Università Roma Tre

Dutch Painting of the Seventeenth Century. An Introduction
Through the analysis of the evolution of the genres of painting (portrait, genre painting, history painting, landscape, marine, still life), of the main centers of artistic production (Haarlem, Amsterdam, Leiden, Delft, etc.), of the oeuvres of the major protagonists (Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan Steen, Peter de Hooch, etc.), and literary sources (from Karel van Mander to Hoogstraten) and in light of the historiographical debate (De Joongh, Alpers, Sluijter, etc.) this course intends to offer an overview of the artistic culture of the Northern Netherlands and his specificities.

For the preparation for the exam it is necessary the critical study of

a) at least one of the two texts chosen:
- Ghislain Kieft, The northern Netherlands: art, craft and commissioning in the golden age, in Painting in the Netherlands, edited by B.W.Meijer, Milan, Electa, 1997, tome II, pp. 409-522 or
- Mariette Westermann, The Art of the Dutch Republic. 1585-1718, New York, Harry Abrams, 1996 (available for online for a very modest sum).

b) at least one of the following texts of your choice (or of all, of course): Svetlana Alpers, Art of describing. Science and painting in the Dutch seventeenth century, Turin, Bollati Boringhieri, ed. 1999 or later; Simon Shama, The Discomfort of Abundance. The Dutch culture of the golden age, Milan, Mondadori, ed.1993 or later; Svetlana Alpers, Rembrandt's workshop. The atelier and the market, Turin, Einaudi, ed.2006; Daniel Arasse, The ambition of Vermeer, Turin, Einaudi, ed. 2006.

c) at least one of the following texts of your choice (the advice of course is always to read them all):
- Eric Jan Sluijter, How Rembrandt surpassed the Ancients, Italians and Rubens as Master of "The Passions of the Soul" ’, in, Batavian Phlegm? The Dutch and their Emotions in Pre-Modern Times, edited by H. Roodenburg and C. Santing, "BMGN-Low Countries Historical Review", 129, no. 2, 2014, pp. 63-89. (downloadable from http://www.ericjansluijter.nl/publications/)
- Eric Jan Sluijter, On Brabant Rubbish, Economic Competition, Artistic Rivalry and the Growth of the Market for Paintings in the First Decades of the Seventeenth Century, in "Journal of the Historians of Netherlandish Art", 1, 2009, n. 2 (http://jhna.org/index.php/)
- A.McNeil Kettering, Ter Borch's ladies in satin, in Looking at seventeenth-century Dutch art, edited by W.Franits, 1997, pp. 98-115. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_hnr9sLU5-Bel96R2pOQ3Z3YTQ/edit?usp=sharing

d) educational material, consisting of the ppt of the slides projected in class and available at http://studiumanistici.uniroma3.it/gcapitelli/, following the research indications contained therein (for example: the lesson on Rembrandt should be studied by checking the site rembrandtdatabase.org, the one on Vermeer exploring, and the site http://www.essentialvermeer.com/).

Non-attending students must add to this program (with the exceptions of the point d that is not for them) the in-depth study of a second text among those listed in point b) and must read all the essays listed in point c).