1st Edition

The Sublime in the Visual Culture of the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic

By Stijn Bussels, Bram Van Oostveldt Copyright 2024
208 Pages 25 Color & 55 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

208 Pages 25 Color & 55 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Contrary to what Kant believed about the Dutch (and their visual culture) as “being of an orderly and diligent position” and thus having no feeling for the sublime, this book argues that the sublime played an important role in seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture. By looking at different visualizations of exceptional heights, divine presence, political grandeur, extreme violence, and... Read more

Introduction  Part 1  1. Hupsos: Franciscus Junius and the Reception of On the Sublime  2. Sublimis and le merveilleux: Dramatizing, Performing, and Picturing Phaethon’s Fall  Part 2  3. Vreese Godts: The Sublime and the Disappearance of God  4. Sublime Landscapes and Seascapes  Part 3  5. Magnificence: The Politics of Architecture  6. The Medusean Gaze: Terror and the Sublime  7. Wonder by Touch  Conclusion

Biography

Stijn P.M. Bussels is Professor of Art History and Head of the Department of Art History at Leiden University Centre of the Arts in Society.

Bram Van Oostveldt is Associate Professor at the Department of Art, Music and Theatre Studies at Ghent University.

"Bussels and Van Oostveldt convincingly characterize how the sublime could manifest in the Dutch Republic, providing a real or imagined visual experience for their viewers. The authors provide a strong case for adding the sublime into the lexicon for analyzing Dutch visual culture."

-- Renaissance Quarterly

"“[This book] consider[s] how viewers regard art works, both visually and through haptic experience; and how viewers respond, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, through related ideas."

--  Religion and the Arts (v.28), Brill.com

"[W]hether engaging with the tension between the sublime and religion (particularly the fear instilled by contact with the divine), or magnificence in architecture or the landscape, the authors carefully establish an analytical framework that relies on transmediality and consider a wide range of textual sources in order to generate new perspectives on the sublime."

-- Similious (v. 46)