EUROPE WITHOUT BORDERS

From March 14 till June 5, 2006 the Kunsthistorisches Museum presents an exhibition in its Special Exhibition Hall to celebrate Austria’s Presidency of the European Union. All the exhibits selected for this show focusing on a “Europe without Borders” come from the Museum’s holdings from the Picture Gallery, the Collection of Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and the Collection of Arms and Armour. The exhibits, their artists and the subjects they depict, as well as their history and provenance document the rich cultural diversity of Europe where national borders have never posed an obstacle to the lively exchange of new ideas.

They illustrate that for artists Europe has always been one continent, a place where they moved more freely than others and were more open to foreign inspirations and influences. Artists were never afraid to work outside their home-countries; and patrons frequently preferred foreign to local artists.

The works selected date from the early 15th to the 18th century. Paintings of the so-called International Style lead the way, a style that held sway in European artistic centres around 1400. These are works by court artists who lived peripatetic lives and created for the duration of a few years a uniform style, elegant and refined, in centres such as Paris, Prague, Vienna, along the Rhine and in Upper Italy.

The altarpiece depicting the Annunciation and the Marriage of St. Catherine by the Master of Heiligenkreuz is a characteristic example; the artist was probably French – or, as some scholars suggest, Austrian – and left his masterpiece in the monastery of Heiligenkreuz. The portrait of the Emperor Sigismund, a scion of the House of Luxemburg and ruler of both Hungary and Bohemia, dates from the same time. His portrait was long attributed to the Italian artist, Pisanello, but is now believed to be the work of an artist active at the court in Prague.
The dominant position in European art history attained by Italy during the 15th century increased that country’s attraction for artists born north of the Alps. Albrecht Durer was the first German artist to bring back from his two Italian sojourns a wealth of humanist topics, painterly splendor, but also a new understanding of the status of the artist. In his footsteps followed numerous northern artists, mainly from the Netherlands, who traveled to Italy for shorter or longer periods of time.

Maerten van Heemskerck studied antique artworks and ruins in Rome and imagined a fantastic procession of bacchantes, while Lambert Sustris invented a classical city which includes the Coliseum and the Pantheon. The early 17th century saw Rubens working in Italy as court painter to the Gonzagas for several years and studying, among other things, the works of Titian; in the following decades of the 17th century Dutch artists moved to Rome where they founded a colony of artists which enjoyed the simple pleasures of life not only in the subject matters of their paintings.

Court painters in particular took an international approach; they were sent to foreign courts to execute commissions. The Emperor Charles V called Titian to Augsburg to portray the captive Elector of Saxony, Duke John Frederick. Another artist working for Charles V was Leone Leoni, who executed portrait busts of the emperor and his sister. Antonis Mor, the Dutch court painter of King Philip II of Spain and together with Titian and others the inventor of the formal court portrait, captured the likeness of Anne of Austria, Phillip’s fourth wife.

Some artists, like Michiel Sittow, traversed huge distances during their travels: born in the Hanseatic city of Reval (modern-day Tallinn in Estonia), he worked in the Netherlands and as court painter to Queen Isabella the Catholic of Castile in Spain where he portrayed her daughter, Catherine of Castille, who later became the first wife of King Henry VIII of England. Hans Holbein the Younger was another artist who worked for Henry VIII after he left Basle, where the Reformation had caused a decline in patronage, and moved to London. Here his first commissions were portraits of the German Steelyard Merchants.

The art-loving Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II invited renowned artists and scholars from all over Europe to his court in Prague. Even more celebrated than the painters, among which was Bartholomaeus Spranger, were the artisans and goldsmiths he patronised; they created elaborate clocks, and magnificent vessels cut from semi-precious stones or rare and valuable natural materials such as narwhale tusks or ivory, vessels which were then elaborately set in precious gold or decorated with enamel.

For economic reasons, or an interest in new ideas and artistic achievements, or as traveling court painters - artists of the past criss-crossed Europe. But their works too boast lengthy itineraries and travel histories. The Kunsthistorisches Museum’s large and celebrated collection of Venetian paintings, for example, did not travel directly from Venice to Vienna. On the contrary, the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm assembled most of these paintings during his time as Regent of the Netherlands when the English Civil War caused the collection of King Charles I and those of his courtiers, foremost among them the Duke of Hamilton, to be sold on the international art market.

Such artworks also made perfect diplomatic gifts, especially portraits or objects of outstanding value or magnificent workmanship; one such example is the state armour that King Philipp II of Spain gave to Alessandro Farnese. The prince then presented it to Archduke Ferdinand II to be included in the latter’s collection.