Bruegel en Italië

Op woensdag 19 april 2023 te 17 u. gaven dr. Sabine van Sprang, directrice Academia Belgica, en Prof. Tine Meganck, Professor aan de Vrije Universiteit Brussel, een lezing (N/F) over de relatie van de Vlaamse schilder Pieter Bruegel en Italië, dit naar aanleiding van het verschijnen van het boek  "BRUEGEL & L’ITALIA / BRUEGEL AND ITALY", dat het resultaat is van de wetenschappelijke bijeenkomst gehouden aan de Academia Belgica te Rome in 2019. De lezing werd gevolgd door een hapje en een drankje.

Inhoud van de voordracht

In 2019, in herdenking van de dood van Pieter Bruegel 450 jaar geleden, wijdde de Academia Belgica een internationaal symposium aan Bruegel en Italië. De akten van deze wetenschappelijke bijeenkomst zijn thans gepubliceerd in het meest recente volume van de Acta Academiae Belgicae. Hoewel Bruegel ongeveer twee jaar in het schiereiland verbleef, is er opmerkelijk weinig van zijn Italiaanse artistieke productie bewaard en is de impact van Bruegels ontmoeting met Italië niet meteen merkbaar in zijn oeuvre. Waarom trok Bruegel dan naar Italië? Om mogelijke antwoorden te formuleren, beschouwen de auteurs niet alleen de meester en zijn werk, maar ook de culturele en artistieke uitwisseling tussen Italië en de Lage Langen voor, tijdens en na zijn Italiaanse reis.  Zij traceren de condities, tradities en netwerken die Bruegels dialoog met Italië  motiveerden en vormgaven, en openen zo nieuwe paden in het onderzoek van deze befaamde, maar zeer ongedocumenteerde kunstenaar. 

De sprekers

Dr. Sabine van Sprang
Directrice Academia Belgica

Sabine van Sprang was born in Ghent in 1966. She has obtained a Master degree in Philosophy and Literature (major: Art History and Archeology) from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She has been working as a curator of 16th and 17th century Flemish painting at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels since 1996.

In 2006, she defended her PhD thesis at the Université Libre de Bruxelles on the Brussels painter Denijs van Alsloot (c. 1568 – 1625/26) of which a revised version in two volumes has been published by Brepols in 2014 in the series Pictura Nova, Studies in the 16th- and 17th- Century Flemish Painting and Drawing (ed. by Prof. Katlijne Van der Stighelen and Prof. Hans Vlieghe). In 2007, in cooperation with Joost Vander Auwera, she organized the exhibition Rubens, a Genius at Work at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts (catalogue in E/FR/N) and in 2012 she curated the exhibition Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens et les autres, Peintures baroques flamandes aux Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique / Flemish Baroque Paintings from the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (catalogue in FR-E) at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris.

From 2007 to 2017, she coordinated the team at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium that was part of the Belgian-Dutch project City and Society in the Low Countries, 1200-1800: Space, Knowledge, Social Capital, conducted by Professor Marc Boone from the University of Ghent (financed by the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Program-Belgian Science Policy). Together with Prof. Tine Meganck, she edited the book Bruegel’s Winter Scenes, Historians and Art Historians in Dialogue (Mercatorfonds, 2018, published in E/FR/N/D), to which several members of the project contributed.

A the same time, Sabine van Sprang curated the first monographic exhibition ever on the Brussels painter Theodoor van Loon (1581/82-1649) (Brussels, Bozar, 9.10.2018-15.01.2019 ; Luxemburg, Musée national d'histoire et d'art, 15.02.2019- 26.05.2019 ; catalogue in Fr/N).

In January 2019, she was appointed director of the Academia Belgica, Centre for the History, the Arts and Sciences in Rome for four years, a term that has been extended for one year (until December 2023).

Tine L. Meganck
Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Tine Luk Meganck is Assistant Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. After her Master in Art History at UGent (1993) and Master in Business Administration at the Vlerick School of Management (1994), she obtained a PhD in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University in 2003. She subsequently joined the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium with a Return Grant of the Federal Science Policy of Belgium. As a researcher at the Royal Museums (2005-2019), she revisited the collection’s rich Bruegel and Rubens holdings from a cultural-historical perspective.

More generally, Tine Luk Meganck studies art and visual culture of the early modern Low Countries in a global context. Her research interests include interactions between artists, merchants and humanists; antiquarianism; ethnography and the representation of the other; art and knowledge, and, most recently, the artistic participation of early modern merchant families and the representation of early modern family life.

Her publications include, among others, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Fall of the Rebel Angels: Art, Knowledge and Politics on the Eve of the Dutch Revolt (2014), Erudite Eyes: Friendship, Art and Erudition in the Network of Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) (2017); Bruegel’s Winter Scenes: Art Historians and Historians in Dialogue (2018 – edited with Sabine van Sprang), and, forthcoming, Bruegel e l’Italia. Bruegel and Italy, editor, Studia Academiae Belgica #3 (2023 - also edited with Sabine van Sprang and in collaboration with Maria Clelia Galassi).

She is editorial board member of Brill Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History (NACH) and of Oud Holland, the oldest surviving art-historical periodical in the world. Since 2022 she is member of the Board of Historians of Netherlandish Art.