International alliances, local boundaries: social and professional networks of the nineteenth-century Antwerp art collectors Florent van Ertborn and Fritz Mayer van den Bergh

Florent van Ertborn (1784-1840) and Fritz Mayer van den Bergh (1858-1901) were Antwerp’s major collectors of late medieval and early Netherlandish art in the nineteenth century. Both their collections reflect an artistic taste untypical for Antwerp at their time in that it broke with the city’s traditional alliance with Rubens. On the other hand, both collectors maintained close contacts with an international community of amateurs and art historians involved in the revaluation movement of early Netherlandish art, but also with contemporary artists from their native city. This paper discusses the two collectors’ international and local, social and professional networks. It argues that, by means of their unusual collections and cultural activity, both van Ertborn and Mayer van den Bergh expressed and transmitted their own educational, cultural and social ideals beyond the established Antwerp traditions of local patriotism and Rubens veneration, and distinctly sought alternative international alliances in their aspirations