Cornelis Schut, born in Antwerp on 13 May 1597, was the son of the merchant Willem Albertz Schu(d)t and Suzanna Schernilla. He had a younger brother, Pieter (°1602), who became a painter and engineer, and a sister, Maria, whom we know only by her Christian name. There is no concrete information about Cornelis Schut’s teachers or his training as a painter. In 1618/19 he joined the Antwerp Guild of St Luke as an independent master. Schut’s earliest documented activity took place in Italy. From 1624 he sojourned in Rome, where he was a member of the Accademia di San Luca and one of the first members of the Bentvueghels, an informal society of Northern artists. This ‘band of birds’ was a flamboyant company, most of whom were painters. They came from the Low Countries, northern France and Germany, and thus formed the contingent of pittori forestieri (foreign painters), known in Italy collectively as fiamminghi (‘Flemings’). Although the fiamminghi had come to Rome to further their artistry by studying the art of antiquity and the famous Italian masters, their diligent studies were often accompanied by exuberant feasting and frivolous ceremonies. Applicants were ragged in the name of Bacchus, the god of wine, and were given a nickname – Schut was known as ‘Broodzak’ (‘Bread Bag’) – and celebrated with a bout of heavy drinking.

 

In the first decades of the seventeenth century, the building of baroque Rome was still in full swing. An extraordinary concentration of very good artists, such as Domenichino (1581–1641), Giovanni Lanfranco (1582–1647) and Guercino (1591–1666), and a few phenomenal ones – the young Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), who, like Schut, arrived in Rome in 1624, and the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) – meant that artistic innovation proceeded at a breath-taking pace. Nuova arte and nuova città coincided perfectly. In this climate, as stimulating as it was competitive, Schut built up an excellent social network. His clients included Pietro Pescatore (Pieter Visscher), a wealthy Flemish banker, merchant and patron of the arts, who in Rome was one of the first to commission work from the talented Brussels sculptor François du Quesnoy (1599–1640). For Pescatore’s villa in Frascati, southeast of Rome, Schut executed a fresco cycle of monumental mythological scenes that can still be admired in the Casino Pescatore. Even though there is no surviving inventory of Pescatore’s art collection, this Roman Fleming is said to have owned works by such artists as Rubens, Poussin and Domenichino, as well as numerous paintings by the Utrecht Caravaggist Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656).  

        

Another important patron of Schut was marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani (1562–1637), an aristocratic banker and art collector who, according to Francis Haskell, could boast ‘the broadest and most deeply experienced artistic culture of any man in Rome and indeed Europe – with the single exception of Rubens’. [1] For Giustiniani – who was, moreover, one of the early benefactors of Caravaggio, by whom he owned a number of works – Schut painted the Adoration of the Magi (Caen, Église de la Trinité) and the Massacre of the Innocents (Caen, Église de la Trinité), among other works.

 

Schut’s work reveals that he was well-acquainted with the Roman art scene, which is impossible to group under one common denominator. Two aspects of the cultural melting pot that Rome undeniably was would soon take on European dimensions:  the increased appetite for naturalism - for a pictorial idiom dal naturale, often with surprisingly lifelike details - combined with thoroughgoing attention to the visualisation of emotions or ‘affects’ (affetti). In religious art in particular (but not exclusively), the point was to touch and move and ultimately convince the viewer. Schut, with his indisputable adaptive ability, mastered this new ‘Roman style’ with astonishing ease. His animated compositions are densely populated with lively and extremely expressive figures, and these stylistic characteristics also typify his electrifying drawings. Strong contrasts of light and dark betray the influence of both Caravaggio and Lanfranco, while his palette recalls the work of Lanfranco and Federico Barocci (c. 1535–1612). 

 

On 16 September 1627, Schut was arrested on suspicion of murder – it was alleged that two months earlier he had fatally stabbed a fellow member of the Bentvueghels, one Joost uit den Haagh (‘Schotsche Trommel’, or ‘Scottish Drum’) – and sentenced first to life imprisonment and subsequently to lifelong banishment. On 18 October, however, he was pardoned at the request of the Accademia di San Lucca. In late 1628 he was active for a while as a tapestry designer for the famous Arazzeria Medicea in Florence. Afterwards, he presumably returned to Rome, where in 1630 he rented a house near the Via Margutta in the parish of Santa Maria del Popolo. From his marriage contract with Catharina Geenssins, drawn up in Antwerp on 22 September 1631, it appears that he then returned to his native city. Soon after settling there, he began to obtain important public commissions. In 1634 he delivered several paintings for the Triumphal Entry of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand into Ghent, and in 1635 he worked as a kind of sub-contractor with Rubens, decorating the city for Ferdinand’s Triumphal Entry into Antwerp. 

 

This says about all there is to say about the artistic relations between these two masters. Even after Schut’s return to Antwerp, the sources of his art must be sought mainly in Italy. The skills he had acquired in Rome ensured him of prestigious ecclesiastical commissions, not only in his hometown but also in Brussels, Ghent, Bruges and Cologne, where his work included three canvases executed for the Jesuit Church. The Jesuits in Antwerp also liked his work, as evidenced by The Coronation of the Virgin which he painted for the high altar of the Sint-Ignatiuskerk (now the Carolus Borromeuskerk). It is possible that Schut obtained this commission through his colleague, the Jesuit painter Daniel Seghers SJ (1590–1661), to whose floral garlands he frequently added the medallions and cartouches, whether or not in trompe l’oeil. Schut’s Antwerp masterpieces also include The Beheading of St George  an altarpiece that he painted in 1643 for the Circumcision Chapel of the Guild of the Young Crossbowmen in Antwerp Cathedral (KMSKA, Antwerp) and the Assumption of the Virgin (1645–47). This monumental canvas, nearly six metres in diameter, which closes off the crossing tower of the cathedral, testifies to Schut’s unparalleled talent in painting da sotto in sù, with spectacularly foreshortened figures and a staggering suggestion of speed and momentum. 

 

In Antwerp, Schut continued to paint mythological and allegorical representations, as shown by his masterly designs for the tapestry cycle The Seven Liberal Arts (c. 1648). Three of the cartoons for this series – Musica, Astrologia and Geometria – survive (Rubenshuis, Antwerp) but are in a deplorable state. He likewise made paintings for the international art market that were traded by the Antwerp firm of Forchoudt, among others. As in Rome, Schut could also count on prestigious private patrons, including Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm of Austria. Leopold-Wilhelm, governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1647 to 1656, had an exquisite collection, dominated by sixteenth-century Italian painting, as well as works by contemporary masters such as Rubens and Van Dyck. After resigning as governor, he returned to Vienna and took his collection with him, including Schut’s monumental Triumph of Time (c. 1650), which now belongs to the core holdings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Schut died on 29 April 1655 and was buried in the Sint-Willibrorduskerk in Borgerhout.

 

Cornelis Schut made extensive use of various techniques in addition to line drawings in chalk, graphite, and pen during the design process. Wash drawings allowed him to work on volume and lighting effects. One such sheet, both sketchy and precise, depicts the final moments of Saint Gertrude, a popular Brabant saint. It is a design for a typical Counter-Reformation altarpiece that clearly shows the influence of Rubens. The drawing can be linked to a preserved painting that was recently attributed to Schut. It is an altar piece on canvas that is currently located on the southern side altar of the Church of Saint Gertrude in Machelen (see ill.). [1] The moderate quality of execution suggests that we are not dealing with the principal work, but rather a studio replica. Nevertheless, it gives us an idea of what Schut's working process ultimately led to. Unlike the purely linear chalk drawings, here he suggests the lighting and volume with brown washes. 

 

The brown pen lines are rough and angular, seemingly executed quickly. However, there is an underdrawing in black chalk, remnants of which are faintly visible in some areas that are less heavily washed and overdrawn. Schut may have developed an earlier compositional sketch using this technique. The drawing and the painting of Saint Gertrude correspond well in most details. The proportions are the same, although the framing has been slightly adjusted; for example, the empty space in the foreground of the drawing has been eliminated. This likely indicates that the dimensions were agreed upon with the patron from the outset. However, modifications were still made at a later stage. Notably, on the painting, the priest administering her last communion is assisted by a colleague. The figure is no longer leaning towards her but stands upright, with his eyes cast downward, looking at the host in his hand and at the face of the dying saint. Furthermore, the nuns and other individuals present at the deathbed of the Holy Abbess have been moved or replaced in certain places. The two kneeling figures at the foot end have been replaced by a praying nun. The two vaguely depicted heads observing have been replaced by a nun looking up at the host and two sisters watching the scene from a distance on the far right. 

 

The purpose of this drawing was clearly to further study the complex composition, with its three vertically arranged scenes, in terms of volume and lighting. Comparing the drawing with the finished painting, it can be observed that the lighting in this study was largely incorporated into the completed altarpiece. Only the scene in the upper register with the Holy Trinity, waiting in heaven with a crown to receive the saint, is slightly more shadowed compared to the drawing. This shifts the emphasis slightly towards the foreground, with the dying Gertrude receiving communion. The art of the Counter-Reformation aimed to emphasize recognizable dramatic and human aspects in order to engage the ordinary believer more directly. At the same time, the sacrament of the Holy Communion, another focal point of the Counter-Reformation, is highlighted. Undoubtedly, Schut further developed everything through intermediate detailed studies on paper and possibly also in an oil sketch.

 

END NOTES

 

[1] Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters. New Haven and London, 1980, 30.

 

[2] Jahel Sanszalazar, “Cornelius Schut: Newly identified paintings in Belgium and Spain”, in: Archive Español de Arte 86 (343), 201-220.