Die Flämische Landschaft, 1520-1700, Villa Hügel, Essen & Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 2003-2004, Cat. No. 60.

With staffage possibly by another unidentified hand[i]. 

Despite a successful career as court painter to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella in Brussels, surprisingly little is known about Denijs van Alsloot.  The son of a tapestry worker of the same name, he was probably born in Brussels around 1568.  He is mentioned for the first time as a master in the Brussels guild of painters in 1599, when he began taking on apprentices.  Around this time, he entered the service of the archducal couple, who had recently arrived in Brussels to take up their appointment as joint governors of the Southern Netherlands.  In his early career, van Alsloot probably worked in the same industry as his father, producing designs and cartoons for tapestry weavers, but he seems only to have taken up easel painting around 1606.  Thereafter, dated examples of his work are known until 1621.

The majority of van Alsloot’s works are cabinet-sized paintings, executed on panel, but he also produced a small number of large-format (dobbeldoeken) canvases.  He frequently signed his work with his name followed by an abbreviation of his official title as court painter – Serenissorum Archiducum Pictor.  Probably owing to his short career as a painter, he left a relatively small oeuvre.  Besides the various versions of the Ommegang procession, only forty-four paintings and eleven drawings are listed in Sabine van Sprang’s 2014 monograph on the artist.  Van Alsloot’s career evidently flourished under the enlightened patronage of the archdukes, the years from 1615 to 1621 marking the peak of his activities as a painter.  During this period, he received a steady flow of large commissions, suggesting that he ran a successful workshop, however, after the death of the Archduke Albert in 1621, the commissions seem to have suddenly dropped off. 

Van Alsloot specialised in forest landscapes, both summer and winter views.  Some are purely fanciful, while others incorporate topographically accurate views of identifiable places, including the Priory of Groenendael, and the royal estates at Mariemont and Tervuren. He regularly turned to specialist figure painters to contribute the staffage in his paintings, among them Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573-1647), Otto van Veen (1556-1629), and the Brussels history painter Hendrik de Clerck (c. 1560-1630).  Besides the patronage of the archducal couple, van Alsloot’s position at court likely gave him access to an exclusive circle of courtiers, government officials and advisors, as well as visiting foreign princes and diplomats, from which he probably drew the majority of his clients.  To Judge from the fact that two of his paintings appear in the 1632 inventory of the pictures belonging to the Stadholder Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange and Amalia van Solms, and another two were in the collection of the art-loving Spanish ambassador to the Brussels court, the Marqués de Leganés[i], Alsloot enjoyed something of an international reputation. 

In this exquisite winter scene Van Alsloot provides a broad panorama of the Flemish countryside seen from a slightly raised vantage point. The pale, yellow glow from a wintry sun steals across the sky, illuminating the snow-covered landscape.  On the right, wooded slopes give way to more open ground as they descend towards the valley floor.  A broad vista on the left affords a view of the castle of Tervuren, surrounded by its frozen moat, with the village and church of Tervuren in the distance beyond.  A watermill, glimpsed through an opening between two trees, appears in the middle of the composition.  Overhead, birds circle in the cold air or find a perch amidst the leafless branches.  Despite the intense cold, a few small figures wend their way along the winding tracks and paths that crisscross the woodland: a hunter with his dogs, a man with a horse and cart, and small groups of travellers with their bundles and pack animals.  In the right foreground, a pilgrim’s cross stands by the roadside next to a broken tree trunk that serves as a warning of the dangers of the winter cold and the fragility of life.

The painter has captured beautifully the picturesque qualities of the season, the silvery blue-grey palette evoking the freezing conditions and misty, rarefied atmosphere.  His extremely refined, almost miniaturist technique is clearly evident, especially in the meticulous depiction of the trees, and the way in which he has rendered the frost-encrusted bark and delicate filigree of bare branches using fine, stippled brushstrokes. 

Located in the Forêt de Soignes, not far to the southeast of Brussels, Tervuren had since the twelfth century served as a hunting lodge and royal residence of the Dukes of Brabant: by the early sixteenth century, it formed part of the Hapsburg dominions of the Emperor Charles V.  In the Archdukes’ time, thanks to its proximity to the Coudenburg Palace in Brussels, Tervuren became a favourite venue for elaborately staged hunts and other festivities.  Between 1608 and 1617, major alterations were carried out to the castle and its grounds under the direction of the court architect and painter Wenceslas Cobergher (c. 1560-1632), including the addition of a Renaissance-style gallery to house part of the archdukes’ extensive collection of paintings. 

Van Alsloot inserted topographically accurate depictions of Tervuren castle into a number of his paintings, both pure landscapes and in landscapes with religious or mythological subject matter, no doubt with the intention of enhancing their appeal for his particular audience.  Similarly, views of the palace of Mariemont, a favourite residence of Albert and Isabella situated in Hainault, and the ancient Priory of Groenendael, which in the time of the Archdukes served as a hunting lodge for the court, also feature often in his paintings.  It becomes clear, however, that although Van Alsloot almost certainly worked from accurate drawings taken from life, he exercised a considerable degree of artistic licence when composing the landscape settings in his paintings.  For example, in this painting, dated 1618, the castle is seen from the east, as it appears in a closely related drawing of 1608 in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts, in Paris[ii], although the landscape here is more extensive.  The castle seen from the same orientation also appears in the background of a very different forest landscape with the Flight into Egypt dating from around 1608[iii].  It should be noted that in both of these paintings the castle is shown as it was prior to Coberbergher’s alterations, exactly as it appears in the drawing of 1608.  However, in a winter scene of 1614 in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, the setting is more or less the same as we see here, but the castle is seen from the northwest[iv]. 

This winter landscape, described by Ertz as “an important late masterpiece”, is a beautiful example of the work of Denijs van Alsloot, a painter who deserves to be better known.  Probably on account of a somewhat short career, spanning less than twenty years, his surviving paintings are rare.  Nevertheless, he evidently enjoyed a privileged status as court painter to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella, serving alongside such prominent masters as Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625), his exact contemporary, Joos de Momper the Younger (1564-1635) and Hendrick de Clerck, with whom he often collaborated. Having gained the favour of the court, he probably had no need to look any further for his patrons.

BIOGRAPHY

Documentary sources provide only sporadic glimpses of Denijs van Alsloot’s life.  The son of a Brussels tapestry worker of the same name, his birth probably in Brussels[v] must have occurred around 1568.  The earliest reference to his name is a receipt dated 26 May 1593 for the gilding and decoration of the Garnier family monument in Notre-Dame-du-Sablon in Brussels.  The records of the Brussels painters’ guild do not mention his admission as a master, but show that he took on three apprentices between 1599 and 1604, the last being Pieter van der Borcht.  In 1599-1600, he entered the service of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella, who entrusted him with many important commissions.  In 1603 and 1604 van Alsloot received payments from them for the design and weaving of two pieces of tapestry.  The artist apparently did not take up easel painting until after 1606: his earliest surviving dated painting is from 1608.  In 1611, he took on another apprentice, Willem de Moye.  No paintings dated after 1621 are known.  In 1618, the artist was living in a comfortable residence near “des Bogards”, in a neighbourhood not far from the Palace of Coudenberg, but after 1621, his circumstances had evidently changed as his name appears in the register of the Poor of Coudenberg.  Although the guild records indicate that Denijs van Alsloot was still alive in January 1625, he had passed away by December 1626 when the Infanta Isabella purchased two of his works from his goddaughter Léonora Cousins that he had bequeathed her in his will.  Although there is no record of his marriage, the registers of the Poor of Coudenberg show that his widow continued to pay the rent on the house near “des Bogaerds” until 1643.