ONE

Introduction
Artists’ and artisans’ collections

FRANS FRANCKEN AND THE HORSESHOE CRAB

In the summer of 1625, the Antwerp painter Frans II Francken (1581–1642) was on his way to
the stately residence of De witte pluym (The white plume), near the Meir, to pay a last visit to
his acquaintance Gillis de Kimpe (d. 1625). De Kimpe was a notary and one of the wealthiest
collectors in Antwerp at the time, but now he was dying. On 14 July he summoned a notary to
draft his last will and appointed Frans Francken as one of the executors.1 De Kimpe died on 16
July, and just a couple of days later an inventory of his household goods was made. The surviv-
ing inventory testifies to the magnificence of the collection: De Kimpe had a library comprising
over 1,000 books, an art collection of 144 paintings and hundreds of drawings and engravings,
over 2,000 coins and medals, some scientific instruments, and a good number of naturalia.
Among his naturalia was a dried horseshoe crab, an exotic animal that was still extremely rare
in European collections at the time. Before the ‘Age of Discovery’, the early modern explora-
tion of the New World and East Asia, no one in Europe had ever seen a horseshoe crab. With
their tough carapace and long, pointed tail, they must have impressed European travellers and
collectors (fig. 1). A horseshoe crab was depicted by Francken in 1617, only a few years before
De Kimpe’s death, in The Cabinet of a Collector, now in the Royal Collection of Britain (fig. 2).
It is very likely that Francken based his depiction of the exotic animal on the specimen in the
collection of his acquaintance.2 There were a few earlier European images of this animal, but
Francken’s was the first one in the medium of oil paint, depicted in a painting representative
of a new and innovative genre: that of the gallery picture—paintings of collectors’ cabinets, or
constcamer paintings. This episode exemplifies some of the main themes of this book: Antwerp
collections in the early seventeenth century and the naturalia and artificialia they contained;
artists’ and collectors’ interest in nature (and in the precise depiction of nature); the invention
and rise of new pictorial genres, such as the gallery picture; and the networks and friendships
among artists, artisans, and collectors.
Frans II Francken played a pivotal role in the invention of the genre of the gallery picture in
the 1610s. The Cabinet of a Collector is a so-called Preziosenwand (wall of precious things): largely
still life compositions of a wall and a table supporting the precious things that one could find
 INTRODUCTION

2. Frans II Francken, The Cabinet of a Collector, 1617, oil on panel, 77 × 119 cm, Royal Collection, rcin 405781.

in Antwerp cabinets. Next to the horseshoe crab, a beautiful carved Indonesian kris (a dagger)
is depicted: it was one of the favourite collectables brought to Europe from the East Indies. We
also see a dried exotic fish and sea horse pinned to the wall, while shells are scattered on the
table and placed in a Japanese lacquer box. There are a number of ancient and modern coins
and a shark’s tooth, a sketchbook and a drawing pinned to the wall, and two close-up studies
of animals. Last but not least are the paintings in the style of local and contemporary Antwerp
painters. In contrast to the tranquillity of the cabinet is the vista to the outside world on the
right, where men with donkeys’ heads are destroying objects and images. Side by side, this
single painting captures the celebration of collections and the destruction of collections.
Collections, connoisseurship, and visual innovation. These are central issues in the work
and life of Frans II Francken. The same holds true for many other Antwerp artists and artisans
in the early seventeenth century. Not only were they producing luxurious and fashionable, and
sometimes innovative, products in their workshops, many of them were also avid collectors
themselves. Early modern Antwerp knew many beautiful collectors’ cabinets, filled with
works of art and nature, artificialia and naturalia. Artists and artisans stood at the centre of
and shaped the city’s cultural life. In their double roles as ‘maker-collectors’, they put a strong
mark on Antwerp’s culture of collecting. This book deals with the collections of Antwerp artists

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 INTRODUCTION

and artisans and interrogates the relationship between making and collecting. It investigates
the high appreciation for the products of local artists and artisans in relation to their status
as collectors. It is a story about art and knowledge, about new forms of connoisseurship, and
about the parts played by artists and artisans.
Around the turn of the century, during a tumultuous era for the city on the Scheldt, a mem-
orable generation of artists and artisans came of age. The most famous of all was undoubtedly
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), who amassed an impressive collection in his urban palace on
the Wapper after his return from Italy (fig. 3). A good number of artists and artisans followed
Rubens’ example. From the Wapper, via the Meir to the Grote Markt, and from there to the
Vrijdagsmarkt and the Kammenstraat, their houses were filled with all things beautiful, curi-
ous, and wondrous (see fig. 4). In what follows, we will get a much-needed first look into the
homes and workshops of people who are otherwise ill-documented. From their household
inventories we know that they collected paintings, drawings, prints, tapestry, books, maps,
jewels, gems, luxury objects, statuettes, exotica, antiquities, dried animals, shells, plants, and
instruments. These important surviving documents have thus far not received the scholarly
attention they deserve. In the same period, the early decades of the seventeenth century, this

3. Jacques Croes (design), Jacobus Harrewijn (engraver), Rubenshuis, 1684, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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3
4 5 6

9 7

8 10 11

12

13

14 15

16
17

18 19

20

21
22

4. Map of Antwerp with the approximate location of artists and artisans discussed in this book.
(for the legend see p. xvi )

remarkable new pictorial genre was invented in Antwerp: paintings of collectors’ cabinets, or
gallery pictures. Francken’s The Cabinet of a Collector (fig. 2) is but one example, but the genre
also included larger (non-still life) compositions of rooms filled with art and connoisseurs,
such as Willem van Haecht’s Apelles Painting Campaspe now in the Mauritshuis (fig. 5). The
genre of the gallery picture was not only a completely new celebration of the display of objects
and images, but it also remained uniquely Antwerpian in the first decades after its invention
around 1610.
Nowadays, early seventeenth-century Antwerp is especially known for its painters, but
there were many other highly successful artisans. In this book, four loosely defined groups
of artist-collectors and artisan-collectors are discussed (see Table 1): painters and dealers in
paintings (chapter 2); apothecaries and grocers (chapter 3); goldsmiths, silversmiths, and jew-

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 INTRODUCTION

TABLE 1. Inventories per group, per decade

Painters and
Apothecaries Gold- and Publishers and
dealers of Total
and grocers silversmiths engravers
paintings

1600-1609 1 1

1610-1619 2 2 2 6

1620-1629 1 1 2 4

1630-1639 5 2 2 9

1640-1649 1 3 3 7

1650-1659 1 3 1 1 6

Total 8 7 9 9 33

5. Willem van Haecht, Apelles Painting Campaspe, c. 1630, oil on panel, 104.9 × 148.7 cm,
Mauritshuis, The Hague.

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 INTRODUCTION

ellers (chapter 4); and engravers and publishers (chapter 5). The sheer wealth and diversity
of many of their collections was incredible. Archival research on probate inventories shows
that the group of collectors, or liefhebbers, was much larger than we realized. These sources
also shed light on the products they made and traded: paintings, distillates, naturalia, jewels,
gems, books, and printed images. There was a vibrant European market for these products,
and Antwerp’s artist-collectors and artisan-collectors were in close contact with some of the
city’s wealthiest collectors—such as Francken and De Kimpe, or Rubens and pretty much all
of Antwerp’s elite. Business and friendship merged seamlessly in the cabinet.

ANTWERP AND THE LOW COUNTRIES

During the sixteenth century, Antwerp became one of the most important economic and
artistic centres of Europe. The city on the river Scheldt was a true ‘world city’, a meeting
place for merchants and a hub for people and goods from all over the world, with a vibrant

6. Hans Vredeman de Vries, Allegory of the Surrender of Antwerp in 1585, c. 1585, oil on canvas, 176 × 237 cm,
AV.2009.009.001, Collectie Stad Antwerpen, MAS, Antwerp.

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 INTRODUCTION

local art market.3 In his best-selling book about the Low Countries, the chronicler Ludovico
Guicciardini (1521–1589) calls Antwerp an example for all other cities in the region. In 1541,
the Florence-born Guicciardini moved to Antwerp, right in the middle of that city’s Golden
Age. Guicciardini devotes more pages of his book to the history, customs, and arts and crafts of
Antwerp than to those of any other city. Antwerp’s ‘arts and crafts’, he writes, yield incredible
profits but also create a strong community spirit: the ‘love’ for the products made with their
own hands makes artists and artisans also diligent keepers of the common good.4
In the 1560s the city numbered around 100,000 inhabitants, a number that decreased to
around 46,000 after the Fall of Antwerp in 1585 and climbed back up to around 66,000 by the
1640s. The Fall of Antwerp was a decisive moment in the history of the city and of the Low
Countries more broadly. Just before he left for the North, Hans Vredeman de Vries (1525/26-
1609) painted an allegory of the surrender of Antwerp, which was perhaps used during the
Joyous Entry of Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma (fig. 6). Studies of the economic and
cultural developments in Antwerp have often focused on the disastrous year of 1585, when

7. Frans II Francken, Allegory of the Abdication of Emperor Charles V in Brussels, c. 1635, oil on panel, 134 × 172
cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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 INTRODUCTION

8. Adriaan de Weerdt (design), Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert (engraver), Hendrick I Hondius (publisher),
Seditio (Rebellion), or The Separation of the Netherlands, 1604, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

the city fell to the Spaniards and the Dutch consequently blocked the Scheldt, and they have
emphasized the dramatic consequences of the blockade and the massive emigration of Ant-
werp’s merchants, artisans, and scholars to the Northern Netherlands.5 This scholarship has
ignored Antwerp’s ‘Indian summer’ of economic prosperity and artistic splendour around the
turn of the seventeenth century.6 The real decline of the Southern Netherlands—and of Ant-
werp in particular—dates to the second half of the seventeenth century, while the rise of the
Dutch Republic truly took shape only in the second quarter of the seventeenth century.7
The abdication of Charles V in 1555 was a landmark moment in the history of the Low
Countries, as it heralded the beginning of the end for the unity of the territory. The rule of
Charles became overshadowed by the later reign of his son Philip II and what became known
as the Dutch Revolt. Even decades after the change of rule had taken place, it lived on in peo-
ple’s hearts and minds—even for those born much later. A painting now in the Rijksmuseum
in Amsterdam depicts an allegory of the change of rule almost a century after it had taken
place. In Frans II Francken’s Allegory of the Abdication of Emperor Charles V in Brussels (c. 1635)
(fig. 7), Charles is seated in the centre, with his successors Ferdinand I to the left and Philip II
to the right; the latter is accepting his role as the new ruler of the Netherlands. His rule would
prove controversial: under Philip, the Dutch Revolt commenced in 1568 and the territory frac-
tured into the Southern and Northern Netherlands. In a print from 1604 (fig. 8), the Revolt
(Seditio) is personified as a Siamese twin, symbolic of the discord in the Low Countries. In the

8
background ‘monks and papists’ are chased and statues are demolished. Indeed, the icono-
clasm of 1566, the Beeldenstorm, was a central event in the Revolt and had lasting after-effects.
The memory of iconoclasm and the debates about the proper use of images became lines of
division between the Catholic South and the predominantly Calvinist North.
In the painting by Francken, the escutcheons of all the provinces of the Low Countries
still appear together on a single flag (the first flag from the left). The wealth of Charles’ united
empire, which encompassed not only large parts of Europe but also parts of Asia, Africa,
and the Americas, is represented by the allegorical figures bearing gifts. For instance, Africa,
personified in the woman with the turban adorned with a bird of paradise and accompanied
by a crocodile, presents to Charles V precious red coral and pearls as well as a bowl with gems.
To her left stands the feather-adorned America, accompanied by an armadillo (the animal
most associated with the New World), offering a casket with precious gold and silver objects
(fig. 9). The act of representing the wealth and prosperity associated with the rule of Charles
V and the still united provinces of the Low Countries may have been nostalgic for Francken.
As we now know, the hope for reunification (expressed by Rubens in his letters, for instance)
turned out to be in vain. But in terms of economic revival, neither Francken nor Rubens had

9. Frans II Francken, Allegory of the Abdication of Emperor Charles V in Brussels, c. 1635, oil on panel,
134 cm × 172 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (detail).