About the project
The migration issue is crucial for our contemporary society, facing the reality of internal and external migrations. The mobility of artists in the past left watermarks on the heritage of the migrant masters, which can be revealed and identified by displaying the results of different approaches.
This study analyzes artistic migration from Flanders to other regions of Early Modern Europe, mainly explained as the influence, reception, or impact of the art schools of Bruges, Brussels, Ghent, or Antwerp on other territories. This problem was usually faced with the biographical approach to artists migrating from their native workshops to foreign countries. Still, few scholars have researched it as a transregional phenomenon in the past. The lack of a general vision of the entire phenomenon makes the Flemish artists’ contribution to the spread of the Renaissance as a pan-European cultural movement hardly understandable, even though scholars have suggested the need for clarification.
Data on the journeys of artists mentioned in The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German painters by Karel van Mander, the first biographer of Northern European artists, will be used as a starting point to create a digital database. Unifying traditional art history research methods and digital humanities, thanks to the Historical and Geographical Information System (H-GIS) and mapping. This match of methods allows the display the information about movements, artworks, and experiences of studied biographies and to face research questions:
- How could the experience of migrating, living abroad, or traveling enrich the artistic creation of painters educated in Flanders and help them in their career development?
- How does the international experience impact the style and manner of Flemish Primitives and Northern Renaissance Masters?
- What did migration and meeting different cultures mean and generate in Early Modern Northern Europe?
- Is there any recognizable migratory flow pattern in the Flemish Master’s movement?