Repertory of Dutch and Flemish Paintings in Italian Public Collections, Vol. I: Liguria by B.W. Meijer; M. Fontana Amoretti; M. PlompReview by: Marco ChiariniSimiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 27, No. 4 (1999), pp. 243-244Published by: Stichting voor Nederlandse Kunsthistorische PublicatiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3780974 .

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243

Book reviews

B.W. Meijer (ed.), Repertory of Dutch and Flemish paintings in Italian public collections, vol. i: Liguria, ed. M. Fontana Amoretti and M. Plomp, Florence (Cen- tro Di) I998*

This is the first of a series of seven volumes, and a beautifully produced publication it is. The idea for the series came from Bert Meijer, director of the Istituto Universitario Olandese di Storia dell'Arte in Florence who began setting up the research program some years ago. Each volume will cover a corpus of Dutch and Flemish painting in a different region of Italy. Some idea of what a significant contribution these volumes will represent once completed was given by Meijer when he announced that such paintings in public and semi-public col- lections in Italy amount to the incredible total of around ten thousand. It is an astounding figure even for someone familiar with the material to be found in Italian museums-admittedly very often relegated to the reserves.

This volume devoted to Liguria gives one an initial notion of the precious store of Dutch and Flemish painting in Italy. Those in this repertory amount to 441, all reproduced in ex- cellent black-and-white illustrations preceded by some 70 col- or reproductions of the most important works from the fif- teenth to the seventeenth centuries, and even a couple from the nineteenth.

The extremely concise entries give all the information needed to place the works in their art-historical context. The provenance is always accurately given, as is the bibliography (where present). One could not provide more than basic infor- mation in a publication of this kind. Anyone wishing to know more about minor artists (some of whom one encounters here for the first time) will have to consult other works. The au- thors could hardly be expected to discuss in detail such minor problems as the complex, still unresolved puzzle of painters of stormy seascapes, classified under the name "Tempesta." This was the name adopted by the best-known painter of this genre, Pieter Mulier, but he cannot possibly have painted all the works reproduced here-one of them in color (nr. 238). Their undoubted quality brings us to the problem of the figure of Mathieu Plattenberg or Plattemontagne, who remains shrouded in mystery, and another, Renaud de la Montagne, who is equally obscure.

The paintings in this repertory belong to institutions or public bodies such as churches, museums and even banks. The latter have contributed a great deal in recent times to Ita- ly's public artistic heritage by making important acquisitions. A recent instance has been the donation of the Collezione Lia to the municipality of La Spezia, resulting in an authentic mu- seum-something this Ligurian city did not have until now.

The artistic riches of Genoa in this sphere-one only need mention Rubens and van Dyck-are well known, but the al- most archaeological work achieved in this publication goes be- yond simply providing a complete catalogue of the most fa- mous masterpieces in churches and museums. The research has been so comprehensive that it even includes copies of Flemish and Dutch works whose originals are found outside the region-evidence of the profound impact on Italy of the creations of the northern masters.

While it was an understandable decision that this volume should not deal with paintings in private collections, I think that it would have been worth including one of the most im- portant Genoese collections of Flemish painting-that of the Palazzo Durazzo Pallavicini. While admittedly a private col- lection, it is tied to the building by Italian law, and no change is permitted in the original arrangement of each room. It is an exceptionally fine example of a Baroque interior which can on no account be altered. It is moreover known to a wider public, having been catalogued in a book by Piero Torriti.' While this extremely important collection is not open to the public, un- like the Doria Pamphili and Colonna galleries in Rome or the Corsini in Florence, it should in my view have been illustrated here. As a collection it is an illustrious example of an aristo- cratic cabinet of paintings in a beautiful state. It gives an idea of the sort of choices made by a noble family, if we consider the Rubens portrait, the six famous van Dycks, some Flemish primitives and two fine paintings by van Lint.

The works in the repertory are of course listed in alphabeti- cal order to facilitate consultation and grouping by artist or school, but there are also two comprehensive indexes of places and subjects. They provide us with extremely interesting in- formation, particularly on the whereabouts of Flemish reli- gious paintings in the churches of the region, but it is obvious that the greatest concentration of paintings (it could hardly be otherwise) is in the city of Genoa. Its galleries boast a nucleus of famous works by masters like Hans Memling, Gerard Da- vid, Jan Provoost, Jan van Scorel, Rubens (whose youthful masterpiece, the portrait of Giovan Carlo Doria on horseback, entered the Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola just over ten years ago), and the considerable group of works by Anthony van Dyck, the most important nucleus of which originated in the donation of the Duchessa di Galliera a century ago. This

* Review translated from the Italian by Donald Gardner. I P. Torriti, La galleria del Palazzo Durazzo Pallavicini a Genova, Genoa I967.

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244 BOOK REVIEWS

generous legacy represented a substantial enrichment of the collections of Genoa. Besides the works of the celebrated Flemish portrait painter's Genoese period (among them the three Brignole Sale portraits and those of a Young man and The goldsmith Puccio, Christ and the tribute money and Christ carry- ing the Cross) there is a rare Rubens, The lansquenet and his sweetheart, and works by Avercamp, Joos van Cleve, Cuyp, Gerard David, van der Neer, Steen and Jan Wildens, thus considerably enlarging our panorama of Dutch and Flemish painting.

On consulting this volume one is struck by the number of works, especially by Flemish painters, that Genoa and the sur- rounding region still possesses in the churches for which they were commissioned, even if some of them, such as Gerard Da- vid's triptych for S. Gerolamo della Cervara, have ended up in the galleries of Genoa. This is an unusual feature, and one rarely documented elsewhere with the exception of Rome. Anyone, therefore, who wants to round out his knowledge of Flemish masters in Liguria-from the anonymous "Master of S. Lorenzo alla Costa" in S. Margherita Ligure to the "Maestro di Hoogstraeten" in Savona Cathedral, from the important

triptych by Joos van Cleve in S. Donato di Genova to the anonymous one in S. Pancrazio, to the glorious pair of altar- pieces sent by Rubens to the Chiesa del Gesui in Genoa, only has to peruse the very useful indexes to have a comprehensive guide to an artistic heritage too often neglected by hasty tour- ists.

We have no comment to make on the very meticulous re- search carried out by the cataloguers; their work has been qui- te outstanding. The only, very minor remark one might make concerns nr. 62, which is in fact a copy of a painting by Pieter van Slingelandt preserved in the reserves of the Uffizi Gallery.

We offer Bert Meijer and the authors of this volume our congratulations for providing us with a formidable research tool that will no doubt greatly encourage further study and which promises, once completed, to become a fundamental work on a part of the Italian artistic patrimony that has hither- to been virtually overlooked.

MARCO CHIARINI PALAZZO PITTI FLORENCE

Michiel C. Plomp, The Dutch drawings in the Teyler Museum, vol. 2: artists born between 1575 and I630, Haarlem (Teyler Museum), Ghent (Snoeck Ducaju & Zoon) & Doornspijk (Davaco Publishers) I997

Established by the will of the Haarlem merchant, cloth manu- facturer, and financier Pieter Teyler van der Hulst (0702-78), Teylers Museum is the oldest continuously operating mu- seum in the Netherlands. Visiting this great institution, with its distinguished library joined to collections devoted to fine art, numismatics, physics and natural history, all preserved in a building that features the Netherlands' finest Louis xvi inter- ior, one feels steeped in the optimistic and rational spirit of the Enlightenment.

Every serious student of Dutch drawings cherishes the Teyler collection. This is in part because of its resonant con- nection to the period around i 8oo, a golden age for the collect- ing and appreciation of seventeenth-century drawings. Yes, one is received at the Teyler in a handsome new study room for works on paper. Nevertheless, a day spent dipping into the venerable albums that still house these precious drawings evokes a peculiarly Dutch tradition of taste and connoisseur- ship that flourished in the late eighteenth century and can be relived here as nowhere else.

To be sure, the mere fact that the drawings remain on old mounts inserted between the pages of ancient portfolios does not in itself confer on the Teyler its unique status among col- lections of Dutch seventeenth-century drawings. In contrast

to the vast holdings of the large municipal and national mu- seums, which inevitably accumulated somewhat haphazardly, most of the Teyler drawings have been selected one by one and with great discrimination, so the level of quality is exceptional. Furthermore, the major private collections assembled in the Netherlands in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such as those of Cornelis Ploos van Amstel and Johan Goll van Franckenstein, were all dispersed, while the drawings cabinets of the major public museums originated at a somewhat later date. Consequently, the Teyler holdings, the cream of which entered the museum by i822, uniquely embody the refined taste of the Dutch amateur of the decades around i8oo.

No comprehensive publication of the Teyler's permanent holdings has appeared since the unillustrated 1904 volume compiled by H.J. Scholten, so everyone interested in old mas- ter drawings should applaud the museum's determination to produce catalogues of its outstanding collections. The series has made a very auspicious debut with the appearance in 1997 of the book reviewed here. A volume devoted to the fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italian drawings is imminent, with an- other comprising the later Italians projected. The next cata- logue of the Dutch drawings, describing those dating from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, will appear in a couple of years, and there are plans for future volumes on works by Netherlandish artists born before I575 (primarily the formidable group by Hendrick Goltzius) and on the Dutch drawings of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centu- ries.

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