Chiostro del Bramante

While wandering around the tiny streets behind Piazza Navona (where the Fountain of the Four Rivers and my new favorite restaurant is located) I stumbled upon the Chiostro del Bramante. This building was once a cloister and as its name suggests, was built by Bramante. 

Donato Bramante, an Italian architect, was instrumental to introducing High Renaissance architecture to Rome. The building was commissioned by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa in 1500. 

As this facade suggests, Bramante was all about symmetry and balance - a true Renaissance man. Bramante was actually the first to be chosen as chief architect to St. Peter's Basilica but he died before it could be completed. Michelangelo took over after his death and although he made a few changes, he basically followed Bramante's designs. 

Anyway, back to Bramante's cloister.

The building now holds art exhibitions - currently, there is an exhibition on the Brueghel dynasty. Pieter Brueghel was a Flemish painter who was accepted into the painter's guild in Antwerp in 1551. Thus began a dynasty of painters who would have an enormous impact on Flemish Renaissance painting. Pieter (the Elder) had two sons, Pieter (the younger) and Jan. Pieter the Younger did not have any children, but Jan did - eleven of them...one, Ambrosius Brueghel, became an accomplished painter and his daughter Anna eventually married David Teniers the Younger, another one of the "big names" in Flemish painting. Quite the family tree. 

The exhibition was great for a few reasons...first and foremost, it helped me differentiate each painter. Here's a quick and simplified breakdown...

Pieter Brueghel the Elder (father of the dynasty) 

Known as the "peasant Brueghel" for painting many genre scenes of Flemish peasants

(...this painting below is actually in Vienna but I did see it there a week later!), Pieter worked at roughly the same time Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Titian were flourishing in Italy. Thanks to the Protestant Reformation in Northern Europe, Flemish and Dutch painters were completely opposed to anything resembling the Roman Catholic south...and as a result, many northern artists focused not on religious subjects like the Italians, but on peasant scenes, landscapes, or nature. 

Here is one of his paintings that was in the exhibition...

Le sette opere di misericordia, 1616‐1618 ca.

Loved this one too..a snow scene 

Trappola per uccelli, 1605

Pieter Brueghel the Younger, his son, copied many of his father's themes, but he developed and enriched them. As one article put it, Pieter the Younger "analyzed human weaknesses with tolerance and insight," which I take to mean he could depict the base impulses of humans like lust, gluttony, etc with a mixture of humor and compassion This was one of my favorites by him...look at the faces of the individuals and you will see that many of them, though at first glance just dancing, are actually doing things like looking down a woman's shirt (see the man in red in the middle...where are his eyes??) or proudly asserting their codpiece (the man on the lower right?!) or getting sick or drinking copious amounts...Pieter the Younger's paintings are more fulfilling the longer and closer you look at them. 

The other brother, Jan the Elder, was known as being more "cosmopolitan" - he traveled to Italy, worked with Rubens, and was technically very accomplished. Although he also did peasant and landscape scenes, I really like his paintings of flowers, still lives, and landscapes. There were quite a few of these...

but he also did things like this - they were so biologically correct you would think they were made for scientific use

This is an example of a painting done with Rubens (probably the most famous artist to come out of Antwerp...ever) and if you get close, you can see Ruben's style in the faces of the peasants. 

Last one by Jan the Elder...this is interesting because look at the man and woman dancing in the lower right hand corner...look familiar? The exact same couple appears in his brother's work, The Wedding Feast.

Moving on...Jan the Younger also did flowers, landscapes, and the like, but enjoyed allegorical subject matter, like the Flora below, a symbol of springtime. Notice, though, that the flowers in his paintings are all exact replicas of what one sees in real nature (just like his father!). Also, his landscapes in the background are indebted to other members of his family.

The rest of the exhibition was devoted to artists tangentially related to the Brueghels (like Teniers) or works produced by the "Brueghel workshop." What struck me most about the paintings in the exhibition is that a majority of them were from private collections and most of these collections were actually American! What is great about getting works from private collections into exhibitions is that everyone can actually see the work for once - otherwise, it hangs in the house/apartment of the owner and nobody sees it except him or her. 

One reason people suggest that Flemish and Netherlandish art appeals to Americans so much is because of the atmosphere in which it was created is markedly different from art that was produced under royal patronage. Because Flemish and Netherlandish artists split from the Catholic Church and (the Dutch at least) refused to recognize a king/royal family, their art was commissioned by self-made businessmen. Nearly every other country had a royal family to commission artists, and this is why you get many royal portraits in England or many religious pictures with the patrons depicted as characters in the Biblical scenes in other countries. By contrast, Flemish and Dutch patrons were businessmen and this is probably why Americans respect that and collect this kind of art. 

I had lunch on the terrace afterwards, soaking up some sun and indulging in my mini baguette sandwiches. Yum!