Attributing old master paintings is one of the most difficult tasks of the art historian. While authorship has important implications for the field of art history and for valuation, little has been written on the theory and techniques of the connoisseur’s work. This volume analyzes the role of the expert’s intuition along with efforts to develop scientific techniques. The author focuses on the challenges of attributing seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art, then turns to investigating connoisseurship, arguing that to evaluate authenticity, it is necessary to understand what it meant when the paintings were created. Further discussions probe the understanding of an “original” versus a “copy” at a time when painters routinely produced multiple versions of a work; the meaning of “by the master’s hand” when paintings were often produced with the help of assistants; and the significance of style when artists intentionally varied theirs depending on the subject matter or the audience.

The Eye of the Connoisseur: Authenticating Paintings by Rembrandt and His Contemporaries

Arts & Photography

Tummers, Anna

History & Criticism

J.paul Getty Museum

From peasant fairs and carnival celebrations to lavish al fresco parties, processions and civic guard banquets, the Netherlands in the seventeenth century was a golden age of partying. Celebrating the Golden Age provides a pageant of people making merry through the eyes of Dutch masters Esaias van de Velde, Dirck Hals, Willem Buytewech, Jan Miense Molenaar, Frans Hals and Jan Steen, who was perhaps the ultimate painter of these festivities. This volume brings to life the painted party, with scenes of celebration at weddings, elegant garden parties, carnivals, Twelfth Night and May festivities, masquerades and family gatherings on Saint Nicholas’ Eve. A series of essays explicates these narrative scenes: their often sly and humorous views of the values of their time, the role of alcohol and bawdy humor, the ways in which painters persuaded their subjects to pose and what costumes and gestures can reveal when the seventeenth century lets its hair down.

Celebrating in the Golden Age

ROODENBURG, HERMAN

Weststeijn, Thijs

de Winkel, Marieke

nai010 publishers

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Books by Tummers, Anna