ABSTRACT
In the sixteenth century, Italy became an artistic magnet that drew many Netherlandish artists across the Alps. Karel van Mander, in the theoretical section of Het Schilderboeck, recollects the difficult crossing. Unlike Italians, Netherlanders rarely produced art literature during the second half of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth. Actual production of art required technical skills in addition to literary and mathematical knowledge. These did not enjoy equal status in either Italian or Netherlandish theory. In the first decade of the seventeenth century the Netherlands ceased to be a single country belonging to the Spanish Hapsburg empire. The northern Netherlands, known as the United Provinces, successfully freed themselves from Spanish rule; the southern Netherlands remained part of the empire. As their political, social and religious structures diverged, so did their art, commonly distinguished as Dutch and Flemish, and their art theory.
