History

In the family scrapbook compiled by Gesina ter Borch (1633-1690), there is a remarkable drawing of an Iranian youth. Art-historical and scientific research has revealed that although the drawing has areas of later overpainting, there is an original Safavid miniature from the sixteen-fifties or sixties underneath them. It is likely that Gesina herself was responsible for these overpaints, when she mounted the badly damaged miniature in her album at some time between 1660 and 1680. Interestingly, aside from the blackened background and the colourful feather and sashes she added, she attempted to follow the original Iranian style in her restorations. The original was made in the sixteen-fifties or sixties by a painter of the Isfahan School, who probably took his inspiration from an older composition by the famous court artist, Riza Abbasi. The article goes on to show that Riza Abbasi’s work was known in the Dutch Republic before then. In 1623 the junior merchant Niclaes Hem travelled t...

A scrapbook compiled between 1660 and 1687 by Gesina ter Borch (1631–1690), a female artist from the small town of Zwolle in the Netherlands, contains an intriguing painting on paper of a full-length portrait of a young Iranian. Although the figure wears the attributes in vogue at the Safavid court of Isfahan, certain elements seem rather incongruous and peculiar. The general composition appears static and rigid, an impression reinforced by an unusual black painted background. Stylistic differences within the painting were also observed, hinting at alterations to the original painting. To investigate the history of the painting and to reconstruct the original composition and identify the later additions, perhaps made by Gesina herself, the painting was examined with different imaging and analytic techniques available at the Conservation and Science Department of the Rijksmuseum. This allowed the research team to discriminate between pigments used for the original composition and pig...

En France, le peintre neerlandais Willem de Famars Testas (1834-1896) est surtout connu pour sa participation a une caravane de peintres qui voyagea en Orient sous la conduite de Jean-Leon Gerome en 1868. Une exposition itinerante a ete consacree a ce voyage d’artistes en 19931. Toutefois, nous etudierons ici un voyage en Egypte que Testas effectua en 1858-1860 en tant que membre d’une expedition dirigee par l’egyptologue francais Emile Prisse d’Avennes, qui proceda au releve de monuments tant pharaoniques qu’islamiques. L’expedition devait fournir matiere a la publication de deux ouvrages illustres, l’un sur l’art pharaonique (Histoire de l’art egyptien), l’autre sur l’art arabe (L’Art arabe). Cette etude se concentre sur le sejour de Testas au Caire et la facon dont il a documente les monuments arabes de cette ville. Quelle fut la contribution de Testas a l’expedition de Prisse et au recueil illustre L’Art arabe ? Et enfin, dans quelle mesure ce voyage a-t-il influence la suite de...

This article I will show how the image Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, III Duke of Alba (1507-1582) portrayed by Netherlandish propagandists during the Dutch Revolt corresponds with older existing Netherlandish stereotypes of the Spanish people in general. The duke of Alva is widely criticized for his Pride, a sin which most clearly visible in the statue of himself which the duke erected in Antwerp in 1571. The connection between Alva and the vice of Pride is used over and over again in Dutch anti-Spanish propaganda during Alva’s reign in the Netherlands but also remains a popular theme well into the seventeenth, eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries. I will illustrate this popularity with some examples of less well-known Dutch prints from these periods dealing with the duke of Alva. Finally I will show how the duke of Alva’s name still lives on in modern day Dutch language.