H. Perry Chapman

Eric Jan Sluijter

Mariët Westermann

Newark Museum

Cornelia Willemijn Fock

The caress of fabrics, the sheen of metal, the brittle luminosity of glass -- Dutch genre painters of the Golden Age were so skilled at mimicking the appearance of things that their largely imaginary domestic scenes are utterly convincing pictures of life as it was once lived. The contemporary viewer enters this world of make-believe as eagerly as Dorothy stepped into the land of Oz, with a complete trust in the fitness and accuracy of the illusion. Now, four eminent art historians reveal the trick behind this illusion and give us insight into the social reality that animates the deception. We learn why domestic interiors were a favorite subject for seventeenth-century Dutch artists and why buyers snatched up these paintings before their varnish dried. And we come to understand why these images of home and family, the earliest in the history of art, still speak to us three hundred years later in a voice as fresh and powerful as when they first appeared. This is the story of an art that echoed and shaped the ideals of an emerging nation -- a sensitive portrait of the painted fictions that laid the ground for our modern concept of "home" as the compass of our true selves. Book jacket.

Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt

Art & Home

"Questions focal to these studies are: why were certain subjects selected, why were they so attractive to represent and to look at, and which thoughts and associations did these visual delights evoke? To this purpose Sluijter examines the patterns of selection, and the way in which artists treated pictorial traditions and iconographic conventions in themes and motifs. The author offers striking insights into the meaning which these images had for the artist and his audience."--BOOK JACKET.

Studies in Dutch Art of the Golden Age

Seductress of Sight

Bart Westerweel

Juliette Roding

In January 2001 the Sir Thomas Browne Institute, the research centre for Anglo-Dutch cultural and intellectual relations at Leiden University (STBI), co-organized the international conference 'Dutch artists in Britain, 1550-1750', together with the Leiden centre for early Modern studies (LINT). Aim of the conference was to shed light on the largely uncharted area of the presence of Dutch artists in England and the works of art they produced. Many questions were raised and (party) answered, about the road to success for some, or the causes of failure for others, about the role of intermediairies and patrons and their attitude to Dutch art, about the way artists from the Low Countries adapted to the English market. Selection of the papers presented at the conference.

Dutch and Flemish Artists in Britain, 1550-1800

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

Rembrandt’s extraordinary paintings of female nudes—Andromeda, Susanna, Diana and her Nymphs, Danaë, Bathsheba—as well as his etchings of nude women, have fascinated many generations of art lovers and art historians. But they also elicited vehement criticism when first shown, described as against-the-grain, anticlassical—even ugly and unpleasant. However, Rembrandt chose conventional subjects, kept close to time-honored pictorial schemes, and was well aware of the high prestige accorded to the depiction of the naked female body. Why, then, do these works deviate so radically from the depictions of nude women by other artists? To answer this question Eric Jan Sluijter, in Rembrandt and the Female Nude, examines Rembrandt’s paintings and etchings against the background of established pictorial traditions in the Netherlands and Italy. Exploring Rembrandt’s intense dialogue with the works of predecessors and peers, Sluijter demonstrates that, more than any other artist, Rembrandt set out to incite the greatest possible empathy in the viewer, an approach that had far-reaching consequences for the moral and erotic implications of the subjects Rembrandt chose to depict. In this richly illustrated study, Sluijter presents an innovative approach to Rembrandt’s views on the art of painting, his attitude towards antiquity and Italian art of the Renaissance, his sustained rivalry with the works of other artists, his handling of the moral and erotic issues inherent in subjects with female nudes, and the nature of his artistic choices.

Eric Jan Sluijter

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