Jacob Campo Weyermans Comments on the Customs and Manners of His Time: A Merry Moralist (Brills Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 72)

The nucleus of Jacob Campo Weyerman's (1677-1747) literary oeuvre is the weekly periodical he published under varying titles from 1720 to the end of his life. He was its sole contributor and editor. This book consists of key excerpts supplemented by a scholarly apparatus that contextualizes Weyerman's witty and satirical comments on the customs and manners of his cocitizens. His moralizing observations constitute a mirror of Dutch society in the second quarter of the eighteenth century in the decades before new socio-cultural paradigms associated with the Enlightenment and Romanticism took hold. Weyerman was the author and editor of a satirical weekly periodical of which two volumes are analysed here. They are a primary source on the customs and manners of urbanised Western Europe, especially Holland, in the early eighteenth century. Weyerman's collection of artists' biographies (1729) is exceptional for three reasons. Firstly, he includes a great number of painters not mentioned elsewhere. Secondly, he does not limit his selection to good artists only; he also discusses failed painters and their abortive careers. Thirdly, he writes as an art critic who does not hesitate to pass judgments, sometimes severe, on his chosen subjects.In the process, Weyerman provides much information on the social and economic circumstances of art production. He found that a bohemian lifestyle was pernicious to a painter's career, and argued that artists should live and think as merchants. In addition to analyzing Weyerman's art critical terminology and his ideas on art theory, De Vries includes translations of two full chapters along with the original Dutch Contents Preface List of Illustrations Introduction 1 Career 2 Sources 3 Satire 4 Style 5 Urban Culture 6 Reputation 7 Conclusion Chapter 1 An Adventurous Eyewitness 1 Telling the Truth with a Smile 2 Self Portrait of a Man-about-Town Chapter 2 A Country and Its Inhabitants 1 National Identity 2 A Princely Republic 3 The English 4 The Merchant 5 Nobility 6 Noble Vices 7 Harmful Luxuries Chapter 3 Variations on the Seventh Commandment 1 Love, Adoration, and Contempt 2 The Undisciplined 3 The Libertines 4 Marriage 5 The Outsiders Chapter 4 A Civilised People 1 Humanity and Culture 2 Science 3 Dangerous Professions 4 Literature 5 Theatre Chapter 5 Knowing and Believing 1 Philosophy and Religion 2 The Pope 3 Monks and Nuns 4 The Jesuits 5 Religious Superstition 6 Secular Superstition Epilogue Bibliography Index of Persons Index of Places