Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1163/22145966-07201001
B. Ramakers, Edward H. Wouk
{"title":"Art and death in the Netherlands","authors":"B. Ramakers, Edward H. Wouk","doi":"10.1163/22145966-07201001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22145966-07201001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29745,"journal":{"name":"Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art-Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81548413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1163/22145966-07201011
Elise Philippe
The choir of Saint Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent boasts one of the most prestigious ensembles of Baroque funerary sculpture in the Low Countries: four magnificent episcopal tombs that reflect the post-Tridentine élan in the Southern Netherlands and underline the reinforced position of bishops during the Counter-Reformation. Dominated by a unifying black and white colour scheme, these monuments form an ‘episcopal dynastic mausoleum’ following the model of groups of royal tombs. Besides commemorating the bishops and highlighting their prestige, the tombs also served to adorn the cathedral and thus glorify God and his Church. Philippe argues that the monuments had didactic purposes too, rooted in the theory of the teaching of post-Tridentine images and linked to the Ars moriendi tradition. By presenting the bishops as exemplars of Catholic piety, this sculptural ensemble encouraged viewers to seek a good death.
{"title":"Mirrors of the good death","authors":"Elise Philippe","doi":"10.1163/22145966-07201011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22145966-07201011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The choir of Saint Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent boasts one of the most prestigious ensembles of Baroque funerary sculpture in the Low Countries: four magnificent episcopal tombs that reflect the post-Tridentine élan in the Southern Netherlands and underline the reinforced position of bishops during the Counter-Reformation. Dominated by a unifying black and white colour scheme, these monuments form an ‘episcopal dynastic mausoleum’ following the model of groups of royal tombs. Besides commemorating the bishops and highlighting their prestige, the tombs also served to adorn the cathedral and thus glorify God and his Church. Philippe argues that the monuments had didactic purposes too, rooted in the theory of the teaching of post-Tridentine images and linked to the Ars moriendi tradition. By presenting the bishops as exemplars of Catholic piety, this sculptural ensemble encouraged viewers to seek a good death.","PeriodicalId":29745,"journal":{"name":"Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art-Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82561890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1163/22145966-07201006
Léonie Marquaille
This essay probes the political and ideological status of such images in the officially Calvinist state after 1579. Focusing on the relationship between representations of the body of dead priests and the collective body of Catholic believers, Marquaille’s essay addresses one visual expression of the paradoxical situation whereby Catholics were reduced to minority status, not in numbers but through restrictions on public worship, including the public display of images. These prohibitions on the display of images notably extended to funerary rites, which were strictly regulated. This repressive context, according to Marquaille, gave rise to the posthumous clerical portrait as a new class of image with specific resonance for the emergent Dutch Catholic community. While Protestants shunned the representation of mortal remains, Dutch Catholics in particular came to embrace such depictions as an affirmative and distinctive feature of their newly proprietary visual culture.
{"title":"Embodying the Catholic faith","authors":"Léonie Marquaille","doi":"10.1163/22145966-07201006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22145966-07201006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay probes the political and ideological status of such images in the officially Calvinist state after 1579. Focusing on the relationship between representations of the body of dead priests and the collective body of Catholic believers, Marquaille’s essay addresses one visual expression of the paradoxical situation whereby Catholics were reduced to minority status, not in numbers but through restrictions on public worship, including the public display of images. These prohibitions on the display of images notably extended to funerary rites, which were strictly regulated. This repressive context, according to Marquaille, gave rise to the posthumous clerical portrait as a new class of image with specific resonance for the emergent Dutch Catholic community. While Protestants shunned the representation of mortal remains, Dutch Catholics in particular came to embrace such depictions as an affirmative and distinctive feature of their newly proprietary visual culture.","PeriodicalId":29745,"journal":{"name":"Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art-Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83689444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1163/22145966-07201004
Anna-Claire Stinebring
This essay deals with Jan Sanders van Hemessen’s Last Judgment of 1537-1539. This triptych was commissioned by Adriaan Rockox and his wife for their family chapel in Saint James’s church in Antwerp. As mentioned above, altarpieces – mostly triptychs – are prominent examples of art made for the purpose of remembrance in the Catholic tradition. They served to stimulate contemplation of death and afterlife, as well as prayer for the salvation of the dead. Van Hemessen, no doubt in concordance with the wishes of his patrons, enhances this purpose by taking the Last Judgment for the subject of the central panel. According to Stinebring, his representation is one of ‘hopeful anticipation’, particularly of the entire corporeal or fleshly. The central scene differs from traditional renderings in several respects. Out of the ordinary and literally eye-catching, due to their size and sensual anatomy, are a number of nudes, both male and female, damned and blessed, that dominate the foreground.
{"title":"Encountering Adam and Eve at the Apocalypse","authors":"Anna-Claire Stinebring","doi":"10.1163/22145966-07201004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22145966-07201004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay deals with Jan Sanders van Hemessen’s Last Judgment of 1537-1539. This triptych was commissioned by Adriaan Rockox and his wife for their family chapel in Saint James’s church in Antwerp. As mentioned above, altarpieces – mostly triptychs – are prominent examples of art made for the purpose of remembrance in the Catholic tradition. They served to stimulate contemplation of death and afterlife, as well as prayer for the salvation of the dead. Van Hemessen, no doubt in concordance with the wishes of his patrons, enhances this purpose by taking the Last Judgment for the subject of the central panel. According to Stinebring, his representation is one of ‘hopeful anticipation’, particularly of the entire corporeal or fleshly. The central scene differs from traditional renderings in several respects. Out of the ordinary and literally eye-catching, due to their size and sensual anatomy, are a number of nudes, both male and female, damned and blessed, that dominate the foreground.","PeriodicalId":29745,"journal":{"name":"Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art-Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89658661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1163/22145966-07201005
Isabel Casteels
Isabel Casteels examines the response of contemporary viewers – both intended and actual – to Frans Hogenberg’s execution prints dating from the first decades of the Dutch Revolt. Hogenberg characterised these executions, like those of the counts of Egmond and Horn in Brussels in 1566, as religious ceremonies, thus implicitly criticising them. The prints highlight the public, ritual, and indeed purely theatrical elements of these events, which, from the perspective of the Catholic Church and the secular authorities, may have legitimised them, but for Protestants and supporters of the Revolt generally did exactly the opposite – that is, de-legitimised them, exposed them for what they really were: cruel bloodshed. Eyewitness accounts confirm this, as did the prosecution of printers who issued copies of the prints. The depiction of the audience in many of the prints made their viewers aware of their role in these judicial rituals.
{"title":"Death on display","authors":"Isabel Casteels","doi":"10.1163/22145966-07201005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22145966-07201005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Isabel Casteels examines the response of contemporary viewers – both intended and actual – to Frans Hogenberg’s execution prints dating from the first decades of the Dutch Revolt. Hogenberg characterised these executions, like those of the counts of Egmond and Horn in Brussels in 1566, as religious ceremonies, thus implicitly criticising them. The prints highlight the public, ritual, and indeed purely theatrical elements of these events, which, from the perspective of the Catholic Church and the secular authorities, may have legitimised them, but for Protestants and supporters of the Revolt generally did exactly the opposite – that is, de-legitimised them, exposed them for what they really were: cruel bloodshed. Eyewitness accounts confirm this, as did the prosecution of printers who issued copies of the prints. The depiction of the audience in many of the prints made their viewers aware of their role in these judicial rituals.","PeriodicalId":29745,"journal":{"name":"Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art-Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80605010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1163/22145966-07201012
Anna Lisa Schwartz
Anna Lisa Schwartz analyses the rites and expressions surrounding the death and funeral of Prince Willem IV on 22 October 1751. Schwartz’s essay clearly illustrates that the Protestant Reformation did not see an end to lavish funeral ceremonies, funerary decorations, or mourning chapels. Willem died a stadtholder of all seven provinces of the Dutch Republic, a position he had achieved only four years before as the first scion of both branches of the Nassau dynasty (the Frisian and the Orange). Schwartz examines a plethora of visual and literary expressions: the decorations of the mourning hall; the catafalque; and funerary poems, medals, and books, the latter containing both descriptions and etchings of all funeral ceremonies. Tellingly, visual references were made to obsequies of Willem’s predecessors belonging to the Orange branch: its founder, William the Silent; his sons Maurits and Frederik Hendrik; and Willem’s predecessor, the king-stadtholder Willem III.
{"title":"Mourning the Prince of Orange","authors":"Anna Lisa Schwartz","doi":"10.1163/22145966-07201012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22145966-07201012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Anna Lisa Schwartz analyses the rites and expressions surrounding the death and funeral of Prince Willem IV on 22 October 1751. Schwartz’s essay clearly illustrates that the Protestant Reformation did not see an end to lavish funeral ceremonies, funerary decorations, or mourning chapels. Willem died a stadtholder of all seven provinces of the Dutch Republic, a position he had achieved only four years before as the first scion of both branches of the Nassau dynasty (the Frisian and the Orange). Schwartz examines a plethora of visual and literary expressions: the decorations of the mourning hall; the catafalque; and funerary poems, medals, and books, the latter containing both descriptions and etchings of all funeral ceremonies. Tellingly, visual references were made to obsequies of Willem’s predecessors belonging to the Orange branch: its founder, William the Silent; his sons Maurits and Frederik Hendrik; and Willem’s predecessor, the king-stadtholder Willem III.","PeriodicalId":29745,"journal":{"name":"Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art-Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90451917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1163/22145966-07201010
A. Powell
In Amy Powell’s essay social death’ offers a prism through which to analyse the said painting and specifically what it conceals – namely, the bodies of Black Africans sold into the transatlantic slave trade from storerooms located immediately beneath the sumptuous chamber depicted here. Wilre, portrayed as director of the WIC at the Dutch fort of Elmina on the ‘gold coast’ of West Africa, profited hugely from this trade even as he obfuscated the source of his wealth in images like this portrait. Powell’s analysis asks us to consider how those basement storerooms, and victims of the slave trade they contained, are ever present in De Wit’s painting, even as they are not figuratively represented. Her reading of two pictures within this picture draws attention to those who have suffered social death. The embedded pictures appear to reflect back to aspects of Wilre’s experience at Elmina as well as the impossibility of fully seeing the bodies marked, dismembered, and ultimately annihilated through the slave trade.
{"title":"Life and death according to the ‘episteme’ of the fort","authors":"A. Powell","doi":"10.1163/22145966-07201010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22145966-07201010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In Amy Powell’s essay social death’ offers a prism through which to analyse the said painting and specifically what it conceals – namely, the bodies of Black Africans sold into the transatlantic slave trade from storerooms located immediately beneath the sumptuous chamber depicted here. Wilre, portrayed as director of the WIC at the Dutch fort of Elmina on the ‘gold coast’ of West Africa, profited hugely from this trade even as he obfuscated the source of his wealth in images like this portrait. Powell’s analysis asks us to consider how those basement storerooms, and victims of the slave trade they contained, are ever present in De Wit’s painting, even as they are not figuratively represented. Her reading of two pictures within this picture draws attention to those who have suffered social death. The embedded pictures appear to reflect back to aspects of Wilre’s experience at Elmina as well as the impossibility of fully seeing the bodies marked, dismembered, and ultimately annihilated through the slave trade.","PeriodicalId":29745,"journal":{"name":"Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art-Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86471816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1163/22145966-07201007
Aleksandra Lipińska
This essay offers a revaluation of the materiality of early modern Netherlandish tombs, a field that has only recently attracted serious scholarly attention. Her contribution focuses on the role played by materiality as a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of these monuments. Tomb sculpture generally relied on a combination of material properties: the potential of realistic representation, durability, intrinsic value, and material splendour. Most suitable for a convincing representation of a dead body in this period was translucent alabaster with its warm flesh tone, while Italian white marble and bronze referenced antiquity and classical notions of durability. The use of specific sets of local and imported materials resulted in a unique ‘material image’ of Netherlandish tomb sculpture, which effectively contributed to the preservation of the deceased’s memoria, social status, and dynastic and personal magnificence.
{"title":"Materia mortis","authors":"Aleksandra Lipińska","doi":"10.1163/22145966-07201007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22145966-07201007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay offers a revaluation of the materiality of early modern Netherlandish tombs, a field that has only recently attracted serious scholarly attention. Her contribution focuses on the role played by materiality as a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of these monuments. Tomb sculpture generally relied on a combination of material properties: the potential of realistic representation, durability, intrinsic value, and material splendour. Most suitable for a convincing representation of a dead body in this period was translucent alabaster with its warm flesh tone, while Italian white marble and bronze referenced antiquity and classical notions of durability. The use of specific sets of local and imported materials resulted in a unique ‘material image’ of Netherlandish tomb sculpture, which effectively contributed to the preservation of the deceased’s memoria, social status, and dynastic and personal magnificence.","PeriodicalId":29745,"journal":{"name":"Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art-Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74040332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1163/22145966-07201008
R. Dekoninck
Ralph Dekoninck focuses on this painting’s dramatic display of suffering and death of the first martyr of Christianity as a case study in the paradox of the performative strategy of ‘sacred horror’ in the context of Tridentine reform. In this large altarpiece, Dekoninck identifies the coincidence of abjection and glory as a reflexive topos through which martyr, painter, and beholder are bound in a complex visual erotics. The troubling beauty of violence, which simultaneously repels and draws the viewer nearer to the image, invites an inner emulation of the holy, bodily sacrifice which does not deform the figure, in Rubens’s image, but instead perfects his physical appearance as a visible embodiment of supreme spiritual attainment. Dekoninck reads this attainment in terms of neo-Stoic philosophy current in Rubens’s circle, which provides a means to understand how the ‘horrific display’ of martyrdom serves to confirm both the sanctity of the portrayed and the efficacy of the image.
{"title":"The stones and the crown","authors":"R. Dekoninck","doi":"10.1163/22145966-07201008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22145966-07201008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Ralph Dekoninck focuses on this painting’s dramatic display of suffering and death of the first martyr of Christianity as a case study in the paradox of the performative strategy of ‘sacred horror’ in the context of Tridentine reform. In this large altarpiece, Dekoninck identifies the coincidence of abjection and glory as a reflexive topos through which martyr, painter, and beholder are bound in a complex visual erotics. The troubling beauty of violence, which simultaneously repels and draws the viewer nearer to the image, invites an inner emulation of the holy, bodily sacrifice which does not deform the figure, in Rubens’s image, but instead perfects his physical appearance as a visible embodiment of supreme spiritual attainment. Dekoninck reads this attainment in terms of neo-Stoic philosophy current in Rubens’s circle, which provides a means to understand how the ‘horrific display’ of martyrdom serves to confirm both the sanctity of the portrayed and the efficacy of the image.","PeriodicalId":29745,"journal":{"name":"Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art-Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83341406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1163/22145966-07201009
Stephanie S. Dickey
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’.
{"title":"Ars longa vita brevis","authors":"Stephanie S. Dickey","doi":"10.1163/22145966-07201009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22145966-07201009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 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’.","PeriodicalId":29745,"journal":{"name":"Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art-Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73609850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}