Borderless Creativity? A New Perspective on Netherlandish Artists in Early Modern Spanish Naples

Marije Osnabrugge

doi:10.6092/issn.2240-7251/18928

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Marije Osnabrugge Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Marije Osnabrugge is a lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is a specialist in early modern Netherlandish and Italian art and art theory. Her research focuses on artist mobility and artistic exchange, practices, creativity, terminology and temporalities. A profound curiosity about the conditions in which artists conceived and created their work within a society unites these themes. After completing a PhD at the University of Amsterdam on the social and artistic integration of Netherlandish artists in early modern Naples (2015), she held research positions at the University of Montpellier, in the project LexArt: Words for Art 1600-1750 (2015-2017) and at the University of Geneva, in the project Un siècle d’or? Repenser la peinture hollandaise du XVIIe siècle (2017-2022). Amongst her publications are the monograph The Neapolitan Lives and Careers of Netherlandish Immigrant Painters (1575-1655) (2019, Amsterdam University Press), and the edited volumes Roma 1629: una microstoria d’arte (2021, Artemide Edizioni, co-edited with Jan Blanc), and Questioning Pictorial Genres in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art (2021, Brepols). Most recently, she published on the terminology for art technique in Dutch art literature (in: The Making of Technique, ed. Dupré and Hendriksen, 2023) and on the experience of the present in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries (Early Modern Low Countries-EMLC, co-written with J. Blanc, T. Brero, É. Lecuppre-Desjardin, 2023). Articles on the depiction of female nudity by Netherlandish artists in Naples (in: Oltre Napoli, ed. T. De Nile, A. Witte, G. Capitelli), on the research methodology for artist mobility (in: Mobilités artistiques à l’époque moderne, ed. M. Schneider) and on the ambiguous place of itinerant artists in artist biographies (in: Art and its Geographies, ed. I. Vermeulen) are forthcoming in 2024.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2240-7251/18928

Keywords:

Artist Mobility, Methodology, Creativity, Baxandall, Early Modern Netherlandish Art, Spanish Naples

Abstract

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artist biographers documented the mobility of early modern Netherlandish artists. Yet, research into the movements of Dutch and Flemish artists still fails to capture the full significance of this essential aspect of the artistic profession. This article presents a novel approach to artist mobility, by applying Michael Baxandall's interpretation of the artwork as “a solution to a problem” to a selection of artworks by Northern artists in late-sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Naples. By analyzing itinerant artists’ abilities to solve the challenges they faced as foreigners in the Spanish Viceroyalty, this study offers new insights into their creativity.

Borderless Creativity? A New Perspective on Netherlandish Artists in Early Modern Spanish Naples

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