This article discusses the horseshoe crab in collections and paintings in early modern Antwerp. Such a crab is depicted in at least three paintings by the Antwerp artist Frans Francken the Younger ... Show moreThis article discusses the horseshoe crab in collections and paintings in early modern Antwerp. Such a crab is depicted in at least three paintings by the Antwerp artist Frans Francken the Younger – among the earliest European depictions of this animal and the first in the medium of oil paint. It is suggested that the crab depicted by Francken was probably in the collection of his acquaintance, the notary Gilles de Kimpe, one of the city’s most avid collectors. Early modern Antwerp supported a lively collecting culture and people like Francken and De Kimpe were fascinated by the variety and abundance of nature. In their own ways, through ownership, observation, and depiction, they were connoisseurs of art and nature, this connoisseurship alluding to questions pertaining to the recognition of curious and exotic specimens, such as the horseshoe crab. Show less
Many seventeenth-century Antwerp collections contained coral, both natural and crafted. Also, coral was a pictorial motif depicted by Antwerp artists on mythological scenes, still lifes, gallery... Show moreMany seventeenth-century Antwerp collections contained coral, both natural and crafted. Also, coral was a pictorial motif depicted by Antwerp artists on mythological scenes, still lifes, gallery pictures, and allegories. Coral was many things at the same time: a commodity crafted into jewellery and objets d’art, a popular collectable in its natural shape, a motif for Antwerp painters, an essential commodity in the European-Indian trade network, a naturalia associated with classical mythology as well as with the Blood of Christ, and a problematic naturalia that raised questions about classification, origins and natural processes. This paper provides an itinerary of coral in early seventeenth-century Antwerp. It is argued that collecting in general and collected coral in particular were related to new understandings of matter and material transformation. Coral functioned in the collection as: first, a place of appreciation for artisanal work - or ‘process appreciation’; second, as a conversation piece; and third, as a visual motif related to the understanding of matter and material transformation, the process of petrifaction in particular. Added up, this explains the value attached to this ‘unusual excrescence of nature’. Show less
A special interest in optics among various seventeenth-century painters living in the Dutch city of Delft, has intrigued (art-)historians for a long time. Equally, the impressive career of the... Show moreA special interest in optics among various seventeenth-century painters living in the Dutch city of Delft, has intrigued (art-)historians for a long time. Equally, the impressive career of the Delft microscopist Anthony van Leeuwenhoek has been studied by many historians of science. However, it has never been investigated who, at that time, had access to the mathematical and optical knowledge necessary for the impressive achievements of these Delft practitioners. We have tried to gain insight in Delft as a ‘node’ of optical knowledge by following the careers of three minor local figures in early-seventeenth-century Delft. We argue that through their work, products, discussions in the vernacular and exchange of skills, rather than via learned publications, these practitioners constituted a foundation on which the later scientific and artistic achievements of other Delft citizens were built. Our Delft case demonstrates that these practitioners were not simple and isolated craftsmen; rather they were crucial components in a network of scholars, savants, painters and rich virtuosi. Decades before Vermeer made his masterworks, or Van Leeuwenhoek started his famous microscopic investigations the intellectual atmosphere and artisanal knowledge in this city centred on optical topics. Show less
This article considers the collections of painters and the invention of the genre of the gallery picture in Antwerp. It zooms in on gallery paintings from the Francken workshop with details of so... Show moreThis article considers the collections of painters and the invention of the genre of the gallery picture in Antwerp. It zooms in on gallery paintings from the Francken workshop with details of so-called 'iconoclastic donkeys'. These pictures were a ‘defence of the image’ and must be understood in Antwerp’s Counter Reformation context, in the aftermath of the iconoclastic furies of the sixteenth century. Quintessential to both iconoclasm and the culture of collecting were issues of display and materiality. The paintings of cabinets suggest that some Antwerp artists were defenders of the image in a time when images and other man-made objects were at the forefront of intellectual debate. The gallery paintings can be related to a widespread debate on materiality that, implicitly or explicitly, extended from scholarly publications to workshops and collectors’ rooms. Show less
