IDEA Teaching Resources

Books & essays:

Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Kolfin, Elmer and Esther Schreuder, eds. Black Is Beautiful: Rubens to Dumas. Amsterdam Zwolle: Waanders, 2008.

Kolfin, Elmer and Epco Runia, eds. Black in Rembrandt’s Time. Zwolle: WBOOKS, 2020.

Lyon, Vanessa J. and Caroline Fowler. “Revision and Reckoning: The Legacy of Slavery in Histories of Northern Art,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 14:1 (Winter 2022) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2022.14.1.1

Spicer, Joaneath. Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe. Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, 2012. https://thewalters.org/wp-content/uploads/revealing-the-african-presence-in-renaissance-europe.pdf

Stoichita, Victor. Darker Shades: The Racial Other in Early Modern Art. London: Reaktion Books, 2019.

“Exhibiting Slavery and Representing Black Lives—Art Museums & the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd8AOe1bxnE&list=PLlaGkbYsw6cf0Xl91jaVoWGBmNRMpJpuN&index=3

Titus Kaphar “Can Art Amend History?”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDaldVHUedI&t=18s

Elmer Kolfin “Out of the shadow and into the light: Black figures in the art of Rembrandt’s time”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0PXon_RWog 

Link to further bibliography on Race & Representation in European Culture

Possible images to use in class: 

Rembrandt, Two African Men, 1661, oil on canvas, 77.8 x 64.4cm, The Hague, Mauritshuis

Adriaen Hanneman, Posthumous Portrait of Maria I Stuart (1631–1660) with a Servant, ca. 1664, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 119.3cm, The Hague, Mauritshuis

Peter Paul Rubens, Four Studies of a Black Man, ca. 1615, oil on canvas, 51 x 66cm, Brussels, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten

Jasper Beckx, Portrait of Don Miguel de Castro, 1643, oil on panel, 75 x 62cm, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst

Jacob van Loo, Allegory on the Distribution of Food to the Poor, 1657, oil on canvas, 260 x 154 cm, Amsterdam, Huiszittenhuis

Jan Jansz. Mostaert, Portrait of an African Man, c. 1525-1530, oil on panel, 30.8 x 21.2 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.

Books & essays:

Bergvelt, Ellinoor, and Renée Kistemaker. De wereld binnen handbereik : Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 1585-1735. Amsterdam: Amsterdams Historisch Museum, 1992.

Kuipers, Matthijs. A Metropolitan History of the Dutch Empire Popular Imperialism in The Netherlands, 1850-1940. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022.

Schmidt, Benjamin. Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

Sint Nicolaas, Eveline et al., ed. Slavery: The Story of João, Wally, Oopjen, Paulus, van Bengalen, Surapati, Sapali, Tula, Dirk, Lohkay. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum with Atlas Contact, 2021.

“Hidden Cost of Luxury” (*a five-minute video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ83bGUFP-4&list=PLlaGkbYsw6cf0Xl91jaVoWGBmNRMpJpuN&index=9

Possible images to use in class:

Willem Kalf, Still-life with a Nautilus Cup and a Chinese Bowl, 1662, oil on canvas, 79.4 x 67.3 cm, Madrid: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

Jan van Kessel, The Four Continents, ca. 1664/66, oil on canvases, each 48.6 x 67.8 cm. Munich, Alte Pinakothek.

Jean Saint (attributed to), Box of the Dutch West India Company, 1749, gold and tortoiseshell, 5.8 x 18 x 11.9 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.

Dirk Valkenburg, Ritual Slave Party on a Sugar Plantation in Surinam, 1706-08, oil on canvas, 58 x 46.5 cm, Copenhagen: Statens Museum for Kunst

Claes Jansz. Visscher II, Conquest of the Silver Fleet in the Bay of Mantanzas by Admiral Piet Hein, 1628, etching, 3.81 x 4.43 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.

Unknown Seneca or Susquehannock Maker, Comb, ca. 1680, moose antler, 12.1 × 6.5 × 0.6 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Books & essays:

Brook, Timothy. Vermeer’s Hat. The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World. Toronto: Penguin, 2008.

Göttler, Christine and Mia Mochizuki, eds. The Nomadic Object. The Challenge of World for Early Modern Religious Art. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2017.

Huigen, Siegfried, Jan L. de Jong and Elmer Kolfin. The Dutch Trading Companies as Knowledge Networks. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2010.

Kehoe, Marsely. Trade, Globalization, and Dutch Art and Architecture: Interrogating Dutchness and the Golden Age. Amsterdam University Press, 2023.

Marx, Lizzie, ‘Odours from Overseas’, in Ariane van Sucthelen, ed. Fleeting – Scents in Colour. Zwolle: Waanders, 2021.

“Where in the World? Mahogany” (this four-minute video featuring Aimee Ng is also relevant for the Environmental Humanities section): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohdJvFYEdwo

Possible images to use in class:

Unknown makers, Dolls’ House of Petronella Oortman, ca. 1686-1710, h. 255.0 × w. 190 × d. 78cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.

Frederiks Andries, Covered Coconut Cup, 1607, silver, coconut, 34.5 x 22.9 x 12.7cm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.

Artists in Jingdezhen, China, and Peter Wiber, Mounted Crow Cup, porcelain with gilded-silver mounts, 17.2cm. Salem, Peabody Essex Museum.

After Lambertus van Eenhoorn and De Metaale Pot (factory), Flower Pot, ca. 1692-1700, earthenware, 156 x 38 x 38cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.

Research & Images:

Berger-Hochstrasser, Julie. “A South African mystery: Remarkable studies of the Khoikhoi.” In Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art / Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 66 (2016): 196-231.

Mallory, Sarah W. “Memory Spaces and Far Away Places: Mauritius, Golden Age Myths, and the Origins of Dutch Landscape.” In Dutch Golden Age(s): The Shaping of a Cultural Community, ed. Jan Blanc, 167-190. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020. Memory Spaces and Far Away Places: Mauritius and the Origins of Dutch Landscape | Sarah W Mallory – Academia.edu

Perlove, Shelley. “Rembrandt’s Visitation: The African Woman at the Dawn of Christianity and Colonialism,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 14:1 (Winter 2022) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2022.14.1.3

Sutton, Elizabeth. Early Modern Dutch Prints of Africa. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012.

“Portraying an African King” (a six-minute video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Iu9Eyr1tYs&list=PLlaGkbYsw6cf0Xl91jaVoWGBmNRMpJpuN&index=10

Research & Images:

Anderson, Carrie. “Mapping Colonial Interdependencies in Dutch Brazil: European Linen & Brasilianen Identity.” Artl@s Bulletin 7, no. 2 (2018): Article 7. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/artlas/vol7/iss2/7/

Brienen, Rebecca Parker. Visions of Savage Paradise: Albert Eckhout, Court Painter in Colonial Dutch Brazil. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006.

Fatah-Black, Karwan. White Lies and Black Markets: Evading Metropolitan Authority in Colonial Suriname, 1650-1800 (Leiden, Brill, 2015).

Klooster, Wim. Illicit Riches: Dutch Trade in the Caribbean, 1648-1795 (Leiden, KITLV Press, 1998).

Schmidt, Benjamin. Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570-1670. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Van der Vinde, Lea et al., ed. Bewongen beeld: op zoek naar Johan Maurits/Shifting Image: In Search of Johan Maurits. The Hague and Zwolle: Mauritshuis with Waanders Publishers, 2019.

Books & essays:

Da Costa Kauffman, Thomas, and Michael North, eds. Mediating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014.

Grasskamp, Anna and Monica Juneja. EurAsian Matters: China, Europe, and the Transcultural Object, 1600-1800. New York: Springer, 2018.

Hochstrasser, Julie Berger. “The Bones in Banda: Vision, Art, and Memory in Maluku,” https://wayback.archive-it.org/17874/20211028225403/https://apps.carleton.edu/kettering/hochstrasser/ 

Kehoe, Marsely L. “Dutch Batavia: Exposing the Hierarchy of the Dutch Colonial City.” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 7:1 (Winter 2015) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2015.7.1.3

Odell, Dawn. “‘Chinese’ Screens in the Dutch East Indies.” In Cross-Cross-Cultural Exchange and the Colonial Imaginary: Global Encounters via Southeast Asia. Edited H. Hazel Hahn, 107-30. Singapore: NUS Press, 2019.

Weststeijn, Thijs. “China, the Netherlands, Europe: Images, Interactions, Institutions and the Ideal of Global Cultural History.” In Foreign Devils and Philosophers. Cultural Encounters between the Chinese, the Dutch, and Other Europeans, 1500-1800, ed. Thijs Weststeijn, 1-23. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020.

Possible images to use in class:

Jacob Coeman, Pieter Cnoll, Cornelia van Nijenrode, their Daughters and Two Enslaved Servants, 1665, oil on canvas, 132 x 190.5cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Artists in Gujurat, India, Ewer, 1570-1620, wood overlaid with mother of pearl and fixed with brass pins, 23 x 21.6 x 11.4cm. Salem, Peabody Essex Museum.

Artists in China, Lacquer Room, before 1695, lacquered wood, 53 x 294.5 x 4cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Originally installed in the Frisian Stadtholder’s palace in Leeuwarden. Better images available in Jan van Campen’s publication: ‘Reduced to a heap of monstruous shivers and splinters’: Some Notes on Coromandel Lacquer in Europe in the 17th and 18th Centuries on JSTOR

Daniel Marot the Elder (designer) and Pierre Husson (publisher), Interior of a Porcelain Cabinet with Paintings and Vases, from Nouveaux Liure da Partements, published in 1703 or 1712, etching, 21.5 x 34.2cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Books & essays:

Grimmett, Kendra. “Stumbling along the Virtuous Path with Rubens’s Drunken Hercules.” Jaarboek de Zeventiende Eeuw (2020): 41-66. https://www.academia.edu/44232462/Stumbling_along_the_Virtuous_Path_with_Rubenss_Drunken_Hercules

Jones, Tanja L. Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts of Europe c. 1450-1700. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021.

Lyon, Vanessa J. Figuring Faith and Female Power in the Art of Rubens. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020.

Moffitt Peacock, Martha. Heroines, Harpies, and Housewives. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2020.

Moran, Sarah Joan and Amanda Pipkin, eds. Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500-1750. Boston–Leiden: Brill, 2019.

Sutton, Elizabeth, ed. Women Artists and Patrons in the Netherlands, 1500-1700. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019.

Vergara, Alejandro, ed. The Art of Clara Peeters. Madrid: Museo del Prado, 2016.

Frick Collection developed a series of interventions called “Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters” which juxtaposed works by NYC-based artists and 17th-century paintings in the Frick: https://www.frick.org/living_histories/salman_toor

Further bibliography on premodern women artists and patrons: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qciG2ndN2dOfg4KDgL9LwCOl8HUZP5liSKtwRcJ_Ah4/edit

Possible images to use in class:

Judith Leyster, Self-Portrait, ca. 1630, oil on canvas, 74.6 x 65.1 cm, Washington: National Gallery of Art

Rachel Ruysch: selection of paintings

Jacob van Campen, Jacob Jordaens, Gerard van Honthorst, Caesar van Everdingen, and others, Oranjezaal, 1648-1652. The Hague, Huis ten Bosch. Commissioned by Amalia van Solms-Braunfels.

Auz, Lucienne Dorrance. “Teaching an Interdisciplinary Art History and Disability Studies Course,” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 13.3 (2019): 323–44.

Barsch, Sebastian, Anne Klein, and Pieter Verstraete, eds. The Imperfect Historian. Disability Histories in Europe. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013.

Bikker, Jonathan. “Hendrick Avercamp. ‘The Mute of Kampen’.” In Hendrick Avercamp. Master of the Ice Scene. Edited by Pieter Roelofs: 11-22. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum 2009.

Canalis, Rinaldo F. and Ciavolella, Massimo, eds. Disease and Disability in Medieval and Early Modern Art and Literature. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021.

Dequeker, Jan, Fabry, Guy, and Vanopdenbosch, Ludo. “Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516): Paleopathology of the Medieval Disabled and its Relation to the Bone and Joint Decade 2000–2010,” The Israel Medical Association Journal 3 (2001): 864–71.

Pearson, Andrea. “Sensory Piety as Social Intervention in a Mechelen Besloten Hofje.” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 9.2 (Summer 2017), DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.2.1

“More than Meets the Eye: Conversation with Georgina Kleefe”: ​​https://www.nortonsimon.org/learn/watch-and-listen/videos-podcasts-and-lectures/audio-more-than-meets-the-eye-a-conversation-with-georgina-kleege/

A short documentary on the deaf painter Johannes Thopas by Rembrandthuis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8Po4mdlmFY 

Angelo Lo Conte & Barbara Kaminska, HNA Podcast Episode 6: Art History and Disability https://hnanews.org/podcast/

Possible images to use in class:

Pieter Aertsen, Christ Healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda, 1575, oil on panel, 56 x 75cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Follower of Hieronymus Bosch, Beggars and Cripples, ca. 1570, engraving, 30.3 x 21.9cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Parable of the Blind, 1568, distemper on linen canvas, 86 x 154 cm, Naples: Museo di Capodimonte

Hendrick Goltzius, Hendrick Goltzius, Goltzius’s Right Hand, 1588, brown pen on paper, 22.9 x 32.8cm, Haarlem, Teylers Museum

Paintings and drawings by deaf Dutch artists: Hendrick Avercamp, Johannes Thopas, Jan Jansz. de Stomme, Hans Verhagen de Stomme

Degroot, Dagomar. The Frigid Golden Age. Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018.

Jorink, Eric, Joanna Woodall, and Edward H. Wouk, eds. Humans and Other Animals. NKJ 71 (2021).

Metzger, Alexis. “Enjoying the Ice. Dutch Winter Landscapes, Weather, and Climate in the Golden Age, 17th Century.” Preprint, Climate of the Past (2020): 1-14. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2020-81.

Powell, Amy Knight. “Bruegel’s Dirty, Little Atoms.” In: Contamination and Purity in Early Modern Art and Architecture. Edited by Lauren Jacobi and Daniel Zolli, 207-242. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021.

Shaw, Lytle. New Grounds for Dutch Landscape. OEI Editör, 2021. See also the review and discussion around the book by Christopher Heuer: https://brooklynrail.org/2022/05/art/New-Grounds-for-Dutch-Landscape?fbclid=IwAR1IKIEwMQGIT9TobEXKqMf1oBkpgY2rHGu-Q6mdqsJnqXtHTQBGd5LPENc

“Sky and Sea: Understanding Climate Resilience and Innovation through Dutch Art”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4ItCKCGHPc&list=PLlaGkbYsw6cf0Xl91jaVoWGBmNRMpJpuN

Weststeijn, Thijs. “Heritage at sea. Must we simply accept the loss of beloved buildings and cities to the floods and rising seas of the climate crisis?” Aeon (Oct. 2021): https://aeon.co/essays/must-we-accept-the-loss-of-beloved-heritage-to-the-climate-crisis