Marisa Anne Bass – författare

This is the first in-depth historical study of Jan Gossart (ca. 1478-1532), one of the most important painters of the Renaissance in northern Europe. Providing a richly illustrated narrative of the Netherlandish artist's life and art, Marisa Anne Bass shows how Gossart's paintings were part of a larger cultural effort in the Netherlands to assert the region's ancient heritage as distinct from the antiquity and presumed cultural hegemony of Rome. Focusing on Gossart's vibrant, monumental mythological nudes, the book challenges previous interpretations by arguing that Gossart and his patrons did not slavishly imitate Italian Renaissance models but instead sought to contest the idea that the Roman past gave the Italians a monopoly on antiquity. Drawing on many previously unused primary sources in Latin, Dutch, and French, Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity offers a fascinating new understanding of both the painter and the history of northern European art at large.

How the nature illustrations of a Renaissance polymath reflect his turbulent ageThis pathbreaking and stunningly illustrated book recovers the intersections between natural history, politics, art, and philosophy in the late sixteenth-century Low Countries. Insect Artifice explores the moment when the seismic forces of the Dutch Revolt wreaked havoc on the region’s creative and intellectual community, compelling its members to seek solace in intimate exchanges of art and knowledge. At its center is a neglected treasure of the late Renaissance: the Four Elements manuscripts of Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1600), a learned Netherlandish merchant, miniaturist, and itinerant draftsman who turned to the study of nature in this era of political and spiritual upheaval. Presented here for the first time are more than eighty pages in color facsimile of Hoefnagel’s encyclopedic masterwork, which showcase both the splendor and eccentricity of its meticulously painted animals, insects, and botanical specimens.Marisa Anne Bass unfolds the circumstances that drove the creation of the Four Elements by delving into Hoefnagel’s writings and larger oeuvre, the works of his friends, and the rich world of classical learning and empirical inquiry in which he participated. Bass reveals how Hoefnagel and his colleagues engaged with natural philosophy as a means to reflect on their experiences of war and exile, and found refuge from the threats of iconoclasm and inquisition in the manuscript medium itself. This is a book about how destruction and violence can lead to cultural renewal, and about the transformation of Netherlandish identity on the eve of the Dutch Golden Age.

A captivating historical look at the cultural and artistic significance of shells in early modern EuropeAmong nature’s most artful creations, shells have long inspired the curiosity and passion of artisans, artists, collectors, and thinkers. Conchophilia delves into the intimate relationship between shells and people, offering an unprecedented account of the early modern era, when the influx of exotic shells to Europe fueled their study and representation as never before. From elaborate nautilus cups and shell-encrusted grottoes to delicate miniatures, this richly illustrated book reveals how the love of shells intersected not only with the rise of natural history and global trade but also with philosophical inquiry, issues of race and gender, and the ascent of art-historical connoisseurship.Shells circulated at the nexus of commerce and intellectual pursuit, suggesting new ways of thinking about relationships between Europe and the rest of the world. The authors focus on northern Europe, where the interest and trade in shells had its greatest impact on the visual arts. They consider how shells were perceived as exotic objects, the role of shells in courtly collections, their place in still-life tableaus, and the connections between their forms and those of the human body. They examine how artists gilded, carved, etched, and inked shells to evoke the permeable boundary between art and nature. These interactions with shells shaped the ways that early modern individuals perceived their relation to the natural world, and their endeavors in art and the acquisition of knowledge.Spanning painting and print to architecture and the decorative arts, Conchophilia uncovers the fascinating ways that shells were circulated, depicted, collected, and valued during a time of remarkable global change.

How today’s questions surrounding monuments and the ways we commemorate our past first arose in Rembrandt’s timeMonuments occupy a controversial place in nations founded on principles of freedom and self-governance. It is no accident that when we think of monuments, we think of statues modeled on legacies of conquest, domination, and violence. The Monument’s End reveals how the artists, architects, poets, and scholars of the early modern Netherlands contended with the profound disconnect between the public monument and the ideals of republican government. Their experiences offer vital lessons about the making, reception, and destruction of monuments in the present.In the seventeenth century, the newly formed Dutch Republic dominated world trade and colonized vast overseas territories even as it sought to shed the trappings of its imperial past. Marisa Anne Bass describes the frustrated attempts by figures such as Rembrandt van Rijn and playwright and poet Joost van den Vondel to reimagine public memory for their emergent nation. She shows how the most celebrated age of Dutch art was more an age of bronze than of gold, one in which the pursuit of freedom from domination was constantly challenged by the commercial ambitions of empire.Exploring how the artists and intellectuals of this vibrant century asked questions that still resonate today, this beautifully illustrated book discusses works by contemporary artists such as Spencer Finch and Thomas Hirschhorn and offers new perspectives on monuments like the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and events such as the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.