Dutch Painting Research Articles

Exploring the Styles of Peasant Painters in the Netherlands: A Case Study of Bruegel Pieter the Elder

This section discusses the origin and main types of development of the Renaissance. It gradually developed from Italy to the whole of Europe. Artists find inspiration from ancient Greek works and use scientific techniques such as perspective in their paintings, resulting in works that are full of volume. At the same time, the styles of southern and northern Europe are also different, especially in the southern region of the Netherlands where Bruguel is located. This is the birthplace of humanism, which has made the civic class the main force on the path of the Renaissance. It is precisely because of spiritual liberation that art has become a tool for ordinary people to showcase their thoughts and feelings. This article focuses on the peasant painter Peter Brueghel the elder of the Renaissance. And Bruegel was the last painter in this region after the Renaissance. He is also the founder of the Dutch painting school. Most of his works are inspired by farmers and his own life, as he chose to use art as a weapon to praise virtue and hope for national independence. He is a true 'farmer painter'. At the same time, his creative techniques are also changing over time.

The Amsterdam dealer Hans Le Thoor at the court of Emperor Rudolf II

Abstract Hans Le Thoor of Amsterdam is known as a versatile art dealer, who conducted business in the Netherlands. In 1620 he made an ill-fated attempt to sell Dutch paintings to the King of Denmark, Christian IV (1577–1648), with the help of the ‘painter and spy’ Pieter Isaacsz (1569–1625). This study draws attention to the fact that, before this interesting episode, Le Thoor had been active in Central Europe in dealings with Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612). The inventories of the Rudolfine collections list exotic objects, naturalia and Chinese paintings delivered by Le Thoor to the court in Prague in 1609. His experience in Prague had a bearing on the later attempted sale to the Danish king, to whom Le Thoor also tried to sell Rudolfine paintings that he had acquired in Brussels between 1618 and 1620 at the partial sell-off of the collection of Rudolf’s brother Archduke Albrecht (1559–1621). New information on Le Thoor’s life and business strategies has come to light through study of archival sources relating to his activities with the Habsburgs. As presented here, these findings advance our knowledge of the mode of operation and scale of international dealer networks in Le Thoor’s time.

‘Verscheurende Beyren’

This article examines the depiction of polar bears in Dutch painting and graphics from the late 16th to the early 18th centuries. Reports of the first encounters between Dutch humans and polar bears established the idea of these animals as aggressive predators. This idea dominated the image of the bear in illustrated travelogues as well as in allegorical depictions of the Arctic and whaling pictures. The polar bear thus became a symbol for the dangers of the region and appears as an obstacle to the human exploitation of the Arctic. However, depictions of the bloody hunt for polar bears indicate the economically motivated triumph of Europeans in this inhospitable area.

Formation of the Iconography of the theme of the Scholars' Study in Dutch painting of the XVII Century

The article is devoted to the characteristics of the traditional theme of "Saint Jerome in his study" and the alchemists and their direct influence on the theme of the "scholar's study" in Dutch painting of the XVII century. The author analyzes the common features of the painting theme of "St. Jerome in the study in the XV and XVI centuries. This theme is popular in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. As a translator of the Bible, Saint Jerome became a exemplar revered by future scholars and humanists. The paintings on this theme depict two types of indicators, namely skulls, hourglasses, extinct candles - symbols of the transience of time, the inevitability of death. Books, writing utensils and ink are the attributes of scholars, they symbolize theology and literary activity. These types of things continue to appear in the paintings of the scholars' study, and this continuation is clear evidence that the theme of scholars' study comes from traditional religious paintings on the theme of St. Jerome. The second part of the article analyzes the works on the theme of alchemists, which represent the most negative image of the alchemist as a person who squandered family funds and generally neglected his household. However, the scene of the study of an alchemist in front of various alchemical equipment certainly inspired the artist to represent the scene of scientists conducting scientific research in a new age. Compared to the alchemist, the esoteric scientist, who values learning and philosophy along with exoteric pursuits, stands out as the most revered figure.

Fotocolor Le distorsioni moderniste della pittura fiamminga tra cromatico e fotografico

In this essay I aim to draw close to an exceptional case study in American modernist art theory: Clement Greenberg’s reinterpretation of Flemish and Dutch painting. I will focus on it in connection with the Greenbergian vision of modernism as a whole.
 Firstly, I will make a genealogy of the “Flemish turn” in the history of aesthetics, by analyzing the key moments (Winckelmann, Hegel, Baudelaire) in which the so-called Northern Primitives have served to frame modern painting, in contrast to Southern classic Renaissance.
 Then, I will concentrate on Greenberg’s use of this heritage, by comparing his linking Flemish colour with photography to Svetlana Alpers’ notion of “art of describing”. It will emerge that an original interaction between colour and photography is given, that is suitable both to the notion of realism and to its modernist acceptance.

JAN VERMEER'İN RESİMLERİNDE GÜNLÜK YAŞAMIN İZLERİ

Bu çalışmada; Jan Vermeer’in eserlerinde gündelik yaşam sahnelerinin araştırılması yapılmış, on altıncı ve on yedinci yüzyılda meydana gelen olayların ışığında şekillenen ve gelişme gösteren Barok dönem resim sanatının ana hatları incelenerek Barok dönem Hollanda resim sanatına ağırlık verilmiştir. On altıncı ve on yedinci yüzyıldaki; Katoliklik ve Protestanlık arasındaki mezhep savaşları, Otuz Yıl Savaşları gibi olaylar, ekonomik alanda yaşanan değişimler insanların yaşam şartlarını ve bakış açılarını etkilemiş, bu durumun neticesi olarak sanata olan yaklaşım değişkenlik göstermiştir. Toplumların yaşadığı olayların, onların yaşamlarında meydana getirdiği değişimlerin sanatsal alana da yansıdığı görülmüş, Hollanda toplumunda gelişen refah düzeyi, dini olayların etkisi resimlerde işlenen konularda değişiklikler meydana getirmiş ve kendi içinde portre, natürmort, janr gibi türlere ayrılmıştır. Portreciliğin Hollanda resim sanatında oldukça önemli bir yer bulduğu Frans Hals’ın eserlerinde kendini göstermiş, din dışı konuların giderek daha fazla yer bulduğu dönemde natürmort türündeki resimlerde de gerçekçi yaklaşımın etkili örnekleri verilmiştir. Janr resim türünün usta ismi olarak resimlerinde sıklıkla yer verdiği mekân betimlemeleriyle günlük yaşamın izlerini yansıtan Jan Vermeer, gerek kompozisyon gerekse renk kullanımı bakımından çağdaşı ressamların önünde yer almıştır. Barok dönem Hollanda resim sanatı içinde görülen janr resminin önemli temsilcilerinden Jan Vermeer’in eserleri kapsamında ele alınan bu resim türü, sanatçının sanat anlayışı ve eserleriyle çalışmanın amacını oluştururken, çalışmada teknik analiz ve eser çözümleme yöntemi uygulanmıştır. On altıncı yüzyılın sonu on yedinci yüzyılın başından itibaren ele alınan Barok dönem ve Hollanda resim sanatının ele alındığı çalışmada Jan Vermeer’in yaşadığı dönemden yola çıkılarak sanatçının eserleri incelenmiş ve gündelik yaşamın izlerinin eserlerinde yer aldığı janr resminin tipik özelliklerini taşıdığı sonucuna varılmıştır.

Empire, Exoticism, and Heterotopia: The Interior of a Chinese Shop

This essay tries to interpret a 17th-century Dutch painting, the Interior of a Chinese Shop from a postcolonial perspective. It argues that the picture is a reflection of the desire and anxiety of the Dutch empire to collect oriental luxuries under the context of mercantilism. It is a heterogeneous space that consists of exotic objects from different geographical zones and timelines, which corresponds to Foucault’s concept of “heterotopia.” The fantasy shown from the painting exposes real spaces and reveals the complexity between Self and Other, leading to a place that is beyond the dualist structure.

Time-dependent variation of lead isotopes of lead white in 17th century Dutch paintings.

This study investigates how lead isotopes in lead white pigment can be used as an additional diagnostic tool to constrain the production time of 17th century Dutch paintings. Analysis of 77 well-dated paintings from 27 different Dutch artists reveal significant change in the source of lead used in lead white at the start, middle, and end of the 17th century. Isotopic shifts are related to major historical and socioeconomical events such as the English Civil War and Anglo-Dutch-French conflicts. These observations offer the prospect that lead isotope analysis of lead white could aid attribution and authentication of Dutch 17th century paintings and provide insights into artists’ international travels as well as lead production and trading.

In Search of Protoglobalization in Seventeenth-century Dutch Paintings: a Didactic Experience

In Search of Protoglobalization in Seventeenth-century Dutch Paintings: a Didactic Experience

Dutch Flower Still Life of 17th Century: Interest and Oblivion through the Centuries

Over three and a half centuries, the genre of flower still life created by Dutch artists experienced ups of interest and oblivion. There were the maximum assessment of society in the form of high fees of the 17th century artists; the criticism of connoisseurs and art theorists; the neglect in the 19th century and the rise of auction prices and close attention of art critics, manifested from the middle of the 20th century to the present day. In the middle of the 17th century, there was already a hierarchy of genres, based on both the subject and the size of the paintings, which was reflected in the price. Still lifes and landscapes were cheaper than allegorical and historical scenes, but there were exceptions, for example, in the works of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Jan Davidsz. de Heem. Art theorists Willem van Hoogstraten and Arnold Houbraken, resting upon academic tastes, downplayed the importance of still-life painting. Meanwhile, the artists themselves, determining the worth of their paintings, sought for maximum naturalism, and such paintings were sold well.In the 20th century, this genre attracted the attention of collectors in Europe and the United States. A revival of interest in Dutch still lifes in general, and in flower ones in particular, began in the 20th century, the paintings rose in price at auctions, and collecting them became almost a fashion. Art societies and art dealers of the Netherlands and Belgium organized several small exhibitions of still lifes. The course for studying symbolic messages in still lifes, presented by Ingvar Bergström, is continued by Eddie de Jong, who emphasizes the diverse nature of symbolism in Dutch painting of the 17th century. Svetlana Alpers, on the contrary, criticizes the iconological method and presents the Dutch painting of that period as an example of visual culture. Norman Bryson’s view of Dutch still lifes is formed against the background of the development of a consumer society, economic prosperity and abundance. Finally, there has been an increasing interest in the natural science aspects of flower still-life painting in the researches of the last twenty years. Curiosity, skill, and admiration for nature are the impulses that can still be felt in the images of bouquets and fruits.

한국 개화기의 ‘풍경화’ 유입

‘Landscape painting’ has been formed on the basis of the human-centered modern view of nature, which gazes everyday nature from a fixed single viewpoint and, by extension, dominates it. This differentiates it from the East Asian tradition of ‘Sansuhwa (lit: Mountain and water paintings).’ Modern philosophy placed human beings as the subject of cognition, the center of the world, and by giving vision dominance over other senses, objectified the world and objects. This vision-centric turn in epistemology burgeoned the progress of modern landscape painting. Compared with other subject matters of painting, landscape is very germane to visual perception. Thus, during the 19th century, it became the mainstream subject of Western modern painting and led the modernization of art around the world.<BR> The modern notion of landscape painting first sprouted in the 17th century Netherlands. As this protestant nation entered into the age of Enlightenment and rationalism, the Dutch paintings gradually broke away from Icon paintings, and new subject matters, such as landscape, emerged. Later on, European countries, including England, extended this genre under the influence of naturalism and romanticism. Along with French Impressionism, landscape painting became a global trend. East Asian countries accepted this genre around the late 19th century. Landscape painting made its name in Korea after the nation went into the modernization process in 1876. The term ‘landscape painting’ was introduced to the Korean public, and several foreign painters visited Korea as well. Furthermore, the print images in mass media and art in the new education system brought the notion of landscape painting to Korea.<BR> Eventually, landscape painting pioneered the great turn in art history from traditional painting to modern painting, and the descriptive realism of this genre initiated the new era of Korean art.

From the Roof Tops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space. Exhibitions in Pennsylvania and New York

This article considers drawings and paintings made by the American artists Edmund Tarbell and John Sloan in relation to the art of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Claims about, interpretations of, and enthusiasm for ‘Dutch Pictures’ were prominent features of the transatlantic artworld in the years around 1900. Art critics, including George Moore, Charles Caffin, James Gibbons Huneker and Frank Jewett Mather, discussed the relationship between historical Dutch painting and contemporary art, while American collectors and museums purchased and displayed large numbers of paintings by Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer and their contemporaries. The article connects specific seventeenth-century Dutch ideas and objects to such paintings as Tarbell&#39;s New England Interior (1906) and Sloan&#39;s Scrubwomen, Astor Library (1910–11) and thinks more broadly about modern art&#39;s relationship to nationalism and to the past.

Exploring the limits of color accuracy in technical photography

The growing importance of publishing art collections online has led to increasingly strict tolerances on digital photography of art objects. There are two internationally recognized sets of guidelines for creating high-quality digital images, Metamorfoze and FADGI. These guidelines require using sets of standardized color patches in museal photography. The X-Rite ColorChecker SG chart with 140 color patches is often used. Recent studies showed that even in standardized conditions it is often difficult to satisfy the strictest guidelines on color accuracy for camera profiling, with no indications for improvements. We report results of our investigation into the bottlenecks in achieving high color accuracy. We show that a large part of the color deviations originates from the 15 black color patches of the ColorChecker SG chart. These patches have a large impact on the average color deviation and the maximum color deviation that are the performance measures for color accuracy in the FADGI and Metamorfoze guidelines. We show that spectrophotometer measurements for the black patches produce color deviations dE(CIE 1976) ranging from 3.7 to 5.2 with respect to reference data, making it impossible to meet the strictest Metamorfoze guidelines. The black patches push the average color difference CIEDE2000 from 0.59 to 0.82 with respect to reference data already when using spectrophotometer data. Since the strictest FADGI guidelines prescribe an average CIEDE2000 = 2.0, this leaves little tolerance for errors due to lighting and camera profile. Our results indicate that the common practice of manually tweaking camera profiles until software suggests sufficient color accuracy is obtained with respect to suppliers’ reference data often does not improve color representation but makes it worse, especially for representing dark nuances. This is unfortunate for example for the digital photography of seventeenth century Dutch paintings, where dark passages occupy large areas of the art works. We show that the key step in achieving color accurate digital photography is to use customer reference data rather than commonly used generic reference data. We explain the results by investigating not only the color properties of the ColorChecker SG chart, but also its glossiness.

Hegel's Concept of the Familiar: Toward a Philosophical Study

AbstractOne of the most memorable lines of Hegel's oeuvre is from the preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit: ‘Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood.’ Surprisingly, relatively little philosophical attention has been paid to the notion of ‘the familiar’ in Hegel scholarship. This essay aims to rectify this lack by offering a preliminary inquiry in what the notion means across Hegel's work. It does so by focusing on three underexplored moments in Hegel's work: (1) the exposition of the logic of appearance in the description and diagnosis of seventeenth and eighteenth century Dutch painting in the lecture notes from the 1823 Berlin lectures on the philosophy of fine art; (2) the function of institutionalized practice in Hegel's Tübingen essay of 1793; and (3) the conjunctural relation of the familiar with philosophical terminology in an entry from the ‘Aphorisms from the Wastebook.’ Through a careful reading of these three moments, I will show that the familiar is a point that constellates multiple processes, mechanisms and apparatuses that, when grasped in their complex totality, functions as the ‘prius’ (priority/prioritization/first moment) of Hegel's speculative philosophy.

SCENIC REPRESENTATIONS OF A CONCERT IN THE INDEPENDENT RUSSIAN POETRY

The article examines the influence of pictorial models on the complex image of a concert in uncensored Russian poetry. It is proved that this image has always had an existential meaning associated with the characteristics of the individual and collective experience of death and immortality, and was not associated with the everyday environment of the concert. The concert turned into a universal symbol of the intense experience of time, its complex movement, allowing to revive dead musical material, and therefore revive the memory of individual people. Such a unique combination of collective experience and individual experience of immortality became possible thanks to the experience of painting: by the example of the image of the concerts of an owl in Dutch painting following the parable of Dion Chrysostom and the concept of restoration by Adolf Ovchinnikov, it is shown that such an experience of individuality as wisdom capable of combining the ideas of death and immortality was supported by the very technologies of painting and the metaphorical meanings in the fable and parable. A detailed analysis of several poems (Alexander Mironov, Ivan Zhdanov, Viktor Krivulin) proves that the same model of the intermedial experience of a concert, with all the differences in the poetics of these authors, expressed the same metaphysical meaning.

Переконструируя святыню. Образ Иерусалима в живописи и графике Антверпена XVI века

The image of Jerusalem as a principal element of Christian art continued to play a big role in the Dutch painting of the 16th century. Usually Jerusalem was represented with temples of more or less fantastic features. From 1515 to 1535, in Antwerp, one of the richest cities of the time in terms of the development of the art market, we find an architectural type (possibly, an allusion on the Holy Sepulchre) atypical of Dutch art, which became very popular amidst the Antwerp Mannerists and some other artists. This architectural type was probably developed as a result of various influences; so, here it is provisionally named the Antwerp type. It is a construction of hybrid features, with a dome and sometimes with gables. The earliest examples can be found in the works of Joachim Patinir and Quinten Massijs. This architectural type became later widespread largely due to Herri met de Bles and his workshop. But starting the mid-16th century, the interest of the Dutch masters generally shifted towards the image of the Tower of Babel, which absorbed, in their view, the features of the Colosseum, due to numerous voyages to Italy and passion for the aesthetics of ruins, as well as to the historical realities of that time. This case investigates the issue of the convergence of various architectural motifs, the evolution of the very idea of a tiered centric building, when Jerusalem sometimes became Rome, and Rome became Babylon (which was largely facilitated, in particular, by engravings made from the drawings by Maarten van Heemskerck). On the one hand, the passion for architectural fantasies was part of the general European process during the Renaissance; on the other hand, it was a reflection of the spirit of Mannerism and the art style that followed it.

Lead isotope heterogeneity in lead white: From lead white raw pigment to canvas

The heterogeneity of lead isotope ratios of lead white paints within individual paintings is evaluated. The analyses of five different 17th-century Dutch paintings, sampled in different locations, identifies the presence of isotopic heterogeneity in lead white within a single painting. Pure pigment in the form of cones of 16th-century Venetian lead white, in contrast, was found to be isotopically homogeneous. The study evaluates the origins of the increased heterogeneity of lead isotope ratios in the evolution from the pure pigment to the artwork.

GAUDEAMUS IGITUR: A SMILE IN DUTCH PAINTING OF THE XVII CENTURY

The article is devoted to the analysis of the phenomenon of smiles and «laugh» genres in the painting of Holland XVII century as a reflection of the sociocultural, religious and economic uniqueness of this region’s culture. The purpose of the analysis is to identify the symbolic code by which the various registers of laugh culture and enjoyment of existence, exclusivity, precisely for that period’ Dutch art, of signifying of certain mental and sociopsychological states that become the leading or background meanings of the artistic work of this epoch. Based on the painting’s material, testimonies of contemporaries, analysis of the art market, we conclude that the iconography of a smile reflects the dignity of a person (civil, religious, economic, etc.) of the Dutch Republic, and the «laugh» genres support the semantics of vitally satisfied life. The collapse of the Republic marks the disappearance from the painting of the open declaration of smile and laughter, preserving only their medieval connotations. This is particularly evident in the situation of group corporate portrait, which exists only in the Golden Age of Dutch painting.

Mehmed Ruhi Bey, A Painter Touches Daily Life

Başlangıcı Rönesans dönemine kadar uzansa da gündelik hayatın resmedilmesi, resim sanatında 17. yüzyılda&#x0D; Hollanda resmi ile gelişmeye başlayan bir olgudur. Zaman içinde sadece bir resim türü olarak anılmanın ötesinde&#x0D; 20. yüzyılda resmedildiği toplumu kavrayabilmenin önemli aracılarından biri haline gelecektir. Türk resminde&#x0D; söz konusu sahnelerin betimlenmesi Tanzimat sonrası gelişen edebi eserlerle başlar, tuval resmine aktarılması&#x0D; ise II. Meşrutiyet döneminde gerçekleşir. Bu bağlamda 1914 Kuşağı ressamları arasında yer alan Mehmed&#x0D; Ruhi Bey (Arel)’in çalışmaları Türk resminde ayrı bir öneme sahiptir. Mehmed Ruhi Bey; Klasizme dayanan,&#x0D; güzelliğin, asaletin, denge ve idealleştirme olgusunun vurgulandığı akademik bir eğitim alır. Ancak içerisinde&#x0D; bulunduğu kuşağın aldığı eğitimden farklı bir üslupta çalışır. Akademizmin verdiği idealleştirme vurgusundan&#x0D; uzaklaşır ve toplumcu gerçekçi bir tavrı benimser. Resimlerinde toplumun içinden figürleri ve yaşamlarını tüm&#x0D; gerçekliği ile ele alır. Sanatçının çalışmaları, resmedildiği dönemin sosyoekonomik profilini yansıtan belgesel&#x0D; nitelikler taşırken aynı zamanda kendisini de kuşağı içerisinde farklı bir yere taşır.&#x0D; Bu makale bilimsel verilere dayanan betimsel modelli nitel bir araştırmadır. Makalede dönemi için yeni&#x0D; sayılacak konuları betimleyerek Türk resminin öncü sanatçıları arasında yer alan Mehmed Ruhi’nin sanat&#x0D; yaşamının üzerinde durularak dönemi içerisinde bir değerlendirmesi yapılmıştır. Söz konusu çalışmada&#x0D; amaçlanan, Mehmed Ruhi’nin üslubu ve çalışmaları göz önüne alınarak, akademik bir eğitim alan sanatçının&#x0D; Realizmi neden benimsediği, neden çağdaşlarından farklı bir yol izlemiş olduğu sorularına cevap aramaktır.

Assessment of the Panel Support of a Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting by Clinical Multislice Computed Tomography

ABSTRACT Clinical multislice X-ray computed tomography (MCST) was performed on a seventeenth-century panel painting from the collection of the National Academy of San Luca Gallery in Rome. The use of MSCT allowed us to detect the numerous characteristics of the wood used, the panel construction, and its condition, leading to a complete preliminary interpretation of its structural characteristics.