As opposed to someone like François-Joseph Navez (Charleroi, 1788 – Brussels, 1869) who, having left for Rome to perfect his education, only stayed there for four years, certain of his contemporary Belgian painters chose to stay there permanently. Such was the case with Martin Verstappen from Antwerp (1773 – Rome 1852) and the painter from Ghent, Jean-Baptiste-Louis Maes, called Maes-Canini. While the first found his place in landscape painting, the second established himself by the mid 1820s as one of the painters most in demand in Rome for a popular genre of “Italian scenes.”
Trained in the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, Jean-Baptiste-Louis Maes demonstrated an early talent.1 He thus swept up the prizes for the school Fine Arts competitions in which he participated: in Mechelen in 1810, Ghent in 1817, Brussels in 1818, Antwerp and Amsterdam in 1819. Elected a member of the Royal Society of Fine Arts in Ghent in 1820, he was accorded an annual allowance by the city for two years in order to pursue his training in foreign countries. From Paris where he stayed along with the landscape painter François Vervloet (Mechelen, 1795 – Venice, 1872), he successfully competed for the Academy of Antwerp’s Prix de Rome in 1821. Flush with a subsidy from the Belgian government, he rapidly set off for the Eternal City in the company of Vervloet. Leaving Paris in mid-August 1821, the two artists arrived at the destination on September 16th.
When he entered Rome, Jean-Baptiste-Louis Maes was a confirmed artist who had already worked in various genres: History painting, allegory, portraiture. New commissions for painting came from his native city, including a large altarpiece: The Holy Family with Saint Anne and Saint Joachim for the Church of Saint Michael. These marks of interest for his painting filled the artist with enthusiasm and furthered his ambition to become a History painter: “I just learned with a great deal of satisfaction that the Church of Saint Michael [in Ghent] just commissioned me to make a picture for the Chapel of Saint Anne,” he wrote on June 30th, 1824 to Lievin De Bast, the Secretary of the Royal Society of Fine Arts in Ghent, “now I am very happy to have occasion to be able to devote myself entirely to historical genre; and I will do the most to acquit myself honorably in meeting the general expectations of the public and of my compatriots; here I am content and happy to find myself always in the midst of masterpieces.”
With a small group Belgian and Dutch compatriots, including Vervloet and Verstappen who were already cited, Hendrik Voogd (Amsterdam, 1768 – Rome 1839), Cornelis Kruseman (Amsterdam, 1797 – Lisse, 1857), Philippe Van Brée (Antwerp, 1786 – Saint-Josse-ten-Nood, 1871), and the sculptor Mathieu Kessels (Maestricht, 1784 – Rome, 1836), Maes went on excursions into the Roman countryside, visiting the Alban Hills, Castel Gondolfo, Genzano, Nemi, Palestrina, Zargalo, Fracati, Grottaferrata, and places known for the beauty of the villagers and their shimmering colorful costumes. He also frequented more cosmopolitan circles. Thus in July 1823, he found himself at the Santa Scolastica Convent in Subiaco, in the company of Vervloet, the mysterious Russian Abasettel, the Frenchmen Louis Etienne Watelet (Paris, 1780 – 1866), Raymond Quinsac Monvoisin (Bordeaux, 1790 – Boulogne-sur-Seine, 1870), and François Antoine Leon Fleury (Paris, 1804-1858).4 He also frequented Germanic artists.
Stimulated by his colleagues and by the special atmosphere of the Eternal City, he turned more and more towards the then-fashionable genre of Italianate scenes. He announced to Lièvin de Bast in his letter of June 30th, 1824: “I have the honor of announcing to you that I just sent three pictures at the beginning of the month, depicting a St. Sebastian, an old woman praying, and the third, the Pifferari before a Madonna; at the beginning of next month, I will send another whose subject is a young and beautiful Vignerola with an old man, a life-size group.” These pictures figured in the Ghent Salon of 1824.
From then on, and with the exception of a few new religious paintings, such as The Good Samaritan of 1825, he mainly devoted himself to “Italian scenes,” and became one of the specialists in this genre in Rome. His success was such that in 1834, he ran a studio in which he employed several young artists in order to complete his numerous commissions. Gifted with an incontestable mastery of drawing, as well as of rendering surfaces and materials – whether it be the delicate flesh tones of young girls, the roughness of old cracked walls, the heavy fabrics of wool or the light linen shirts, - he delighted in flattering his clients’ taste with somewhat simpering or affected depictions of picturesque Roman country people. Furthermore, certain works are not without evoking, in insipid mawkish affected modes, the paintings of Leopold Robert (La-Chaux-de-Fonds, 1794 – Venice, 1835), with whom, as Denis Ciejekberghs suggests, he undoubtedly was in contact. Jean-Baptiste-Louis Maes explored themes belonging to the genre by depicting pilgrims, hermits, shepherds, peasants, and pifferari.
In 1827 in Rome, Jean-Baptiste-Louis Maes married Anne Maria, the daughter of the engraver Bartolomeo Canini, and settled permanently in the city. From then on, he added his wife’s name to his own. From their marriage a son Giacomo was born in 1828 who was to become a painter as well. Maes-Canini remained a useful relay for Belgian artists arriving and staying in Rome.
Until now, we did not know of any preparatory studies for pictures by the artist. This sheet of studies in pencil and oil is thus the first piece of evidence on his manner of working. Four studies of figures are discovered: one of an Italian mother drinking from a water pitcher which is held out to her while she is nursing her child; the second depicts an Italian girl seated on the ground and holding out an object in the right hand to a figure who is not shown, but at whom she gazes with a smile; the third study is of a young Italian woman seen from behind and turning her head towards the viewer; the last study seems to combine two figures, an Italian woman also seated on the ground over whom the artist has superposed a woman’s bust with her head covered in a white scarf.
It has been possible to compare two of these studies to pictures by the painter: the study of the young woman seen from behind in relation to Portrait of a Young Italian Woman, dated 1828 (fig. 1), and the study of a seated girl, which is inverted compared to the painting, The Preparations for a Ceremony, dated 1852. These discoveries obviously provide a chronological range stretching over almost a quarter of a century.
It is testimony to the Maes-Canini’s meticulous work in perfecting his figures. Trained in rigorous Neoclassical technique, he defined the silhouette of each of them with a light pencil outline. He then colored his figures by giving them body and volume through subtle gradations of light and shade. As with Navez or his compatriot from Ghent, Joseph Paelinck (Ghent, 1781 – Ixelles, 1839), Maes-Canini’s painting appears to be a successful synthesis of the Flemish masters’ colorist tradition and the firm draughtsmanship of Davidian Neoclassicism which the painter from Ghent had made a point of studying during his Parisian sojourn.
Alain Jacobs
transl. chr
