On Monday, 8 May, in Berlin, Schwartz heard a top connoisseur account for differences in finish between two paintings by Hugo van der Goes as acceptable variations within a single artistic personality, and on 12 May, in Den Bosch, heard another top connoisseur denying the very possibility of such a thing concerning two paintings by Jheronimus Bosch. What a week!
Congresses and symposia
415 Some stray observations
A sequence of fortunate circumstances put Schwartz and his Loekie into one artistically rich environment after another.Sheer non-committal enjoyment, giving birth to reactions he does not have to defend in the court of art-historical responsibility.
404 Dutch art outside in
Dutch art, an export product from the start, has found its way into hundreds of museums and university curriculums in large stretches of the world. This might be on the decline, but there are still institutions outside the Netherlands devoted to the art Schwartz most loves. Continue reading “404 Dutch art outside in”
Rembrandt Seen Through Jewish Eyes: The Web Conference
Rembrandt Seen Through Jewish Eyes: The Web Conference
Continue reading “Rembrandt Seen Through Jewish Eyes: The Web Conference”
89: Cosmopolitans and other border-crossers
Nexus is a remarkable institution, based first in Tilburg University and since 2017 the VU University in Amsterdam, while claiming to fulfill a function that universities have largely forsaken. That function is the preservation and promulgation of high European culture. Nexus publishes a journal and holds conferences at which leading intellectuals speak and exchange opinions. Schwartz reflects on the conference of 1999. Continue reading “89: Cosmopolitans and other border-crossers”
City fathers as civic warriors
The 350th anniversary of the Treaty of Münster and the Peace of Westphalia was celebrated with symposia in Münster, Osnabrück and the Louvre. My contribution in Paris was a lecture on the image of Dutch burghers in painting with respect to the Eighty Years War.
“City fathers as civic warriors,” in: Jacques Thuillier and Klaus Bussmann, coordinators [aside: the editors, who should have been mentioned on the title page, were Hermann Arnhold and Matthias Waschek], 1648: Paix de Westphalie. L’art entre la guerre et la paix | Westfälischer Friede. Die Kunst zwischen Krieg und Frieden. Actes du colloque organisé par le Westfälisches Landesmuseum le 19 november 1998 à Münster et à Osnabrück et le Service culturel du musée du Louvre les 20 et 21 novembre 1998 à Paris, Paris (Louvre and Klincksieck) and Münster (Westfälisches Landesmuseum) 1999, pp. 201-225
The proceedings were published in a thick, tightly bound volume that is difficult to scan. Apologies as well for the lack of complete titles in the notes – the bibliographies of the individual essays are combined at the end in a 28-page section. For full references, send me a mail.
363 Saenredam and Huygens; Rubens and Rembrandt
“Saenredam, Huygens and the Utrecht bull” was Gary Schwartz’s first publication as an art historian. He looks back on how it came into being and what it meant in his life. Schwartz would like to think of the Dutch- and Flemish-speaking low countries as one culture, but circumstances keep intruding on this ideal image. Circumstances such as the lives and posterities of Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt van Rijn.
Continue reading “363 Saenredam and Huygens; Rubens and Rembrandt”
359 The Temple Mount in the Lowlands
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem exercises a bewitching lure over Jews, Muslims and Christians. Not even the famously sober Dutch Calvinists could escape its spell. At least four seventeenth-century churches in the Republic were identified in form with the Temple. So was the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam. As similar as these features of the churches and the synagogue may look, the meanings they convey are antithetical.
356 Listening to lectures
Listening to lectures is one of the poorest methods known for acquiring knowledge. There are exceptions – Schwartz thinks he took away new insights from recent lectures on the Netherlands in the seventeenth century (Spinoza); Germany in the sixteenth (Luther); and literature in the twenty-first (Nicole Krauss).
Continue reading “356 Listening to lectures”
The structure of patronage networks in Rome, The Hague and Amsterdam in the 17th century
The Francesco Datini Institute in Prato holds a highly distinguished yearly conference (Settimana di studi) on economics and its history. The range of subjects is impressive and inspiring, from “Wool as a raw material” in 1969 to “Water management in Europe, twelfth to eighteenth centuries” in 2017. In 2001 the theme was “Economics and art,” with more than fifty European and American participants. My contribution was a comparison of the patronage networks in three major seventeenth-century art centers. I suggested that certain structural similarities reveal themselves that may point to deep-lying social forces.
The proceedings were published in 2002 in a form that is not easy to scan well. Now that I have tried, fifteen years later, I see that the results are legible enough. An invaluable feature of Datini proceedings is that they include the discussions following each block of papers. Click here for a column on the congress.
“The structure of patronage networks in Rome, The Hague and Amsterdam in the 17th century,” in: Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., Economia e arte secc. XIII-XVIII: Atti della “Trentatreesima Settimana di Studi” 30 april-4 maggio 2001, Le Monnier for Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini,” Prato 2002, pp. 567-74
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