Michael Sweerts. Realtà e misteri nella Roma del Seicento

The exhibition at the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca at Palazzo Carpegna is an opportunity to discover the history and absolute singularity of one of the most enigmatic, complex and international artists of 17th century Flemish painting, a figure ignored by the historians of his time and only re-evaluated since the early 20th century by northern European critics and since the middle of the century by Italian critics.

The research for the exhibition provided an in-depth insight into the biographical, social and artistic life of Michael Sweerts, who was free from the whims of patronage and the artistic fashions and currents in vogue thanks to the economic and intellectual independence that his aristocratic origins guaranteed him. In Rome, where he stayed from 1643 to 1653, Sweerts came into contact with the undisciplined community of Dutch and Flemish painters, being influenced by the Bamboccianti school and Caravaggio but developing his own poetic autonomy. In his studio in Rome, Sweerts collected plaster casts of ancient and modern sculptural fragments, recurring in his canvases as traces of the city’s classical past and as a statement of an artistic practice far removed from the usual abstract and theoretical approaches. Returning to his homeland and becoming deeply religious, Sweerts left for the East to follow a French Lazarist mission, probably dying in Goa.

The eighteen works on display (owned by the Academy or from public and private collections, including the Académie de France Villa Medici, the Spada Gallery and the Capitoline Museums) allow us to re-evaluate neglected aspects of Sweerts’ work, such as his vocation for teaching and initiating young artists, often present in his pungent representations of ateliers. The works also highlight the weight of the Roman sojourn in the painter’s articulated expressive journey, mostly mortified by critical reading. It was during the decade spent in the city that Sweerts fine-tuned a non-monumental realism, made up of scenes revolving around recurring iconographic themes, such as young prostitutes and old drinkers in urban settings that illustrated the splendors and miseries of Rome. Sweerts’ interest in depictions of the sky can also be traced back to the Roman period, a theme he would also develop after his return home.