Early Modern Netherlands Research Articles

Mute Painting: Deafness and Speechlessness in the Theory and Historiography of Dutch Art

The lives and careers of deaf and mute painters in the early modern Netherlands challenge the perception of disabled artists as self-taught outsiders and the assumption that a premodern experience of disability must have necessarily resulted in poverty and exclusion. Rather than approaching deafness and speechlessness as marginalizing “defects,” I propose to regard them as categories that allow us to reconsider how painting was understood in the seventeenth century. As part of that discourse, this article also examines the idea of sensory compensation, including its roots and impact on theory and historiography of art.

Antiquarianism, Local Traditions, and Urban Identity in the Early Modern Netherlands: The Controversy about the City of the Nervii.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the study of Roman remains led to the questioning of many local traditions, including those that associated the episcopal see of Tournai with the valiant Nervii. The rediscovery of ancient Itineraries and the absence of vestiges in Tournai led scholars to question this association: they preferred to locate the city of the Nervii in Bavay. This new thesis irritated several Tournaisian authors who defended the illustrious past of their city. This scholarly controversy illustrates the new role that the material evidence played in the construction of historical discourses and local identity at that time.

A raptor’s-eye view in the early modern Netherlands

Yannis Hadjinicolaou’s contribution focuses on Netherlandish landscape painting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a time when visual constructions of territory were often accomplished through the lens of falconry as a political tool. Depicting the falcon flying high above the territory transforms the natural landscape into a political one through substituting and extending the ruler’s sovereignty over it. A vertical perspective of power is allowed through the human-fabricated ‘bird’s-eye view’. This territorial aerial ‘view’ offers a political and privileged perspective over a vast, flat, and shapeable landscape through evoking the very etymology of land-schap in Dutch, here embodied by a ‘raptor’s eye’. Notably, an artist has to act like a falcon, sharply monitoring an area, if he or she wants to produce fine landscapes according to art theoretical works of the time. Studying the epistemic imagery of falconry can teach us much about the merging of art and nature together with their respective political implications through visual representations.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Clashing Globes: Images of the Earth and Heidegger’s Thinking of Modernity

Abstract: Visual representations of the whole earth permeate modern cultures, shaping how societies imagine globalization and planetary ecological derangement. To explore the complex ways in which these images configure human attitudes toward environments, this essay attends to a series of hegemonic representations of the earth from diverse situations and stages of modernity in conjunction with ideas drawn from Martin Heidegger’s ontological philosophy. I proceed from the insight that for Heidegger modernity is not a singular condition, but entails two contrary determinations of being: “machination,” in which detached subjects reshape an objectified world, and “enordering,” in which fungible and flexible resources circulate endlessly around a closed global space. Taking up these divergent concepts, my argument accentuates basic differences in how the earth has been disclosed in representation over the course of modern history. Through close analyses of world maps from the early modern Netherlands; chalkboard globes from nineteenth-century schoolrooms; and the contemporary geospatial application Google Earth, I show how global visions both articulate and complicate Heidegger’s thinking of machination and enordering. Far from being the culmination of a singular modernity, images of the earth reveal and reinforce a discordant global condition, riven by clashing, equally total disclosures of the world.

Global Revolutions

Global Revolutions

Barbara A. Kaminska, Images of Miraculous Healing in the Early Modern Netherlands

Barbara A. Kaminska, Images of Miraculous Healing in the Early Modern Netherlands

Cribriotic lesions in archaeological human skeletal remains. Prevalence, co-occurrence, and association in medieval and early modern Netherlands

ObjectiveThis paper studies the prevalence, co-occurrence, and association of cribra orbitalia, cribra humeri, and cribra femora to contribute to the complex debate on cribriotic lesions and their relationship with one another. Materials179 adults and 53 non-adults from the medieval/early modern Netherlands (800–1600 CE) for whom all three lesions could be observed are included in this study. MethodsPresence or absence of cribriotic lesions was studied macroscopically. Prevalence, co-occurrence, and association of lesions and their link to sex and age-at-death were assessed. ResultsA clear link between prevalence of the lesions and age-at-death is found. Co-occurrence and association of all three lesions is uncommon. There is a significant moderate correlation for cribra humeri-femora in non-adults. ConclusionsLesion prevalence is connected to age-at-death. However, while a similar age distribution and associations between pairs of lesions are noted, due to limited co-occurrence of the three lesions, the presence of a ‘cribrous syndrome’ cannot supported. SignificanceThis is the first study investigating the prevalence, co-occurrence and association of cribra orbitalia, cribra humeri, and cribra femora in non-adults and adults contributing to discussions about the nature and the much-debated aetiology of these commonly encountered skeletal lesions. LimitationsThe number of non-adults in this study is limited, potentially obscuring meaningful patterns, as the cribrous lesions are significantly more common in younger individuals. Suggestions for further researchMore research into the prevalence of the post-cranial lesions and their co-occurrence as well as into bone growth and remodelling is warranted.

Urbanization and respiratory stress in the Northern Low Countries: A comparative study of chronic maxillary sinusitis in two early modern sites from the Netherlands (AD 1626–1866)

AbstractThe aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between urbanization and upper respiratory health in two early modern populations from the Netherlands. For this purpose, we analyzed the prevalence of chronic maxillary sinusitis in the adult urban population of Arnhem (n = 83) and in the rural village of Middenbeemster (n = 74). A slightly higher prevalence of chronic maxillary sinusitis was observed in the Arnhem sample (55.4%) compared with the Middenbeemster sample (51.3%), and these variations were not statistically significantly different. Although historical sources attest to the fact that life in the postmedieval settlements of Arnhem and Middenbeemster greatly differed, our results suggest that both environments exposed people to certain respiratory hazards. Furthermore, sinusitis prevalence was also investigated in correlation to sex, as urbanization in the Netherlands often involved women in factory work in direct contrast to the traditional domestic role they kept covering in rural environments. No significant differences were observed between males and females, both in an intersite (Arnhem males vs. Middenbeemster males; Arnhem females vs. Middenbeemster females) and in an intrasite (males vs. females at Arnhem; males vs. females at Middenbemster) comparison. As men and women in Arnhem worked on similar tasks, our results confirm that they were both exposed to similar risk factors. In Middenbeemster, where women mainly stayed inside taking care of the house while men worked the fields, the adverse weather conditions and continuous exposure to pollens and allergens may have enhanced men's chances of contracting chronic maxillary sinusitis. This study suggests that urbanization in the early modern Netherlands was in fact not inherently more detrimental than rural living. Future research incorporating a larger sample from other Dutch sites is being considered to better frame the complex etiology of sinusitis within the present understanding of historic regional variation in urbanization patterns.

:Ambitious Antiquities, Famous Forebears: Constructions of a Glorious Past in the Early Modern Netherlands and in Europe

:<i>Ambitious Antiquities, Famous Forebears: Constructions of a Glorious Past in the Early Modern Netherlands and in Europe</i>

Representative Government in the Dutch Provinces

This article reconsiders the way political representation was understood in the early modern Netherlands by focusing on the contemporary contribution of Simon van Slingelandt. His views of the representative nature of the government of the Dutch Republic were deeply polemical when he developed them, but went on to have a profound influence on the later literature and are notably sustained in modern histories of the subject. The best way to nuance the view of political representation our historiography has inherited from Van Slingelandt is by returning to the earlier views he set out to discredit. By examining both views, I thus hope to shed some new light on the representative nature of early modern Dutch government.

The Convergence of Fine Art and Printing Technology in the Early Modern Netherlands

The Convergence of Fine Art and Printing Technology in the Early Modern Netherlands

Bankruptcy and the Praetorian Pledge: The Law of the Books and the Law in Action in the Early Modern Netherlands

The article points out at the discrepancy between the different Mss. of the Roman Justinianic text: Littera Pisana and Littera Bononiensis. The discrepancy entailed that the doctrine of medieval Ius Commune offered stronger protection of the collective rights of the creditors, in comparison with the Classical Roman law. The Roman Dutch “Elegant School”, despite its general reliance on the original Roman sources, already in the writings of Grotius demonstrated allegiance to the medieval doctrine on the issue of bankruptcy. The authors of the “Elegant School” continued to prefer the medieval interpretation of the creditors’ rights and bankruptcy, although Dutch practice was, in many respects, drastically different from the Ius Commune doctrine. This ensured a strong protection of creditors in bankruptcy in Dutch law.

The “Small Landscape” Prints in Early Modern Netherlands. Alexandra Onuf. Visual Culture in Early Modernity. London: Routledge, 2018. xxii + 240 pp. $150.

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"Crooked justice". Corruption, inequality and civic rights in the early modern Netherlands

With the help of several case studies from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, this article focuses on two key questions. How did ordinary Dutch citizens protect themselves against corruption and misuse of power by law enforcement agents, public prosecutors and the courts? And, whose interests were actually being served by the early modern criminal justice system? Or, put another way: whose order was being maintained and who was excluded from it?&#x0D; &#x0D; Its is argued that the weakness of a critical traditional in Dutch -and possibly even more widely, in Continental European- historiography concerning these issues fits in with the Continental perspective in which the rights of the state are emphasized rather than the rights of the individual. In England (perhaps even in the wider Anglosaxon context) the opposite seems to be the case: a critical historiographical tradition juxtaposed to a past in which civil rights rather than state privilieges were emphasized, together with resistance to the state and other bastions of power.

Which religious history for the (two) early modern Netherlands before 1648? Questions, trends and perspectives

With the grand narrative of the Dutch Revolt and the Eighty Years War having been fundamentally rewritten within the last few decades, this review essay examines religious history from this very sa...

Domesticating Goods from Overseas: Global Material Culture in the Early Modern Netherlands

This essay is based on the notion that the early modern world was shaped by connections that stretched across geographical, political and cultural boundaries. The mobility of early modern people, ideas and things, and the networks they created and relied on, facilitated flows of material and immaterial interactions. Within that early modern connected world, material culture played a key role. Goods ranging from treasured, unique objects to commodities traded in vast quantities always accumulate layers of meanings as they move through time and space. By looking at a number of things in circulation in the early modern Netherlands, we can identify them as both ‘global’, in the sense of having travelled across long distances, having accumulated associations with the exotic, and as ‘local’, part of the cultural practices we have come to think of as Dutch. Methodologically, this essay combines a close reading of the idealized representations of things in domestic spaces we encounter in paintings with an analysis of the materiality, design and historical trajectories of the things themselves. Tracing global and local aspects of design as it appears in idealized representations and in early modern Dutch historical objects, I argue that embodied experiences play key roles in the domestication of goods from overseas. I seek to show that through vision and touch, and the proximity of objects to bodies in domestic environments, goods from all over the world become part of the material culture of the seventeenth-century Netherlands. As exotic goods and materials become part of the domestic environment, global goods gain local meanings, and simultaneously bestow new layers of meaning on the material culture of the early modern Netherlands.

Eric Jorink; Bart Ramakers (Editors). Art and Science in the Early Modern Netherlands. (Netherlands Yearbook for History and Art, 61.) 367 pp., illus., bibls. Zwolle: WBOOKS, 2011. €107 (cloth).

Eric Jorink; Bart Ramakers (Editors). <i>Art and Science in the Early Modern Netherlands</i>. (Netherlands Yearbook for History and Art, 61.) 367 pp., illus., bibls. Zwolle: WBOOKS, 2011. €107 (cloth).

Households, Consumption and the Development of Medical Care in the Netherlands, 1650–1900

This article examines the development of the Dutch medical marketplace between 1650 and 1900 from a household’s perspective. Using debts for medical care recorded in probate inventories, we construct the first quantitative analysis of levels of demand for medical care and the types of medical provision in small towns and villages across the Netherlands – locations much more representative of most of Europe than its better-studied cities. We reveal substantial growth in the sick’s reliance on commercial medical practitioners between 1650 and 1800, measured by both the frequency and size of debts to practitioners. We also find large differences between the commercialised maritime areas of the Netherlands and the more autarchic inland regions, where households were particularly unlikely to have used medical practitioners circa 1650. These differences extended to the types of practitioner involved: surgeons were most prominent in the maritime region; apothecaries in the inland region. Patterns of medical consumption converged during the nineteenth century, as did the types of practitioner used, anticipating laws restricting professional activity in medicine. As we show, differences in households’ uses of medical care within and between regions reflected their income, level of monetisation and engagement in commercial activities and other forms of non-essential consumption. We conclude that the profound growth in commercial medicine experienced in the early modern Netherlands was linked closely to wider trends in consumer behaviour.

Biblical beliefs in the shaping of modern nations

The ideology and culture of modern nations and nationalism have been profoundly influenced by two traditions that reach back into the ancient world, the biblical and the classical. Here, the focus is on the particular contribution of the Hebrew Bible to the political ideals of modern nationhood. Modern Western nations, unlike non-Western and ancient nations, are distinguished by their quest for territorial integrity and sovereignty, citizenship, legal standardisation, cultural homogeneity and secular education, while modern nationalism is a pro-active, ideological movement that seeks to ‘build’ autonomous, unified, distinctive and ‘authentic’ nations out of ethnic populations deemed by some members to constitute actual or potential ‘nations’. While modern European nations emerged out of the matrix of Christianity, as Adrian Hastings argued, it was the political model and ideals of community found in the Hebrew Bible, which Christianity adopted (while rejecting the Jews) and which the New Testament lacked, that so often provided the dynamic of modern nationalism and the values of modern Western nations. Chief among these were the Pentateuchal and prophetic narratives of Exodus, Covenant, Community of Law (Torah), the holiness of a ‘chosen people’, the messianic role of sacred kingship and the dream of fulfilment in the Promised Land. These ideals did not fully come into their own until the Reformation. In this period, state elites expressed growing national sentiments and biblical texts were being rendered into the vernacular, while a more rigorous biblical form of ‘covenantal nationalism’ emerged in early modern Netherlands, Scotland and England, taking the narrative of the deliverance of the Israelites as its starting point. In the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the novel cults of ‘Nature’, ‘Authenticity’ and ‘Human Perfectibility’ secured an opening for neo-classical political ideas in the formation of nations. But it was the biblical ideals of liberation, Covenant, election and promised land that provided the basic model of the modern nation and nationalism in Europe, from the French Revolution, and German and East European nationalisms to the Hebraic Protestant nationalism of Victorian Britain. To a large extent, the modern age owes to the Jewish Bible its fundamental vision of a world divided into distinctive and sovereign territorial nations.