Michiel Coxie the Elder (1499-1592) Saint Sebastian's Marty...

Hammer

£4,500

Michiel Coxie the Elder (1499-1592)
Saint Sebastian's Martyrdom
Oil on panel

Property of a Gentleman

Dimensions:
(Frame) 20 (H) x 15.75 in. (W)
(Panel) 14.75 (H) x 10.25 in. (W)

Typical of the Mannerist obsession with virtuosity and complexity are the twisting poses, the high finish and the obsession with detail in the rendering of the muscles. Saint Sebastian was a Roman legionary martyred for his Christian beliefs. Since he was pierced with arrows, he became the patron saint of archers. Saint Sebastian was often depicted as a nearly nude young man. It would be easy to dismiss the plethora of works portraying his story simply as a means for early and high Renaissance artists to flaunt their capabilities in representing an idealized human form. Another possibility for the idealized manner in which Saint Sebastian was depicted throughout the Renaissance is the idea that Saint Sebastian was an offering to God and should therefore be shown as the best offering possible. Sheila Barker acknowledges this idea by arguing that as “it was a widely accepted principle that the more precious the offering, the more God would be placated, [therefore] the attractiveness of Sebastian’s imagery may have been regarded as a factor in attaining divine mercy.” This panel is likely to be a precursor to Coxcie’s larger painting of the Martyrdom of Sebastian for St Rumbold’s Cathedral in his home town Mechelen, Belgium, the same building where he died after falling from scaffolding whilst working. The poses of St Sebastian are similar, as is the highly respectful attention to botanical detail in the leaves on the trees. Both paintings celebrate Coxcie’s nickname as the Flemish ‘Raphael’, with his inscription of an ‘R’ on the tree.

However, our panel is a more intimate depiction, parading Coxcie’s unbridled mastery in the classicised human form. Despite the limpness and deathly palour of the figure, Coxcie’s portrayal of St Sebastian still shows a visceral force and beauty that shows off Coxcie’s highly skilled classical training from his time working in Rome. Coxcie’s rendering of St Sebastian’s body is strongly evocative of Raphael and Michaelangelo’s muscular sculptural forms, and his soft treatment of St Cecile’s face is reminiscent of Raphael’s portrayal. This affirms Coxcie as a cultured and humanistic artist, who sensed the spirit of the age and celebrated it in his masterful compositions.

The figure of St Sebastian is consistent with the Italian style and shows an artist who has fully understood the basic principles of Italian renaissance painting. But the composition is not purely Italian because Coxcie depicts the saint in a typically Flemish landscape. In terms of perspective and anatomy, sixteenth-century Italian painters led the field. But when it came to painting landscapes, depicting textiles and other matter, the Low Countries were by far the best and their use of colour was unrivalled. This little work by Coxcie shows a master who bridged the gap between the two schools of painting. He uses the best of both worlds and integrates it into his own synthesis of the Renaissance.

Michiel COXCIE (Coxie, van Coxcie or de Coxien) was born in 1499 in Mechelen in the Duchy of Brabant. Though few people today are familiar with his name, Michiel Coxcie was probably one of the most important painters in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. His nickname, the “Flemish Raphael”, illustrates just how highly his art was rated. Hence the ‘R’ on the tree in this painting of Saint Sebastian and many of his other works. He was compared to the greatest Renaissance master and regarded by some as his match. The position Coxcie occupied was on a par with that of Rubens and other great masters. Coxcie was born at the end of the fifteenth century and died in 1592 at the age of 93 following a fall from scaffolding. He was restoring one of his paintings in the Town Hall in Antwerp when he lost his balance. So his career spanned almost the whole of the tumultuous Sixteenth Century: from the Reformation and the Iconoclasm to the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

Coxcie invented designs for tapestries, stained glass windows, prints and he also executed paintings, which are dispersed in collections around the world. He was widely travelled, worked in Rome, Brussels, Malines, and Antwerp. He was praised by Vasari for having taking the Italian manner to the Netherlands. He became a popular court artist and was commissioned by royalty and politicians all over Europe including, the King Phillip II of Spain, the Duke of Alva, Guido Morillon and Cardinal de Granvelle and Mary of Hungary to name a few.

Artistically he was a living link between the Flemish Primitives and the Baroque. When he was born, Gerard David was still active and Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1450-1516) was at the height of his powers. When Coxcie died, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was training in Antwerp. Coxcie trained in Bernard van Orley’s studio in Brussels in the 1520s, then moved to Italy where he was to spend about ten years studying the art of classical antiquity and mastering the style of the High Renaissance. During those years in Rome he came into contact with Vasari and Michelangelo and his reputation earned him commissions in the Church of Santa Maria dell’Anima and St Peter’s Basilica. Recognition of his work brought him membership of the Compagnia di San Luca in Rome, an honour conferred on no other Fiamminghi before him. In 1539 he returned to the Netherlands, a Messiah of Renaissance art. Almost immediately he became the favourite of Charles V and Margaret of Hungary and in that capacity he was given the honour of, for example, working with Titian on tapestries for the Royal Palace in Binche. Coxcie designed many tapestries and stained-glass windows for the Hapsburg dynasty. For Philip II he painted the famous copy of the Ghent Altarpiece (Adoration of the Mystic Lamb). During the first decades of the Dutch Revolt (1568-1648) Coxcie sided resolutely with the Catholics. After the Iconoclasm that decision brought him commissions for scores of new altarpieces in (among other places) Antwerp, Mechelen and Brussels. Few commanded so much respect as Coxcie and few had so much influence on their contemporaries. Even in the Seventeenth Century, artists – and not least Rubens - reworked his inventions. And yet … After his death Michiel Coxcie’s reputation gradually went downhill. In his influential ‘SchilderBoeck’ (Book of Painters) published in 1604, Karel van Mander, a Flemish painter who had taken refuge in Haarlem because of his Protestant faith, reproached Coxcie for aping Raphael and not being very creative with the knowledge and skill he had acquired in Italy. After the publication of Van Mander’s book, Coxcie’s label as a slavish imitator of Raphael stuck. Even in recently published art history reference works those clichés are repeated without critical substantiation. But Coxcie laid the foundations on which great masters like Rubens and Van Dyck later built their reputations.

In the Sixteenth Century Flanders was in the spotlight of political developments and the centre of trade in Northern Europe. It was the place where the new ideas of Erasmus, Lipsius and more came to light. Brussels was the Mecca for tapestry production and achieved a level of excellence that would never again be equalled. The very first international art market developed in Antwerp. But then we arrive at an extraordinary conclusion: these days paintings from sixteenth-century Flanders are almost unknown. The only name the general public is familiar with is Brueghel. Yet the painters in that period were no less talented than the Flemish Primitives or Peter Paul Rubens and his circle. Despite being one of the most important painters in the Netherlands in the Sixteenth Century, Michiel Coxcie is one of those artists whose name disappeared into the annals of history. Coxcie acquired great fame in the years he spent in Italy, where he had access to the most notable art collections and was a member of Michelangelo’s small exclusive circle. In the decade he spent in the Eternal City, he saw and studied so much that he not only fully understood the style of the High Renaissance, but he also became thoroughly acquainted with the classics. This knowledge shaped him as an artist and was to make him one of the great masters of the Sixteenth Century.

MICHIEL COXCIE THE FLEMISH RAPHAEL

Almost nothing is known of the early years of Michiel Coxcie’s life and his early training. From later sources, the year of his birth can indirectly be deduced as 1499 and we can assume that he was of Mechelen origin. His training is also shrouded in uncertainty. Everything, however, points to the studio of the Brussels master Bernard van Orley. There are several arguments to support this. For example, during their stay in Rome Bernard van Orley and Coxcie enjoyed the favour of the same patron, the powerful Dutch cardinal Willem van Enckevoirt (1464-1534). So when Coxcie was planning to travel to Italy, it is not inconceivable that van Orley recommended his pupil to his former patron. Michiel Coxcie also took over the design commission for the stained-glass windows for the Cathedral of St Michael and St Gudula in Brussels from Bernard van Orley. And in 1604 the artists’ biographer Karel van Mander mentions in his famous ‘Schilder-Boeck’ that Coxcie trained under “Bernard van Brussel”.

In 1516 the design cartoons Raphael had made for a set of ten tapestries arrived in Brussels. Pope Leo X (1475-1521) had commissioned them for the Sistine Chapel. In those days Brussels was home to the best weavers and this important commission went to the workshop of master weaver Pieter van Aelst (ca. 1450-1531). The design cartoons brought the art of the High Renaissance to the Netherlands for the first time, and they were by no lesser an artist than the great Raphael. Artists like Bernard van Orley could now study the new style. But clearly that was not enough, because several artists set off over the Alps to see the classics for themselves. They were not the first. It is assumed that Jan van Eyck made the journey to Italy and Jan van Scorel (1495-1562) spent several months there in 1508. Pieter Coecke van Aelst (in 1525-1526) was also an early visitor to Rome. But Michiel Coxcie was the first to settle in Italy for a long period. The earliest evidence of Michiel Coxcie dates from his Roman period. The famous artists’ biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) knew Coxcie personally and was aware that Coxcie had painted the frescos in the Church of Santa Maria dell’Anima at the request of Cardinal van Enckevoirt. The frescos were probably painted around 1531. The fresco technique was a typical painting technique of the Italian Renaissance. As the damp climate of the North did not lend itself to frescos, Coxcie must have learned this relatively difficult technique south of the Alps, which suggests that he had already been in Italy for some time when he began work on the commission. It signalled his breakthrough in the Eternal City. After that he had the great privilege of being made one of the first Flemish members of the Compagnia di San Luca, the guild of painters of the city of the High Renaissance. Coxcie remained in Italy until the end of the 1530s and during that time executed several remarkable commissions. He was involved in decorating the new St Peter’s Basilica. Sadly, the frescos he made for Christianity’s first Basilica Major did not survive. The walls on which Coxcie had made his frescos had to be sacrificed to the many alterations carried out between 1506 - when building work on the new St Peter’s began - and its consecration in 1626. They do, however, show that Coxcie was indeed rated in Rome.

On an artistic level his return to the Netherlands in 1540 was a veritable triumph. Back home Michiel Coxcie painted The Holy Kinship, a monumental altarpiece and certainly the most important work of Michiel Coxcie’s career. It must have made a tremendous impression on its viewers. Unlike Raphael’s cartoons in the weaving workshop in Brussels, the altarpiece could be seen by everyone. For the first time the general public in the Netherlands could view a work that fully reflected the new Italian style. Its hitherto unseen monumentality must have caused a sensation, for it was the general public’s first confrontation with the grand, monumental style of the High Renaissance, a style based on a first-hand knowledge of the classics and embodying all the innovations of Raphael, Da Vinci and Michelangelo. People were used to the detailed execution of elegant figures by the Flemish Primitives and altarpieces by mannerists such as Jan Rombouts (ca. 1480-1535): a rather hybrid style which still used the idiom of the generation of Dieric Bouts, yet introduced several decorative elements from the Renaissance. The impact of the altarpiece not only makes it a key work in the history of art in the Netherlands, it also gave Coxcie’s career wings. The altarpiece was made for the chapel of the Antwerp Hosiers’ Guild in the Church of Our Lady. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the altarpiece was transferred to Emperor Rudolf II’s collections in Austria. Not long after that the triptych was taken to Kremsmunster monastery, where it is preserved to this day. Coxcie was also a graphic artist. The relatively new medium of printing had the advantage that images could easily be produced in large print runs. For example, Coxcie made an important contribution to the spread of the Renaissance in the North by designing the set of prints on the theme of Amor and Psyche (Gallery 21). This set of 32 prints, engraved by Agostino Veneziano (ca. 1490-ca. 1540) and the Master of the Die, was published by Antonio Salamanca (1479-1562). The series was an inexhaustible source of forms, so that artists all over Europe used them for their compositions. Coxcie himself had based a series on the frescos which Raphael had made in the Loggia of Eros and Psyche at the Villa Farnesina. Coxcie also made other designs, including the erotic series The loves of Jupiter. In 1546 an invoice was drawn up in which Coxcie is referred to as: “Meester Machiel, schildere des Coninclycke Majesteyt” – Master Michael, painter to his Royal Majesty. We don’t know when Coxcie became court painter to the Hapsburg dynasty, but there are clues. Bernard van Orley died in 1541, leaving the position of court painter vacant. At that time van Orley had only just begun work on the prestigious commission of designing the stained-glass windows for the Chapel of the Hapsburgers in the Cathedral of St Michael and St Gudula in Brussels.

Coxcie became one of the most respected painters in the Netherlands. He was Charles V’s favourite painter and then he became court painter to Philip II. This great honour boosted his career. In that capacity, comparable to the status Peter Paul Rubens was to enjoy a century later, he was granted commissions by leading individuals and institutions. An example is the triptych he made for Guy Morillon from Burgundy. Morillon was one of Leuven’s foremost dignitaries. Not only was he Charles V’s secretary, he was also professor at the Collegium Trilingue and a friend of Erasmus.

In the last quarter of the Sixteenth Century and particularly after the Fall of Antwerp in 1585, Coxcie received numerous commissions to decorate churches. But by that time the painter was very advanced in age. His better works were much less accessible, if they had not been destroyed in the 1566 Iconoclasm. Karel van Mander tells us that Coxcie’s best works were abroad like this panel of Saint Sebastian. It seems it was a lucrative activity to buy Coxcies in the Netherlands and sell them abroad at a great profit. Consequently, numerous masterpieces are found in art collections in Spain and Germany. Coxcie died in 1592 after falling from scaffolding whilst painting in a church. He left behind his son Raphael, also a painter and his wife Ida.