Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland
Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland
Out of Print
Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland is the first sustained study to offer an account of the rise of scientific naturalism in Dutch art and the simultaneous interest in fantastic imagery, representations of witches in particular. Claudia Swan uses the work of artist Jacques de Gheyn II (1565–1629) to explore the reciprocity between visual representation and early modern descriptive science, and of the parallel demonological theories of the human imagination and artistic theories of creation. This book is the first to examine De Gheyn's work in the context of cultural history and image theory.
- The first critical study of de Gheyn's work
- Addresses the fascinating relationships among art, science, and witchcraft
- Ample illustrations of de Gheyn's work, including several color plates
Reviews & endorsements
'Claudia Swan's study … hinges on two aesthetic ingredients - his extravagant use of imagery, especially as it relates to witchcraft, and his scientific naturalism.' The Times Literary Supplement
'Swan's study has successfully marked out this critical area for further research. It has also brought a new level of nuance and sophistication to the way we read images of witchcraft. … most of all, the study has provided us with rich new insight into the curious and also fascinating imagery of Jacques de Gheyn, and the ways it bridges and brings together the worlds of naturalism and fantasy, of mimesis and imagination.' Sehepunkte
Product details
July 2005Hardback
9780521826747
272 pages
254 × 198 × 28 mm
0.85kg
75 b/w illus.
Unavailable - out of print April 2010
Table of Contents
- Part I. Jacques de Gheyn II and the Representation of the Natural World:
- 1. De Gheyn in Leiden: approximating nature
- 2. Making nature: the Lugt album
- 3. Patterns of experience, pictures of nature
- Part II. Unnatural Sights: Witchcraft and Phantasia:
- 4. The wherewithal of de Gheyn's witches
- 5. Seeing witches: thinking about witchcraft in the Netherlands ca. 1600
- 6. Trouble in the Ventricles: Phantasia, melancholy, witchcraft.
