Rome
The Saint-Denis Commission and the Road to Rome
At the age of thirty-four, Louis Brüls settled in Rome for the rest of his life. Before departing, he proposed the Saint-Denis commission to the parish church of Saint-Denis in Liège: a mandate to copy two masterworks of the Italian school for the church interior. The church could have commissioned original compositions, but Brüls argued against it. He maintained that the Italian school was still largely unknown in Belgium, and that a fine copy of an excellent religious painting could offer a value almost impossible to achieve in a newly invented work.
He recommended two paintings in particular: the Descent from the Cross by Fra Bartolomeo (1472–1517) at the Uffizi in Florence, and the Saint Cecilia by Raphael (1483–1520) in Bologna. The administration of Saint-Denis agreed and sent him to Italy. He departed at the beginning of November 1837, carrying the two large Saint-Denis commissions along with four smaller private commissions, mostly religious and one secular, for three separate patrons.
At the time of his departure, his Belgian contact address was care of "Mr Van Marcke, Place Verte, Liège," listed as such in the Antwerp Salon catalogue of August 1837. This indicates he maintained a proxy correspondence address in Liège rather than a studio of his own.
After arriving in Florence in late 1837 to begin work on the Fra Bartolomeo copy for Saint-Denis, Louis was struck almost immediately by severe ophthalmia (an acute eye disease), which the Journal historique et littéraire attributed to Florence's climate.
He was incapacitated for six months and entirely unable to paint. Recovery came only after he relocated to the mountains near Rome, where within three weeks, his sight and strength returned. His doctor then advised him to spend the winter in Rome rather than return immediately to Florence.
It was during this enforced Roman winter, while recovering from the eye illness, that Brüls produced his first major Roman work. The painting was titled I Crociati a S. Miniato (The Crusaders at San Miniato). It depicted the blessing of the banners of knights departing for the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre, set in the interior of the church of S. Miniato al Monte near Florence.
Il Tiberino, a Roman art weekly, published a detailed review in August 1839 describing the scene: the bishop surrounded by an immense crowd, a kneeling deacon, a Muslim convert who had renounced Islam to fight for the Cross, a knight of royal blood crossing his hands upon his chest. The painting earned Brüls a considerable reputation among artists and foreign visitors to Rome. It was sold to an English collector and attracted a crowd of distinguished persons to his studio. The Kunstblatt later confirmed that this work had caused a sensation in the city.
By 1838, Louis Brüls had settled in Rome. His movement south, begun in the mid-1830s through Munich and northern Italy, had become permanent. Rome was now his base of operations, his working environment, and the centre of his identity as an artist.
Between Rome and Florence
His position in the city was soon established. Brüls worked within the network of Northern European painters clustered around the Piazza di Spagna, the traditional centre of foreign artistic life in Rome.
By 1843, Reverend Donovan's travel directory Rome Ancient and Modern recorded Louis's address as Piazza di Spagna no. 46, within a few dozen metres of the Antico Caffè Greco on Via Condotti, the principal meeting place for foreign artists. Belgian, Dutch, and German artists formed a recognisable community, sharing studios, patrons, and exhibition circuits.
By the early 1840s, Brüls was part of this expatriate world, not merely a visitor passing through. This dual footing explains both the direction of his work and his continued visibility in Northern Europe. Brüls did not sever ties with Belgium or the Liège region; instead, he operated across two spheres, producing work in Rome while exhibiting and receiving commissions from the north.
Brüls returned to Florence in 1839 with no recurrence of the eye illness.
On 18 April 1839, he wrote a formal letter in Italian to the director of the Palazzo Pitti requesting permission to make an oil copy of Fra Bartolomeo's Deposizione di croce, asking for two months to complete the work. Permission was granted for the period 18 July to 18 September 1839.
The three-month interval between his request and the start of copying may reflect the administrative processing of the Florentine galleries, or the time needed to prepare his materials. Once admitted, he worked on the copy daily from half past six in the morning until three in the afternoon. The completed painting arrived in Liège later that year and was placed in the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin at Saint-Denis.
The Journal historique devoted several pages to an admiring review, its author confessing that during an hour and a half spent looking at the painting for the first time, he had tears in his eyes throughout. The letter also shows how quickly he had acquired fluent written Italian, a linguistic facility that would serve him throughout his career in Rome.
By 1840, Brüls was producing works of clear narrative ambition. A repetition of his Crusader painting, modified from the original that had caused a sensation in Rome, was exhibited in Belgium under the title Bénédiction des étendards pour la Terre Sainte. This placed him squarely within the cultural and religious interests of the period: a romanticised medieval Christianity expressed through large-scale historical composition.
At the same time, documented commissions also show his professional standing. His copy of Raphael's Saint Cecilia for the church of Saint-Denis in Liège required access to major Italian collections and significant travel between Florence and Bologna, where the original hangs. The fee of 1,500 francs, recorded in the official payment mandate of the Fabrique de Saint-Denis, indicates that he was working as an established professional painter.
During this early Roman period, Brüls began to appear prominently in the press. One revealing reference comes from the Kunstblatt, the art supplement to the Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser, one of the most widely read cultural periodicals in the German-speaking world. In issue no. 52, dated 29 June 1843, the Kunstblatt published a dispatch from Rome in which Brüls was the first artist discussed. The unnamed reviewer called him an "excellent colourist" who "has become less well known than he deserves."
Two recent paintings received detailed praise: The Taking of the Veil by a Noble Maiden, set in the church of Or San Michele in Florence, was described as "rich without confusion, with very skilful use of space"; and A Baptism in St Mark's, Venice was called "full of dignity and truth."
The reviewer praised the colour of both works as combining "strength and grace": warm, luminous, and harmonious despite the many gleaming fabrics and garments depicted. The review concluded that these paintings reflected very favourably on the newer art of Belgium.
The Florentine and Venetian settings of both paintings, Or San Michele in Florence and St Mark's in Venice, suggest that Brüls spent time travelling through northern Italy during 1843, a period when he was otherwise based in Rome. This pattern of movement between Rome and the north, already visible in the Saint-Denis commissions, would continue the following year.
In the summer of 1844, Brüls returned to Florence to study works in the Uffizi. On 26 August, he wrote in French to the Marquis Bourbon del Monte, Conservateur of the Imperial and Royal Museum of Florence, requesting permission to make oil studies in the gallery's portrait collection. He named six subjects: Dante, Michelangelo, Galileo, Raphael, Titian, and Rubens, and estimated two days for each portrait. Permission was granted from 27 August onward.
The visit matters because of what he chose to copy. The list of subjects, Dante, Michelangelo, Galileo, Raphael, Titian, and Rubens, shows a painter studying the Italian and Flemish masters at first hand, and actively deepening his knowledge of the Old Masters mid-career.
The estimated pace of two days per portrait indicates he was making rapid oil sketches rather than finished copies, a practice common among Belgian artists studying in Italian galleries. The letter also demonstrates his continued bilingualism: having written to the Pitti in Italian in 1839, he now addressed the Uffizi in French, adapting his language to the institution and its curator. This second documented visit to Florence, following the 1839 copying campaign, confirms that he maintained an active relationship with the Florentine galleries even after settling permanently in Rome.
Brüls continued his cycle of Crusader-themed works, including The Knight's Return, which complements the earlier The Knight's Farewell. These paintings, signed and dated 1840 and 1841 respectively, form a coherent group reflecting his sustained interest in medieval subjects. By December 1854, both were documented in the collection of Baron de Man d'Hobruge in Brussels.
San Giuliano and the Belgian Circle
Simultaneously, Brüls engaged with the international artistic community in Rome. His portrait of the Dutch painter Cornelis Kruseman (1797–1857), recorded by the RKD as Portrait of Cornelis Kruseman in Italie and dated c. 1843–1847, shows both his technical ability and his place in a cosmopolitan network of artists, travellers, and patrons. By 1844, documentary evidence places Brüls within a circle of Belgian artists active in Rome.
A memoir published in the Revue de Belgique (1879) by a visitor who had travelled to Rome in 1844 recalls joining the painter Jan Portaels (1818–1895) and meeting the Belgian artists resident there, naming Brüls among the first. From 1846 onward, Brüls participated in the exhibitions of the Società degli Amatori e Cultori delle Belle Arti, Rome's principal art exhibition society.
His first documented appearance was in 1846 with Doge Dandolo, followed by Lavatoio di Palestrina in 1847 and additional works in later years. His inclusion in the Società's exhibitions reflects his integration into the city's formal artistic structures.
In the same year, 1846, Brüls was appointed as a lay provisor of the Stichting Sint-Juliaan der Vlamingen (San Giuliano dei Fiamminghi), the historic Flemish charitable foundation and church in Rome.
Sint-Juliaan had declined severely during the French occupation and Napoleonic period, when its traditional role as a hospice for Flemish pilgrims was disrupted and its revenues came under outside control. After 1815 it gradually recovered, though less as a working pilgrims' hospice and more as a Belgian Catholic institution in Rome, administered and supported by artists, clergy, and diplomats.
Brüls joined the provisorenraad alongside the Ghent-born history painter Jean-Baptiste Maes-Canini (1794–1856), who had been resident in Rome since 1827. Both were lay members, a status the authoritarian rector P.J. Aerts, documented in 1842–1843, reportedly viewed with displeasure.
The appointment placed Brüls on the foundation's governing body during a period of tension between its clerical and lay leadership. Brüls and his fellow provisor Pierre Monami (1814–1857) were repeatedly consulted as artists on the renovation and decoration of the Belgian church. The minutes of the provisors' meetings and the records of their "congrégations" show them charged with overseeing the fitting out of the premises, drawing on their professional expertise to guide decisions about the institution's physical fabric.
He would later become vice-president (ondervoorzitter) of the provisorenraad, a role documented in the 1862 Pasinomie and the 1866 Forcella inscription at San Giuliano.
At the same time, he maintained strong ties to Liège and Belgium. A copy of Fra Bartolomeo's Descent from the Cross for the church of Saint-Denis had been completed in Florence and arrived in Liège in 1839. A second version (or possibly a reworked copy executed at the Pitti Palace) is documented with a date of 1845 in the Liège art inventory.
Whether these represent the same painting or two separate works remains uncertain, but either way the connection to Saint-Denis continued across many years. These commissions required not only technical skill but also trust; the church's willingness to wait suggests that patrons regarded Brüls as a reliable intermediary capable of reproducing major Renaissance works for ecclesiastical settings.
The works he exhibited during this period reveal two main directions. On one hand, he continued to produce large-scale historical compositions, including Crusader subjects and scenes involving Doge Dandolo, maintaining his alignment with Romantic historical painting. On the other, he exhibited Italian genre scenes such as Lavatoio di Palestrina, which drew on local life and appealed to collectors seeking representations of Italy.
Revolution and Return
In 1848, political upheaval struck Rome directly. The revolutionary wave that swept across Europe reached the city, culminating in the flight of Pope Pius IX (1792–1878) and the establishment of the Roman Republic.
For an artist like Brüls, whose work was closely tied to Catholic and historical themes, the turmoil affected both patronage and working conditions. Thieme-Becker records that he left Rome in May 1848 because of the Revolution. Brüls returned to Belgium and personally brought three paintings to the Exposition Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
The exhibition and its critical reception are documented in the Revue du Salon de Bruxelles (1848), authored by L. Van Roy and T. Decamps. The reviewers, encountering Brüls's work for the first time, described him as a "compatriot whose talent was unknown to us" and whose success they noted "with keen pleasure." They confirmed that he had lived in Rome for a very long time and had returned to his homeland to deliver the paintings in person.
The three exhibited works were L'Enfant malade (The Sick Child), Jeune femme des Abruzzes à sa toilette (Young Woman of the Abruzzi at Her Toilette), and La prière (The Prayer). The reviewers singled out L'Enfant malade as "one of the happiest compositions in the Salon," praising its expression and sentiment: the superstition of the father who brings two superb roosters to Capuchin friars to obtain the recovery of his sick son, the grief of the mother, the indifference of the monks, all rendered with skill. The scene takes place in an underground church in Tuscany.
Jeune femme des Abruzzes was praised for its magnificent colour and powerful effect, and the reviewers noted that it held its own alongside the work of Robert-Fleury, one of the most celebrated French history painters of the era. Only La prière received qualified criticism: while the colouring was warm, the tones were judged "false" and the drawing not entirely beyond reproach.
L'Enfant malade was awarded a vermeil (gilt silver) medal, a formal Belgian state honour for artistic merit, and was selected for a full-page lithographic reproduction in the Revue, drawn by Ch. Billoin and lithographed by Simonau. This is the earliest known printed reproduction of one of Brüls's paintings. The work was also allocated to the official lottery, indicating it was purchased by the state or exhibition authorities. The exhibition catalogue listed him as "Bruls (L.). Rome," confirming that even while in Belgium, his official residence remained the Eternal City.
His presence at the Brussels Salon illustrates the dual structure of his career: based in Rome, yet still connected to Belgium. A letter dated 13 November 1848, written from Drinhausen, the family estate near Übach where he had been born, confirms that he visited his family during this period. The estate was now managed by his younger brother Franz-Theodor Brüls, who had taken over the farm after their father's death. Louis also spent time in Maastricht, with his elder brother Jean-Joseph, before returning to Rome after the political situation stabilised later in 1849.