Gentlemen in Satin: Masculine Ideals in Later Seventeenth-Century Dutch Portraiture (original) (raw)
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MORALISING NUDES: Eroticism in Dutch Mannerism of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century
Before the turn of the twenty-first century, the role of eroticism in Dutch art and the purpose of its images has largely being neglected. However, in their time these representations of nudity and salacious images and the subjects they implied were often cited in contemporary writings, songbooks and farces. The authors usually attributed a moralising meaning to them so as to ‘justify’ their appearance. This dissertation will consider the role of eroticism in the art of the Dutch Mannerists of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. It will focus on the paintings, engravings and drawings between 1585 and 1630 from the artists working in Haarlem and Utrecht. The adoption and development of this phenomenon is examined in chapter one. Chapter two looks at eroticism in works with a mythological subject. Finally, chapter three deals with the salacious images with a biblical or religious subject. Subsequently the role of these images in the oeuvre of these artists and in society will be revealed. The role of eroticism in biblical and religious subjects has not been analysed extensively, this dissertation aims to enrich existing research. This dissertation draws on a contextual and object-based approach in which primary published educational books, farces and songbooks from the Dutch seventeenth century as well as more recent secondary sources are used to construct an argument. Images from the Netherlands Institute of History archive will prove insight to the extent of the role of eroticism in Dutch Mannerism.
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Dutch Crossing, 1990
Wilt gy Katryn, door verf, de Doodt verby doen streeven? De Doodt heeft aan de deugdt, die eeuwigh is, geen deel. Een ander leeft, 0 Kunst! door kracht van uw penseel: Maar Polsbroek' s gemaalin zal uw penseel doen leeven. Zoo maakt haar man het Y, door wys beleit, vermaart Haar edel' inborst kan men door geen verf vertoonen. De deught wordt door geen kunst, maar door zichzelf bewaart. Een braave Faam verduurt de roem der lauwerkroonen. 12
Fashion and Fancy. Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt's Paintings, Amsterdam, 2006
Until now dress has played a minor role in the studies of Rembrandt's paintings. This is all the more surprising since the artist clearly delighted in the rendering of clothes. He made extensive use of clothing and jewellery to emphasize the character, religious affiliation or social status of the sitters in his portraits, and to clarify the narrative or heighten the drama in his history pieces.De Winkel fills this lacuna and shows that research of this neglected field can contribute in many and unexpected ways to our understanding of Rembrandt's art. Serious study of the history of dress is itself a rather new field, and was long regarded by art historians as merely ancillary to art history, mainly as a help in matters of dating. However, the knowledge of dress can contribute to the identification of the sitter. It can also help to determine the message the sitter or the artist wished to express. The wider aim of the author is to investigate the possible contemporary connotations of clothes in Rembrandt's painted oeuvre by placing them within a wider cultural and historical context.
2021
Recently two studies were published by authors who, like me, are art historians and in which they present their findings on early modern phenomena that are related to my dissertation research from 2003, The House and the Rules of Thought. There is also a great deal of overlap between the two studies. The authors use the same textual and visual source material from the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, relate to the same art-historical literature and bring in comparable knowledge from surrounding disciplines. What makes that these authors, despite their similarities, took different directions? What choices have they made, and based on which principles? And what new insights do their studies offer us? Moreover, both publications make me wonder: what has happened in this field of research over the past decades?
Malleable Masculinity. Fashioning male identity in Teding van Berkhout’s travel letters (1739-‘41)
Journal of Family History, 2020
Drawing evidence from the letters and travel journal of Jan Teding van Berkhout – scion of a wealthy regenten family from Delft – this article scrutinizes how elite masculinity and wellevendheid (politeness) were constructed, perceived, experienced, and contested in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic. Berkhout’s correspondence not only hints at some important differences in the Netherlandish and British interpretation of polite masculinity, but also evidences that ideas about what a “true man” was and how he should behave could differ substantially within one and the same family. Differences in age, gender, and the unequally balance of power created a set of – coexisting, competing, or clashing – multiple masculinities. Whether masculinity was performed front- or backstage also mattered, as politeness was frequently put on hold and replaced by intimate bawdiness. In fact, the spectrum of masculinities available in the Berkhout family casts serious doubt on Connell’s controversial idea of hegemonic masculinity.
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Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 2019
Between the late 1620s and late 1640s, Jacques Blanchard, Simon Vouet, and Claude Vignon all painted the femme forte, a type of exemplary, heroic womanhood whose popularity was linked to the presence of Marie de Medici and Anne of Austria on the royal stage. This article puts French paintings of femmes fortes (strong women) from the early seventeenth century into conversation with period discourse regarding the reception of paintings and the status of women. Pictorial representation tended to cast the femme forte into contexts that compromised her exemplary status. Nude, on the verge of death by her own hand, the figure of the femme forte invited the very kind of sensual consumption that the femme forte herself attempted to disavow. Yet the ultimate threat posed by the femme forte was that her image might ‘trick’ male viewers into unwise actions.
The Oxford Handbook of the Baroque, 2019
What did it mean to be a man in Baroque Europe? The answer was crucial for men aspiring to success, whether in everyday society or in the rarefied culture of the court. While the concept of manliness was defined by clothing and articulated in conduct books, it was most clearly demonstrated in portraits. Portraits involved not just likenesses but the carefully arranged iconography of clothes and accessories, how they were worn, and their associations. The masculine ideal shifted perpetually from looseness to restraint, from sensitivity to strength, from meditation to sociability. A survey of portraits over a 150-year period reveals how the civil servants of Europe, equipped with their knowledge of fashion and behavior and sustained by the skills of artists, achieved a complex, dignified version of the public masculine self.
Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 2017
In the seventeenth-century Netherlands, drama and politics were interwoven with one another. This was also the case with the controversial morality play Tieranny van Eigenbaat (Tyranny of Egoism, 1679), which opposed the House of Orange, and especially William III, Stadtholder of the Netherlands and King of England (who was, according to the writers of the play, a true example of uncontrolled egoism). Although the main character Eigenbaat (Egoism) disguises himself as a warrior woman (an Amazon) to seize power, his cross-dressing has not been discussed in relation to rumors surrounding William’s alleged sexual preferences. By “reading against the grain,” this article discusses the so-called faultlines, where the characters display same-gender passions for each other. The article focusses on two examples of such relationships: Egoism, who seduces Lady Will, while in female disguise, and the intimate nature of Egoism’s relationship with his male servant and slave, Vice. As such, the article offers an elaboration on the thesis that Tieranny van Eigenbaat was used by the republican authorities of Amsterdam as a propaganda play to discredit William III for rule, as well as his offspring.