H. Perry Chapman

Joanna Woodall

The early modern period is defined, in part, by the emergence of the artist as a distinctive kind of human subject. This volume is concerned with images and discourses of the artist in the Netherlands from the late 15th century to the mid 17th century, when the relationship between a community of craftsmen and elite individuals, between consciousness of a native tradition and membership of international humanist society, between image and word, between hand, mind and spirit, were being actively defined. Discussions of architects, painter-poets and copyists critically engage with the Netherlandish artist's identification with oil painting, which became ever-closer during this period. Contributions in which self-portraits, images of the studio and art literature are related to the practices, behaviour and economic lives of a range of practitioners, provide new insights into the artist not only as a producer but a figure produced by his work.

In the Early Modern Netherlands

Envisioning the Artist

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

Marjorie E. Wieseman

Johannes Vermeer

Wayne E. Franits

A visually stunning and seductive book that celebrates the mysterious and enigmatic world created by Vermeer in some of the best-loved and most characteristic works from late in his career.

Secrets and Silence

Vermeer's Women

H. Perry Chapman

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