Knowledge and Discernment in the Early Modern Arts

Sven Dupré is Professor of History of Art, Science and Technology at the Faculty of Humanities at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Christine Göttler is Professor of Art History at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

• Table of ContentsIllustrationsNotes on ContributorsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Hidden ArtificesSven Dupré and Christine Göttler Part I: Sites of Discernment1 Transforming Nature into Art: Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562) by Pieter Bruegel the ElderTine Luk Meganck2 Vulcan’s Forge: The Sphere of Art in Early Modern AntwerpChristine Göttler Part II: Artifices and Imitation3 Superb Craftsmanship in Antwerp: Baroque Goldsmiths’ Work in Competition with the Visual ArtsLorenz Seelig 4 The Veronica according to Zurbarán: Painting as Figura, and Image as VestigioFelipe Pereda 5 ‘The Various Natures of Middling Colours We May Learne of Painters’. Sir Kenelm Digby Looks at Rubens and Van DyckKarin Leonhard Part III: Secrets and Knowledge6 Oil Painting as a Workshop Secret: On Calumnies, Legends, and Critical InvestigationsOskar Bätschmann 7 Peiresc in the Parisian ‘Jewel House’ Peter N. Miller 8 Germanic Antiquity in Rembrandt’s CircleThijs Weststeijn Part IV: Mechanical Science and Technique9 Rembrandt and Painting as a Mechanical Science in Dutch Seventeenth-Century ArtJan Blanc10 From Mechanism to Technique: Diderot, Chardin, and the Practice of Painting Paul Taylor