Claimed By All or Too Elusive to Include: The Appreciation of Mobile Artists by Netherlandish Artists’ Biographers

Artist biographies contribute significantly to our knowledge and def inition of art in specific cities, countries, or regions. Through the inclusion and exclusion of artists, biographers shaped the understanding of artistic production in a place, and as such of local ‘style’ and the local ‘school of art’. The mobility and migration of artists—a ubiquitous phenomenon—poses a problem to the construction of the idea of local art. This paper explores the ways in which early modern Dutch biographers dealt with mobile and migrant artists. As I will argue, these biographers did not yet think in terms of a clearly delineated Dutch ‘school of art’ or ‘local style’ and, consequently, brought a more inclusive and f lexible approach to mobile artists.