Review of Ulrike Kern, Light and Shade in Dutch and Flemish Art (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), in Historians of Netherlandish Art Newsletter and Review of Books, vol. 34, no. 1 (April 2017): 32-33. (original) (raw)
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?
In recent decades, the historical significance of the panel paintings by Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and the Flémalle group has been subject to debate. This essay analyses the shifts in gilding practices that accompanied the introduction of the fifteenth-century ars nova, arguing that the new panel painting marked a self-conscious departure from the luxury arts by asserting its value through representation alone, rather than through material worth. From the 1420s-30s onwards, Netherlandish panel paintings rejected gold-leaf backgrounds, and they also increasingly either relegated gilding to small details such as halos and heavenly rays, or incorporated it into pictorial representation. In addition, these paintings display a particularly intensive visual dialogue with contemporary sculpture and brocaded textiles, as a means of exploring painting’s superior capacity to depict persuasive surfaces in spatial depth. In establishing its independence from other contemporary art forms, and in promoting the intrinsic value of representation, early Netherlandish panel painting presaged the high status of painting in the ensuing centuries of the western canon, even though, in other respects, these works remained firmly rooted in earlier tradition. The rise of early Netherlandish painting thus sheds important light on the role of periodization within art-historical interpretation. Where a number of recent studies have perceived temporal instability within the content of medieval and Renaissance images, this essay proposes that historiographical assessment should take into account the specific material and conceptual qualities of different artistic media, and weigh the relative importance of their perceived references forwards and back in time. The research for this project developed over many years and eventually coalesced into a size and shape in between a typical book and a typical journal article. Digital publication on the University of York’s History of Art Research Portal enables this essay to be presented at its full length, incorporating far more material—especially a greater number of detailed illustrations—than is possible in traditional printed journals. Publication at full length also enables it to combine typically disparate methodologies and sub-fields: historiography, methodological reflection, technical analysis, and close looking at artworks in different media, from luxury objects and sculpture to panel painting. Most critically, the visual apparatus of digital publication supports this essay’s emphasis on the importance of contingent looking within particular lighting circumstances, a feature rarely considered in art-historical studies.
The past is always present: The image of early Netherlandish art in the long nineteenth century
Oud Holland – Journal for Art of the Low Countries
In 1881, the American collector Stephen Whitney Phoenix bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York a painting by the artist Wilhelm (Guillaume) Koller (1829-1884/1885) entitled Hugo van der Goes painting the portrait of Mary of Burgundy (fijig. 1). Koller, who trained in Vienna and Düsseldorf, moved in 1856 to Belgium, where he exhibited this painting at the Brussels Salon of 1872. 1 The picture imagines an encounter between Van der Goes (ca. 1440-1482) and Mary of Burgundy (1457-1482), shown as a child seated on the lap of her young stepmother Margaret of York (1446-1503). Behind them is likely Charles the Bold (1433-1477), who married Margaret after the death of Mary's mother, Isabella of Bourbon (1434-1465). 2 Koller's painting offfered nineteenth-century audiences an appealing, if fijictional, image of an esteemed northern European artist depicting a moment in the domestic life of a noble dynasty closely identifijied with the history and heritage of Belgium. 3
Renaissance Quarterly, 2020
People bought a lot of tickets in order to increase their chances of winning and paid not only in cash but also in valuables. In this way the lottery system gradually became independent and turned into a profitable business for those running it. Painters and art dealers also used this lucrative opportunity to display their work and stocks of pictures profitably before the general public. That is why lotteries have found attention by historians, art historians, and economists studying the Dutch art market. Despite various smaller studies, Sophie Raux's book provides the first fundamental monograph that examines the history of lotteries and the art markets in the Southern Netherlands and the Dutch Republic. She shows that the lotteries emerged in the context of the expanding art market in the Dutch Golden Age. Painters produced paintings for an anonymous market and wanted to sell their works to the public, experimenting with new market strategies and new distribution channels. To make the public aware of the new offer, entrepreneurs had to publicize the lotteries, using the new print media to produce lottery posters and booklets. It is to the merit of Sophie Raux to have for the first time thoroughly explored the role of print in structuring the art world. She shows that for the dealers who organized successful lotteries, posters and booklets were crucial promotional tools and to an extent predecessors of the later art auction catalogue. Thus, these media had an impact on the new material and commercial culture of the Dutch Republic. In the eighteenth century the character of the lottery changed all over Europe. They became a financial tool at the service of the states, while charity and private lotteries lost significance and especially the visibility they had had in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This well-written and lavishly illustrated book is a must read for art historians and historians working on the early modern Low Countries.
Mediaeval painting in the Netherlands
2005
M e d i a e v a l p a i n t i n g i n t h e N e t h e r l a n d s In the first decade of the fifteenth century, somewhere in the South Netherlands, the Apocalypse (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, néerlandais 3) was written in D utch (dietsche) and illuminated. Noone knows w ith any certainty exactly where this happened. Erwin Panofsky in his famous Early Netherlan dish Painting (1953) argued convincingly for Liège,• later Maurits Smeyers (1993) claimed it for Bruges (and did so again in his standard work Vlaamse Miniaturen (1998)). The manuscript cannot possibly have been written and illum inated in Liège, nor is it certain that it comes from Bruges (as convincingly demonstrat ed by D e Hommel-Steenbakkers, 2001). Based on a detailed analysis of the language and traces of dialect in the D utch text of the Apocalypse, N elly de Hommel-Steenbakkers concluded that the manuscript originated in Flanders, or perhaps in Brabant. It m ight well have come from Bruges though, a flourishing town in the field of commerce and culture, but other places, such as G hent, Ypres, Tournai and maybe Brussels, cannot be ruled out,• other possible candidates are the intellectual and cultural centres in the larger abbeys. In the Apocalypse manuscript the accent is firmly on the com plicated and high-quality page-sized miniatures. The manuscript may definitely be characterized as a luxury item-a highly representative luxury item. The person who ordered it was surely a member of the wealthy South-Netherlandish élite w hich on the one hand wanted a complex iconographie pictorial account, and on the other hand wanted to read the Apocalypse in its native tongue, the Flemish vernacular. The figures depicted at the bottom left in the foreground of f. 4 are probably the principal actors in this splendid manuscript: a married couple kneeling in prayer, a second couple close behind them, and opposite them a man kneeling in devout prayer. The foremost couple is clad in opulent, fashionable attire: the man in a brown waisted jack et w ith extremely wide sleeves, close-fitting red hose and-the height of fashion-m atching pointed-toe shoes. A thickly gilded belt accentuates his hips. The woman's vivid red cloak is folded back to reveal a blue-grey dress,• a white cloth is draped over her head. The second couple is only partly visible and appears to be dressed entirely in dull red. The older man at the front is also well-dressed in a wideskirted garment and a dark blue cape w ith white piping and a dull red lining, the same colour as his hood; his sleeves are bright red. This group of notew orthy persons calls a variety of scenarios to mind. The foremost couple, advised by the somewhat older figure as their (spiritual?) leader and mentor, could perhaps have commissioned the manuscript. An alternative possibility is that the elder man commissioned the manuscript and that the couples kneeling opposite him are his children, married or otherwise. M ore scenarios are conceivable, but this is all pure conjecture. The only thing we can be certain of is that this is an extremely valuable South Netherlandish manuscript w ith a well-planned iconographie programme that was almost certainly written in Flanders and illum inated for a wealthy patron from what was probably an urban background. There is no indication that it was commissioned by a man of the church, nor is there any allusion to-or accent on-an aristocratic environment. Stylis tically the miniature cycle is consistent with what is known as International G othic, the highly fashion able late G oth ic style of around 1400. Let us first dwell briefly on the artistic situation in the South Netherlands in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the direct context of the Flemish Apocalypse. This is followed by a general survey of mediaeval painting in the Netherlands, for w hich we have created four time-blocks: the period prior to ca. 1300, the years 1300-1375 and 1375-1425 for "full" G othic, ending w ith the period spanning the years from 1425 to the beginning of the sixteenth century for the heyday of late G othic and the transition to the Renaissance. Each of these four time-blocks is introduced by a brief historical setting, followed by a dis cussion of early D utch painting and ends w ith a brief look at the tradition of Apocalypse representations and depictions of John on Patmos in D utch painting. Throughout all this, and from both a historical and an art-historical point of view, the special accent is on Flanders,• Flanders, after all, was the most prosper Bruges had become one of Europe's leading cultural and artistic centres. O ther important centres in the