RKD STUDIES

In contrast to the painters who travelled to Italy first and foremost to study the classics and the painting schools of the past, early 19th-century sculptors were attracted to the Peninsula by contemporary art [1].¹ Thanks to the presence of Antonio Canova (1757–1822) and Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), Rome was the pre-eminent sculpture capital in the early 1800s.² In the Eternal City, one could observe canonical works of art from the past³ and seminal contemporary sculptures, while exchanges on aesthetics with the most influential living masters of the time were within the reach of every ambitious young artist.⁴

As will be argued in this article, the involvement of several young ‘Belgians’ in this early 19th-century Roman artistic community, and their contacts with illustrious colleagues in the Eternal City, were a determining factor in the appearance of sculptural art in the southern Low Countries, afterwards Belgium, from the 1820s to the 1840s. For several decades, the Roman influence nurtured an international style which was hardly questioned.

1
Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765),
Roman ruins with a prophet, 1751,
canvas, 98 x 134.5 cm,
Graf Harrach'sche Familiensammlung, Gemäldegalerie