Ambitious Antiquities, Famous Forebears

Constructions of a Glorious Past in the Early Modern Netherlands and in Europe
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-90-04-36139-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 307/41, 438 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 885 g

Reihe: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History / Brill's Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History

This monograph studies the constructions of ‘impressive’ historical descent manufactured to create ‘national’, regional, or local antiquities in early modern Europe (1500-1700), especially the Netherlands. This was a period characterised by important political changes and therefore by an increased need for legitimation; a need which was met using historical claims. Literature, scholarship, art and architecture were pivotal media that were used to furnish evidence of the impressively old lineage of states, regions or families. These claims related not only to Classical antiquity (in the generally-known sense) but also to other periods that were regarded as periods of antiquity, such as the chivalric age. The authors of this volume analyse these intriguing early modern constructions of appropriate “antiquities” and investigate the ways in which they were applied in political, intellectual and artistic contexts in Europe, especially in the Northern Low Countries.

This book is a revised and augmented translation of Oudheid als ambitie: De zoektocht naar een passend verleden, 1400–1700 (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2017).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Enenkel, Karl A E

Ottenheym, Konrad Adriaan

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: Renaissance, Manierismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Geschichte der Architektur, Baugeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

Part 1: Thinking about the Antiquities of Europe

1 Antiquity, a Source of Power and Prestige: the Competition for Antiquities in Early Modern Europe

2 Supposed Ancestors

3 The Origin Legends of the European Nations

4 What Is Antiquity? The Early Modern Chronology of History

5 A Malleable Past: On ‘Proof’, Interpretations, Errors and Falsifications

Part 2: Humanists and Antiquities in the Northern Low Countries

6 The Batavians as Ancestors in Early Dutch Humanism: Erasmus, Aurelius and Geldenhouwer

7 Attempts to Find the Origins of Architecture in the Northern Low Countries: On the Romans, Batavians and Giants

Part 3: The Chivalric Past of the Dutch Republic

8 From Chivalric Family Tree to ‘National’ Gallery: the Portrait Series of the Counts of Holland, c. 1490–1650

9 Living as Befits a Knight: New Castles in Seventeenth-Century Holland

10 The Mediaeval Prestige of Dutch Cities

Conclusion

Notes

List of Figures

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Karl A.E. Enenkel is Professor of Medieval Latin and Neo-Latin at the University of Münster. Previously he was Professor of Neo-Latin at the University of Leiden. He has published widely on international Humanism, early modern culture, paratexts, literary genres 1300-1600, Neo-Latin emblems, word and image relationships, and the history of scholarship and science.

Konrad A. Ottenheym is Professor of Architectural History at Utrecht University. His publications are focused on Dutch architecture and architectural theory of the early modern period with a special attention to its relationships with other European regions.