Netherlandish Culture of the Sixteenth Century: Urban Perspectives (Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800)) (Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800), 41)

A selection of essays by an international group of historians and art historians on the rich urban culture of the sixteenth-century Low Countries. The authors of this volume examine various fields of cultural discourse in the Netherlands of the sixteenth century: the political, commercial, religious, artistic, and sensory domains, and less obviously metaphysical properties like time and space. What defined the Low Countries were not its borders and its territories but its cities, and their economies dominated political relations. A dense network of large cities and small towns developed hand in hand with a broad range of textile and luxury industries. In Antwerp, culture was commerce: its art and printing industries catered to much of the Western world and, at the same time, carved a confident self-image celebrating the liberal arts as a means of social and self-improvement. Antwerp is omnipresent in this book, with essays on its painting, printing, politics, and public festivals. But other cities such as Bruges, Leuven, and Leiden also figure prominently. It was precisely the interconnectedness of urban centers, large, middle and small, rather than their autonomous character, that defined civic culture in the Low Countries. Among the topics treated are differing notions of urban topography, the dialogue between city and court, issues of censorship, and the sensory and psychological response to texts and images Table of ContentsE. M. Kavaler & A.-L. Van Bruaene, IntroductionSpace & TimeJ. De Rock, From Generic Image to Individualized Portrait. The Pictorial City View in the Sixteenth-Century Low CountriesE. M. Kavaler, Mapping Time. The Netherlandish Carved Altarpiece in the Early Sixteenth CenturyS. Mareel, Making a Room of One's Own. Place, Space, and Literary Performance in Sixteenth-Century BrugesGuilds & Artistic IdentitiesR. Adam, Living and Printing in Antwerp in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries. A Social EnquiryA. Glover, What Constitutes Sculpture? The Guild Dispute of 1544 over the Saint Gertrude Choir Stalls in LeuvenK. De Jonge, Tales of the City. The Image of the Netherlandish Artist in the Sixteenth CenturyDialogues between City and CourtE. Neumann, Inventing Europe in Antwerp's 1520 Entry for Charles V. An Erasmian Allegory in the Face of Global EmpireS. Bussels & B. Van Oostveldt, 'Restored Behaviour' and the Performance of the City Maiden in Joyous Entries into AntwerpV. Soen, Habsburg Political Culture and Antwerp Defiant. Pacification Strategies of Governors-General during the Dutch Revolt (1566-1586)O. Horbatsch, Printing the Female Ruler. Nicolas Hogenberg's Death of Margaret of Austria (1531)The Poetics of History and MythologyM. A. Bass, Batavia, the New World, and the Origins of Humankind in Jan Mostaert's Eve and Four ChildrenG. Fiorenza, Frans Floris and the Poetics of Mythological Painting in AntwerpT. H. Uchacz, Mars, Venus, and Vulcan. Equivocal Erotics and Art in Sixteenth-Century AntwerpLiterary Practices: License and its LimitsD. E. H. De Boer, Fun, Greed, and Popular Culture. Lotteries and Lottery-Rhymes as a Mirror of the Cultural Legacy of the Low Countries' 'Long Sixteenth Century'A.-L. Van Bruaene, State of Play. Rhetorician Drama and the Ambiguities of Censorship in the Early Modern Low CountriesCognitive and Affective StrategiesH. Roodenburg, Continuities or Discontinuities? Exploring Affective Piety in the Sixteenth-Century Low CountriesK. Jonckheere, The Timanthes Effect. Another Note on the Historical Explanation of PicturesBeyond the Low CountriesK. Ottenheym, A Missing Link? Sixteenth-Century Protestant Basilicas by Netherlandish Architects outside the Low CountriesN. Lamal & H. Cools, An Italian Voice on the Dutch Revolt. The Work of Francesco Lanario in a European Perspective