Slavery and the Invention of Dutch Art

By: Caroline Fowler

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Synopsis: In Slavery and the Invention of Dutch Art, Caroline Fowler examines the fundamental role of the transatlantic slave trade in the production and evolution of seventeenth-century Dutch art. Whereas the sixteenth-century image debates in Europe engaged with crises around the representation of divinity, Fowler argues that the rise of the transatlantic slave trade created a visual field of uncertainty around picturing the transformation of life into property. Fowler demonstrates how the emergence of landscape, maritime, and botanical painting were deeply intertwined with slavery’s economic expansion. Moreover, she considers how the development of one of the first art markets was inextricable from the trade in human lives as chattel property. Reading seventeenth-century legal theory, natural history, inventories, and political pamphlets alongside contemporary poetry, theory, and philosophy from Black feminism and the African diaspora, Fowler demonstrates that ideas about property, personhood, and citizenship were central to the oeuvres of artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Hercules Segers, Frans Post, Johannes Vermeer, and Maria Sibylla Merian and therefore inescapably within slavery’s grasp.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:: 9781478031321
Related ISBNs:: 9781478028093
Publisher:: Duke University Press
Date of Addition:: 01/07/25
Copyrighted By:: DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: History, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Politics and Government
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.