16세기 네덜란드에서의 이탈리아 르네상스의 수용: 마르턴 판 헤임스케르크를 중심으로

Abstract

Artists of the Netherlands started to travel to Rome from the 16th century onward. Of the three representative painters who visited Italy in this period, Maerten van Heemskerck (1498-1574) is known to have made the most crucial contribution to the development of Dutch art in the 16th and 17th centuries. This paper attempts to find out how Heemskerck tried to emulate the Italian art of the Renaissance to change the art world of his own country. Thus it first examines the Italian influences in formal aspects, focusing in particular on one of his early works, I.e. St. Luke painting the Virgin (1532). It seems that Heemskerck understood the idea of illusion art and the Classical Antiquity better and applied more radically than his teacher and colleague Jan van Scorel who introduced the Italian art to the Netherlands prior to him. Heemskerck also appears not to have been satisfied with just imitating its stylistic features. For one can observe Italian art theoretical ideas visualized in several works of his. Among others the following four pieces could be of interest. They are two St. Luke painting the Virgin (1532 and c.1553), Self-portrait with Colosseum in Rome (1553) and the Self-portrait in the title-page of the Series Clades (1568). These compositions clearly show motifs delivering such concepts as inventio, diligent study of anatomy and antique sculpture, paragone, Michelangelo as the artist's role model etc. In addition to these, humanistic trends are reflected, too. For instance, the idea of Apelles as the ideal artist or antiquarian interests are depicted by means of image as well as text. Heemskerck's pursuit of Italian artistic ideas was, it should be pointed out, basically connected to the concept of history painting. In order to execute history paintings an artist should have the knowledge of various disciplines like geometry, mathematics, anatomy and especially classical literature and art. These qualities were considered to be necessary for the composition of noble stories in which human figures and their actions formed the essential part. Hence, the discussions on history painting in the Renaissance could all be said to have laid emphasis on the intellectual aspects of the art of painting. And its purpose was then to claim that the visual arts did not belong to the fields of physical labors but to those of intellectual activities. In this context it was also argued that the arts should be classified among the Liberal Arts instead of the Mechanical Arts to which the pictorial arts had belonged since the Antiquity. Behind these consistent attempts of the Renaissance artists and theoreticians lied their desire to enhance the social status of art and artist. It seems that Heemskerck's reception of Italian art and artistic ideas should be viewed in this perspective. In other words, Heemskerck should have pursued to form his own image as a history painter, which could not only bring him fame and wealth but also change the contemporary Dutch art which still remained in the Gothic style.