This book examines the career of the Brussels artist Michael Sweerts through an examination of the artistic, intellectual and cultural contexts that shaped his work and academy in the Netherlands and Italy in the seventeenth century. The Flemish artist Michael Sweerts has long been considered one of the most fascinating and enigmatic painters of the seventeenth century. His peripatetic career, which stretched from his native Brussels to Rome, and later Amsterdam and the Far East, included work for the papal family and the foundation of a drawing academy in the Southern Netherlands. Despite this rich and varied career, Sweerts has yet to be fully examined within the artistic, intellectual and cultural contexts of Brussels and Rome in the seventeenth century. This book aims to retrace the artistic traditions that shaped Sweerts' development and evolution as a painter, etcher and teacher, firmly situating him at the crossroads of artistic exchange between the Netherlands and Italy. The author demonstrates how Sweerts responded to contemporary notions of artistic practice and pedagogy in his work, and how he played a critical role in the formation of a Netherlandish academic tradition.