Frans Floris was born in Antwerp ca. 1519/20 into a prominent family of artists. His father, Cornelis I Floris, was a stonecutter; his brothers all became artists. Cornelis II became a very important architect and sculptor (one of the designers of the Antwerp city hall), Jacob a painter of stained-glass windows and Jan a Potter. Little documentary evidence of Frans Floris’ life remains; most of what we know about him today has come down to us through his extensive biography in Karel van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck (1604). Frans was possibly first trained as a sculptor by his father, before being apprenticed to the Liège-based painter Lambert Lombard. He became a member of the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1540. [1]

 

Frans travelled to Italy in 1541, where he studied the art and architecture of ancient Rome, as well as the work by contemporary Italian artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo, who would greatly influence him. Ca. 1545 he returned to Antwerp and opened his workshop, where a whole generation of 16th-century artists worked and trained under his guidance. Van Mander lists a few dozen pupils of Floris’, but the actual number of his assistants may well have exceeded one hundred. [2] In 1547 Floris married Clara Boudewijns; the couple had one daughter and two sons, both of whom were later trained as artists by their father.

 

Floris quickly became one of the most important Netherlandish artists of his day, enjoying the patronage of many wealthy and noble personalities, including the Antwerp banker and collector Nicolaes Jonghelinck and the duke of Aarschot. In 1549 he was tasked with the design of the decorations for the joyous entry into Antwerp of Charles V of Spain. Furthermore, Floris was well acquainted with several of Antwerp’s leading humanists, including Abraham Ortelius and Christophe Plantin. Floris was a prolific painter, who mainly produced large-scale altar pieces and mythological or allegorical compositions and, to a lesser extent, a small number of excellent portraits.

 

The present well-preserved 16th-century drawing is a recent rediscovery and an addition to the body of drawings known collectively as Frans Floris’ Roman Sketchbook. [3] This group of drawings, for the most part kept in the Kupferstichkabinett at the Kunstmuseum Bazel (inv. Nos. U. IV.6 - U.IV.29), once formed part of a larger sketchbook, which Frans Floris brought back with him to Antwerp on his return from his travels in Italy ca. 1545. [4] In these drawings, Floris copied famous examples of Antique and Renaissance sculpture present in Rome, which had been - and were still being - discovered all over the city from the late 15th century onwards. Not limiting himself to drawing artworks and monuments he saw in the streets, Floris also visited the homes of several famous private collectors, as can be ascertained from the inscriptions on some of the sheets. 

 

After his return to Antwerp, Floris presumably presented the sketchbook to his brother Cornelis, who, as a sculptor and an architect, would have had a great interest in the subject matter of the drawings. [5] As some of these drawings were taken out for use or perhaps because Floris wanted to keep some sheets for himself, several of the originals were replaced with copies, presumably by someone from Floris’ workshop. This explains, for example, how one of Floris’ originals from the Roman Sketchbook ended up in the Royal Library in Brussels (inv. No. F 11791) , while a copy remained in the group kept in Bazel (inv. no. U.IV.10). [6] 

 

The present sheet was drawn after a statue of a sitting woman now kept in the Palazzo dei Conservatori  (Musei Capitolini, inv. no. MC0775; see ill. 1) in Rome. This sculpture had been found on the Via Appia, restored to represent Roma Victrix and exhibited in the Giardino Cesi only shortly before Floris copied it, ca. 1541/5. [7] Another version of the drawing can be found amongst the sheets kept in Bazel (inv. No. U.IV.7; see ill. 2), where Roma Victrix is flanked by copies after several other sculptures from the Cesi collection. Though the Bazel drawing was published by Van de Velde as by Floris [8], it does not compare very favorably to the present sheet. Harshly drawn without any hesitation, especially in the hatchings and the drapery, it has nothing of the monumentality, the light touch and the quality of the present sheet, which is therefore a far likelier candidate for Floris’ original.

 

 

END NOTES

 

 

[1] This short biography is based on C. Van de Velde, “Frans Floris (1519/20 - 1570): leven en werken”, in: Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België: Klasse der Schone Kunsten, 37, Brussel, 1975, 21 - 47.

 

[2] Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-boeck, Haarlem, 1604, fol. 242v and 243r.

 

[3] Van de Velde published and discussed all drawings from the Roman Sketchbook extensively in his excellent article: C. Van de Velde, “A Roman Sketchbook of Frans Floris”, in: Master Drawings, Vol. 7, no. 3, 1969, 255 - 286 + 312 - 326.

 

[4] C. Van de Velde, “Frans Floris (1519/20 - 1570): leven en werken”, in: Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België: Klasse der Schone Kunsten, 37, Brussel, 1975, 338.

 

[5] Ibid., 92. 

 

[6] Ibid., 353 - 356.

 

[7] Ibid., 350 - 351. When Maarten van Heemskerck drew the garden ca. 1535, the sculpture was not yet on display.