Table Of ContentTHIJS WESTSTEIJN [ ]
ED.
The Universal Art of
Samuel van Hoogstraten
(1627-1678)
Painter, Writer, and Courtier
Amsterdam University Press
amsterdam studies in the dutch golden age
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The Universal arT of samUel van hoogsTraTen 2
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Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age
editorial Board
h. Perry Chapman, University of Delaware
lia van gemert, Universiteit van amsterdam
Benjamin J. Kaplan, University College london
henk van nierop, Universiteit van amsterdam
eric Jan sluijter, Universiteit van amsterdam
marc van vaeck, Katholieke Universiteit leuven
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The UniverSAl ArT of
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SAmUel vAn hooGSTrATen
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(1627-1678)
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Painter, Writer, and Courtier
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Edited by Thijs Weststeijn
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Amsterdam University Press
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founded in 2000 as part of the faculty of humanities of the University of amsterdam (Uva), the am-
sterdam Centre for study of the golden age (Amsterdams Centrum voor de Studie van de Gouden Eeuw)
aims to promote the history and culture of the Dutch republic during the ‘long’ seventeenth century
(c. 1560-1720). The Centre’s publications provide an insight into lively diversity and continuing relevance of
the Dutch golden age. They offer original studies on a wide variety of topics, ranging from rembrandt
to vondel, from Beeldenstorm (iconoclastic fury) to Ware Vrijheid (True freedom) and from Batavia to new
amsterdam. Politics, religion, culture, economics, expansion and warfare all come together in the Centre’s
interdisciplinary setting.
editorial control is in the hands of international scholars specialised in seventeenth-century history, art and
literature. for more information see www.aup.nl/goudeneeuw or http://cf.uba.uva.nl/goudeneeuw/.
Cover illustration: samuel van hoogstraten (attr.), Young Man in a Turban, canvas, 65 x 50 cm, Qatar,
Private royal Collection
The publication of this book has been made possible by: stichting Charema, fonds voor geschiedenis en
Kunst; J.e. Jurriaanse stichting; m.a.o.C. gravin van Bylandt stichting; stichting familie van hoog-
straten; The netherlands organisation for scientific research (nWo); and the amsterdam Centre for
Cultural heritage and identity.
Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, amsterdam
lay-out: heymans & vanhove, goes
lithography: BfC graphics & design bv, amersfoort, the netherlands.
amsterdam University press english-language titles are distributed in the Us and Canada by the Univer-
sity of Chicago Press.
isbn 978 90 8964 523 4
e-isbn 978 90 4851 859 3 (pdf)
e-isbn 978 90 4851 860 9 (ePub)
nur 642
© m.a. Weststeijn / amsterdam University Press, amsterdam 2013
all rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may
be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the
copyright owner and the author of the book.
every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book.
nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.
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Contents 3
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Preface approaches to a multifaceted master 7 6
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Prolog samuel van hoogstraten and the golden age of Dutch art, literature, 8
and science: The Present Book and future research 21 9
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van hoogstraten’s Theory of Theory of art 11
jan blanc 35 12
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Paradoxical Passages: The Work of framing in the art 14
of samuel van hoogstraten 15
celeste brusati 53 16
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The Young samuel van hoogstraten, Corrected by rembrandt 18
ben broos 77 19
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“Zwierich van sprong”: samuel van hoogstraten’s night Watch 21
paul taylor 97 22
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samuel van hoogstraten’s Personal letter-rack Paintings: 24
Tributes with a message 25
michiel roscam abbing 115 26
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a Pledge of marital Domestic Bliss: samuel van hoogstraten’s 28
Perspective Box in the national gallery, london 29
herman colenbrander 139 30
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van hoogstraten’s success in Britain 32
fatma yalcin 161 33
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samuel van hoogstraten, the first Dutch novelist? 35
thijs weststeijn 183 36
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great respect and Complete Bafflement: arnold houbraken’s 38
mixed opinion of samuel van hoogstraten 39
hendrik j. horn 209 40
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Appendix arnold houbraken’s references to samuel van hoogstraten
and his ‘introduction to the academy of Painting’
edited and translated by hendrik j. horn 241
Bibliography 259
List of Illustrations 279
About the authors 285
Index 289
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PrefACe 5
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Approaches to a Multifaceted Master
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samuel van hoogstraten (1627-1678) was one of the most distinguished of european artists, ac- 18
cording to the swiss abbot gabriel Buzlin (1599-1681). Buzlin included him in a list of 166 paint- 19
ers of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, Pictorum Europae praecipuorum nomina (c.1664).1 20
This judgment may have been colored by the abbot’s own collection: his Weingarten monastery 21
contained van hoogstraten’s only full-fledged altarpiece, The Vision of Saint Benedict.2 and later 22
scholars did not share his praise of the self-styled ‘painter of his holy imperial majesty [ferdi- 23
nand iii]’.3 The literary historian Peter schull, writing in 1833, asserted that van hoogstraten’s 24
poetic qualities greatly surpassed his talents in the visual arts.4 even nowadays, the painter is 25
probably better known for a set of cumulative factors rather than for the quality of his figurative 26
works: as one of rembrandt’s pupils, as a key author in the seventeenth-century theory of art, 27
and as a social climber who achieved success through a combination of prolific painting, poetry, 28
optical experiments, and european travels. 29
as the discipline of art history has increasingly highlighted the socio-economic context of 30
paintings and other interdisciplinary issues, scholarly interest in van hoogstraten’s multifaceted 31
career has caused his position to shift from that of a marginal figure in rembrandt’s studio to 32
someone central to the art of the Dutch golden age. in the last two decades, not only museums 33
and departments of art history but also historians of literature, science, and even the new media 34
have increasingly paid attention to the Dordrecht master. The closing of the millennium pro- 35
duced six monographs about the artist and his work, most of which consist of more pages than 36
his own treatise on painting.5 37
The present book, resulting from a symposium in amsterdam in 2009, is the first collec- 38
tive effort addressing samuel van hoogstraten. nine scholars explore different facets of his life 39
and work: his theoretical treatise, artistic terminology, still life and genre paintings, perspective 40
boxes, as well as his travels, novels, and reputation. The different vantage points extend the analy- 41
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preface the universal art of samuel van hoogstraten
sis to van hoogstraten’s teacher, rembrandt, as well as his own best-known student, arnold
houbraken, and other members of the van hoogstraten family. furthermore, not only does
the present book confront divergent scholarly backgrounds, it is also the first time that some of
the authors have published their work in english, coming originally from Dutch, german, and
french academic traditions.
The present anthology thus intends to do justice to the works of, in his own words, the
‘universal master’ from Dordrecht (universeel of algemeen meester).6 echoing a sentiment formu-
lated most cogently by leonardo da vinci, who may have served as his example especially when
pairing artistic and scientific interests, van hoogstraten advises his readers to practice ‘universal
art’ or even ‘universal knowledge’ (algemeene wetenschap).7 This ideal not only joins painting to
poetry. his treatise enumerates the manifold particulars of the visible world that are the object
of the painter’s knowledge. van hoogstraten’s statement that an artist’s ambition should know
no limits within the sublunar realm responds to the ideal of the polymath current in the scholar-
ship of his day. he refers to the Dutch republic’s foremost Universalgelehrter, gerard vossius,
to argue that:
it is harmful to think … that one would not be able to understand everything: because
is there anything that can satisfy our mind completely …? Put so much science in it and
fill it with so much knowledge of things as you can, it will only grow in desire and the
more it holds, the more it seeks, being given neither a headache nor bad stomach by
this. our cupboards, says Cassiodoros, cannot hold more once they are filled: but this
treasure-house is never overloaded. When it has taken in very much already, it still yawns
constantly after more, all the more so, says Cicero, since all liberal arts have a common
linkage and are joined together as if through a kind of parentage.8
Do we hear an echo here of the young samuel who set out, after being trained in rembrandt’s
studio with its encyclopaedic collection of natural and artificial curiosities, to see the world?
Where are we now: Van Hoogstraten’s writings
in 1924, the historian of european art theory Julius von schlosser leveled his criticism at van
hoogstraten’s writings, concluding that the Dutch republic was ‘vastly uncommunicative in its
main utterances’: its masters ‘painted diligently in their studios; they did not talk, and any literary
aspirations were alien to them’. The german scholar’s verdict illustrates how van hoogstraten’s
treatise, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst, anders de zichtbaere werelt (introduction to
the academy of Painting, or the visible World, 1678), played a role in the still-topical division of
the history of art into national schools that would reflect specific qualities. as late as the 1980s,
svetlana alpers quoted from the Inleyding to argue for the ‘descriptive’ essence of Dutch art –
leaning towards science rather than literature – in contrast to the ‘narrative’ italian one.9 eddy de
Jongh, on the other hand, found the treatise a useful source to argue for the contrary thesis: the
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the universal art of samuel van hoogstraten preface
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presence of disguised symbolism in Dutch painting.10 van hoogstraten’s book, which Jan em- 2
mens described as a ‘not uncongenial amalgam’ of different viewpoints, may therefore be inter- 3
preted as reflecting contradictions inherent to the Dutch golden age itself. (The most profound 4
paradox, perhaps, was expressed in those still lifes that focus on the most ephemeral aspects such 5
as reflections and surface qualities, relishing the pleasing appearance of the visible world while at 6
the same time highlighting its transience).11 7
in any case, the variety of views expressed in this treatise has made possible four different 8
readings: Celeste Brusati (1995) has explored how the Inleyding showcased van hoogstraten’s ar- 9
tifice in the service of his personal, social ambitions. hans-Jörg Czech (2002), by contrast, high- 10
lighted the book’s more general aim of founding the art of painting on international theoretical 11
standards after the Dutch art market’s collapse following the Rampjaar (‘disaster year’) of 1672. 12
Jan Blanc (2008) has called attention to the profoundly practical import of van hoogstraten’s 13
theory, while the most recent analysis (2008) extended to the treatise’s rhetorical premises.12 14
The possibility of different views towards van hoogstraten’s art theory highlights pre- 15
cisely that the author took the project of writing a comprehensive theory of art more seriously 16
than his Dutch contemporaries. he aimed at an encyclopedic work: his ‘visible world’ – the 17
treatise’s subtitle – in book form is conceived as a microcosm. each chapter is associated with one 18
of the nine muses and one of the planets, governing all visible things, the works of nature and 19
man.13 The treatise reflects not only his experiences with rembrandt in amsterdam but also his 20
work in germany, vienna, rome, and london. What is more, compared to his colleagues in the 21
netherlands and elsewhere, van hoogstraten was a much more avid reader. as the data collected 22
by Blanc have revealed, the Inleyding draws from more than 130 different literary sources, while 23
other authors of painting treatises such as Karel van mander, Joachim von sandrart, and gerard 24
de lairesse used only two or three dozen. few works in the european tradition of art theory 25
refer to a similarly broad range of literature as the Inleyding, from drama and poetry to moral 26
philosophy, history of the church, travelogues from the far east and the new World, and texts 27
about archaeology, law, gemstones, and anglo-saxon history – many facets which still remain to 28
be explored.14 29
The master’s encyclopedic ambitions extended to practical knowledge, which explains 30
the book’s enduring capacity to yield information about painting technique and style: ernst van 31
de Wetering’s most recent work on rembrandt’s art theory, in A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings 32
(2011), continues to use van hoogstraten as its main source, while Paul Taylor’s and Ulrike Kern’s 33
analyses of individual stylistic concepts also depend on the Inleyding.15 in effect, the present book 34
proves the treatise’s continuing topicality as all contributions derive theoretical and practical 35
information from it. 36
Despite the Inleyding’s display of erudition, how much of van hoogstraten’s ideas were 37
based on more than superficial literacy remains a moot point – whether he went to Dordrecht’s 38
latin school, for instance, is unclear. an open question in this respect (broached by michiel 39
roscam abbing in 1993 and again by Czech) relates to the treatise’s projected second volume, 40
De onzichtbaere werelt (The invisible World), which may suggest that the painter’s interest in 41
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