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The Sublime in the Visual Culture of the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic (Routledge Research in Art History)
Author(s): Stijn Bussels (Author), Bram Van Oostveldt (Author)
- Publisher: Routledge
- Publication Date: November 7, 2023
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 200 pages
- ISBN-10: 1032375876
- ISBN-13: 9781032375878
Book Description
Contrary to what Kant believed about the Dutch (and their visual culture) as “being of an orderly and diligent position” and thus having no feeling for the sublime, this book argues that the sublime played an important role in seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture.
By looking at different visualizations of exceptional heights, divine presence, political grandeur, extreme violence, and extraordinary artifacts, the authors demonstrate how viewers were confronted with the sublime, which evoked in them a combination of contrasting feelings of awe and fear, attraction and repulsion. In studying seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture through the lens of notions of the sublime, we can move beyond the traditional and still widespread views on Dutch art as the ultimate representation of everyday life and the expression of a prosperous society in terms of calmness, neatness, and order.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, architectural history, and cultural history.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0) 4.0 International license. Funded by Ghent University.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Bussels and Van Oostveldt convincingly characterize how the sublime could manifest in the Dutch Republic, providing a real or imagined visual experience for their viewers. The authors provide a strong case for adding the sublime into the lexicon for analyzing Dutch visual culture.”
— Renaissance Quarterly
““[This book] consider[s] how viewers regard art works, both visually and through haptic experience; and how viewers respond, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, through related ideas.”
— Religion and the Arts (v.28), Brill.com
“[W]hether engaging with the tension between the sublime and religion (particularly the fear instilled by contact with the divine), or magnificence in architecture or the landscape, the authors carefully establish an analytical framework that relies on transmediality and consider a wide range of textual sources in order to generate new perspectives on the sublime.”
— Similious (v. 46)
About the Author
Stijn P.M. Bussels is Professor of Art History and Head of the Department of Art History at Leiden University Centre of the Arts in Society.
Bram Van Oostveldt is Associate Professor at the Department of Art, Music and Theatre Studies at Ghent University.
