Presence in seventeenth-century practice and theory

Abstract

Circa 1600 Netherlandish artists began drawing nude figures that appeared to have been completed nae t’leven (from or towards life). In order to grasp the importance of this shift in artistic practice, the term nae t’leven must be seen in relationship to the concept of welstant, an idea evoking the representation of the harmonious interplay among the separate limbs of a moving body into a single figure. Through considering the dynamics between nae t’leven and welstant in practice and theory, it may be seen that the artist’s presentation of a nude figure was a realization not only of the body-in-movement but also of the artist’s own comprehension of leven (life). This development of working nae t’leven in artistic practice paralleled changes in seventeenth-century natural philosophy, in which thinkers such as René Descartes argued that the body’s movement was generated by an internal force as opposed to an external power. These shifts in seventeenth-century artistic practice and natural philosophy demonstrate emerging conceptions of the interrelationships among bodies and objects as a means to describe movement and to conceive space.