The Notion of the Painter-Architect in Italy and the Southern Netherlands – Rubenianum, Antwerp, 1-3 December 2011

In conjunction with the “Palazzo Rubens. The Master as Architect” exhibition, the Rubenianum, the Rubens House and the Department of Design of the University of Antwerp organize an international colloquium under the title “The Notion of the Painter-Architect in Italy and the Southern Netherlands”.

The colloquium will take place on 1, 2 and 3 December 2011 in Antwerp. Registration is open until 25 November; please use the online registration form on www.palazzorubens.be/en/inschrijven.

Content
Since the time of Vitruvius, architects have been expected to have a broad knowledge of the arts and sciences. The need for good skills in sketching and working up drawings even led, from the sixteenth century onwards, to fierce debates on the meaning and status of ‘disegno’. With the rise of the Baroque, it was even alleged that in order to be a competent architect, one had to be a painter as well.

While Italy saw the emergence of famous painters who excelled as architects, also in the Southern Netherlands the notion that an architect must also have a mastery of the painter’s art became widespread, owing in part to the dissemination of publications by Sebastiano Serlio and Pieter Coecke van Aelst. In the seventeenth century, Peter Paul Rubens was able to make his own contribution to this discussion as a consequence of his sojourns in Italy (1601–1608). In the context of the Rubens House exhibition Palazzo Rubens. The Master as Architect, his architectural ideas and realisations will evidently be a focal point of the colloquium.

Bringing together distinguished art and architecture historians from Europe and North America, this interdisciplinary colloquium will shed light on the interrelationship of architecture and painting in the Southern Netherlands, both of which came to fruition during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Programme
Thursday 1 December 2011

09.30
Registration

10.15
Welcome and introduction – Véronique Van de Kerckhof (curator of the Rubenianum) and Prof.dr. Piet Lombaerde (AUHA, Faculty of Design Sciences and University of Antwerp, Department of History)

10.30
Key note lecture – “Scientific/architectural" and/versus "universal": the notion of disegno in a changing context of art and architecture – Prof.dr. Werner Oechslin (ETH Zürich)

Italy: Theory and Practice – Chair: Prof.dr. Piet Lombaerde
11.00
Sebastiano Serlio and the Italian tradition of architecture in painting – Prof.dr. Sabine Frommel (EPHE Paris Sorbonne)

11.30
Painter architects in Rome: Michelangelo, Raphael, Peruzzi – Prof.dr. Howard Burns (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa)

12.00
Vignola, a serious training: painting, perspective, architecture – Prof.dr. Bruno Adorni (Università di Parma)

Lunch

The Painter-Architect during the 16th century in the Southern Netherlands – Chair: Prof.dr. Konrad Ottenheym (University of Utrecht)

14.00
The painter-architect in the Low Countries 1480-1530: the first generation? – Drs. Oliver Kik (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

14.30
Pieter Coecke van Aelst, painter-architect – Prof.dr. Krista De Jonge (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

15.00
Les emblèmes du véritable artiste: the house of Frans Floris de Vriendt in context – Dr. Edward H. Wouk (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Coffee

16.00
Design in motion: the Netherlandish painter-architect as traveller, pilgrim, and exile – Prof.dr. Christopher Heuer (Princeton University)

16.30
Wensel Cobergher: paintings of a court architect – Dr. Tine Meganck (Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels)

17.30
Evening visit to House Delbeke and Rockox House & Drink

Friday 2 December 2011

09.15
Registration

Vasari & Rubens – Chair: Prof.dr. Piet Lombaerde
9.30
Giorgio Vasari and the architecture of the arts – Prof.dr. Gerd Blum (Kunstakademie Münster, Hochschule für Bildende Künste)

10.00
Vasari, Rubens and the question of style in architecture – Dr. Barbara Uppenkamp (University of Hamburg)

Coffee

The Palaces of Genova – Chair: Prof.dr. Piet Lombaerde
11.00
Rubens and Genova: paintings and painted architecture – Prof.dr. Stefano F. Musso (Università di Genova)

11.30
That rare book in a large folio’. Remarks about the production, early reception and significance of Rubens’s Palazzi di Genova – Stijn Alsteens (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

12.00
Frans Geffels, Rubens and the Palazzi di Genova – Drs. Giulio Girondi (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Planning)

Free lunch

Rubens 's Architectural Ideas – Chair: Prof.dr. Krista De Jonge
14.30
Rubens’s Antwerp palazzetto: concept and meaning – Ben Van Beneden (Curator of The Rubens House)

15.00
Rubens’s House: light and architectural space – Prof.dr. Piet Lombaerde

Coffee

16.00
Closing lecture – Rubens and his theoretical notebook – Prof.dr. Arnout Balis (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Centrum Rubenianum)

17.00
Evening visit to the Exhibition Palazzo Rubens. The Master as Architect in The Rubens House

Closing Reception

Saturday 3 December 2011

10.00 – 13.00:
Guided City Tour: 17th Century Architecture in Antwerp