16th and 17th century Dutch and Flemish Art

This article will touch upon Rembrandt’s Portrait of Johannes Wtenbogaert : its
historical value, provenance, auction policy, auction price, acquisition and present
status. In 1633 Rembrandt painted the fabulous Portrait of Johannes Wtenbogaert
(aka Uytenbogaert / Uitenbogaert / Uyttenboogaard (1557-1644)). He was the
foremost clergyman of the moderate group of Protestants who followed the tolerant
tenets of Jacobus Arminius.

The famous Flemish artist, praised by all the scholars of the period, amongst whom Bellori and Baldinucci, was fundamental in determining the evolution of the Baroque period, opening the way to making the typical language of the Counter-Reformation widespread over Europe: solemn and magnificent, intended to instill awe with its dizzying perspective and mass of gestures.

Several series of Sibyls, of variable number and quality, that have been
previously attributed to different painters within Peter Paul Rubens’ circle, in foreign and Spanish collections, as well as in the art market, are here claimed to be by the hand of the Flemish master Jan van den Hoecke. The persistent confusion both in terms of attribution and identification of the subject matter is clarified in this paper, following on from Hans Vlieghe’s 1990 evidence. Tracing the now dispersed series as far as possible, the present article pays special attention to the eleven canvasses at Tessé Museum, Le Mans, as they appear part of a unique ensemble that still remains undispersed. For these series Jan van den Hoecke created an original iconography, with no formal precedents. Comparison of the different versions allows for a deciphering of the Latin texts accompanying each depiction, and for an identification of their literal sources. Judging by the numerous versions, the series of Sibyls must have rewarded the artist with great success, a demand that he
satisfied with a changeable effort.

La autoría del pintor flamenco Jan van den Hoecke se reivindica en varias series de Sibilas, de variable número y calidad, atribuidas a otros pintores de la estela de Peter Paul Rubens en colecciones españolas y extranjeras, así como en el comercio del arte. Tanto las atribuciones como la identificación de los asuntos son objeto de una gran confusión que persiste y se esclarece en este artículo, en base a lo avanzado por Hans Vlieghe en 1990. Se sigue la pista de los diversos ejemplares hoy dispersos en la medida de lo posible, prestando especial atención a los lienzos del museo de Tessé de Le Mans, por ser el único ejemplo existente de una serie que se conserva unida. Jan van den Hoecke fue el creador de una iconografía original que se distancia de los precedentes formales. La comparación entre los diferentes ejemplares permite descifrar los textos en latín que acompañan cada representación, precisando sus fuentes literarias. A juzgar por la elevada cantidad de versiones localizadas, es tema que le proporcionó éxito y demanda que satisfizo con esfuerzo cambiante.

One of the main distinctions between Italian Manneristic artistic period and the Dutch golden age of the 17th century painters is, as Svetlana Alpers noted, a question of the position of the observer. Italian art , linked with the themes chosen by a patron, creates an unreal and harmonic world , enclosed by a framed window and with the viewer-us-forced into a specific position. Linear perspective was, instead of an aid to reality, a portal to illusionism. Where these paintings were located? Often they were the so-called altarpieces, displayed behind the altar, symmetrical to the main axis on a Latin cross floor plan church. They were located in an area that was inaccessible to the common observer. (This idea worked even for Art moved in the smallest lateral naves chapel, normally a location for buried clerics. Inaccessibility was the source for the placements of the observers.) Since the middle age, Art was invested in the role of a teacher for te faithful. The uneducated were not able to obtain the word of god through a mass spoken in Latin, moreover they were moved to Faith with an illusionism far removed from everyday life. Linear perspective creates a timeless representation, a sort of explanation of Faith. It was a rhetoric figure placed permanently in front of our eyes. The renaissance concept of a reality that refuses the chaos of the everyday, that looks for the shape of perfection, a symmetry that only art had the power to set. Since Early Dutch painting, themes show off their distance with that conception. an example can be found in the Arnolfini portrait by Van Eyck: the commissioners are the subject of the painting (even in Italian Art Renaissance the commissioner was often depicted in the paintings, placed in a hidden or lateral position, often bowing to the religious theme which would hold the central position.) they are not particularly attractive or perfect, their wealth essentially hidden in small objects. See for example the famous round-shape mirror (Fig.

Title: Figuring Faith and Female Power in the Art of Rubens
Author: J. Vanessa Lyon
Series: Visual & Material Culture, 1300-1700
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Figuring Faith and Female Power in the Art of Rubens argues that the Baroque painter, propagandist, and diplomat, Peter Paul Rubens, was not only aware of rapidly shifting religious and cultural attitudes toward women, but actively engaged in shaping them. Today, Rubens’s paintings continue to be used -- and abused -- to prescribe and proscribe certain forms of femininity. Repositioning some of the artist’s best-known works within seventeenth-century Catholic theology and female court culture, this book provides a feminist corrective to a body of art historical scholarship in which studies of gender and religion are often mutually exclusive. Moving chronologically through Rubens’s lengthy career, the author shows that, in relation to the powerful women in his life, Rubens figured the female form as a transhistorical carrier of meaning whose devotional and rhetorical efficacy was heightened rather than diminished by notions of female difference and particularity.

Download Table of Contents & Intro: https://assets.ctfassets.net/4wrp2um278k7/5ZvX0DCvTsh2XeHP5SpoAy/6364a537ac0e62749047271c8b372ce0/9789048536665_ToC_Intro.pdf

A Triptych with the rise of Lazarus and Saint John the Evangelist and Saint John the Baptist is attributed here to Adrian Isenbrant, and other painting with Saint Ursule is attributed to Pieter Claeissens I. Both painters belong to the Bruges School at XVIth century and have a lot of production made for the foreing commerce, specially to Spain. This article reflects over the relationship between the painters workshops at Bruges and the spanish taste.

Where have all the women gone? It can be difficult, sometimes, to find evidence of female participation in the arts and culture of the early modern period. This short essay explores how we can locate women and their participation by approaching our research differently.

The Dutch translation of Pieter Bruegel d.Ä. This translation published by Meulenhoff includes all references!

Bruegel de Oude is een fenomeen. Zijn werken zijn ruim 450 jaar oud, maar nog steeds meer dan indrukwekkend. Al tijdens zijn leven was hij beroemd en beroemd is hij gebleven. Terecht, volgens Büttner, die laat zien waarom Bruegel zo spannend is: de verborgen details in zijn schilderijen waarmee hij de waanzin van de mensheid laat zien.

Le DUT Information Communication comprend trois filières : Communication des organisations , Publicité et Métiers du livre. Chacune forme les étudiants à une large palette de métiers dans les domaines de l'informa-tion et de la communication, en leur donnant une solide culture professionnelle mais aussi les outils intellectuels pour comprendre les mutations rapides de ce secteur.

Since the 16th century Europeans had been interpreting the New World not only through words but also through images. European professional artists did not truly start painting South Americas's tropics in loco, however, until the Dutch invasion of northeast Brazil in 1630-1654. In the entourage of Count Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, WIC governor in Recife from 1637 to 1644. Eckhout and Post stood out as pictorial virtuosi capable of capturing nuances of ethnicity, landscape, fauna and flora. The Brazilian world of Amsterdam's Baroque imaginary was derived from their paintings' wide spaces, limpid skies, farm houses, sugar mills, chapels, rivers, woods, Europeans, mestizos, blacks, and indigenous people. The aim of such images, at least those created in Brazil, was to express the wealth of the land under Dutch rule in Portuguese America. Their starting premise was thus a political/ economic one. Yet, diverging from what became entrenched in the modern western imaginary, they are not "documents" of Brazil, but Baroque allegorical expressions of an exotic world created as a theatrical "register" of reality.

Chap. 13. The end of the donor portrait in the Dutch Republic left a gap in the artistic repertoire of spiritual self-imagination. The absence of portraits in ecclesiastical environments, as part of a commemorative cult, has stimulated the rise of the autonomous biblical portrait historié in secular spaces. Since the rise of the Modern Devotion, being portrayed in a religious scene was a way to testify in person of one’s search for forgiveness, mercy and rapprochement to God. The primacy of Scripture and the “Word-oriented” visual culture of the Reformation, in connection to the Dutch Israel imagery, attested to the popularity of the biblical portrait historié in civic context. Biblical portraiture could be theologically legitimised on the basis of guidelines in commentaries on catechisms, although this does not explain its practical purpose. It has been argued that secularized mentality penetrated devotional art and destroyed it from within. It remains unclear whether or not a family portrait with a biblical subject a for private home actually differs in use from an altarpiece or other devotional works of art containing portraits. To attend to this matter, general questions about functionality and devotional practice of portraits need to be studied first. The debates about the Andachtsbild and the differences between private and public art also complicate an overall interpretation of the portrait historié.

Before the Reformation, Dutch artists were already aware of the symbolic relationship between subject matter and form (or function) of religious paintings. In the autonomous biblical portrait historié – i.e. the secularised type – form, figuration and fashion were often linked to the discussion on the functionality of religious art. Often one finds critial references to pious practises: e.g. the pseudo-donor portrait in Delff’s Jacob and Esau: a criticism on intercession of saints; or the fact that Fabritius’s centurion before Peter does not kneel in veneration of the apostle. Catholic defenses against the reproach of idolatry and reactions from Protestants make clear how portraiture and remembrance were viewed from a religious perspective. According to the Reformed view, there is an essential distinction between paintings in the church and those at the home because of a difference in use. Portraits were allowed at home according to Ursinus’s guidelines, that fitted seamlessly with Calvin’s approval of representations of visible creatures. In the Reformed restrictions of art, one can find further explanation for the success of the biblical portrait historié. Not only does this type of portrait only have a civic use, but it also meets all the requirements that were set for art. For it serves as a remembrance, not only of the portrayed, in the Paulinic sense, but also of the biblical story, while the image as a rule also contains a moralistic message.

The reasons given for portrayal as a specific biblical figure or participant in a biblical scene, mainly explain the choice of subject rather than the motivations for that identification. Reformed critiques of the phenomenon portrait historié have not been handed down, and its assessment can only be interpreted indirectly. In some catechetical texts dramatically performed roles are discussed, which may offer some insight into how this kind of role play in religious art was judged – though views differ widely. Biblical parallels and comparison between persons were often justified in an euhemeric way, because of the conformity with God. Both the perfectionist pursuit of conformity with Christ and the imitation of exemplary figures in calvinist sanctification can be seen as adaptations of the medieval imitatio Christi to the Reformed theology of predestination. By following in the footsteps of Old Testament forerunners, and by being portrayed as patriarchs and the people elect, the Dutch placed themselves, as it were, in the succession from the Old to the New Covenant. In the biblical portrait historié, the Christian actually portrays himself as a Christian; in Old Testament scenes without risk of a personal glorification, so as to disprove allegations of vainglory and idolatry. The analogy in Old Testament portraits histories was seldom based on individual parallels. The choice of subject seems to have been as important as the identification with a biblical figure. The autonomous biblical portrait historié is a painterly representation of the personal empathy of the people portrayed with the Dutch Israel. Inherent to the doctrine of predestination is that biblical figures, as representatives of the contemporary persons, are not actually the acting figures of the story, but God, who works in the form of the Holy Spirit, who reveals himself in Grace who remains invisible to the believer and the spectator.

13. Religieuze portretkunst in context 579
13.1. Het bijbelse portrait historié als gedachtenis 579
13.2. Nog één maal de bijbelse rol 598
13.3. Euhemerisme en gelijkvormigheid aan Christus in de zeventiende eeuw 601
13.4. Nawoord 605

Carl Borromäus Ruthart (Gdańsk 1630–L’Aquila, after 1703), also known as Karl Ruthard, Carlo Ruttardo and Fra Andrea di Danzica is as fascinating as little known. He was most likely born in Gdańsk where he first learned to draw and paint, so the Gdańsk painting milieu of the ca. mid-17th century played a key factor in the development of his technique. His mature work was produced in a number of places in Europe, including Antwerp, Vienna, Venice, Rome and ultimately in L’Aquila. His most typical motifs were dramatic hunting scenes, and later religious scenes always in the midst of animals and objects. Especially the begin- nings of his career remain unknown.
Ruthart’s continuously popular animal scenes are kept in and purchased for museums and private collections on several con- tinents. The painter’s sacred works can be mainly found in the churches and museum collections of Rome and L’Aquila. There are also sketches of animals in various techniques and prints that are testament to Ruthart’s interest in studies. It is they that we will mainly use to follow the directions in which Ruthart looked for his models in his early career. Young Carl Borromäus’s interest in animal painting was surely influenced by certain particular features of Gdańsk culture. The 16th-century décor of Artus Court already shows an interest in hunting themes. Ruthart was influenced by such artists as Daniel Schultz, Samuel Niedenthal and Frans Snyders. A collection of Niedenthal’s drawings from Erlangen is lost but the exceptionally large collection of the artist’s work preserved at the Kupferstich-Kabinett (Print Collection) in Dresden. The chronology of Ruthart’s both early and later work is very difficult to determine because he very rarely signed them. His earliest signed work is a quick sketch from the National Museum in Gdańsk. A pen and wash drawing, it shows a dog at rest and is signed “Carl Ruthart/ geschehn[?] in Venetia,/ Den 22 Aug: 1655”. Four similar drawings by Ruthart, depicting single animals at the graphic art collection in Munich and are none-too-widely- known. The first sketch depicts a Sleeping Pig. It is a black chalk drawing on 24.1 × 39 cm blue paper. The next one made in the same technique on cream-coloured paper (14.1 × 18.5 cm), features a boar in profile. The other two, depicting a Calf and a Doe in motion are drawn in black and washed with white chalk. The last drawing is inscribed: „A. Rutharts del” at the bottom and „812” underneath it, written with bistre. ust like the Gdańsk drawing, the Munich sketches focus on the detail and are more toned down than his later work. In these studies of poses, Ruthart shows himself to be an astute observer, focused on depicting a specific animal at rest or posing it in motion. The similarities between both artists’ preparatory sketches and the very interest in the subject do not seem to be accidental. Stags, lions, leopards and all kinds of birds in Niedenthal’s drawings and paintings appear in similar ways in Ruthart’s paintings. Ruthart produced animal “portraits” similar to Niedenthal’s with oil on paper or canvas, for example the Wild Boar and Wolf from the former collection of the Marchesi Strozzi in Florence. A so-far record-breaking sum of €659,000 was paid in 2007 for a painting signed and dated by Ruthart depicting Adam Naming the Animals which, although painted in 1686, has a clear connection to the work of the Gdańsk painters’ milieu of the mid- 17th century. In fact, the subject repeats the iconography of the earlier mentioned painting of the same title, albeit in a somewhat different manner. The animal world fascinated Ruthart. He certainly gained the ability to carefully study various species of birds, animals and amphibians at the workshop of his master, most likely Niedenthal. His travels and the opportunity to see the work of Netherlandish and Italian painters developed him greatly, while his popularity with customers made him use his skills to create many works meant primarily for palace interiors.

Chap. 1. The subject of this study is the biblical portrait historié, a portrait type in which a person is depicted as a figure from the bible, as it flourished in the Netherlands of the 16th and 17th centuries. In art history, the term portrait historié is used for a subset of both history painting and portraiture in which an individual is portrayed in the guise of a historical, religious, mythological or legendary figure. The description “portrait in the guise of a biblical figure” can cover a wide variety of works of art. A person may be portrayed as protagonist of a biblical story (as David with the head of Goliath) or as biblical figure in a non-biblical narrative scene (as Luke the Evangelist painting the Virgin). The individual(s) depicted could have a main role, actively or passively engaging in the biblical act or hallowed proceding, or appear as an anonymous, secondary but relevant figure in the margins of a multifigured painting. The specific role of the sitter can be identified by analysing the iconography (the sitter’s attributes and/or the narrative context). The term portrait historié is an ambiguous one since it can be used both for a work of art itself, whether it be a proper history piece or an autonomous portrait, and for a portrait figure that is inserted in a narrative scene. The latter portraits are also known as cryptoportraits (i.e. hidden portraits), although these portraits are in no way intended to remain hidden. As an alternative, the description “integrated portraits historiés” is introduced here for those non-autonomous portraits.

1. Tussen portret en historiestuk 13
1.1. Inleiding: afbakening en methodologie van het onderzoek 13
1.2. Kunsthistorisch begrippenapparaat en stand van onderzoek 20
1.3. Werkdefinitie en terminologische afbakening 27
1.4. Formele onderverdeling van het autonome portrait historié 30
1.5. Geïntegreerd portrait historié en assistentieportret 34
1.6. Formele onderverdeling van het geïntegreerde portrait historié 37
1.7. Genrematige grensgevallen: De Verloren Zoon en eigentijdse Bathseba’s 40

El Museo del Prado recibe en sus salas una exposición dedicada a la enigmática pintora flamenca Clara Peeters, una de las pioneras del género del bodegón en el primer cuarto del siglo XVII. La exposición ha contado con el patrocinio de la Fundación Axa, y ha sido organizada en colaboración con el Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten de Amberes, y expuesta previamente en el Museum Rockoxhuis de la misma ciudad.

Although his celebrated pupils, Guido Reni, Francesco Albani and Domenichino, flourished in the Eternal City, during his lifetime the Antwerp-born painter and draughtsman Denys Calvaert (c.1540–1619) probably visited Rome only once, between 1573 and 1576. While Calvaert’s sojourn in Rome is recorded in documents and early sources, the evidence of his artistic activity is rather meagre, which has led to some misinter- pretations and chronological confusions. The discovery of a group of drawings that can be confidently attributed to Calvaert and precisely dated to his years in Rome adds visual substance to documenting the artist’s presence in the city, which was crucial for his training as a draughtsman and his future development as an artist.

The most unusual of Van Dyck’s four portraits of James Stuart is that in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, in which he proffers a fruit. Here identified as a quince, symbol of marriage, it allows the painting to be accurately dated. The portrait has intrigued many artists and writers, notably Marcel Proust.

Jacob van Ruisdael's dramatic landsape paintings, in particular his wild waterfalls, were already cherished by his contemporaries. They seem like a faithful representation of reality, especially the depictions of Castle Bentheim which he painted thirty times, but a look at the still extant castle shows an entirely different image. Who were the customers for these and the countless images of Haarlem, the so-called "Haarlempjes", and do these customers reveal anything about the dramatic depictions shown by Ruisdael?