Peasant Scenes and Landscapes: The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market

Author:   Larry Silver
Publisher:   University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN:  

9780812238686


Pages:   392
Publication Date:   08 February 2006
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained


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Peasant Scenes and Landscapes: The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market


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Overview

Modern viewers take for granted the pictorial conventions present in easel paintings and engraved prints of such subjects as landscapes or peasants. These generic subjects and their representational conventions, however, have their own origins and early histories. In sixteenth-century Antwerp, painting and the emerging new medium of engraving began to depart from traditional visual culture, which had been defined primarily by wall paintings, altarpieces, and portraits of the elite. New genres and new media arose simultaneously in this volatile commercial and financial capital of Europe, home to the first open art market near the city Bourse. The new pictorial subjects emerged first as hybrid images, dominated by religious themes but also including elements that later became pictorial categories in their own right: landscapes, food markets, peasants at work and play, and still-life compositions. In addition to being the place of the origin and evolution of these genres, the Antwerp art market gave rise to the concept of artistic identity, in which favorite forms and favorite themes by an individual artist gained consumer recognition. In Peasant Scenes and Landscapes, Larry Silver examines the emergence of pictorial kinds-scenes of taverns and markets, landscapes and peasants-and charts their evolution as genres from initial hybrids to more conventionalized artistic formulas. The relationship of these new genres and their favorite themes reflect a burgeoning urbanism and capitalism in Antwerp, and Silver analyzes how pictorial genres and the Antwerp marketplace fostered the development of what has come to be known as ""signature"" artistic style. By examining Bosch and Bruegel, together with their imitators, he focuses on pictorial innovation as well as the marketing of individual styles, attending particularly to the growing practice of artists signing their works. In addition, he argues that consumer interest in the style of individual artists reinforced another phenomenon of the later sixteenth century: art collecting. While today we take such typical artistic formulas as commonplace, along with their frequent use of identifying signatures (a Rothko, a Pollock), Peasant Scenes and Landscapes shows how these developed simultaneously in the commercial world of early modern Antwerp.

Full Product Details

Author:   Larry Silver
Publisher:   University of Pennsylvania Press
Imprint:   University of Pennsylvania Press
Dimensions:   Width: 17.80cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 25.40cm
Weight:   1.039kg
ISBN:  

9780812238686


ISBN 10:   0812238680
Pages:   392
Publication Date:   08 February 2006
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Preface 1. Introduction: Cultural Selection and the Origin of Pictorial Species 2. Antwerp as a Cultural System 3. Town and Country: Painted Worlds of Early Landscapes 4. Money Matters 5. Kitchens and Markets 6. Labor and Leisure: The Peasant 7. Second Bosch: Family Resemblance and the Marketing of Art 8. Descent from Bruegel I: From Flanders to Holland 9. Descent from Bruegel II: Flemish Friends and Family 10. Trickle-Down Genres: The Curious Cases of Flowers and Seascapes 11. Conclusions: Value and Values in the Capital of Capitalism Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

Reviews

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2006 Encompassing a complex and varied set of methodologies, economic histories of the arts have framed compelling new questions around the activities of artists, patrons, and dealers as cultural agents that tend to locate meaning in behavior rather than visuality. Larry Silver's entree into the field not only builds on his own earlier explorations but also significantly reorients the kinds of questions asked and, by extension, the nature of the answers derived from the study of markets. -CAA Reviews Grandly conceived and richly rewarding... By integrating current critical methodologies-semiotics, rhetoric, economic theory-into the examination of sixteenth-century painting in Antwerp, Silver's study has significant and far-reaching application and relevance to other disciplines, notably history and literary criticism. -Choice A rich and stimulating essay on the symbiotic relationship between artistic development and the market at the beginning of the modern era... A valuable and supremely well informed contribution to our knowledge of both the formation of taste and the evolution of pictorial genres in early modern Europe. -Sixteenth Century Journal


Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2006 Encompassing a complex and varied set of methodologies, economic histories of the arts have framed compelling new questions around the activities of artists, patrons, and dealers as cultural agents that tend to locate meaning in behavior rather than visuality. Larry Silver's entree into the field not only builds on his own earlier explorations but also significantly reorients the kinds of questions asked and, by extension, the nature of the answers derived from the study of markets. -CAA Reviews Grandly conceived and richly rewarding... By integrating current critical methodologies-semiotics, rhetoric, economic theory-into the examination of sixteenth-century painting in Antwerp, Silver's study has significant and far-reaching application and relevance to other disciplines, notably history and literary criticism. -Choice A rich and stimulating essay on the symbiotic relationship between artistic development and the market at the beginning of the modern era... A valuable and supremely well informed contribution to our knowledge of both the formation of taste and the evolution of pictorial genres in early modern Europe. -Sixteenth Century Journal


Encompassing a complex and varied set of methodologies, economic histories of the arts have framed compelling new questions around the activities of artists, patrons, and dealers as cultural agents that tend to locate meaning in behavior rather than visuality. Larry Silver's entree into the field not only builds on his own earlier explorations but also significantly reorients the kinds of questions asked and, by extension, the nature of the answers derived from the study of markets. --CAA Reviews Grandly conceived and richly rewarding... By integrating current critical methodologies--semiotics, rhetoric, economic theory--into the examination of sixteenth-century painting in Antwerp, Silver's study has significant and far-reaching application and relevance to other disciplines, notably history and literary criticism. --Choice


Author Information

Larry Silver is Farquhar Professor of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of many books, including Rembrandt and Art in History.

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