Chapter 2 - Collecting Early Netherlandish Paintings in Europe and the United States

Summary

The history of collecting early Netherlandish paintings spans different periods. This chapter begins with the earliest collections, it focuses on the rediscovery and collecting of these works from the French Revolution until the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and it concludes with a brief outline of American collecting at the turn of the twentieth century.

EUROPE

The Habsburg collections

In the sixteenth century, Margaret of Austria, regent of the Low Countries, amassed a sizeable collection in her palace at Mechlin, which included, beside works of art by contemporary masters, panels by Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling, and even one of the most important fifteenth-century Netherlandish pictures, the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck [FIG. 25]. After her death in 1530, the collection was divided among her heirs in Spain and the German Empire. Thanks not only to Margaret but also to her niece Mary of Hungary, her nephew Charles V and his son Philip II, Netherlandish paintings came into the possession of the House of Habsburg. To mention but a few of the early works, Mary of Hungary purchased Rogier van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross from the guild that had commissioned it, Charles V owned a triptych by Hans Memling, and Philip II acquired paintings by Hieronymus Bosch. All were shipped to Spain, where they can now be seen in the Prado.

The later Habsburgs continued to purchase fifteenth-century Netherlandish art. Under Emperor Rudolf II, Prague became an important European center for the arts, and his Kunstkammer forms the core of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Rudolf's brothers Matthias, Ernst and Albert, successively the governor of the Southern Netherlands, were no less active as collectors. The inventory of the estate of Archduke Ernst lists, in addition to pictures by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, works by Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hieronymus Bosch. Another Habsburg, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, likewise governor of the Southern Netherlands, was acquainted with such connoisseurs as the Antwerp collector Peter Stevens, from whom he acquired van Eyck's famous Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati [FIG. 94]. It is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, which also preserves panels by Rogier van der Weyden [FIG. 168], Geertgen tot Sint Jans [FIG. 80], and Hugo van der Goes [FIGS. 95, 96], from Leopold Wilhelm's collection.