Review: The Notion of the Painter-Architect in Italy and the Southern Low Countries, edited by Piet Lombaerde

Abstract

Piet Lombaerde, ed. The Notion of the Painter-Architect in Italy and the Southern Low Countries Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2014, 311 pp., 258 b/w illus. €95, ISBN 9782503548500 This book owes its title to an insightful essay by Frans Baudouin that appeared in 2002 in the first volume of the Brepols Architectura Moderna book series, also edited by Piet Lombaerde.1 Baudouin describes how painters got a share in designing buildings and became architects as well, focusing on the role of the painter-architect within the building process by clarifying Peter Paul Rubens's part in the design of a Jesuit church and his own house, both in Antwerp. Baudouin makes clear that the cooperation between painters and craftsmen such as masons, stonecutters, and carpenters benefited both groups: the craftsmen could improve their designing skills as a result of their cooperation with a painter, who, as a professional “designer,” expanded his activities to the field of architecture. This interesting phenomenon of painters becoming architects is the subject of the present volume, in which Lombaerde narrows the subject down to Italy and the Southern Low Countries (present-day Belgium) within the time frame of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Other countries such as France and the Dutch Republic are not included. Lombaerde indicates in his foreword that his aim for the book is “to provide fresh insights into the relationship between the arts, more specifically painting and architecture” (vii). Unexpectedly, the book does not start with a historiographical introduction on the notion of the “painter-architect.” According to Lombaerde, that designation can be used for certain practitioners of architecture, including not only artists like painters and sculptors but also artisans like goldsmiths or carpenters. Following his introduction, thirteen essays “treat the notion of the painter-architect in entirely different ways, using a broad range of approaches,” as Lombaerde states (ix). These essays include various monographic …