For the first time, the collections of artists and artisans in Antwerp are investigated systematically. This yields new results about the connection between making and collecting: between innovation and appreciation.
Paintings, drawings, prints, maps, jewels, gems, statuettes, medals, exotica, antiquities, dried animals, shells, corals, and scientific instruments. All these objects and more were on display in collectors’ cabinets in Early Modern Antwerp. This book tells the story of the collections of artists and artisans, who stood at the centre of and shaped the city’s cultural life. In their double roles as maker-collectors, they put a strong mark on the culture of collecting.
The culture of collecting was inextricably linked to changing conceptions of the material world, which went hand in hand with the emergence of new pictorial genres and the increasing dominance of forms of knowledge based on objects and material evidence. This book traces the important role of Antwerp artists and artisans in this culture of art and knowledge. It is a story about friendship and networks; about new forms of connoisseurship; and about innovation and appreciation.
Marlise Rijks (1986) is a postdoc researcher at Ghent University, specialized in art, science, and technology of the Early Modern period. She is currently working on the project Printing Images in the Early Modern Low Countries. Patents, Copyrights, and the Separation of Art and Technology.