Images of Miraculous Healing in the Early Modern Netherlands

Barbara Kaminska is Assistant Professor of Art History at Sam Houston State University. She has published extensively on Netherlandish painting and print culture, and is the author of Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Religious Art for the Urban Community (Brill, 2019).

"Drawing from an impressive range of visual and textual sources, Kaminska’s book provides a stimulating examination of Christ’s healing miracles together with early modern Netherlandish attitudes about infirmity and charity." - Jeffrey Chipps Smith, University of Texas at Austin, in: Journal of Jesuit Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3 (2022), pp. 472–475"Images of Miraculous Healing presents analyses of works of art that have not been widely studied by historians of Netherlandish art. Just as importantly, it also offers insights into early modern discourses of disability, medicine, and charity. The author has amassed a wide range of visual, religious, medical, and literary sources, which she marshaled effectively to build her arguments. The book is a valuable contribution not only to art history, but also to the study of social, cultural, and religious history of the early modern Netherlands." - Angela Ho, George Mason University, in: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Winter 2023), pp. 1483–1485

• AcknowledgmentsList of Illustrations1 Introduction: Understanding Miracles, Compassion, and Disability1.1 Chapter Overview and Organization of the Material1.2 Early Modern Disability and Terms Used in This Book1.3 Biblical Healing Miracles and the Understanding of Charity before the Renaissance2 Christus Medicus and Beyond: The Thaumaturgic Power of Christ and Medical Metaphors in the Premodern Netherlands2.1 Christus Medicus and Its Origins: An Overview of the Topos2.2 Christ the Physician and Bodily Health in Hendrick Goltzius’s Miracula Christi2.3 Regulating the Medical Profession in the Netherlands: Goltzius, Guilds, and the Question of Status2.4 Physician as Christ or Charlatan? Quacksalvers in Pamphlets, Theatrical Plays, and Visual Arts2.5 Christ the Physician – Healer of the Netherlands3 “I was sick and you visited me”: Medical Assistance and the Seven Works of Mercy3.1 Visiting the Sick as a Spiritual and Corporal Work of Mercy3.2 Visiting the Sick and the Iconography of the Seven Works of Mercy in the Seventeenth Century3.3 Charity in Late-Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Sermons3.4 Display of Images of the Seven Works of Mercy and Decoration of Netherlandish Gasthuizen4 Healing the Blind: Images of Visual Impairment in the Early Modern Low Countries4.1 Blindness in the Early Modern Netherlands4.2 “Thy faith hath made thee whole”: Touch and Word in Healing Miracles4.3 “That the works of God should be made manifest in him”: Agency in the Images of Healing the Blind4.4 Landscape, Guides, and Dogs: Iconographic Staffage of Healing Miracles5 Healing the Lame: Biblical Miracles and Mobility Impairment in the Early Modern Netherlands5.1 Bethesda, Healing Waters, and the Cessation of Miracles in Early Modern Europe5.2 Droochsloot’s Sources and Anti-Beggar Sentiments in the Netherlands5.3 “Sir, I have no man”: Healing of the Paralytic as a Model of Mercy5.4 Authority and Mercy in the Healings in the Acts of the Apostles6 Healing the Multitudes: Miraculous Healing beyond Visual and Motor Impairments6.1 The Healing of the Deaf: Hearing as an Instrument of Faith6.2 Invisible Miracles and Healing beyond the Jewish Community6.3 Healing the Lepers and Leprosy in the Premodern NetherlandsEpilogue, or Who Is Worthy of Healing and Why It MattersBibliographyIndex