Des réseaux plutôt que des ethnies : la place des portraits de souverains dans les anciens Pays-Bas [titolo redazionale]

This contribution discusses the historiographical approach to sixteenth-century portrait sculpture in Hainaut, Brabant and Antwerp. In particular, it rejects the linear, ethno-centric evolutionary paradigms adopted in the nineteenth and twentieth century to give account of the presence and impact of artists such as Leone Leoni, Pompeo Leoni, Jacopo da Trezzo and Giampaolo Poggini in this area. Its key question concerns the reasons for the success of these artists, summoned from afar to work in a region with a well-established production in the arts they practiced, such as metal casting, stone carving, and the engraving of seals and coin dies. The essay challenges the notion of “Italian art's superiority” and concludes that the artistic landscape of the ancient Netherlands was shaped by diverse trajectories and encounters, rejecting simplistic narratives of “Italianization” as opposed to “vernacular tradition”. Finally, the author proposes a new classification for the bronze bust of Philip II at the Museo Nacional del Prado (inv. E266), the previous framing of which exemplary reflects the biases of the past historiography about this region.