Millions of paintings were produced in the Dutch Republic. The works that we know and see in museums today constitute only the tip of the iceberg -- the top-quality part. But what else was painted? This book explores the low-quality end of the seventeenth-century art market and outlines the significance of that production in the genre of history paintings, which in traditional art historical studies, is usually linked to high prices, famous painters, and elite buyers. Angela Jager analyses the producers, suppliers, and consumers active in this segment to gain insight into this enormous market for cheap history paintings. What did the supply consist of in terms of quantity, quality, price, and subject? Who produced all these works and which production methods did these painters employ? Who distributed these paintings, to whom, and which strategies were used to market them? Who bought these paintings, and why?

Historians and art historians provide a critique of existing methodologies and an interdisciplinary inquiry into seventeenth-century Dutch art and culture.

An illustrated scholarly analysis of the art and the cultural interpretations of the Flemish Primitives.

In the mid- to late-seventeenth century, a number of successful Dutch painters created a novel kind of genre painting using restricted sets of stock motifs. Focusing on Gerrit Dou, Gerard ter Borch, and Frans van Mieris, this book explores how these artists employed various forms of pictorial repetition-from creating virtuosic, self-referential compositions around signature motifs to engaging esteemed predecessors in a competitive dialogue through emulation - to project a distinctive artistic personality. The resulting paintings, recognizable yet unique, became the occasions for wealthy viewers in the young Dutch Republic to demonstrate their knowledge of art and claim membership in the exclusive circle of sophisticated enthusiasts. Drawing on contemporary art treatises, inventories of collections, and manuals of collecting and connoisseurship, the book considers the visual and social environments in which the paintings were received. It contends that creative repetition was a strategy that served the interdependent interests of artists and viewers.

When people attend classical music concerts today, they sit and listen in silence, offering no audible reactions to what they're hearing. We think of that as normal-but, as Darryl Cressman shows in this book, it's the product of a long history of interrelationships between music, social norms, and technology. Using the example of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw in the nineteenth century, Cressman shows how its design was in part intended to help discipline and educate concert audiences to listen attentively - and analysis of its creation and use offers rich insights into sound studies, media history, science and technology studies, classical music, and much more.

Is it possible to talk about Dutch art after 1680 outside the prevailing critical framework of the "age of decline"? Although an increasing number of studies are being published on the art and society of this period, genre painting of this era continues to be dismissed as an uninspired repetition of the art of the second and third quarters of the seventeenth century, known as the Dutch Golden Age. In this stunningly illustrated study, Aono reconsiders the long-dismissed genre painting from 1680-1750. Grounded in close analysis of a range of paintings and primary sources, this study illuminates the main features of genre painting, highlighting the ways in which these elements related to the painters' close connections to, on the one hand, collectors, and on the other, to classicism, one of the dominant artistic styles of that time. Three case studies, richly supplemented by a catalogue of 29 selected painters and their work, offer the first clear picture of the genre painting of the period while providing new insights into painters' activities, collectors' tastes and the contemporary art market.

In this study of Amsterdam's Golden Age cultural elite, John Michael Montias analyzes records of auctions from the Orphan Chamber of Amsterdam through the first half of the seventeenth century, revealing a wealth of information on some 2,000 art buyers' regional origins, social and religious affiliations, wealth, and aesthetic preferences. Chapters focus not only on the art dealers who bought at these auctions, but also on buyers who had special connections with individual artists.

During the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was transformed into a leading political power in Europe, with global trading interests. It nurtured some of the period's greatest luminaries, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Descartes and Spinoza. Long celebrated for its religious tolerance, artistic innovation and economic modernity, the United Provinces of the Netherlands also became known for their involvement with slavery and military repression in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. This Companion provides a compelling overview of the best scholarship on this much debated era, written by a wide range of experts in the field. Unique in its balanced treatment of global, political, socio-economic, literary, artistic, religious, and intellectual history, its nineteen chapters offer an indispensable guide for anyone interested in the world of the Dutch Golden Age.

Painting and Publishing as Cultural Industries, 1580-1800 addresses how a small country like the Dutch Republic could become a major player in the creation of cultural goods during the Golden Age. On the basis of quantitative and qualitative sources from art history and book history, Claartje Rasterhoff traces the evolution of the painting and publishing industries from modest trades to booming industries. Informed by studies on cultural industries, she focuses on the role of industrial organization in shaping patterns of growth and innovation. Much like their present-day counterparts, early modern Dutch cultural industries were spatially concentrated, highly networked, and institutionally embedded. This distinct organizational structure helped to reduce uncertainty in the market and stimulated the commercial and creative potential of painters and publishers, for a century at least. Dutch painters and publishers had catered to their markets so rapidly and in such variety, that the exceptional levels of output, quality, and innovation accomplished during the first half of the seventeenth century could not be sustained. As producers came to face saturated domestic markets, they took to limiting risks and strenghtening their distribution and marketing activities. By introducing the concepts of business cycles and spatial clusters, Rasterhoff offers a novel explanation

Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic, 1860-1940 aims to bring the marketplace dynamic into sharper focus with its essays which examine the many functionaries who participate in the art market network, among them, agents, scouts, intermediaries, restorers, fakers, decorators, advisers and experts. All of the essays are rooted in case studies which give voice to the various aspects of supply−from branding to marketing, from inventory to display, from restoration to pastiche to fabrication. Each is incredibly rich in their marshalling of primary sources and archival materials; in sum, they present an impressive array of new research. Contributors are: Fae Brauer, Denise M. Budd, Patrizia Cappellini, Lynn Catterson, Sebastien Chaffour, Laura D. Corey, Flaminia Gennari-Santori, Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, Joanna Smalcerz, Alexandra Provo, AnnaLea Tunesi, and Leanne Zalewski.