were known to be fond of travelling, as Guicciardini in 'Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi' (Antwerp, 1567) and Karel van Mander in his 1604 'Schilderboeck', already noticed. Much more mobile than their colleagues from other European countries, many Netherlandish artists spread all over Europe; a remarkable number among them achieved great fame as court artists, as the careers of Claus Sluter in Burgundy, Anthonis Mor in Spain, Bartholomeus Spranger or Adriaen de Vries in Prague, Giambologna and Jacob Bijlevelt in Florence demonstrate. Moreover, they exerted considerable influence on the artistic production of their time. Nevertheless most of them sank into oblivion soon after they died. Dutch art history neglected them for a long time as they did not fit into the traditional canon of the Low Countries, nor were they adopted by the art histories of their new homelands. This new NKJ volume is an attempt to change this.