Entry of Karl V into Antwerp

An anonymous American art critic praised Makart’s Entry of Karl V into Antwerp and commented on differences in attitudes toward nudity in Europe and the US:

“No picture attracted more attention, or was more worthy of it, at the past Paris Exposition, than Makart’s Entry of Charles V into Antwerp. This is a true historical picture, in rendering which the artist has taken few liberties with the record. The subject is admirable for the artist’s style of painting and love of opulent display of color. The incident of this great picture is described in Albrecht Dürer’s Journal of a Voyage to the Netherlands, in which he says: ‘I gave a sou for a little book describing the entry into Antwerp, where the king received a costly triumph. The city gates were ornamented in the most costly manner; there was music and great rejoicing, and beautiful young maidens whose like I have seldom seen.’ Dürer told Melancthon, his friend, in 1526, that ‘he looked at these young women very attentively and closely, and without shame, because he was a painter.’ It is supposed that these maidens were nude, and that they were grouped on a balcony, or in some tableau. For artistic reasons of his own Hans Makart saw fit to introduce them into the procession, walking in front, or by the sides of the king’s horse, bearing presents in their hands. But he did not go as far as the historical record would allow, and gave them sufficient drapery to satisfy, one might suppose, the most fastidious public guardian of modern American morals! Although this great work is universally admired in Europe, and a sketch of it, made by the artist himself, has appeared in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, a splendid imported photography, exhibited in New York, was suppressed by an official who determines what is proper and what is not for the free people of America to look at. If the same picture was reproduced in The Aldine, it might subject it to suppression in the mails, and our readers would be deprived of that issue. Perhaps it is better not to run the risk.”

Anonymous, “Hans Makart,” The Aldine, vol. 9, no. 9 (1879): 285-6.