La cerchia di Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle e un problema di metodo: le medaglie di Anthonis Mor e Francisco Pacheco oltre le storiografie nazionali

The sharp division between "Italian" and "Early Netherlandish" culture fostered by a nationally minded art history has led to serious misunderstandings in the classification of unattributed works created within supranational networks in the sixteenth century. The artistic circle of Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517–1586), minister to Charles V of Habsburg, can be considered a prime example of such a network, because it was characterized by an intense and widespread mobility of artefacts and artists from and to Brussels between the 1540s and the 1560s. This article focuses on two medals that portray personalities close to Monsignor of Granvelle, namely the painter Anthonis Mor and Cardinal Francisco Pacheco y Toledo. It aims to revise their traditional attributions and to demonstrate the extent to which the cultural encounters that took place in the shadow of the Habsburg court impacted artistic developments. Above all, the article will illustrate how much the interpretive schemes of a nationally minded art historiography have biased our account and complicated our understanding of these encounters.