Lecture LIVE! Art Historical Survey Series | Still Life in the Dutch Republic

ruticker 05.03.2025 16:01:07

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So tonight, we are covering **still life painting in the Dutch Republic**. Specifically, still life as a genre did extend into other European countries, and we will see that it does have kind of its foundation in other time periods. However, when you consider the specific genre of still life, it really originated in the Dutch Republic. Actually, a lot of what we see that's not biblical scenes or mythological scenes are typically called history paintings. So when you think of landscapes, florals, and still lives, that really stems from the Dutch Republic because they are not commissioning these more religious or mythological scenes anymore—these history scenes—because of their break with the Roman Catholic Church. This is now officially not only a republic, so not only a political shift, but it's also a religious shift as well, as it is now more identified with Protestantism rather than Catholicism. This means that the art, of course, has shifted. Now, there were precedents of artists that were obviously sending things other than figural studies; they weren't just studying the human body. This image may be very Italian; this is a painting done by Caravaggio. Artists would study certain elements, such as florals or landscapes, in order to incorporate them into whatever narrative they were painting. We also have an example here on the right side of the screen—a kind of an earlier proto-still life, if you will. There were studies in collections, so the idea of collecting was starting to become very popular, not only in the Dutch Republic but in much of Europe. Artists were interested in rendering these things. So there was interest, but the specific genre really comes along in the Dutch Republic. Now, this is an early Northern Netherlandish image, and this is more of a marketplace. These are kind of the forerunners of what we would consider still lives. When I say forerunners, you can obviously see there's a narrative in the background. Although this was happening kind of in this religious split, it wasn't quite until the 17th century. I want to say this one's dated to about 1580 or 1590, but there is a scene—a narrative scene back here—that's meant to mimic a discretely religious scene, probably the Flight into Egypt, but they put it in a Dutch context. You have figures also represented, but then the main focus is this kind of market scene or this meat market, per se. This was kind of the forerunner prototype of what later became very popular. So we're going to be going over florals, memento mori's—which kind of includes skulls and other aspects to mark ideas of death—and then we're going to be going over breakfast scenes, dinner scenes, and prom still lives. I'll explain what those are, but these still lives had their own categories pretty much, and we've kind of classified them into one big still life category. They really encompassed a lot of different things, and each had their own heyday of popularity. Now, this would be considered a **memento mori**, and I'm sure at some point during some of these lectures I've mentioned it, but just for you to know, memento mori's are meant to be reminders of your own mortality. They are meant to remind you that you are human, you live, and then someday you die. Now, it wasn't really meant to be this dark omen by any means; it was meant to simply remind the viewer that in a religious sphere, in a religious setting, there is something else. This is not all that life has to offer—there's hope, there's resurrection within this contextualized Christian faith. But it is meant to remind the viewer of the vanity surrounding life, surrounding the ownership of objects, and social hierarchies at play—money, wealth—there are lots of things going on. The reason memento mori's became relatively popular in Dutch society is because this very democratic republic was now born, and it's kind of where we see the birth of capitalism itself. There was a lot of wealth coming into this very small and new nation, which created a lot of anxiety and tensions. Not only was there this Protestant Christian faith that condemned the overabundance of wealth, but they also condemned the attitudes behind it. Were you sinful with your wealth? Did you get it through cheating certain people, stepping over certain people? So there's this one religious aspect of wealth—to be very weary of it—that your identity is not in this world but in the heavenly realm, in the supernatural world. Then there was also a tension between how much wealth was actually coming into the Dutch Republic, starting with these trade companies and people that had invested in such things—merchants, certain guilds—and it just trickled down into every aspect of Dutch life that people were doing relatively well. This idea of tension is really starting to be played out in still lives, particularly with memento mori's. You can see in this depiction there are other elements in the image aside from the skull. We will talk a little bit more about how artists are playing with light and reflection, as seen in this goblet and glass. This is perhaps meant to symbolize—you can actually see the burning wick right here, you can see the smoke coming through the background. What is interesting is that there are other memento mori's at play here besides the skull. This burning wick is meant to symbolize the temporality of life. You can actually see memento mori's in skulls and flies, typically in certain depictions of animals and in certain other elements, such as this burning wick. That is really meant to represent the temporality of life. Artists would use the same elements for their compositions, particularly if they sold well on the open market. They weren't really getting large commissions from wealthy patrons anymore because everything was kind of not so much equal. I don't want you to think that there weren't wealthy people existing in the Dutch Republic, but the fact that this open market was starting to expand and more and more clients—particularly this kind of wealthier middle class—were starting to come to the forefront of Dutch society. So they're interested in buying these paintings, and artists would often repeat motifs in terms of what sells well. It was kind of an experimental thing, back and forth. We obviously have a memento mori right here on the left-hand side, and I just wanted to show you some examples because skulls tend to pop up every now and then, but they really are their own specific genre, as we'll see. Studying other things, such as florals, was very popular in the Dutch Republic. There was actually a tulip craze that happened; I think the height of tulip mania, as scholars have called it, was 1637. The Dutch loved their tulips, and they still do today. This was because tulips were not native to the Netherlands at the time; they actually came from the East, from Turkey. The Ottoman Empire sent them to the Roman Emperor in the 16th century, and they made their way over to the Netherlands eventually. People just couldn't get enough of them, but they did very well in Dutch soil. You can actually still go over there today and see all the beautiful tulip fields when they bloom. There's still much of an obsession that started in the 16th century, which is pretty cool. Tulips had a really great variety of shapes and colors, so artists could take certain tulips and practice rendering formal elements, light, and shadow. They did very well on the open market, as you can imagine. People would hang them in their kitchens, living rooms, and along their hallways. What we should note is that these bouquets may look very realistic to us—and they definitely do. You would probably assume that this was a real bouquet. We've seen gorgeous bridal bouquets; we've seen people give flowers for presents or special occasions, and so we've seen very elaborate bouquets. But what's interesting is that all of these blooms would have been happening at different times in the season. What artists would do is that it seems as though they're painting from life, and you would assume it being still life, but they would do intricate studies of certain florals. They would take those studies back—whether they'd be sketchings or etchings or however they decided to work—take them back to their studio, and then render it all in a painting, particularly flowers that bloom in different seasons. That gives us kind of this impossible bouquet. It's very elaborate, very ornate, and very detailed. It's meant to seem realistic, but it's also meant to trick the viewer. This idea of tricking the viewer was a concept found in Dutch art that was just very popular. It's this idea of constructed artifice—pretty much realistic artifice, I guess you could call it. The Dutch just loved it, and that extended into other genres that we're not even going to go into, such as interior scenes, church interior scenes, and landscapes. This idea of artificially constructing a scene and making it seem realistic to the viewer got them going. This was a part of floral still lives; it was kind of this impossible and elaborate construction of putting these flowers and blooms together that would not exist in reality. That really transferred into their depiction of other still lives, typically of table scenes, which is primarily what we're going to be focusing on for the rest of this course. When we look at these table scenes, we can see that they are definitely elaborately constructed. They've got a lot of very realistic-looking details. Most of these things were real; these flowers were real. They're just put in kind of an impossible situation. More than likely, the artist was working with most of these elements in these table still lives, but he was incorporating certain details to make these a little bit more ornate. You can actually see here this is a nautilus shell right here, and that signifies that's not native to the Netherlands. This is actually signifying a part of Dutch trade. They likely got these from the Caribbean. I'm forgetting where this shell actually originated from; it could have originated somewhere from Africa. But it was alluding to the fact that Dutch trade was booming at the time. Not only did they have the Dutch East India Company that we all probably know, but they also established the Dutch West India Company, and that brought them into communication on a global scale. We'll actually be talking about the impact of global trade, not only from the Netherlands but of the world, particularly with the Mughal court in India. These still lives were meant to reflect not only an elaborate scene potentially belonging in a wealthy patron's home but also to reflect the richness and success of Dutch trade. That kind of brings us to scenes such as this. Paintings of food on tables were very popular, and they were realistic assemblages. They were painted from life, but it was probably done in sections. So, painted from life, but just not all together. Likely, the artist would have seen this pie and painted this pie, and then he would have painted certain goblets that he would have seen—probably this one in the background. So the painting was done in stages, particularly of food, because you can't put all of this food together and expect it to hold out for the rest of the painting. That's kind of how these still lives, aside from florals, worked. What artists became interested in is not only what was of interest in the art market—so not only what people were buying—but these paintings became kind of foundations for experimentation. This is where artists can work out how to render light and reflection and how to maybe transfer that to a very serious painting. There were still commissions happening, just not on the grand scale that you saw in the Southern Netherlands or more Catholic countries. But there were still serious formal elements that artists were trying to figure out, and still life became a way to kind of render that. They're playing with light sources here; obviously, there's an above light source, typically a window shining down. This particular artist is playing with the idea of reflection and light, not only in the glass but how that light transfers through the liquid and reverberates back into the composition. He's also looking at this silver right here—how a reflection would be done on different sources and how that reflection actually reflects back on this plate. There's a lot of complicated formal elements going into these particular still lives. One of the things that makes still lives approachable and fun to look at, that maybe we haven't considered, is that they kind of teeter on a very still moment, but it borders on that level of anxiety. We can see that because look at this plate as it extends from the table; it seems like it's going to fall off. It's extending into our picture plane almost; it's extending towards the viewer. The painter or the artist has foreshortened it that way, making it more three-dimensional, extending into us. But it stays there, right? So it's that kind of anticipation—this idea of anticipated movement—that makes these scenes kind of pull us back and forth around the composition. Of course, that movement gets our eye looking around the rest of the composition to consider where this goblet came from, where this glass was made. You know, obviously, glass mirrors certain things, which were pretty valuable items. The presence of certain fruits and foods also tells us about this idea of global trade. I think you'll be able to see it in a different slide, so I might wait to bring that up. Another element that artists liked to use to give us this idea of anticipated movement and to artistically show off is they would put a lemon peel here, and that would extend into our plane as well. It would function in the same way that this plate is functioning in this scene on the right side. Here, you actually have all of the elements combined in this kind of more chaotic structure. You have the lemon peel, which you're going to see repeatedly, and then you have the plate kind of jutting out. They've even added a knife to kind of jut out into our picture plane, and this really is to establish this idea of movement within something that's meant to be still. It's anticipation, and all this really plays into the lingering anxieties that this culture had and how wealthy they were becoming and how much they were growing. What to do with all of that wealth? People like to describe it as the secular versus the religious, but I typically think that happens in whatever culture when a culture booms economically. There's kind of this anxiety of what do we now do with all this wealth? How do we handle it responsibly? That's what a lot of scholars are saying these paintings are alluding to. I just wanted to consider some elements that you may not typically see. Particularly in this one on the right, you can actually see a bug right here; I think it's a bee, and he's chilling out on this piece of bread. You can actually see a butterfly. Sometimes in these compositions, there will be bugs and certain elements that come through to try to inform us of movement, trying to add a little bit of spice to the composition that maybe had not been there previously. When you look at certain elements, you can look at citrus fruits and certain things that are not native to Dutch society. When you look at certain silver, you start to wonder where all this stuff came from because not all of these things originated in the Dutch Republic itself. You really start to see the influence of other cultures in Dutch society through this aspect of global trade. Here, you can actually see—let's see, I'm getting my slides—there we go. Well, it's not this one; there's one that specifically alludes to peppercorn, which was not a spice originally coming from the Netherlands. Most of the spices did not originate there. There was this thing called the spice trade that alludes to it. So, pepper and sugar, in particular, when they're represented here, are meant to represent this idea of global trade. Unfortunately, these still lives don't really show us the darker aspect of what happened in the Dutch global trade, which obviously was slavery. Now, in the Netherlands, slavery was illegal, so another human being could not own anybody. But when these trade routes were established, they were established in countries where slavery was not illegal. In a lot of the processing of what we consider this Dutch Golden Age, it was a golden age for certain people but not for all people—particularly all the people represented in the background of how these items came to be in Dutch hands. Typically, some of these items, some of these foodstuffs, some of these more ornate depictions of lacquered boxes, can be seen in other Dutch genre scenes. What you see is not always the true story; it's kind of an artifice put forth by the artist. It really ignores all the stories of how these things are coming to be in the Dutch Republic specifically. There are quite a few museums in the Netherlands that are beginning to focus on that particular history. Not to say that we should just hate still life because bad things happened in the past—that's not what I'm saying—but it is important to reconcile with history and understand that in the establishment of some of these trade routes, slavery was the real deal. We need to know that when we approach certain things because it layers how we're meant to see it, and it also layers how people throughout history would have interacted with these items themselves. Now, these more elaborate dinner scenes are called **proc still lives**, which are meant to display excessive wealth. These were very attractive to emerging middle-class upper-middle-class citizens who were wanting to dip into that upper echelon of society. These things were definitely very popular. They're called proc still lives, just in case you missed it, but they typically have this very ornate banquet of food laid out. We definitely get some meats here, we get some crab here, meaning this person is wealthy. You've got an assortment of fruits, citrus fruits, and grapes, and you've got all of these elaborate tableware. You've got even the materials, even the fabrics, extending out from the table itself. It really is this idea of excessiveness of wealth. What's interesting, and how artists are playing with this, is that you can actually see a reflection of a man coming into the scene right here in this silver jug. You can actually see this person coming in the reflection, and you can see this silver plate reflected too with these cups. They've even rendered these goblet cups right here, and so they're really studying every single little detail to make these works. This is an experiment for them; this is how they are rendering light and reflection. The idea of the mirror really captivates a lot of art historians interested in psychoanalysis or applying scientific methods to art history. Artists are very much interested in this because there are a lot of scientific discoveries happening in the 17th century. Now, prom still lives also typically feature these more exotic animals—animals that are not obviously found in the Dutch Republic, such as monkeys and certain birds. They also represent animals that would be found there because these are meant to be elaborate constructions. The Dutch Republic and its people are still very proud of what they're building—this new society outside of the confines of the Catholic Church. All of these paintings, all this Dutch visual culture, is pouring into this construction of a larger Dutch identity—a larger republican identity. You should see these inclusions of exotic animals or exotic fruits, even exotic flowers, as a reflection of what they're doing and their connections to the rest of the world. It's not really meant to be a true picture of what's happening in the rest of the world; it's meant to be how that connects them to this world. So it's very much in the Dutch perspective and in the Dutch context. Here's another even more elaborate still life. They just keep going and getting fancier and fancier. We actually see a parrot here in the corner, which, because of the way the PowerPoint is set up, I cut the top of the parrot off. I'm sorry about that if you were really wanting to see the parrot. But we also have a lobster, some live animals—a dog, a monkey. This particular dog is very popular in Netherlands art, even earlier Netherlands art. You may think of Jan van Eyck's marriage portrait that every art history class teaches you about. You'd see cherries, grapes, and all sorts of things—a variety of meats, kind of a Dutch pie right there. You also have the lemon peel that artists just love to use, and these constructions just become more and more elaborate as wealth in the Dutch Republic begins to grow. at. So, to summarize, when we examine still life paintings from the Dutch Republic, we uncover layers of meaning that go beyond mere representation. These works are not just about the objects depicted; they reflect the complexities of a society grappling with rapid change, wealth, and identity. The use of motifs like overturned silverware and curtains serves to evoke a sense of anxiety and artifice, reminding viewers of the transient nature of life and the tension between the secular and the eternal. Moreover, the tradition of creating illusions in art has deep roots in antiquity, and the Dutch artists adapted these ideas to their context, creating a unique visual language that speaks to their cultural identity. The still life genre became a platform for experimentation, where artists explored themes of light, reflection, and the natural world, all while engaging with the broader currents of global trade and scientific inquiry. In conclusion, still life paintings are rich with narrative and symbolism, offering insights into the values and concerns of Dutch society during a transformative period. They invite us to look closer, to appreciate the artistry involved, and to consider the historical context that shaped these remarkable works.

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