Papers by Eric Jan Sluijter
Museums at the Crossroads, 2011
Page 1. De lof der schilderkunst Over schilderijen van Gerrit Dou (1613-1675) en een traktaat van... more Page 1. De lof der schilderkunst Over schilderijen van Gerrit Dou (1613-1675) en een traktaat van Philips Angel uit 1642 ERicJ. SLUIJTER Page 2. Page 3. De lof der schilderkunst Thi s One K4QT-01N-RHRK Page 4. Zeven Provinciën ...
Mijnheer de Rector Magnificus, mijnheer de voorzitter van het College van Bestuur, zeer geachte t... more Mijnheer de Rector Magnificus, mijnheer de voorzitter van het College van Bestuur, zeer geachte toehoorders, Aan het begin van de vorige eeuw werden in hetzelfde jaar-in 1907-de eerste twee Nederlandse hoogleraren in de Kunstgeschiedenis benoemd: Willem Vogelsang in Utrecht en Wilhelm Martin in Leiden. 1 Groter verschil dan tussen deze twee toen nog zeer jonge geleerden was nauwelijks denkbaar en hun oraties, die eveneens in dat jaar werden uitgesproken, getuigen daarvan. 2 Vogelsang was vrijwel uitsluitend geïnteresseerd in de autonome artistieke ontwikkeling van de kunst, in het 'kennen en innerlijk beschrijven van het visuele beeld' door vormanalyse. 3 In zijn oratie sprak hij dan ook wat neerbuigend over kunsthistorici die zich slechts bezighouden met het beschrijven, vergelijken, en categoriseren, en met het verzamelen van historische gegevens over de kunstenaar, diens werk en diens omgeving. 4 Martin daarentegen was naar voren geschoven door juist dat type kunsthistorici: degenen die zich intensief met enerzijds kennerschap en anderzijds bronnenonderzoek hadden beziggehouden. Hij werd blijkens de voordracht van de Leidse curatoren gezien als vertegenwoordiger van een onder Abraham Bredius en Cornelius Hofstede de Groot ontwikkelde 'nationale Nederlandsche Kunstwetenschap'. 5 De richting van Vogelsang, geënt op het denken van Aloys Riegl en Heinrich Wölfflin, zou in de jaren twintig en dertig geheel de overhand krijgen en ook Martin zou er door worden meegesleept. Leest men nu hun beider oraties dan is de briljante rede van Vogelsang voor ons voornamelijk om historiografische redenen nog interessant. De oratie van Martin daarentegen, evenals zijn zes jaar eerder verschenen dissertatie, bieden nog steeds-of misschien vooral: opnieuw-aanknopingspunten voor recente kunsthistorische vragen. 6 Gevormd als ik was door de kunstgeschiedenisbeoefening uit de jaren zeventig, de tijd dat Martin voornamelijk werd gezien als de auteur van een weliswaar monumentaal, maar zwaar verouderd stijlhistorisch en nationalistisch gekleurd over-7 VERWONDERING OVER DE SCHILDERIJENPRODUCTIE
Oculi, Feb 16, 2015
This book follows upon a monumental project titled "Artistic and Economic Competition in the Amst... more This book follows upon a monumental project titled "Artistic and Economic Competition in the Amsterdam Art Market, ca. 1630-1690: History Painting in Amsterdam in Rembrandt's Time" conducted by Eric Jan Sluijter and Marten Jan Bok, together with colleagues and graduate students at the University of Amsterdam and New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. Bok and Harm Nijboer developed a database (http:// www.vondel.humanities.uva.nl/ecartico/) that makes available information on more than 20,000 people who worked in the cultural industries of Amsterdam, enabling users to compile and visualize data in a wealth of formats to reveal, for example, patterns in migration to and from the city and around the world as well as points of contact among networks of artists, collectors, and dealers. A number of important dissertations, articles, and book-length studies have emerged from this project already, with more on the horizon. Sluijter's book focuses on Amsterdam history painting during two decades, from 1630 to 1650, of immense growth in production and innovation. Without unduly privileging Rembrandt, this study adeptly situates and contextualizes him, highlighting his peculiar contributions to the industry while also clearly distinguishing his personal, professional, and stylistic characteristics from those of his rivals. This blend of sociobiographical investigation and stylistic analysisthe two are not separated, but rather seen as interwoven in a complex, emergent, and rapidly expanding marketprovides a model approach to the field. Sluijter draws both acute and broad-ranging conclusions about stylistic influences, patterns of patronage, notions of quality and value, and the economic and social prospects of the artists who lived and worked in this cosmopolitan city. The book opens with an important chapter on the place of Amsterdam in the larger context of the European market for painting and particularly the prominence of history subjects and the significant position of Old Testament scenes. The role of competition and reputation in the construction of value lays the foundation for this remarkable surge. The next
Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, Dec 31, 2009
The text was translated by Jennifer Kilian and Katy Kist with footnotes translated by the author.... more The text was translated by Jennifer Kilian and Katy Kist with footnotes translated by the author. This essay presents observations on how and why the number of painters and the production of paintings in Holland increased so spectacularly around 1610. It also discusses the technical changes, the economic competition, and the artistic emulation related to this increase. It is argued that the sudden wave of inexpensive paintings from Antwerp that flooded the Dutch art markets in the first years of the Twelve Years Truce-paintings which seem to have been bought avidly by immigrants from the Southern Netherlands in particularfunctioned as a booster. Decorating the house with a variety of rather inexpensive paintings, something the immigrants were already familiar with, caught on with the native population. Second generation immigrants took advantage of this profitable gap in the market and competed with the imported works by producing paintings with similar techniques and subjects, but of a higher quality. I Addressing the aforementioned phenomenon, it must be understood that we are not alone in our present-day observation that something quite exceptional was transpiring in Dutch art of the seventeenth century. Contemporaries were also aware of the exceptional nature and quality of painting as well as the astounding growth in the production and collecting of the actual works of art, as indicated by Van Hoogstraten's above-cited account. In this connection, the frequently quoted observations in the travel diaries of the Englishmen John Evelyn (1641) and Peter Mundy (1640) and the Frenchman Samuel Sorbière (1640) must be mentioned. Their comments regarding the vast amount of paintings they encountered everywhere in Dutch cities, and about which they wrote with sheer astonishment, must have become commonplace at the time. Quite likely a proud awareness of this phenomenon was already imbedded in the self-image of the prosperous Dutch burgher. When Peter Mundy wrote that all the Dutch were striving to adorn their houses, particularly the rooms facing the street, with paintings, and that even butchers, smiths, and cobblers had a few paintings in their stores or workshops, he wished to assure his readers that "Such is the generall Notion, enclination and delight that these Countrie Natives have to Paintings." These lines underscore his statement: "As For the art off Painting and the affection of the people to Pictures, I thincke none other goe beeyond them." 3 Sorbière noted an "excessive curiosité pour les peintures" in the Netherlands. 4 From the wealthy patrician elite to well-to-do craftsmen, the interest of the Dutch in paintings, however it is described, "inclination," "delight," "affection," or JHNA Home Volume 1: Issue 2 On Brabant Rubbish, Economic Competition, Artistic Rivalry, and the Growth of the Market for Paintings in the First Decades of the Seventeenth Century HOME VOLUME 1: ISSUE 2 PAST ISSUES SUBMISSIONS ABOUT JHNA SUPPORT JHNA CONTACT search... 1 of 16 "excessive curiosity," was clearly perceived as highly exceptional and had become part of the stereotyping of this somewhat curious people as seen through the eyes of foreigners. 5 The omnipresence of paintings is also evidenced by the heated reactions of individuals who condemned the art of painting on moral and religious grounds as nothing but "deception." As early as 1624, the ire of Dirck Raphaelsz. Camphuyzen, an extremist in this matter, was roused because the art of painting was so well-liked that one could say nothing against it: "Painting! ha, who can denounce it without [inciting] general rebellion?" One can turn nowhere without seeing pictures: "The whole world depends on engraving, drawing, painting," he cries out in despair. "Painting is the common bait for the uneasy heart overwhelmed by choice, / That despite having to meet essential needs charms the money out of one's purse, / Painting seems to be the sauce for all that sprouts from the human mind." 6 His comments make all the more clear the extent to which this art served as an important source of amusement for his Dutch contemporaries. That they purchased paintings in large quantities and took pride in the renown of their painting fellow townsmen enraged Camphuyzen beyond reason. As for positive testimonials by compatriots, those of Constantijn Huygens, a connoisseur par excellence, are undoubtedly the most interesting. In the autobiography of his youth, which he began in 1629 and continued until 1631, he remarked that his fellow countrymen had attained greater heights than anyone else-including the ancients, he adds-"in the art of rendering everything with a fresh, lifelike draughtsmanship: every shape and every pose of humans and animals, as well as trees, rivers, mountains and all such things as one sees in a landscape." 7 Further on he comments that landscape painters "in the present Netherlands are so tremendously plentifully represented and of such high quality that it would take an entire book to discuss them all individually." History painters in the Netherlands, he continues, are no less numerous and no less successful. 8 In his discourse, Huygens makes no distinction between his fellow countrymen in the Northern or Southern Netherlands, though only a fraction of the painters he mentions-naturally, including his idol Rubens-were active in the south at the time. Published appreciations of Dutch painting as a source of pride and self-respect already had a tradition in the Netherlands. Praising Netherlandish artists, incidentally, began with an Italian, Ludovico Guicciardini. In the section on Antwerp in his 1567 description of the Netherlands, he touted Antwerp artists as well as other artists from the Lowlands. Around the same time Hadrianus Junius in his Batavia incorporated short biographies of famous artists (alongside those of scholars), deeming them exemplary of the "Hollandica ingenia." 9 Subsequently, against the backdrop of rivalry with Italy, Karel Van Mander extolled Netherlandish painters for his contemporaries and for future generations in his 1604 Levens. Their fame had already been propagated pictorially a few decades earlier: first in a series of twenty-three portrait prints, with short laudatory poems composed by Domenicus Lampsonius, published by Hieronymus Cock in Antwerp and later, in 1610, in a considerably extended series of sixty-eight portrait prints published by Hendrik Hondius in The Hague. 10 The idea that the art of painting contributed to their renown became so firmly entrenched in the civic pride of towns such as Antwerp, Amsterdam, Leiden and Haarlem that eulogies of painting and its practitioners became a standard feature in city descriptions. Again, this began in Antwerp with Carolus Scribanius's chapter on the Ars Pictoria in his Antverpia of 1610. 11 A year later Johannes Pontanus incorporated a brief account of painters in his description of Amsterdam, and in 1614 Jan Orlers followed with a much more comprehensive exposé in his book on Leiden. Haarlem artists were extensively discussed by Samuel Ampzing in 1628. Orlers substantially expanded the Leiden canon in 1641 and was succeeded in 1648 by Theodorus Schrevelius, who revisited the merits of Haarlem's painters. 12 In some of these descriptions the authors even boast that the nation's best painters issued from the city in question. 13 Pride in the art of painting and the awareness that something special was happening in this regard must have become firmly rooted in the self-image of the elite, first in Antwerp and subsequently in the most important Dutch towns. These panegyrics devoted ever more space to painters who specialized in new kinds of subject matter, such as landscapes or peasant scenes. As he did with the history painters, Scribanius compares Joachim Beuckelaer and Pieter Balten with masters from classical antiquity, whom he says they had surpassed. He also commends the landscapists Joachim Patinir and Cornelis Molenaer. 14 Ampzing even claims that landscape painting was invented in Haarlem, 15 and Orlers allots Jan van Goyen and Pieter de Neyn a no less exalted position than that of history painters. The public praise and appreciation that comes to the fore in these prestigious city descriptions no doubt amplified the painters' self-respect, but it would also-and this applies to both history painters and specialists-have fueled their ambitions and stimulated their ideas regarding artistic emulation. Constantijn Huygens's words are evidence that a connoisseur from the most elevated, elite burgher circles was proud to count painters among his friends. After mentioning that he always enjoys the company of illustrious men, Huygens states that he wishes to consider more extensively the most prominent painters of his time, the majority of whom, including the ubiquitous De Gheyn and the young and highly ambitious history painters Rembrandt and Lievens, he claims are good friends. 16 The artists he discusses include not only eminent individuals such as Rubens (it was Huygens's greatest wish to become personally well-acquainted with him) and the aforementioned masters but also specialists, such as the portraitist Michiel van Mierevelt, the marine painter Jan Porcellis, and the landscapist Esaias van de Velde. Clearly, in 1629, Huygens believed that the quality, quantity, and diversity of painting had already increased substantially in his lifetime: he was a mere thirty-three at the time. In his treatment of celebrated Dutch painters, Huygens definitely thought in terms of rivalry-not only Dutch painting vis-à-vis antiquity and Italy but also the painters vis-à-vis each other-which comes emphatically to the fore when he speaks-repeatedly-about one artist having surpassed another in some area. 17 That the best-known seventeenth-century anecdote regarding competition has to do with marine and landscape painters and that Samuel van Hoogstraten simultaneously links the tremendous increase...
Nederlandsch kunsthistorisch jaarboek, 1999
Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 1999
... cat. Im-magini degli dei: mitologia e collezionismo tra 5oo e '600, Lecce (Fonda-zio... more ... cat. Im-magini degli dei: mitologia e collezionismo tra 5oo e '600, Lecce (Fonda-zione Memmo) 1996-97, pp. 302-03; M. Fabianski, "A fresh look at Correggio's Danae and its figural sources," Paragone 47 (1996), nrs. 8-Io, pp. ... cit. (note 5), pp. 226-27, and Fabianski, op. cit. ...
Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, 2017
Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, Feb 11, 2020
This article demonstrates how Lairesse's style, his knowledge of contemporary Italian art and ide... more This article demonstrates how Lairesse's style, his knowledge of contemporary Italian art and ideas, and his understanding of the art of antiquity was fully developed by 1670 and had been shaped by the Romanist-classicist tradition in Liège and through confrontation with the art in Amsterdam, without any significant intervention of French painting and art theory.
University of California Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2017
University of California Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2017
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Papers by Eric Jan Sluijter