Winner of the 2023 Roland H. Bainton Prize for Art History Written by the poet-painter Karel van Mander, who finished it in June 1603, the Grondt der edel, vry schilderconst (Foundation of the Noble, Free Art of Painting) was the first systematic treatise on schilderconst (the art of painting / picturing) to be published in Dutch (Haarlem: Paschier van Wes[t]busch, 1604). This English-language edition of the Grondt, accompanied by an introductory monograph and a full critical apparatus, provides unprecedented access to Van Mander’s crucially important art treatise. The book sheds light on key terms and critical categories such as schilder, manier, uyt zijn selven doen, welstandt, leven and gheest, and wel schilderen, and both exemplifies and explicates the author’s distinctive views on the complementary forms and functions of history and landscape.
This volume contains twenty-four essays, which, in their subjects and methodology, pay tribute to the scholarship of Walter S. Melion. The contributions are grouped under three categories: “Devotion,” “Art and Image Theory,” and “Vision and Contemplation.” The Devotion section addresses votive practices, theological theory and polemic literature. The Art and Image Theory section focuses on Jesuit image theory, the reflexive dimension of works, and artists’ reflections on the function of images. Finally, the Vision and Contemplation section discusses the ‘early modern eye’ as a tool for thoughtful, prolonged looking to ascertain visual wit, deception, self-assessment and friendship, sacred and profane allegories.
This book examines deployments of mixed emotion in the literary and pictorial arts of early modern Europe. It consists of two parts, the first focusing on portrayals of mixed emotion in theatre, poetry, and prose, the second on forms and functions of mixed emotion in spiritual exercises centering on pictorial images, and on the heuristic and/or restorative functions of portraying mixed emotion. Contributors are Stijn Bussels, Tom Conley, Wietse de Boer, Carolin A. Giere, Barbara A. Kaminska, Graham R. Lea, Walter S. Melion, Mitchell Merback, Ruth Sargent Noyes, Bram Van Oostveldt, Raphaèle Preisinger, Bart Ramakers, Lukas Reddemann, Ludovica Sasso, Aline Smeesters, Paul J. Smith, Anita Traninger, and Elliott D. Wise.
Contemporary media history is a rapidly growing field that extends far beyond traditional studies of technology or institutions such as radio, film, and television. This volume expands the scope further still to analyze ephemeral, mundane phenomena long overlooked by media historiography. In eight original essays, the volume demonstrates the strengths of a broad concept of the media. The first part centers on media systems and media events, with studies of spiritist séances, Gallup polls, the mediated persona of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the burial of a Swedish elder statesman in 1915. The second part focuses on media materialities and infrastructure such as art replicas, ring binders, tourist guidebooks, and media technology in the IKEA home. Aimed at students and academics alike, Expanding Media Histories offers new empirical research, which engages critically with key concepts in media history today.
Frans Hals is one of the most important portrait painters of all time. Like Rembrandt, the famous Dutch Baroque master's striking portraits of the bourgeoisie and social outsiders are distinguished by their extraordinary vividness and accurate depiction. His sketch-like paintings, executed with bold brushstrokes, had a decisive influence on modernist painting. This comprehensive publication coincides with the first major survey exhibition of Hals' oeuvre in more than thirty years. FRANS HALS (1582/84–1666) was born in Antwerp, the son of a cloth merchant. In 1610 he was accepted into the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. Hals created hundreds of genre paintings, individual, and group portraits and enjoyed great public prestige. Despite his fame during his lifetime, it was not until the nineteenth century that he was enthusiastically rediscovered by the Impressionists and Realists.
A unique seventeenth-century account of painting as it was practiced, taught, and discussed during a period of extraordinary artistic and intellectual ferment in the Netherlands. The only comprehensive work on painting written by a Dutch artist in the later seventeenth century, Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst, anders de zichtbaere werelt (Introduction to the Academy of Painting; or, The Visible World, 1678) has long served as a source of valuable insights on a range of topics, from firsthand reports of training in Rembrandt’s studio to contemporary engagements with perspective, optics, experimental philosophy, the economics of art, and more. Van Hoogstraten’s magnum opus—here available in an English print edition for the first time—brings textual sources into dialogue with the author’s own experience garnered during a multifaceted career. Presenting novel twists on traditional topics, he makes a distinctive case for the status of painting as a universal discipline basic to all the liberal arts. Van Hoogstraten’s arguments for the authority of what painters know about nature and art speak to contemporary notions of expertise and to the unsettled relations between theory and practice, making this book a valuable document of the intertwined histories of art and knowledge in the seventeenth century.
This volume is the fifth volume of A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, a project devoted to all Rembrandt’s paintings. This is the work of ‘The Rembrandt Research Project’, consisting of a group of scholars led since 1993 by Professor Ernst van de Wetering. The project began in 1968 with the aim of separating Rembrandt’s own paintings from the vast number of Rembrandtesque paintings made by his many apprentices and followers. Having opted for a chronological approach to the cataloguing of Rembrandt’s paintings (from 1625 till 1642) in the first three volumes, it was decided in 1993 to adopt a thematic approach for further volumes. This was largely to facilitate the recognition of different hands. The new approach yielded much more information not only about Rembrandt’s working methods but also about the function and meaning of his works. This expanded field of view meant that etchings and drawings with similar themes also needed to be included. In 2005 Volume IV appeared, devoted to Rembrandt’s self-portraits, in painting, etching and drawing. Volume V consists of a catalogue and analysis of the so-called small-scale history and genre paintings. That theme was chosen because this type of complex work shows a variety of full-length protagonists acting in different narrative settings. For this reason, in the 17th century, painting, etching or drawing biblical and mythological scenes was looked upon as an artist’s greatest challenge. The choice of this theme proved to be highly fruitful in several ways. Small-scale history pieces reveal Rembrandt’s artistic ambitions most clearly. They also offer the authors a much more accurate view of the daily routine in Rembrandt’s studio; his apprentices mostly copied this type of work or used it as a starting point for their own. As a result it was easier to distinguish the works by the master himself from those of his pupils. All aspects of the skills necessary to create a pictorial illusion play a part in the creation of small-figured history paintings. These aspects were referred to as ‘the basis of the noble art of painting’ in Rembrandt’s days. Two seventeenth century painter/theoreticians discussed these principles systematically in two books which up till now have only sporadically been consulted in the context of 17th century studio practice. Karel van Mander wrote his Grond der edel vry schilder-const [Basis of the Art of Painting] in 1604 and Samuel van Hoogstraten produced his Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst [Academy of Painting] in 1678. Van Hoogstraten was a pupil of Rembrandt between 1642 and ’48. Comparing the two books and considering them in relation to Rembrandt’s oeuvre, gradually reveals his original views on painting and how these had developed during his career. Thus, the authors of this new Volume of A Corpus have gained an unexpected and profound insight into Rembrandt’s ideas and approach to his art. The ‘basic aspects’ of painting included the following topics: function and methods of drawing; human proportions; various positions, poses and gestures of figures; ways of arranging a scene’s protagonists in a composition; facial expressions of a variety of emotions; light, shadows and reflected light; landscape and animals; draperies and articles of clothing; methods of painting, and various characteristics and uses of colours. The way these ‘basic aspects’ were selected and dealt with presumed that the more practical side to the art of painting would be learned by the apprentice in the daily routine of his master’s studio. With the development of art history in the nineteenth century the ‘basic aspects’ of the art of painting listed above acquired the vague label of ‘style’. However, the seventeenth century categorization of the ‘basic aspects’ provides a much more acute means of probing the views and criteria for judging a painting by Rembrandt and his contemporaries than the concept of ‘style’. Volume V in the series A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings breaks new ground from the point of view of art history, not only in its approach to Rembrandt as an artist, but more particularly to his thinking about painting. Moreover, a detailed comparison of Rembrandt’s works and those by his apprentices who based their works on his, led to a profound and detailed understanding of Rembrandt’s views on pictorial quality. In art historical literature quality usually does not feature prominently since it is regarded as being too subjective. This comparative approach, together with the analysis of seventeenth century categories of thought about painting, have given the research on Rembrandt a new impetus, at the same time allowing us to see more clearly through seventeenth century eyes. That is why the new volume of the ‘Corpus’ is an important publication – not only for art historians but also for all who want to fully enjoy the numerous works of art that date back to the Dutch Golden Age, now scattered in museums around the world.
Throughout his life, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was considered an exceptional artist by contemporary art lovers. In this highly original book, Ernst van de Wetering investigates why Rembrandt, from a very early age, was praised by high-placed connoisseurs like Constantijn Huygens. It turns out that Rembrandt, from his first endeavours in painting on, had embarked on a journey past all the 'foundations of the art of painting' which were considered essential in the seventeenth century. In his systematic exploration of these foundations, Rembrandt achieved mastery in all of them, thus becoming the 'pittore famoso' that count Cosimo the Medici visited at the end of his life. Rembrandt never stopped searching for ever better solutions to the pictorial problems he saw himself confronted with; this sometimes led to radical decisions and alterations in his way of working, which cannot simply be explained by attributing them to a 'change in style' or a 'natural development'. In a quest as rigorous and novel as Rembrandt's, Van de Wetering shows us how Rembrandt dealt with the foundations of his art and used them to try and become the best painter the world had ever seen. His book sheds new light both on Rembrandt's exceptional accomplishments and on the practice of painting in the Dutch Golden Age at large.
'The Open Access publishing costs of this volume were covered by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Veni-project “Leaving a Lasting Impression. The Impact of Incunabula on Late Medieval Spirituality, Religious Practice and Visual Culture in the Low Countries” (grant number 275-30-036).' This volume explores various approaches to study vernacular books and reading practices across Europe in the 15th-16th centuries. Through a shared focus on the material book as an interface between producers and users, the contributors investigate how book producers conceived of their target audiences and how these vernacular books were designed and used. Three sections highlight connections between vernacularity and materiality from distinct perspectives: real and imagined readers, mobility of texts and images, and intermediality. The volume brings contributions on different regions, languages, and book types into dialogue. Contributors include Heather Bamford, Tillmann Taape, Stefan Matter, Suzan Folkerts, Karolina Mroziewicz, Martha W. Driver, Alexa Sand, Elisabeth de Bruijn, Katell Lavéant, Margriet Hoogvliet, and Walter S. Melion.
