Learning to perform in early modern art collections

Abstract

Abstract This essay discusses the relationship of understandings of civility and performance to expected behaviour when visiting art collections in the first half of the seventeenth century. With the growth of art collecting as a fashion across Europe in the 1600s, it became increasingly necessary for visitors to collections to acquire a vocabulary and sense of standards concerning art in order to be able to converse effectively about objects within collections. The text examines the types of literature available to novices and the first principles considered important by different kinds of authors for this market. It looks in particular at the English situation in the first half of the seventeenth century, when there were few opportunities to examine and discuss art collections.