Introduction: Erasures, Confessions, Sublimations

The timeline in Grand Design, Elizabeth Cleland's recent outstanding exhibition catalog on the work of Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502–1550), makes note of a key moment in the pioneering Brussels artist's career: the posthumous publication by Mayken Verhulst (1518–1599) of his majestic printed frieze-like scroll, Ces Moeurs et fachons de faire de Turcz, or “The Customs and Fashions of the Turks.” (Figure 7.1) An important figure in the mid-sixteenth century artistic milieu of the Netherlands, Verhulst painted miniatures and was also Coecke van Aelst's wife for a little over a decade (married c. 1538/39–1550). The catalog's notation is correct in suggesting that Verhulst deserves credit as the prime actor in the publication of the long, horizontal woodblock prints of Coecke van Aelst's designs. Nadine Orenstein's concise essay introducing the prints serves admirably the overarching agenda of the Grand Design catalog and exhibition – to detail Coecke van Aelst's achievements. Orenstein situates Ces Moeurs within Coecke van Aelst's career as a masterful draftsman, tapestry designer, and antiquarian painter who served Emperor Charles V (1500–1558). She discusses the origin of the prints and describes how they began life as designs for tapestries. Orenstein also accounts for the subjects that the prints portray and identifies some of Coecke van Aelst's figural sources in Italian art, particularly the paintings by Giulio Romano that Coecke van Aelst encountered during his Roman sojourn, which took place in the early 1530s.