This course explores the extraordinary production of pictorial art in the Netherlands during the seventeenth century, and key roles played by pictures in the formation and life of the Dutch Republic. Our explorations will take us into the spheres of painting, drawings, prints, maps, book illustrations and the entire range of pictorial representations and technologies that constituted Dutch visual culture. The course will situate Dutch art within its historical and social circumstances, and investigate its relation to the broader visual culture of the Dutch Republic. Lectures will give special emphasis to the innovative work in still life, landscape, portraiture, perspective and optics, and scenes of social life for which Netherlandish artists have long been renowned. Lectures will feature the art of such well known figures as Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer, as well as less familiar but equally fascinating works by their contemporaries. Discussions will examine the character, meanings, and functions of these pictures; the aesthetic, social, and economic values they enjoyed, and the ways of seeing they generated. In the process we will look at how Dutch pictures were made and marketed, how people made sense of them, and how they circulated both in the Netherlands and beyond. The course will involve a mix of lecture and discussion. Evaluation will be based on participation, several kinds of writing assignments (about 20 pages altogether) and a final examination.

Estimated cost of materials: $50 or more, but less than $100.

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