influence and what the authors call “the long-established view that Rubens was the only person who could ultimately have advised the Jesuits to give the church its undeniably Baroque appearance”… Click to show full abstract
influence and what the authors call “the long-established view that Rubens was the only person who could ultimately have advised the Jesuits to give the church its undeniably Baroque appearance” (11). They convincingly demonstrate that the Flemish Jesuits did not necessarily depend upon Rubens’s direct knowledge of Italian Baroque architecture and his large, private library of relevant architectural sources (e.g., Vitruvius, Serlio, and even Rubens’s own notebook containing theoretical notes on architecture). Rather, they argue that Aguilón would have enjoyed unfettered access to an extensive collection of relevant treatises and architectural prints already located in the library of the Jesuit Professed House (30–31). Moreover, they show that Huyssens had already designed a Baroque Jesuit church in Maastricht around 1600: a plan, similarly inspired by Vignola’s design for Il Gesù in Rome, that the authors propose may “be detected in embryonic form” in the Antwerp Jesuit church (28). Still, Rubens’s numerous ornamental inventions—richly illustrated and cataloged in drawings and oil sketches influenced by Italian models that were sometimes reused in later designs (e.g., in his 1635 Pompa Introïtus Ferdinandi)—offer key evidence, along with his lost paintings and two remaining altarpieces (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), of the artist’s singular contributions to the church’s theatrical, idiosyncratic Baroque character. Ultimately, the volume successfully carves out an important and secure, if surprisingly narrow, space for Rubens in the church’s design history. One is necessarily left to wonder, however, how what must have been frequent, close intellectual and social interactions between Rubens and his collaborator Aguilón (for whom Rubens also produced illustrations for the 1613 Opticorum Libri Sex) might have also impacted the church’s underlying architectural conceptions or style. Ironically, the possibility alone of such gaps in our knowledge of their interactions inevitably keeps the door open for further speculation on how Rubens might have undergirded his Jesuit friends’ architectural ideas in foundational ways that his richly ornamental designs, at least on their face, might otherwise belie.
               
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