Questioning Pictorial Genres in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art

Definitions, Artistic Practices, Market & Society

Edited by Marije Osnabrugge

Book cover: Questioning Pictorial Genres in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art

Extent: 402 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Art & Art History, Early Modern & Renaissance Studies

Series: Gouden Eeuw. New Perspectives on Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art

Series volume number: 2

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(December 2021)

ISBN: 9782503596242

Price: $169.00

In stock

Church interiors, cortegaerdjes, scenes of everyday life, tronies, landscapes, spoockerijen, group portraits, bambocciate, hunting scenes, history paintings, sottoboschi, still lives and many other subjects: the wide variety of pictorial genres and sub-genres in which Dutch artists specialized is a key component in our perception of Dutch seventeenth-century art. Yet the epistemological framework constituted by genre definitions, conventions and hierarchies is far from self-evident, nor does it necessarily reflect how people in the seventeenth-century thought about artworks. In fact, art literature of the period is largely silent on these matters and artists do not appear to have followed an established set of principles. This volume examines the way pictorial genres can be, and have been, defined by artists, theorists, audiences and art historians; how individual artists conceived the subject matter of their artworks; and how society and the art market contributed to the development of certain subjects. As such, it embraces the complex and often messy reality of pictorial genres in seventeenth-century Dutch art.

  • Edited by Marije Osnabrugge