Entry by
Austeja Mackelaite,
completed April 03, 2018:
This spirited drawing is the only known work by Bernart Prooijs. The draftsman belonged to a group of northern and central European artists who would be entirely unknown to us but for their contributions to Stammbücher, or alba amicorum (friendship albums). Popular in Germany and the Low Countries from the mid-16th century onward, such collections included drawings made by the owners’ friends and acquaintances, as well as artists and other prominent individuals. As is the case with the Harvard drawing, the sheets often contain dates and signatures. This helps scholars identify the makers of the drawings, some of whom are lesser-known or entirely unknown draftsmen of the period.
While the artist’s name reveals his Netherlandish origins, the drawing’s style and subject matter disclose his familiarity with the international court style at Prague at the end of the 16th century. Prooijs might have belonged to a large number of artists born in the Netherlands who, facing political and economic uncertainty in the Low Countries, spent their careers working in Prague or other cultural and commercial centers of the Holy Roman Empire. The central figure’s contorted pose, elongated proportions, graceful gestures, and highly abbreviated facial features, as well as the cursory, angular contours throughout the drawing, are derived from the visual vocabulary of artists working at Rudolf II’s imperial court in Prague, most notably Bartholomeus Spranger.
The spear-wielding Minerva—the goddess of wisdom and war—is seen here triumphing over the arrow-wielding death, the horned devil, and an unidentified vice. Although this exact allegorical arrangement cannot be found in Spranger’s oeuvre, Minerva as Wisdom appears frequently in Rudolfine paintings, drawings, and prints, serving, in the words of Sally Metzler, “as a leitmotiv for Spranger, and indeed for Rudolfine aesthetics.”
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