Crisis and Convergence:
Explorations in 17th and 18th Century Art
Arizona State University (Tempe) and the Phoenix Art Museum
March 2, 2007
Isack Elyas, Merry Company, 1620
Presentation Abstracts
Panel 1: Cultural Contact and Colonial Resistance
The Science of Culture: A Contextual Analysis of the Cataloguing of Peoples and Culture in Pieter de Marees’ Beschryvinghe ende historische verhael vant Gout Koninckrijk van Gunea
Elizabeth Sutton, University of Iowa
The images in Pieter de Marees’ 1602 Description and History of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea (Beschryvinghe…) became visual rhetorical pieces which shaped Dutch and European culture. These images tell us about the culture which produced them and about how visual images repeated over time affect how peoples are perceived and treated. The Beschryvinghe images and images in travel accounts from this period forged enduring visual stereotypes that legitimized the subsequent subjugation of non-European peoples. As these records and prints were reproduced and circulated, they not only created readily recognized tropes of African inferiority, but simultaneously constructed a superior European subjectivity.
The
supposedly empirical images must be considered within the context of a changing
model of European epistemology. The natural world was being observed, recorded, and
classified as it had not been previously. As exotica, Africans were included in
this new empirically-based epistemology. Indeed, I argue that the images of
native peoples in the Beschryvinghe
are compositionally similar to other scientific illustrations produced in this
period. In this way, non-European
peoples were depicted as exotic specimens akin to flora and fauna, available for
European consumption and distribution. My presentation will explore the
compositional similarities between the scientific diagrams
A Cry for Liberation:
Aleijadinho’s Prophets as
Capoeiristas
Monica Bowen, Brigham Young University
Throughout the late eighteenth century, many Brazilians became inspired by the political revolutions of the French and the American colonies. These Brazilians sought for a similar type of revolution, hoping to gain independence from the Portuguese crown. One nationalistic group named the “Inconfidência Mineira,” politically influenced the art of the sculptor Aleijadinho. Aleijadinho’s work has been examined by scholars as a political message previously, but has never been explored as propaganda through the representation of capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art. Capoeira formed as a means for African slaves in Brazil to fight their way off of plantations where they were kept. When training to fight, slaves would disguise capoeira to look like a dance, so that slave owners would not suspect rebellion. Through the visual representation of capoeira, Aleijadinho’s statues of twelve Old Testament prophets at Bom Jesus dos Matozinhos express a cry for liberation, not only liberation for African slaves, but also Brazilian independence from the Portuguese.
This paper examines the circumstances in Colonial Brazil and Aleijadinho’s personal life which allowed him to create this unique message of liberation. Capoeira is also examined as a form of propaganda, and the stances of various prophets are compared to capoeira movements. Through the combination of these elements, as well as the use of the Brazilian soap stone medium, Aleijadinho’s Prophets capture the spirit of Colonial Brazil. These statues not only embody the Brazilian land through their actual medium, but also capture the sentiment of the Brazilian people, colonists and slaves alike.
Panel 2:
Portraiture and Patronage
Illustrating a Painter’s Profession: Convergence of Dutch Genre Conventions in Anna Dorothea Therbusch’s Self-Portraits
Christina K. Lindeman, University of Arizona
Prussian court painter Anna Dorothea Therbusch (1721-1782), like so many German-speaking painters during the eighteenth century, traveled to Paris in search of painting commissions. In 1766 she moved to France and in the next year was received in the Royal Academy. Denis Diderot called her “the wretched Prussian lady” in his commentaries on the Salon of 1767, feeling she mistreated him after he had supported her artistic career. No matter his personal and public feelings towards the artist, her talent and skill was sought after in German-speaking countries. Beginning in 1769 she traveled to one small German principality after another and then was finally called to Berlin in 1770. At the court of Friedrich Wilhelm II, Therbusch painted numerous portraits of both the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Her painterly style followed French conventions in portraiture, as was the taste in Prussia, however two self-portraits of the artist, one painted in 1764/65 and the other in 1780, curiously imitated seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings. Her portraits resemble Gerard Dou’s paintings of people exhibiting their occupations. Dou’s adoption of a trompe-l’oeil niche, a device found in portraiture in his genre scenes, created a unique hybrid in Dutch art. This essay examines the convergence of seventeenth-century Dutch painting conventions in Therbusch’s self-portraits. As such, the portrait must be considered in several intertwined contexts: self-portrait conventions used by female artists, the cultural politics of collecting Dutch art in German-speaking countries, as well as the rise of the bourgeoisie during the eighteenth century.
Coming into Focus: the Influence of Bourgeois Culture in Seventeenth Century Neapolitan Art.
Concetta Martone
Dragani, Temple University
Panel 3: Politics and Propaganda
Velázquez’s Surrender of Breda: Military Propaganda as Regal Glorification
Melody Maxted, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
The present study explores Velázquez’s glorification of the Spanish monarch in his painting The Surrender of Breda of 1634 (Museo del Prado, Madrid). Commissioned for King Philip IV of Spain, the painting originally hung alongside eleven other depictions of Spanish military victories within the Hall of Realms of the, then, recently constructed Buen Retiro Palace. The paper argues that the painting glorifies the king because of its original location within the palace structure and also through a series of subtle visual clues depicted within the canvas. These clues, when compiled, lead to an interpretation of the painting as a work of publicity for the monarch and his army.
This paper builds upon Jonathan Brown and J.H. Elliott’s seminal interpretation of the painting, wherein they emphasized Velázquez’s depiction of the magnanimous exchange between the Spanish general and the governor of Breda that stands at the center of the painting. As they have shown, Velázquez adopted his representation from The Siege of Breda, a 1626 play by Calderón de la Barca. They also note that, because of its location within the king’s new palace, the painting deviates from typical surrender scenes to emphasize the generosity of the king and the accomplishments of the Spanish army.
This essay
enhances existing interpretations of the painting by looking closely at
additional visual evidence presented within the picture. Thus, this paper
considers the painting in light of Velázquez’s courtly aspirations and his
relationship to the king’s advisor, The Count Duke of Olivares. The author
argues that the inclusion of a sheet of paper in the corner of the canvas and a
likely self-portrait of the artist are a means for understanding the artist’s
social aspirations; Velázquez’s later Portrait of Philip IV on
Horseback and Las Meninas serve as comparanda. Several prominent
horses in the canvas stand as symbols of the might of the Spanish army during
this period of military conquest. This paper concludes that subject matter of The
Surrender of Breda and its location within the King’s new pleasure palace
glorifies the reign of Philip IV of Spain.
Isabella, Rubens, and the Archducal Propaganda Machine
Alexandra B. Libby,
Boston University
“A gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is
a contradiction.”—Marcel Mauss
Becoming regent only twenty years after a cruel and brutal Spanish occupation, the negotiation of Isabella’s (Spanish) presence in the Southern Netherlands was a necessarily sensitive and delicate one. Thus, the great level of autonomy and respect she achieved during her lifetime begs the question, how? Rather than a function of her innate gentility, sympathy or piety, this paper proposes that there was a far more calculated agenda at work.
Using the work of Peter Paul Rubens, her court painter and confidant, Isabella turned the gifting of art—an aestheticized form of exchange particularly prevalent in court settings—into an archducal propaganda machine. Expanding on the work of French sociologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss, this paper address the issues of honor, service, and loyalty and the ways in which art was used as a tool of transaction, drawing the receiver into an obligatory reciprocity. In this way, Isabella was able to promote the grandeur of Catholicism, make specific points about imperial ideology, aid in diplomatic endeavors, and manage her own image literally and figuratively both locally and internationally.