Spoockerijen. Tassonomia di un genere della pittura nederlandese del XVII secolo

De Nile, T. (2013)

Doctoral Thesis

This PhD thesis traces the development, success and meaning of images depicting scenes of temptations, witchcraft and hells in Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century art. It singles out these images as an independent genre filling a niche in the market for genre paintings. By the beginning of the century these images had come to form a distinct artistic genre that ventured far beyond the mere imitation of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel the Elder__ s models. When examining the role and meaning of such representations in the context of their place and time, it is important to refer to them with a specific name, rather than a merely descriptive one like __diableries__. The most significant term that emerges from contemporary Dutch sources, art literature, inventories and auction catalogues is __spoockerijen__ (literally: ghosts). It is worth noticing a remarkable difference in the terminology used in Southern and Northern Netherlands to refer to these images. In the north the word __spoockerijen__ was used as a generic term to designate images ranging from temptations to witchcraft and hell scenes, whereas in the south a linguistic distinction is made between __tentatien__, __tooverijen__ and __hellen__. This implies that northern viewers recognized the non-existent character of the figures as the common denominator of all these representations. Interestingly, Dutch and Flemish art reveals an iconographic exchange between such images and references to religion, mythology and literature are freely fused. As a result, various subgroups of the genre of __spoockerijen__, showing different manifestations of the devil, are seen merging. This process of blurring boundaries between formerly distinct categories of the genre was possible because they ceased to be linked with their former literary and Christian context. Instead, they increasingly became subjects which allowed the artist to freely express his imagination at the highest level, as they show just illusions and fake worlds.

• Domenicus van Wijnen
• Jacob van Swanenburg
• Cornelis Saftleven
• David Teniers
• Helschen Breugel
• Phantasmata
• Illusions
• Hells
• Witchcraft
• St. Anthony temptations
• Spoockerijen

• All authors: De Nile, T.
• Supervisor: Sman, G.J.J. van der; Di Macco, M.
• Qualification: Doctor (dr.)
• Awarding Institution: Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University
• Date: 2013-05-30