Michiel Sweerts or Michael SweertsOther names by which he is known: Michele Suars, Michele Suarssi, Michiello Suerts, Michiel Suerz, Michiel Sweerts, il Cavaliere Suars (29 September 1618 – 1 June 1664) was a Flemish painter and printmaker of the Baroque period, who is known for his allegorical and genre paintings, portraits and tronies. The artist led an itinerant life and worked in Rome, Brussels, Amsterdam, Persia and India (Goa).
While in Rome Sweerts became linked to the group of Dutch and Flemish painters of low-life scenes known as the Bamboccianti. Sweerts' contributions to the Bamboccianti genre display generally greater stylistic mastery and social-philosophical sensitivity than the other artists working in this manner. While he was successful during his lifetime, Sweerts and his work fell into obscurity until he was rediscovered in the 20th century as one of the most intriguing and enigmatic artists of his time.Michiel Sweerts (Brussels 1618-1664 Goa), A lady sewing in an interior at Christie's
Life Early life and stay in Rome Michiel Sweerts was born in Brussels where he was baptized on 29 September 1618 in the St. Nicholas Church as the son of David Sweerts, a linen merchant, and Martina Ballu. Little is known about the artist's early life and nothing about his training.
He arrived in Rome in 1646 where he remained active until 1652 (or 1654).Michael Sweerts at the Netherlands Institute for Art History In Rome he became soon linked to the circle of Flemish and Dutch painters associated with Pieter van Laer, who is considered the founder of the Bamboccianti. By the time Sweerts arrived in Rome van Laer himself had already left the city.Michiel Sweerts, Portrait of a young man playing a hunting horn at Galerie Canesso The Bamboccianti brought existing traditions of depicting peasant subjects from sixteenth-century Netherlandish art with them to Italy. They created small cabinet paintings or etchings of the everyday life of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside.
In Rome, Sweerts painted genre paintings in the style of the Bamboccianti as well as a series of canvases on the activities and training of painters in their studios, attending classes or working from live models.Life of Michiel Sweerts (Brussels, 1624 -Goa, 1664) at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum He resided near Santa Maria del Popolo. In 1647, Sweerts became an associate (aggregato) of the Accademia di San Luca, a prestigious association of leading artists in Rome. Sweerts is also recorded as having connections with members of the Congregazione Artistica dei Virtuosi al Pantheon. The Congregazione was a corporation of artists who organised annual exhibitions of their own paintings on the metal railings in front of the Pantheon.Edgar Peters Bowron, Joseph J. Rishel, Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2000, pp. 236–237 There is no evidence that Sweerts became himself a member of the Virtuosi. Sweerts lived from 1646 to 1651 in the Via Margutta where many foreign artists resided. While in Rome, Sweerts was the teacher of Willem Reuter, another Flemish painter from Brussels who spent time in Rome where he was influenced by the Bamboccianti.Biographical details at the National Gallery of Art, accessed 15 March 2016
Despite the fragmentary nature of evidence pertaining to his career in Rome, it would appear that Sweerts succeeded in creating for himself a sufficiently solid reputation to be invited to enter into the service of the ruling papal family, the Pamphili family, and in particular Prince Camillo Pamphilj, the nephew of the reigning Pope Innocent X. He is said to have painted a portrait of Camillo Pamphilj.Everett Fahy, Jayne Wrightsman, 'The Wrightsman Pictures', Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005, p. 128 Sweerts also painted theatre decors for Camillo Pamphilj and purchased art for him as his agent.Maaike Dirkx, The silent world of Michael Sweerts (2), posted on 19 August 2013 It is likely that his patron Prince Camillo Pamphilj involved Sweerts in the organization of an art academy in Rome.Adriano Aymonino, Anne Varick Lauder, Drawn from the Antique: Artists and the Classical Ideal, Sir John Soane’s Museum 2015, pp. 134–139 At the instigation of Camillo, the pope bestowed upon Sweerts the papal title of Cavaliere di Cristo (Knight of Christ), the same honor enjoyed by the likes of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini.Jonathan Bikker, "Sweerts' Life and Career: A Documentary View," in 'Guido Jansen, et al., ed., Michael Sweerts: 1618–1664, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 2002, 28-31.
It is during his time in Rome that Sweerts developed a lifelong relationship with the Deutz family, who were one of the most prominent trading families of Amsterdam. In 1651 Jean Deutz gave Sweerts a power of attorney to act on his behalf in a sale of silk. The Deutz brothers also purchased paintings of Sweerts through the art market in Italy. Sweerts further acted for the Deutzes as an agent on the Italian art market. It is believed that the Portrait of Man with a Red Cloak (c. 1650, Wallace Collection) is in fact a portrait of Jean Deutz who was likely then in Rome on his grand tour.Jonathan Bikker, The Deutz Brothers, Italian Paintings and Michiel Sweerts: New Information from Elisabeth Coymans's "Journael", in: Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art Vol. 26, No. 4 (1998), pp. 277-311
Return to Brussels and residence in Amsterdam
Despite enjoying the patronage of the highest echelons in Rome, Sweerts left Rome for unknown reasons sometime between 1652 and 1654. He is recorded in Brussels in July 1655 at the baptism of a child of his sister. In Brussels he joined the local Guild of Saint Luke in 1659. He opened an academy in Brussels where his students could work after live models and the Antique. He also created a series of prints of various human expressions, which were used in the training of his students.
In Brussels, Sweerts lived in a large town house close to the Grote Markt, in the street then called Voldersstraat, later renamed as a part of Lombardstraat. He moved into it not before August 1655 and left not after August 1658. The house was also occupied between 1649/50 and his death in 1657 by the household of an aristocratic military officer Gaspard Antoine d'Aubremont, governor of Dendermonde: he may have been Sweerts's landlord and patron. Michiel Sweerts's parents also lived in the house, as did Sweerts's servant Martinus Scheuts and the priest of a local church, Antoine de Bavay. Sweerts's art academy was probably also located there. The freehold of the house was bought in 1658 by a Brussels textile merchant Jerome Lefebure, but Lefebure then attempted to annul the purchase on the ground that the house was haunted by ghosts. Michiel Sweerts was one of several residents who testified to Lefebure's notary that he had been troubled by horrible noises, extraordinary banging sounds and inexplicable knocking on his door when there was nobody there. On advice from De Bavay, Sweerts challenged the ghost by sitting up in bed and saying "Who is there? If you are of God's ways, speak. But if you are of the devil's ways, go to the place to which you are destined." According to Sweerts, this was followed by a series of diminishing sounds like small thunderclaps as the ghost fled.
When the dispute went to arbitration, contrary evidence was given by Martinus Scheuts, who stated that he had not experienced any ghosts, but that two other servants played at being ghosts by rolling [cannon-balls?] across the floor above Sweerts's bedroom. Scheuts cast doubt on Sweerts's testimony by impugning his sanity. Michiel Sweerts, he said, "was subject to frenzies according to various actions that he carried out and statements that he made. For example he boasted that he had had several revelations and had the spirit of prophecy, and other similar statements. In particular, he said that he had invented a boat that carried five thousand men and five thousand cannons, of which he said he was to be the engineer, and that God had given him the inspiration for it in order to overcome all non-believers. He had also proposed to His Highness Don John of Austria an invention whereby two hundred men would have [the equivalent force of?] about a thousand men, upon which his said Highness sent him away as a madman ["un Fol"]". Nevertheless, Sweerts's testimony helped to convince the court that the house was haunted, and Lefebure won his case.Deucelaer, ibid.
Sweerts joined around this time the Missions Étrangères, a Catholic missionary organization, who were followers of Vincent de Paul and committed to proselytizing in the East. He was a lay brother and became a devout Christian. A Lazarus priest who met Sweerts in 1661 reported that Sweerts had apparently experienced a 'miraculous conversion' and had stopped eating meat, fasted daily, had given away his possessions and took communion three or four times a week.
In 1658, Sweerts made for the Guild of Saint Luke of Brussels a self-portrait as a farewell gift. He perhaps spent time in Amsterdam, probably as early as 1658. It is documented that he was present in Amsterdam for a number of months in the year 1661 just prior to setting off on his trip with the Missions Étrangères to the Far East. During his time in Amsterdam he helped supervise the building of the ship that would transport the Missions Étrangères to Alexandretta and then further East. in: Rijksmuseum Kunstkrant maart/april 2002
Travel to the East By December 1661, Sweerts had arrived in Marseille from where his ship left for Palestine in January 1662.Michael Sweerts at the Kremer Collection Sweerts sailed for Alexandretta with bishop François Pallu, 7 priests and another lay brother. In Syria he is said to have produced some paintings. On the overland portion of the trip in Syria he became mentally unstable and was dismissed from the company somewhere between Isfahan and Tabriz in Persia. He then travelled on to the Portuguese Jesuits in Goa where he is reported to have died at the age of 46.
Work General
The surviving works by Sweerts mostly date to the period of his residence in Rome. Due to the difficulty of attributing works to the artist who rarely signed his works, the number of canvases given to the artist vary from 40 to 100. Some of Sweerts' works were so popular in his time that contemporary copies were made, some by Sweerts himself, others by pupils or followers. It is not always easy to determine the level of Sweerts' involvement (if any) in the making of these copies. For instance, there exist at least four early copies, of varying quality, of his Artist’s studio with a woman sewing (one copy at the Collection RAU - Fondation Unicef, Cologne).Maaike Dirkx, Michael Sweerts on the art market, posted on 19 August 2013 None of his paintings produced after he left Europe is known to survive.
The majority of his output falls into two categories: 'genre scenes" of low-life subjects of country and street life and portraits or tronies. A third category are allegorical works, which are regarded as enigmatic and are the subject of ongoing interpretation by art historians.Thomas Röske, "Blicke auf Männerkörper bei Michael Sweerts (1618-1664)", in: 'Männlichkeit im Blick, Visuelle Inszenierungen in der Kunst seit der Frühen Neuzeit' Published by Mechthild Fend und Marianne Koos, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna, 2004, pp. 121–135 Sweerts reportedly painted compositions of Biblical subjects, several of which are mentioned in contemporary inventories. However, none of these are known to have survived. One of his religious paintings, a Lamentation is known from the print, which Sweerts himself made after his own painting. The composition is unusual for the Virgin’s comforting gesture towards the inconsolable Mary Magdalene.