16th and 17th century Dutch and Flemish Art

In his Discourse on Light, Ibn Al-Haytam develops his theory of light propagation that remind us of the "Eyckian revolution". What follows is an edited transcript of a lecture by Karel Vereycken on the subject of "Perspective in XVth-century Flemish religious painting" delivered at the Paris Sorbonne University.

To glorify contemporary artist David Hockney's two years' investigation as
"a sensational d iscovery that became the subject of headlines, and media
attention and debate among prominent scientists, art h istorians, and museum directors worldwide" (as one promoter of this book did) is overdone. In Reality Great Art Requires More Than Optical Technology.

Two newly discovered accomplished paintings, in terms of their quality and size: the Death of Seneca and Apollo flaying Marsyas, two works by 'Wautier" that were lost since 1764, when they are recorded in the collection of the City of Brussels architect, Pierre de Doncker. Stylistically, Seneca is more comparable to works by Charles Wautier, whilst Apolo and Marsyas relates to the paintings of Michaelina Wautier, making it possible to identify each of the artists as authors of one and the other works. Inviting us to make comparisons as well as observe differences, that enable us to better understand their practice and approach, in an attempt to distinguish the oeuvre of the sibling painters whose vital and artistic fusion cannot be refuted, and undeniably remains a challenge for today’s scholars.

In her time, the amateur botanist and collector Agnes Block (1629–1704) became celebrated as Flora Batava — the goddess of flowers of the Batavians, mythical ancestors of the Dutch Republic. This reputation was carefully curated. This essay posits that Block’s successful self-fashioning as Flora Batava was due in part to her engagement with a network of artists. Membership in this network, together with her wealth and keen appreciation of art, contributed to her becoming one of the most important and influential patrons in a genre that fused art and science.

This paper investigates the Academia Aretiniana, a still unexplored group of literati and artists who gathered in Venice around the eclectic figure of Pietro Aretino (1492-1556). I argue that this pseudo-academy represents a critical network which aligned with the ideals of cultural restoration of the city from the 1530s. Through a close intellectual dialogue among the members, the group introduced fundamental innovations for both literature and visual arts, which informed art theory and kindled formal experimentation. This project, therefore, seeks to explore how this humanistic circle contributed to reshape artistic production in sixteenth-century Venice. By unpacking the theoretical discussion on the arts carried on by the group, as well as exploring how artistic practice fed into it, the project proposes an interdisciplinary approach to understand how the group elaborated a novel aesthetic vocabulary that permeated the creative processes of artists and writers. It is the aim of the project to answer the question as to the academic aspirations of this circle and how they eventually shaped the coeval artistic practice, paving the way for Venetian Mannerism. The presentation will address the topic by elaborating on its status quaestionis, the inherent limits of such research and the methodological approach.

Ce mémoire présente une analyse minutieuse de trois œuvres attribuées au peintre hollandais Jan Mostaert (ca. 1474 -1553), originaire de la ville d’Haarlem et actif durant la première moitié du XVIe siècle. Ces trois peintures, dont le Triptyque de la Passion, deux volets d’un retable, ainsi que le Portrait du Chevalier Abel van Coulster, sont conservées aux Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (MRBAB). Si ces œuvres ont déjà fait l’objet de quelques publications, elles ne sont pourtant pas reprises, ni étudiées, dans les catalogues du musée sur la peinture flamande du XVe et du début du XVIe siècle étant donné l’origine hollandaise du peintre.

Rembrandt: 400 years old and still young! Even without any knowledge of the specific historical context, few are those that remain indifferent to his artistic message and skill. Why Rembrandt? What particular quality of his paintings, engravings and drawings gave him the power to reach over centuries of time? As we will document here, Rembrandt, a precocious intellectual, became already quite « universal » as a young adult. But let's try to find out what « universal » means.

The domestic interiors to which we are accustomed do not constitute eternal norms, instead resulting from complex evolutions of which an essential phase occurred in the Netherlands during the seventeenth century. There, new modes of dwelling shaped – and were shaped by – the distribution, decoration and furnishing of space. The emerging taste for domesticity was paralleled by an expanding appreciation for the representation of interiors and their inhabitants. These images come close to a representation of daily realities, yet retain a selective or reconstructed vision that requires detailed analysis. Beginning with a study of Dutch houses and paintings – and eventually extending to their eighteenth-century reinterpretations on a European scale – this seminar will investigate the pleasures, constraints and aesthetics that shape experiences of the domestic interior. Weekly topics, such as cleanliness, disorder, privacy, surveillance, and material culture, will allow us to uncover connexions between the work of celebrated painters (Vermeer, Chardin, Hogarth) and the daily realities of inhabited space.

Oil on canvas Oil on Canvas 6.75 X 8 inches 7.5 X 9.6 inches Addison Thompson Collection (NYC) Louvre Museum (Paris) The enormous hair bun of the known version is compared to the unrestored new version of Vermeer's Lacemaker. The known version has been stripped with caustic solvents and over painted, to cover-up the tribal art New Guinea Asmat skull, she is wearing.

6 schede su opere di Adam de Coster (3 opere della collezione Koelliker di Milano); Tiziano e bottega (la "Deposizione di Cristo nel sepolcro" della Pinacoteca Ambrosiana di Milano); Antoon Van Dyck (2 opere tra cui "Le quattro età dell'uomo" del Museo Civico di Vicenza): pp. 54-55, cat. 1; pp. 66-69, catt. 7-8; pp. 80-85, catt. 13-15

Ever since the transcription and publication  in 1864 of the Liggeren, the register of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke, 11th February 1618 has been widely accepted as the date on which Anthony van Dyck enrolled as
a free master and became a painter in his own right. However, an examination of the Liggeren, alongside the manuscript accounts book kept by the printer Jan Moretus II, who was Dean of the Guild in the guild year 1616–17, leads to the conclusion that Van Dyck became a free master four months earlier, on St Luke’s Day, 18th October 1617.

Research report for Bijl-Van Urk B.V.:
The Amsterdam painter Jan (or Johannes) Victors (1619-1676/77) was the son of Styntje Jaspers (1587-c. 1625) and the Antwerp-born Louis Victors (c. 1585-c. 1658). In his early years, Louis moved with his parents from Antwerp to Amsterdam – probably because of religious persecution in the South – where he made a career as a chair maker in ‘the Spanish style’. In 1642, Jan Victors married Jannetje Bellaert. At the time, Jan lived with his widowed father in the Kalverstraat, but a few years later the young married couple moved to the Hartenstraat. Records indicate that they had moved to the Rokin, ‘near the church’, by the time Jannetje died, in 1661. She left Jan behind with seven underaged children.

Majewski’s film allows the non-expert public to get a glance at the real dimension of Bruegel, not only a painter with elevated philosophical ideals, but an engaged citizen in close contact with the Schola Caritatis (House of Love), a circle of Erasmian humanists around figures such as Hendrick Niclaes, the French printer Christophe Plantin and some of the early pioneers of cartography such as Abraham Ortelius and Gerard Mercator.

Dlaczego było tak mało malarek na Śląsku w okresie baroku? W dniu 8 marca 2021 roku po raz pierwszy w długoletniej historii Rijksmuseum w Amsterdamie umieszczono w galerii honorowej trzy obrazy stworzone przez kobiety: Judith Jans Leyster, Gesinę Terborch i Rachel Ruysch. Gdyby na podobny krok zdecydowało się Muzeum Narodowe we Wrocławiu – główna instytucja zajmująca się gromadzeniem i eksponowaniem dzieł dawnej sztuki powstałych na Śląsku – to miałoby bardzo poważny problem z jego realizacją. W okresie baroku na Śląsku zawód malarki uprawiały bowiem jedynie trzy kobiety: Anna Elisabeth Willmann, Dorothea Gloger oraz Antonina della Vigna. Co więcej, nie odniosły one znaczącego zawodowego sukcesu, a ich kariery pozostały w zasadzie niespełnione. Spośród około 10 000 obrazów o śląskiej proweniencji z okresu baroku zachowanych do naszych czasów tylko pięć zostało namalowanych przez kobiety. Dlaczego tak mało kobiet zajmowało się zawodowo malarstwem na Śląsku w tym czasie? I dlaczego z ...

Michael Gibson was a prominent art critic for the Paris-based International Herald Tribune. He wrote several monographs, including one on Pieter Bruegel, and also of a “history of a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder,” titled “Bearing the Cross.” In 1999, Karel Vereycken conducted the following interview.

Over the last 30 years, more than 70 pieces of furniture from the Rijksmuseum collection (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) have been dated using dendrochronology. Furniture from the northern Netherlands was seldom dated by the maker and never signed, and only a few documents indicating who and when it was made have survived. Here, we present an overview of the research carried out on 17th-century furniture objects from the Rijksmuseum, with a special focus on the results pertaining to marquetry cabinets produced around the 1700s. We outline the general approach followed to conduct dendrochronological research on cabinets — from the selection of elements to the interpretation of the results. On average, a cabinet consists of fifty to 100 wooden elements. In many of these elements, the end grain is not accessible, and partial dismantling may be required to access the surface and the tree-ring pattern; hence, conscious choices must be made. Seven pieces of furniture are discussed in this pa...

This  essay  examines  early  modern  alba  amicorum  as  collections  of  social  and  intel-lectual networks, personal memories, and other textual and visual materials. In what way are these ‘paper worlds’ related to collections of objects, and to networks of con-nections? How do they interact with other book and manuscript genres, such as the emblem and the costume book? Taking the album of the Dutch collector Bernardus Paludanus  (1550-1633)  as  a  case  study,  an  argument  will  be  made  regarding  the  conceptual  and  material  kinship  of  alba  with  other  forms  of  manuscript  and  print  collections. The intermediality and materiality of friendship books will be shown to be crucial aspects for understanding how this medium functioned within early modern cultures of collecting and the communal production of memory and knowledge.

The Triumph of Death? The simple fact that the heir to the throne of England, Prince Charles, and even the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have tested positive to the terrifying coronavirus currently sweeping the planet, tells something to the public.

Realizing that these “higher-ups” are not part of the immortal Gods of Olympus but are mortals as all of us, brings to my mind “The Triumph of Death”, a large oil painting on panel (117 x 162 cm, Prado, Madrid), generally misunderstood, painted by the Flemish painter Peter Bruegel’s the elder (1525-1569), and thought to be executed between 1562 and his premature demise.

A better understanding of the history of the witty culture of the Low Countries today makes it possible to abolish the five hundred years wall that has separated us from the very image-rich language of Bosch. The time has come to get rid of the simplistic and caricature-like interpretations cooked up by surrealist and Jungian would-be historians, since the great clarity of Bosch’s language for his contemporaries has been at last conclusively demonstrated.

En étroite collaboration avec les secteurs photographie, conservation / restauration et analyses scientifiques, SIK-ISEA a pu continuellement optimiser la haute qualité de sa photographie technique et élargir le spectre des processus de diagnostic par rayonnement.

Het Academiegebouw is het hart van de Universiteit Leiden. In dit boek horen we het in elke ruimte kloppen. Soms krachtig, als het gaat over de Verlichting of verdediging van vrijheid, over helden in de wetenschap of de stencilmachines waarmee studenten in 1969 hun “aktie” voor democratisering aanslingerden.  Voor andere verhalen legde Dorrit van Dalen haar oor tegen de muren van het gebouw: kleine verhalen over de tekeningen op de trap, een pedel met de slappe lach, de klokkenzolder als uitkijkpost in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, over Leidse liefde voor decorum die met grillen wordt gekruid.

Przełomowa rola Zgromadzenia Księży Misjonarzy w procesie kształtowania przestrzeni sepulkralnej Warszawy była powszechnie znana i doceniana. Mimo niepodważalnych zasług na tym polu oraz licznych opracowań poświęconych nekropoliom warszawskim jak i temu zgromadzeniu, temat ten nie doczekał się wnikliwejmonografii historycznej uwzględniającej ustalenie rzeczywistego czasu, w którym przenoszenie cmentarzy za miasto się rozpoczęło oraz poznania przyczyn tych działań. Niniejszy artykuł ma za zadanie wykazać, że w badaniach nad kształtowaniem się cmentarzy pozamiejskich przyjmowano długo założenie, iż najpierw pojawiły się regulacje prawne, nakazujące ich tworzenie, a dopiero później (i z dużymi oporami) doszło do ich realizacji. Nowsze studia pokazują jednak, że w XVI, XVII i XVIII wieku organizowano jednak miejsca pochówków poza osadami bez żadnych ścisłych nakazów. Czyniono to z konieczności, wynikającej z przepełnienia podziemi świątyń i cmentarzy przykościelnych. Warszawa, postrzega...

La obra Indias Huancas de Julia Codesido (1883-1979) forma parte de la colección de arte moderno del Centro Pompidou de París y es una obra que, al igual que muchas obras de artistas mujeres, actualmente no está expuesta al público. Este artículo analiza el trabajo de Codesido desde la perspectiva feminista y decolonial. Al mismo tiempo, la relectura de su obra propone una revisión de la iconografía representada a partir de la significación de sus elementos. Codesido fue una artista comprometida con las ideas de la vanguardia artística del Perú, su adhesión a la estética indigenista le permitió crear obras que alteraron los cánones academicistas, explorando nuevas formas de expresión. Mediante estas nuevas maneras de representación restituyó la presencia de las mujeres y su diversidad étnica y cultural en la historia del arte del Perú.The work Indias Huancas by Julia Codesido (1883-1979) is part of the modern art collection of the Center Pompidou in Paris and is a work that, like ma...