Dutch Painters Research Articles

Medical findings and congenital anomalies in Vermeer's paintings.

The 17th century was a time of scientific discovery in Europe. Leading academic centers provided the general population with an opportunity to view anatomic dissections of human bodies. Rather than portray idealized versions of individuals, Dutch painters were committed to accurately representing their models. This was true for Johannes Vermeer. The 2023 exhibition of Vermeer's paintings at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam provided an unprecedented opportunity to observe 28 of his 37 existing paintings simultaneously in person. Here the authors suggest that in at least eight paintings a visibly pregnant woman is present. Vermeer's wife was pregnant or lactating most of the time during their 22-year marriage. Further, evidence of specific medical findings and congenital anomalies such as polydactyly, ectrodactyly, alopecia, kyphosis, and hyperthyroidism were observed in the paintings. These have not been previously reported in the medical or art history literature.

The Prince, the Noblemen and the Painter: Collectionso Works of Art in Copenhagen Between 1800 and 1848

The history of collecting in Denmark and Norway in the 19th century is intimately connected with the history of the painters and sculptors active during that period. Only in Copenhagen were the Royal and private collections accessible to the artists, for whom copying paintings by Old Masters formed an important part of their curriculum. Major collectors of the Age were Prince Christian Frederik (later King Christian VIII of Denmark), who mainly acquired paintings and sculptures by contemporary artists, and the portrait painter Christian Albrecht Jensen, whose preference was to buy and sell the works of Old Masters. In Copenhagen, the collections of the Counts Moltke, which mainly consisted of works by Dutch painters, was open to the public, while the Royal Collection (today a part of Statens Museum for Kunst) could only be visited from 1827 onwards. None of the three collections dealt with in the present article have survived until today, while the works of art and the antiques belonging to the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen are at present housed in the museum bearing his name.

The Plaster Cast and the Intimacy of the Studio

In the seventeenth century, plaster casts, which were essential sources of inspiration and instruction, became a recurring motif in images of Dutch painters’ workspaces, a marker of both intellectual and manual labor. Painters used plaster casts to proclaim their erudite knowledge of antiquity and of Renaissance sculpture that emulated ancient models. Plaster casts also provided a means for ambitious painters to communicate their personal and aspirational ties to other masters. The presence of plaster casts in archival records along with painted depictions of the studio provide insights into the impact of these objects on Dutch artists’ practice and the distinguished lineages they claimed.

S. Alpers. <i>The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century</i>

The review deals with the Russian publication of the 1980s’ bestselling study of art history, whose author polemises with Michel Foucault by invoking Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, and Jan Komenský. The core premise of Alpers’ book is a thesis about the decidedly describing rather than narrating character of the Northern Renaissance as opposed to the Italian model. In its reliance on the ‘optical’ method in order to create images (using a lens, a microscope, or a camera obscura), as opposed to the use of perspective by Italian artists, Dutch painters are not merely engaged in copying nature but instead depict the state of mind, ‘the storage of visual images.’ They also abolish the priority of the verbal over the visual described as ut pictura poesis. Among other topics, the author pays tribute to Rembrandt. She argues that his uniqueness comes from the fact that he dismisses both the lofty Catholic miracle of the incarnated Word and the humble Dutch faith in the world’s outer shell, and thus rejects not only the Dutch art of describing but also the Italian idea of narrative painting.

Ars longa vita brevis

Abstract It is therefore nothing short of frustrating that the passing on 4 October 1669 of Rembrandt van Rijn, long considered the greatest among seventeenth-century Dutch painters, has left scarcely any traces. In her essay Stephanie Dickey reconstructs the circumstances of the artist’s death. Her piece amounts to a cultural history of death and burial in Protestant Amsterdam. Rembrandt was buried like any other citizen. No elaborate funeral ceremony took place; no eulogies were composed; no funeral monument was erected. He ended up in a rented grave with two other men. The now lost stone slab probably only included his name. The exact location in the Westerkerk went unrecorded. As Dickey almost ruefully concludes, ‘(…) Rembrandt’s modest burial suited his standing as one established artist among many in the busy city’.

Painting Authorship and Forgery Detection Challenges with AI Image Generation Algorithms: Rembrandt and 17th Century Dutch Painters as a Case Study

Painting Authorship and Forgery Detection Challenges with AI Image Generation Algorithms: Rembrandt and 17th Century Dutch Painters as a Case Study

William Hogarth (1697–1764) and book illustration I: Hudibras, Quixote and the Littlecote House murals

This article progresses long-term researches on Hogarth and book history, the iconography of the skimmington and transnational receptions of Don Quixote, by introducing a substantial new group of images potentially illuminating Hogarth's lost activities as a young painter, before he turned 30 in 1727. Astoundingly, no previous research-based study of them exists. Unknown to Hogarth specialists and dismissed by art historians, they are in the painted room at Littlecote House. Within a complex decorative scheme broadly referencing themes of human folly and the cabinet of curiosities, two walls feature floor to ceiling composite murals uniting numerous episodes from the publications most significant for Hogarth's early career as a book illustrator: Cervantes' Don Quixote and its most successful English derivation, Samuel Butler's Hudibras. Butler's book-length poem is exceptionally significant: Book-historically for its key role in copyright legislation and eighteenth-century British book illustration; arthistorically for its central role in the early career of Hogarth, who published two sets of engravings illustrating Hudibras in 1726. Local historians attribute the Littlecote murals to unidentified amateur Dutch painters, working in the 1660s (when Hudibras was first published). Archive-based evidence first presented here confirms their dating not to the 1660s but the 1720s and supports Hogarth's presence at Littlecote House around 1724. This work is heavily indebted to the exemplary scholarship of two landmark publications of 2016, Elizabeth Einberg's authoritative catalogue of Hogarth's paintings (all post-1726) and Peter Black's ground- -breaking exploration of Hogarth and house decoration. I here re-visit Hogarth's early practice of book illustration and house decoration with reference to a canon of pre-1800 Hudibras images, newly enlarged by situating the substantial Littlecote Hudibras mural within this context and its associated visual, literary and book historical traditions. With reference to the new images and evidence first presented here, I ask: Is Littlecote's painted room a rightly neglected pastiche? Or does it deserve closer scholarly attention? Perhaps even as an exceptional unrecognized British art treasure? Should Hogarth specialists now evaluate an entirely new possibility: whether the challenging pre-1727 gap in Hogarth's early career as a painter can be addressed by identifying his earliest paintings at Littlecote House? I must confess, I have but little hopes of having a favourable attention given to my design in general, by those who have already had a more fashionable introduction into the mysteries of the arts of painting, and sculpture. Much less do I expect, or in truth desire, the countenance of that set of people, who have an interest in exploding any kind of doctrine, that may teach us to see with our own eyes.

ÖLÜM OLGUSU VE VANİTAS RESİMLER ÜZERİNE BİR DEĞERLENDİRME

Death has been one of the most curious, afraid and trying to undersstand issues of humanity. Since the subject of the study is the phenomenon of death and vanitas Picture, how humanity reacts to death was examined. These reactions were expressed mostly through works of art. Therefore, this situation is clearly reflected in the Works of art. The art of painting and sculpture has been the branches of art in which the most expressions are found on this subject. For this reason, how the death phenomenon takes shape in vanitas paintings has been the main subject of this study. The main purpose of Vanitas paintings is to remind people not to forget that they are mortals and that one day they will leave this world. Therefore, vanitas paintings are works that advise the rich to live a more modest life. It is because wealth will also end one day, and that is why it reminds them to immerse themselves in worldly pleasures and distance themselves from an extreme life. They seem to try to prove that everything will one day disappear and even everything is empty. 17th century Dutch painters made their paintings based on religious rituals. They also symbolically expressed the dilemma of heaven and hell.

Insects as interactants in artists’ minds: Symbols and anti-symbols

Les insectes sont l'un des groupes animaux aux interactions diverses avec les humains, qu'elles soient positives ou negatives. Les representations qu’ils inspirent aux artistes refletent la facon singuliere dont ils sont percus par les societes et le rapport complexe que ces dernieres entretiennent avec eux. Cette relation a deja ete analysee pour les principaux groupes d'insectes dits "typiques". Les plus visibles d’entre eux ou ceux disposant d'une metamorphose complete – abeilles, coleopteres, papillons, mouches – ont toujours fascine et intrigue les humains. Mais qu’en est-il des insectes infiniment petits et moins seduisants a priori ? Avec les pucerons pour exemples, nous montrerons qu’ils ont egalement nourri l’imaginaire artistique a differentes epoques et que, paradoxalement, leur invisibilite est le vecteur meme de l’interet qu’on leur porte. Je me propose de dresser un rapide panorama des relations reciproques entre scientifiques et artistes sur le motif du puceron. De la Grece antique a internet, d’Aristote a Debord en passant par Brueghel, Bonnet, Delacroix, Hugo, Beauvoir ou Vian, il s’agit d’interroger la variete des propositions esthetiques et symboliques que ce groupe d’insectes a pu engendrer.

Political Sites and Collective Identities in Hendrick Avercamp’s Ice-Skating Landscapes

ABSTRACTIn the first decades of the seventeenth century, Hendrick Avercamp was among the first Dutch painters to prioritize local landscape subjects as a source of pictorial interest. Avercamp’s ice-skating scenes offer a vision of a prosperous society emerging in the Northern provinces in the midst of the Dutch Revolt against Spain. This paper argues that Avercamp’s work, rather than simply celebrating a quaint pastime, invites a more political reading. Avercamp’s use of nascent symbols of Dutch identity – particularly the tricolour flag – tie his paintings inextricably to the political cause of Dutch autonomy, and suggest the political consciousness of the citizens of the young Republic.

Ekphrasis and/As Translation in Marlene van Niekerk’s Volumes of Poetry Gesant van die mispels and in die stille agterkamer

ABSTRACT This article discusses two volumes of ekphrastic poems by the South African author Marlene van Niekerk. The volumes are based on paintings by two relatively minor Dutch painters. The first, Gesant van die mispels [‘Emissary of the medlars’], centres on paintings by Adriaen Coorte who presumably lived from 1659 to 1708, whereas the second In die stille agterkamer [‘In the quiet backroom’] relates to paintings by Jan Mankes who was born in 1889 and died of tuberculosis in 1920. Taking its cue from the poet’s comments in an interview with Jan Steyn, the article explores the way in which writing ekphrastic poetry can be seen as a process during which artefacts produced in one semiotic system (the visual) are translated into artefacts in another semiotic system (the verbal), making use of theoretical insights by James Heffernan, W. J. T. Mitchell and Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux. The article also explores the further significance of publishing the original version of the poems written in the language Afrikaans next to their translations into Dutch, pointing out the significance of the fact that the poems highlight the historical connection between the two languages. The article also discusses the way in which the poet engages with the way in which the two artists dealt artistically with their respective realities. It includes analyses of two poems, one from each volume, in which the poet deals with certain profound qualities she finds in these painters’ work.

La imagen de la virtud doméstica en la obra de Van Gogh

En este articulo se pretende poner de manifiesto la influencia que ejercieron en Van Gogh los pintores holandeses del siglo XVII, una influencia que se concreta de forma especialmente intensa en la imagen de la mujer en el hogar que para el pintor holandés se convierte a la vez, en un icono y en el ideal al que aspira para alcanzar la felicidad. Aunque después del primer periodo, en el que se centra este trabajo, se va desprendiendo de las influencias formales de la escuela barroca holandesa, ese modelo femenino de “la virtud domestica” permanecerá a lo largo de toda su obra sintetizándose finalmente en La Berceuse.

Representations of Women in Selected Short Stories by Katherine Mansfield Viewed Through Seventeenth-century Genre Paintings

The goal of the paper is to demonstrate the influence of the Dutch masters on the representation of women in Mansfield’s short stories. The correspondences discernible between Mansfieldian women characters and the women figures from the Dutch Old Masters’ canvases as well as Dutch painters’ techniques dealing with perspective and Mansfield’s treatment of narration show a lot in common. When introducing her female protagonists, Mansfield seems to employ certain narrative strategies that are reminiscent of the techniques utilised by the Old Masters. The paper addresses, therefore, two issues. Firstly, it deals with a transmedial aspect of Mansfield’s stories and makes an inquiry into the question of how the writer endowed her female protagonists with the characteristics that echo the features of women painted by the seventeenth-century artists. And secondly, the paper tries to establish why Mansfield would resort to the Old Masters’ canvases while constructing her modern texts. Since the topic of Dutch influences in Mansfield’s works appears to be a complex one, the paper is but an introduction into a deeper and more thorough inquiry into the works of Katherine Mansfield in relation to the 17th century paintings.

Cut Flowers

Designations of still life as natura morta, nature morte, naturaleza muerta are based on a gross misunderstanding. We are only beginning to fully understand how masterfully the genre played with the supposed boundaries between the living and dead. It is above all floral still life painting after 1600, in which the intermediate state between life and death is centrally thematized. Where do cut plants actually derive their mysterious liveliness? Throughout its history the study of botany focused on the reality and mystery of plant metabolism. As scientists fiercely debated the nutritional aspect of floral still life in the horizon of its precarious liveliness, Dutch painters experimented with making visible the mysterious interiority of vases. In this way, still life painters modelled the larger epistemic problem of plant nutrition, self-preservation, and life not in terms of a positive answer, or hypothesis, but as an enigmatic field, an open question.

Johannes Anthonie Balthazar Stroebel (1821-1905). Oudhollands leven en Hollands licht

The Dutch painter Johannes Anthonie Balthazar Stroebel (1821-1905) was born and raised in the Hague. He received his training at the local Teekenacademie (School of the Arts) and in the studios of Bartholomeus van Hove and his son Huib, both painters of historical architecture. Stroebel followed in their footsteps, while concentrating on spaces indoors enlivened by all manner of figures in seventeenth century dress, thus presenting a wide variety of scenes from everyday life in the past. All through the nineteenth century this type of historical scene enjoyed popularity in most European countries, with many artists successfully specializing in such topics. In the Netherlands however a different situation developed, although historical genre scenes were produced in considerable numbers. Countless Dutch painters tried their hand at such scenes once or twice, thereby adding to its overall quantity, but only to abandon history painting for ever. Merely a handful of artists held on to this subject matter throughout their careers. Stroebel was one of those few. His choice may have originated in individual interests, but will certainly have been influenced by the growing popularity of his personal brand - his rendering of natural sunlight in historical interiors. In spite of criticism of his technical qualities he was a respected artist and successful in exhibiting and selling his work. The results of earlier research into the reception of historical genre scenes in European countries other than the Netherlands suggest that the appreciation for Stroebel's work is likely to have been inspired by a lively cultural historical interest on the part of his admirers. A closer scrutiny of that appreciation however has shown that it was not so much the artist's presentation of life in the Netherland's Golden Age as his particular use of sunlight, often described as Rembrandtesque and almost invariably as charming, even delightful, that caught the attention and fuelled the enthusiasm of his Dutch contemporaries.

De la letra a la tela (I): Jan Steen y La visita del médico en la pintura holandesa del Siglo de Oro a la luz de la tradición clásica

Primera parte de las dos que componen un trabajo que se ocupa de analizar la influencia de la tradición clásica en un tema pictórico de gran predicamento entre los grandes maestros del Siglo de Oro de la pintura holandesa, La visita del médico o La enferma de amor, con especial atención a su tratamiento en la obra de uno de sus más conspicuos representantes, el pintor de Leiden Jan Steen (1626-1679).

Mapping spaces: networks of knowledge in 17th century landscape painting

Seventeenth-century Europe saw a fruitful creative exchange between the arts and contemporaneous scientific thought. Mapping Spaces traces the multifaceted dimensions of this exchange with contributions from more than forty leading scholars who, together, reflect on the influence of science and technology on the arts through the specific study of the process of mapping in Dutch landscape paintings of the mid-seventeenth century. The dialogue between the arts and sciences, the contributors find, extends back well beyond the new media and digital satellite imagery of modern times. Many Dutch painters of the period are believed to have employed systems of remote sensing for their paintings. For his well-known historical battle scenes, for instance, Pieter Snayers would have required an understanding of both ballistics and geography. Bringing these and many other insights together with more than 350 large-format illustrations, Mapping Spaces presents readers with past exchanges of knowledge that surprisingly anticipate the techniques of mapping used today.

Drama and Devotion: Heemskerck’s <i>Ecce Homo</i> Altarpiece from Warsaw

This title offers a fascinating look at the efforts of the J. Paul Getty Museum to preserve and expose a stunning 16th century triptych. Maerten van Heemskerck (1498-1574) was one of the most active and inventive Dutch painters of the 16th century. Over the course of his long career, he created lively mythological scenes, dramatic altarpieces for guilds, and smaller works for wealthy individuals. Regrettably though, several of his religious paintings were destroyed by Protestant iconoclasts in 1566. One of his extant masterpieces, the Ecce Homo triptych of 1544, was brought from the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland, for treatment and study at the J. Paul Getty Museum as part of the Conservation Partnership program. Richly illustrated, this book documents the dramatic process of revealing the brilliance of a 16th-century masterpiece.

Soil’s Social and Cultural Connections

Soil’s Social and Cultural Connections

Mound of butter: Antoine Vollon.

Mound of butter: Antoine Vollon.