Religious Visual Culture in the Private Space: The Living Room in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Dutch Protestantism (original) (raw)
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German Religious Emblems as Stimuli of Visual Culture in the Dutch Republic
The existing studies into Dutch translations of German religious texts suggest that literaryreligious culture in the Dutch Republic did not undergo significant transformation during the course of the seventeenth century as a result of German-Dutch exchange. There is even more reason to assume that German illustrated religious literature remained out of the focus of Dutch audiences: visual additions to religious texts, popular in German publications as a result of the Lutheran approach to word-image interaction, encountered resistance in the Dutch Republic where the development of illustrated religious literature was restricted and delayed compared to the Republic's neighbouring countries. A closer look at two cases of German-Dutch literary exchange in the field of religious emblematics suggests that the restrictive Dutch visual practices were at times stimulated and innovated by the import of German models. The two cases discussed in this article give us reason to advance the very tentative hypothesis that the German-Dutch contact was at times critical to the growth of the use of religious imagery in Dutch religious literature. Finally, a case is made in favour of attending more to the international exchange of religious imagery in order to chart the impact of the Reformation in Northern Europe.
"Persisting Patterns. Aspects of Continuity in Dutch Church Interiors through the Calvinist Reformation’, in Mariëtte Verhoeven, Lex Bosman and Hanneke van Asperen (eds), Monuments & Memory. Christian Cult Buildings and Constructions of the Past, Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 317-327, 2016
Article in honour of Prof. Sible de Blaauw on the occasion of his retirement in 2016. Alongside the many changes brought about by the Calvinist Reformation, there were also important elements of continuity in how churches were furnished and used for religious services. These elements have traditionally been largely overlooked, as scholarship has rather tended to focus on caesuras in theology, liturgy and mentality. The traditional function of the nave as a preaching space was maintained and even reinforced with the transition to Calvinism, resulting in pulpits being retained or, if replaced, remaining in the same position. The importance of preaching was often emphasized through the addition of carvings to the drums. Many reformed churches featured a screen or gallery on the boundary of the chancel, as had been the case in medieval churches. This now formed a natural backdrop to the nave, where the religious service was concentrated, and also concealed the utilitarian purposes of the chancel – as a storage space, as a school or meeting room. Another reason why many screens were kept in place is that the chancels of many churches were intended for the occasional celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the Calvinist successor to the medieval Mass. This ritual use of the chancel could go hand-in-hand with the creation of mausoleums through the erection of tombs and other memorials for the elites. All of these developments resulted in many Dutch Calvinist churches being neither austere nor devoid of images, as they are generally believed to be.
2005
The book is a study of the 'the interaction between theology and visual culture', the 'Protestant imagination'. As Dyrness admits, many will see this as an oxymoron. Protestantism, with the honourable exception of seventeenth century Dutch art, is commonly seen as a destructive, iconoclastic movement, hostile to the visual image, and to the fine arts generally. Many readers will be familiar with this theme in the work of Eamonn Duffy, recently popularised in Britain by Sir Roy Strong. Dyrness sets out to show that the reality was much more complicated: that a major shift in the use of the imagination during the Reformation, in which a 'clean break' was made with the visual mediation of faith, and its replacement with 'an internalised faith which privileged the ear over the eye'. However, Dyrness believes, the iconoclasm of the Reformers had positive as well as a negative influence on the developing culture, opening up certain pathways in art, whilst it closed off others. After setting the late medieval scene, Dyrness notes the crucial importance of Calvin, and his idea that the world is the theatre of God's glory. This made possible a new aesthetics of ordinary life: in serving our neighbour we are creating a world, 'making images' that reflect God's glory. It is this structuring of both the interior and exterior life as an artistic act, shaped by Scripture, which is the heart of the book. Dyrness then traces these themes through sixteenth century England into seventeenth century Holland and New England. One of the great strengths of this account is that Dyrness takes in not only fine art such as the work of Nicholas Hilliard, and Dutch landscape painters, but also other visual media such as book illustrations, town planning and landscape gardening, through which Reformed Christians constructed a visual world that glorified God. He notes how the Calvinist architect Bernard Palissy
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This paper employs the concept of Protestant Hierotopy to explore the spiritual roots of Dutch Golden Age Painting. Hierotopic methodology focuses on the creation of sacred spaces as a form of human creativity. Though the Reformation may have done away with ecclesiastical sacred spaces, it introduced a new kind of hierotopy in their place: a sacralization of the whole of Creation, with a focus on human environments. Protestant admiration for nature was imbued with religious feelings, while cleanliness and domesticity came to be seen as closely akin to holiness. In this paper I interpret Dutch Golden Age Painting as an iconography of this new form of sacrality. I argue that what we find in this art ought to be understood, not as a purely descriptive, objective realism conceived for its own sake, but rather as a passionate or even sacred naturalism motivated by admiration for God's marvelous creation and enhanced by a Protestant sense of co-working with the Creator.
Cultural Hybridity Reconsidered Religious Visual Culture and the Dutch Republic
This article engages with the overriding tendency to see cultural hybridity as a progressive force in the Dutch Republic, focusing on the case of Dutch religious literature. It is a puzzling fact that in the literary realm, processes of cultural hybridity were put on hold between 1560 and 1680. In this area of cultural activity impermeable barriers between Catholic visual practices and Protestant textual traditions caused religious books to be virtually imageless. Given our current understanding of cultural hybridity and of seventeenth-century Dutch culture, why was the intermingling of textual and visual practices so unexpectedly complicated, especially in comparison to neighbouring countries where hybrid religious literary cultures emerged in spite of restrictive mechanisms such as censorship and legislation? How does the reluctance in the literary sphere relate to other cultural domains in the Dutch Republic, and to the tendency to see the Dutch Republic's culture as a historical model of cultural hybridity?