"The Visible World" explores the writings of Dutch painter and poet Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-78)--one of Rembrandt's pupils--and clarifies his use of painterly themes and theory from the Dutch Golden Age. Van Hoogstraten drew on a variety of literary, philosophical, and artistic sources, as well as from history and travel accounts, in writing has magnum opus, "Introduction to the Academy of Painting; or the Visible World" (1678) a cross-section of general seventeenth-century views on art in Holland. Questioning the motives of artists represented by van Hoogstraten's theory, as well as the...

The first in a series that will provide a comprehensive comparative history of the humanities, this book focuses on the early modern period in the development of this dynamic field. Specialists in philology, musicology, art history, linguistics, and literary theory examine the intertwining nature of these various disciplines, as well as their impact on the sciences. The contributors, including the renowned scholars Floris Cohen, David Cram, and Ingrid Rowland, reveal how the humanities developed from the "liberal arts" to modern disciplines via the curriculum of humanistic schools. They go on...

While it is clear that around 1800 the humanities as a discipline rose to prominence, it is less clear what the exact nature of this shift in academia was. Was it a sudden revolution caused by a momentary but powerful change in the zeitgeist or the turning point of a much longer process? In this volume, the editors have selected a series of essays that look at the origins of the humanities and find that long before 1800 the concept of the humanities was already at the fore. The shift around 1800 was thus mostly institutional, not theoretical. The Making of the Humanities traces this...

This book is the long awaited third volume in a series that provides a comprehensive comparative history of the humanities. This installment turns to the modern period, from 1850 to 2000, bringing together specialists in philology, musicology, art history, linguistics, archaeology, and literary theory to explore the intertwining nature of these various disciplines, and how together they make up the broader investigative project of the humanities.

How did the classical tradition survive on the North Sea shores? This richly illustrated book explores the interplay between art and erudition in the seventeenth century. It analyses the sources, editions, and reception of Franciscus Junius's writings to chart how ideas about Northern European painting, from Van Dyck to Rembrandt, developed as a counterweight to the Italian tradition. Thus the language of art in Junius's The Painting of the Ancients appears to be related to his seminal work in the field of Germanic linguistics and his discovery of the shared pre-Christian civilization...

Netherlandish art testifies in various ways to the interconnectedness of the Early Modern world. New trade routes, the international Catholic mission, and a thriving publishing industry turned Antwerp and Amsterdam into capitals of global exchange. Netherlandish prints found a worldwide public. At home, everyday lives changed as foreign luxuries, and local copies, became widely available. Eventually, Dutch imitations of Chinese porcelain found their way to colonists in Surinam. This volume of the Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art breaks new ground in applying the aims and...

While inquiries into early encounters between East Asia and the West have traditionally focused on successful interactions, this collection inquires into the many forms of failure, experienced on all sides, in the period before 1850. Countering a tendency in scholarship to overlook unsuccessful encounters, it starts from the assumption that failures can prove highly illuminating and provide valuable insights into both the specific shapes and limitations of East Asian and Western imaginations of the Other, as well as of the nature of East-West interaction. Interdisciplinary in outlook, this...