Book Description

Virtue was ubiquitous in early modern Europe, not because everyone behaved well, but in the sense that interest in the subject was pervasive and intense. In a changing society, the widening aspiration to nobility was justified by claims to different kinds of virtue and the theory of virtue was the established way of re-assessing accepted human values. In Latin-based languages and humanist culture, certain materially based qualities attributed to the artwork itself eventually became identified as 'virtuosity', and the 'virtuoso' emerged in 17th century Europe as an elite figure with a particular interest in and appreciation of works of art and other objects of virtue. This volume brings together a set of essays on the relevance of virtue to Netherlandish art, dealing with virtue as a popular subject of visual representation and opening up fascinating links and comparisons between the special qualities accorded to revered works of art with the claims of elite artists and beholders to privileged standing. Themes addressed range from a discussion of ways in which Dutch artists and writers adapted courtly and humanist notions of martial virtue to validate still life to an analysis of political and painterly virtue in a mythological painting by Cornelisz. van Haarlem; from an examination of Goltzius's 'Tabula Cebetis' as a representation of artistic virtue to an exploration of the virtues of amateur landscape in the seventeenth century Netherlands. The volume also reconsiders the relationship between virtue and 'net' and 'rouw' painting, particularly with reference to the definition of sprezzatura in Castiglione's 'Book of the Courtier'. Or readers can compare Rubens' self-identification with virtue through humanist friendship with Jan Brueghel the Elder's reference, as a court painter, to the virtue and diligence of both his conduct and his art. Within a wide range of subject-matter and approaches, the authors share a commitment to establishing the place of virtue at the heart of Netherlandish art.