ARTH 3419 - Rembrandt and His Circle: Technologies of Vision

(crosslisted) VISST 3419
(HB) (CA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

L. Pincus.

The variety of visual experience in 17th-century Dutch art is legion: still life, portraiture, self-portraiture, landscape, cityscape, genre, and architectural painting. New scientific technologies and trade routes, a robust economy, and bustling commerce also place their marks on the cultural and artistic production in the Netherlands. In this course, we will dip into these multiple facets of the Dutch scene, but in critical rather than a general way, in order to assess Dutch “technologies of vision” in picturing and describing their world. Also important will be our inquiry into the context of Dutch art production: the social, economic, and political factors that made the Dutch art market so unusually vital.