Anton van den Wyngaerde

Anton van den Wyngaerde (Spanish: Antonio de las Viñas) (1525 - 1571) was a prolific Flemish topographical artist who made panoramic sketches and paintings of towns in the southern Netherlands, northern France, England, Italy and Spain. He is best known for many panoramas of cities in Spain that he drew while employed by Philip II of Spain. His work was dispersed into different collections after his death and neglected. Its historical and artistic value has only recently been rediscovered.

Life
Van den Wyngaerde was probably born around 1525 in Antwerp. His father may also have been an artist, since an "Anton van den Wyngaerde" was registered in 1510 in the painter's guild of Antwerp. His first known work was a topographical view of Dordrecht from around 1544. Trained in the Antwerp school, his views were made by artistic observations from nature. From his body of work, he is known to have traveled to Italy, where he drew views of Rome, and to England.

A large view of London in fourteen sheets is dated to 1544. Between 1552 and 1553 van den Wyngaerde created views of Rome, Genoa, Naples and Ancona. Four of van den Wyngaerde's panoramas of Rome were discovered in the Sutherland Collection in the Bodleian Library of Oxford. They appear to be copies, and may have been done by apprentices rather than by the artist himself. The original of one of them was found later, in four separate leaves, more clearly and carefully drawn. They must have been executed no later than September 1557 since one of them shows the Pons Aemilius still complete. That bridge was ruined by a flood of the Tiber on 18/27 September 1557, and was not repaired in stone until 1575.

Van den Wyngaerde entered the service of Philip II of Spain, and during the 1557 Spanish campaign in northern France he documented the sieges of Saint Quentin and Ham. He also drew views of Sluis, Dunkirk, Mechelen and Bruges. A view of Brussels is dated 1558. Between 1558 and 1559 he visited England, perhaps more than once, where he made views of places that Philip II had visited in 1555 when he had traveled to England to marry Mary Tudor, including Dover, London and the palaces of Greenwich, Hampton Court, Oatlands and Richmond.

The original of the Panorama of London is in the Sutherland Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and measures 10 feet by 17 inches, in seven sheets.

Around 1561 or 1562 Anton van den Wyngaerde went to Spain where Philip II commissioned him to document all the main towns, and also to decorate the royal palaces with pictures of the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. He decorated the walls of the El Pardo palace with several city views, and he painted scenery for theater productions at the royal court. Van den Wyngaerde made at least sixty-two views of cities and towns, including Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza, Granada, Córdoba, Seville, Toledo, Burgos and Madrid. Van den Wyngaerde's picture of Cadiz before it was sacked by the English in 1596 is the only reliable view from that time. He drew the first picture of Gibraltar. His main task was to make paintings of the many cities in Philip's kingdom on the walls of the Royal Palace of Madrid. These were lost in a fire of 1727 that destroyed the palace, but many of the drawings survived.

Van de Wyngaerde once said, "among all the joys that the delightful and ingenious art of painting has to offer, there is not one that I hold in higher esteem than the representation of cities." His last dated work was a panorama of Çamora from 1570. In 1571 he died in Madrid. He received little recognition during or after his life until his work was rediscovered in the late 1800s.

Work
As a servant of the king, van de Wyngaerde's drawings presented the Spanish cities in their best possible light, but he succeeded in giving a vivid depiction of town life in his day. He showed the general prosperity of the Spanish cities of his day, which were growing fast, although they were all still walled cities in the Medieval tradition, dominated by churches and palaces. The drawings show the cities as they were during the golden age of Philip II with what appears to be photographic accuracy. However, there is no trace in his pictures of the squalor of street life that prevailed in all cities of that time.

Van den Wyngaerde's city views, often from imaginary viewpoints, were made without falling back on surveys or plans but depended on the artist's visual memory and imagination. His line drawings would be enhanced with watercolors in green, blue, red and brown to add detail and realism. He would add pictures of the surrounding countryside with figures of people to give a sense of scale, The sense of realism was illusory, as close examination shows problems of scale and selective representation of features of interest.

In a 1563 View of Valencia, the city seems to be viewed from the north, but the cathedral is depicted as it appears from the west, which shows off the building to better advantage. The streets are made wider and straighter as though the city had been formally planned, the squares are made larger and some of the towers are moved to different positions. Despite the appearance of detail and realism, the picture gives an idealized sense of the city's appearance rather than an accurate representation. Van den Wyngaerde's work was always artistic rather than scientific.