The Low Countries' connection: landscape and the struggle over representation around 1600

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 32, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 712-730

  Mels, Tom ^a  

^a LINNAEUS UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

Author keywords

Custom; Justice; Landscape representation; Low Countries; Politics

Indexed keywords

CROSS-BORDER RELATIONS; CULTURAL LANDSCAPE; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; POLITICAL IDEOLOGY; RATIONALIZATION; SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION;

EURASIA; EUROPE; ITALY; SOUTHERN EUROPE; SPAIN; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 33748434132     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2005.11.018     Document Type: Article

References (108)

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3. D. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, London, 1984, 161.
4. Olwig does not explicitly refer to 'spatiality' and the spatial ontologies of relative and absolute space. I invoke these terms because they help clarify that his distinction between spatial and platial does not instantiate a dualistic ontology which separates space and place, precisely the kind of dualism that Olwig subjects to a reflexive critique.
5. See. Olwig K.R. Germanic 'Raum' and Swedish 'rum' in English language geographical discourse. Geografiska Annaler 84 B (2002) 1-17
6. For a discussion of the shifts between place and space to which Olwig refers, see E. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Berkeley, 1997.
7. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, Chapter 5.
8. K.R. Olwig, Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic: From Britain's Renaissance to America's New World, Madison, 2002. In the case of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, Richard Helgerson speaks of an 'ideology of place and particularity'. He contrasts the chorographer's prime concern with place - centered around the land as an amalgamation of diverse cities, villages, counties, and manors - with the chronicler's devotion to monarchs. Not unlike Olwig, Helgerson thus examines the links between political representation and artistic (visual, textual, verbal) representation, in which the conflicts between country and court, or place and royal power, play an important role. My thanks to one referee for bringing Helgerson's work to my attention: R. Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England, Chicago, 1992, 131-138.
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37. A. van Deursen, Staatsinstellingen in de Noordelijke Nederlanden 1579-1780, in: D.P. Block et al. (Eds), Algemene geschiedenis der Nederlanden, Vol. 5, Haarlem, 1980, 350.
38. R. Fruin, Geschiedenis der staatsinstellingen in Nederland tot den val der Republiek, in: H.T. Colenbrander (Ed.), The Hague, 1901, 366-367; H. Kampinga, De opvatting van onze oudere Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis bij de Hollandsch historici der XVIe en XVIIe eeuw, The Hague, 1917, 69-81, 148-149; J.K. Oudendijk, Het 'contract' in de wordingsgeschiedenis van de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden, Leiden, 1961; H.H. Rowen, The Low Countries in Early Modern Times, New York, 1972, 70.
39. M. van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt 1555-1590, Cambridge, 1992, 264.
40. L. Guicciardini, The Description of the Low Countreys, London, 1593 (original 1567), 3.
41. P. Geyl, Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse stam, Vol. I, Second Edition, Amsterdam, 1948, 270-298;
42. Haakonssen K. Hugo Grotius and the history of political thought. Political Theory 13 (1985) 239-265
43. Kampinga, De opvatting van onze oudere Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis bij de Hollandsch historici der XVIe en XVIIe eeuw; G.C. Molewijk, Een geschiedvervalsing uit 1610, introduction, in: H. de Groot (Ed.), De oudheid van de Bataafse nu Hollandse Republiek, Weesp, 1988; H. van der Waal, Drie eeuwen vaderlandsche geschied-uitbeelding 1500-1800: Een iconologische studie, 2 Vols, The Hague, 1952; P. Vinogradoff, Roman Law in Medieval Europe, Second Edition, Oxford, 1929; A.C.J. De Vrankrijker, De Staatsleer van Hugo de Groot en zijn Nederlandsche tijdgenooten, Nijmegen, 1937.
44. M. van Gelderen, From Domingo de Soto to Hugo Grotius, in: G. Darby (Ed.), The Origins and Development of the Dutch Revolt, London and New York, 2001, 155.
45. W. Blockmans and W. Prevenier, The Promised Lands: The Low Countries Under Burgundian Rule, 1369-1530, Philadelphia, 1999, 237.
46. L. van den Bergh, Handboek der Nederlandse Geographie, Third Edition, The Hague, 1949, 112-115; L. van den Bergh, Middelnederlandsch woordenboek, The Hague, 1885-1952, gewest, lantscap; L. van den Bergh, Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, The Hague and Leiden, The Hague, 1850-1998, gewest, landschap; cf. F. Schiller, Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande, in: F. Schiller (Ed.), Sämtliche Werke IV, Historische Schriften, Munich, 1958 (original 1788), 52.
47. A.A. Beekman, Geschiedkundige atlas van Nederland: de gewesten van Noord- en Zuid-Nederland in 1300, Second Edition, The Hague, 1932, 5.
48. P.J. Blok, Geschiedkundige atlas van Nederland: de zeventien provinciën in 1555, The Hague, 1917, 22-25; H. Brugmans, Geschiedkundige atlas van Nederland: de Republiek der vereenigde Nederlanden in 1648, The Hague, 1919, 32-33; R. Fruin, Overzicht der staatsgeschiedenis van het landschap Westerwolde tot op zijne vereeniging met de XVII Nederlanden, Leiden, 1886.
49. Fockema Andreae S.J. De Nederlandse staat onder de Republiek Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse akademie van wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde 68 (1960) 71 90
50. Fockema Andreae, De Nederlandse staat onder de Republiek Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse akademie van wetenschappen, afd, 72.
51. Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, The Hague and Leiden, The Hague, 1850-1998, gewest, landschap.
52. Fruin, Geschiedenis der staatsinstellingen in Nederland tot den val der Republiek, 23-24.
53. Fockema Andreae, De Nederlandse staat onder de Republiek Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse akademie van wetenschappen, afd.
54. Huizinga, Nederland's beschaving in de zeventiende eeuw, 23; cf. C. Busken Huet, Het land van Rembrandt: studien over de noordnederlandsche beschaving van de zeventiende eeuw, Second Edition, Haarlem, 1886; Romein, De lage landen bij de zee; G. Werkman, Kent gij het land der zee ontrukt: eenige hoofdstukken uit de waterstaatkundige geschiednis van ons woongebied, Bussum, 1948.
55. Schiller, Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande, 37; cf. C.R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600-1800, London, 1965; H. van der Wee, The Low Countries in the Early Modern World, Aldershot, 1993.
56. J.L. Motley, History of the United Netherlands, Vol. III, The Hague, 1867, 17; S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, London, 1987, 37-50.
57. S.J. Fockema Andreae, Studiën over waterschapsgeschiedenis, Vols. I-VIII, Leiden, 1950-1952; Middelnederlandsch woordenboek, The Hague, 1885-1952, waterschap; Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, The Hague and Leiden, 1850-1998, waterschap.
58. A.A. Beekman, Nederland als polderland, Zutphen, 1932, 171; R.H.A. Cools, Strijd om den grond in het lage Nederland, Rotterdam, 1948, 35-42.
59. Olwig, Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic, 21.
60. S.J. Fockema Andreae, Overzicht van de Nederlandse waterschapsgeschiedenis, Leiden, 1952, 16-20.
61. H. van Nierop, Alva's Thorne: making sense of the revolt of the Netherlands, in: Darby (Ed.), The Origins and Development of the Dutch Revolt, 34-35.
62. M. Boone and M. Prak, Rulers, patricians and burghers: the great and the little traditions of urban revolt in the Low Countries, in: K. Davids and J. Lucassen (Eds), A Miracle Mirrored: The Dutch Republic in European Perspective, Cambridge, 1995, 99-134; Pirenne, Early Democracies in the Low Countries, 238.
63. van der Wee, The Low Countries in the Early Modern World, 11.
64. This argument is also voiced in Ann Adams' research on how political, economic and religious changes gave 'new meaning to the local, the prosaic and recognizable features of land'. A. Jensen Adams, Competing communities in the 'Great Bog of Europe', in: Mitchell (Ed.), Landscape and Power, 38.
65. Among art historians, controversies persist over iconographic and 'realistic' ('iconoclastic' or 'post-iconographic') interpretations of the production and reception of early modern Netherlandish landscape art. 'Realistic' readings reject the idea that landscape imagery seeks to convey any deeper symbolic meaning (see W. Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting in the Seventeenth Century, London, 1966). Many, following Alpers' post-iconographic ventures, understand pictures as descriptive structures of knowledge rather than ideations. Iconographers, notably since E. Panofsky's Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character, Cambridge, MA, 1953, propose that the realism of Dutch painting was only superficial. Among Dutch scholars, Josua Bruyn's 'scriptural reading', Eddy de Jongh's 'emblematic interpretation' and what is known as the Utrecht School have made early contributions to recover - by reference to textual semiotic systems - the didactic and moralizing content beneath the apparently descriptive surface of realistic imagery (see J. Bruyn, Toward a scriptural reading of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting, in: P.C. Sutton et al. (Eds), Masters of Seventeenth-century Dutch Landscape Painting, exh. cat., Amsterdam, Boston, Philadelphia, 1987, 84-103; E. De Jongh, Kwesties van betekenis: Thema en motief in de Nederlandse schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw, Leiden, 1995). The more universalizing assumptions and essentialist claims of both realism and iconography have been subjected to extensive criticism during the past two decades. Today, a more contextual consideration of art markets, patronage, and post-positivistic appreciations of the cultural construction of ethnicity, gender, class, and nationhood have renewed the field. These readings do not allow for the categorical dualisms of ideation or description and are more receptive to the ways meanings have been culturally shaped, received and altered.
66. See. Haverkamp-Begemann E. The state of research in northern Baroque art. Art Bulletin 69 (1987) 510-519
67. Westermann M. After iconography and iconoclasm: current research in Netherlandish art, 1566-1700. Art Bulletin 84 (2002) 353-373
68. For further overviews, see B. Bakker, Landschap en wereldbeeld van Van Eyck tot Rembrandt, Bussum, 2004;
69. Demetz P. Defences of Dutch painting and the theories of realism. Comparative Literature 15 (1963) 97-115
70. W. Franits (Ed.), Looking at Seventeenth-century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered, Cambridge, 1997; D. Freedberg and J. de Vries, Art in History/History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-century Dutch Culture, part 1, Santa Monica, CA, 1991; F. Grijzenhout and H. van Veen (Eds), De Gouden Eeuw in perspectief. Het beeld van de Nederlandse zeventiende-eeuwse schilderkunst in latere tijd, Heerlen, 1992.
71. R. Barthes, The world as object, Selected Writings, London, 1982, 63.
72. E. Relph, Rational Landscapes and Humanistic Geography, London, 1981, 26; cf. W.E. Gibson, Mirror of the Earth: the World Landscape in Sixteenth-century Flemish Painting, Princeton, NJ, 1989.
73. Alpers, The Art of Describing, 122.
74. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, Vol. I, 3-5.
75. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 8.
76. Olwig, Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic, 36-37.
77. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting.
78. Alpers, The Art of Describing, 148-152.
79. D. Freedberg, Iconoclasm and Painting in the Revolt of the Netherlands 1566-1609, New York, 1988; Friedländer, Landscape, Portrait, Still-Life, 89; W.S. Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander's 'Schilder-boeck', Chicago, 1991, 97; H. Miedema, Karel van Mander: The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German painters, Vol. I, Doornspijk, 1994; Mitchell, Gombrich and the rise of landscape, 103-118.
80. K.R. Olwig, Landscape, place and the state of progress, in: R.D. Sack (Ed.), Progress: Geographical Essays, Baltimore, MD, 2002, 22-60, 56.
81. C. Levesque, Journey Through Landscape in Seventeenth-century Holland: The Haarlem Print Series and Dutch Identity, University Park, PA, 1994, xviii, emphasis added.
82. T.J. Beening, Het Landschap in de Nederlandse letterkunde van de Renaissance, Nijmegen, 1963.
83. Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 46-47.
84. R. Jacobsen, Carel van Mander: Dichter en prozaschrijver (1548-1606), Rotterdam, 1906, 82, 91-92; M.B. Smits-Veldt and H. Luijten, Nederlandse pastorale poëzie in de 17de eeuw: Verliefde en wijze herders, in: P. van den Brink (Ed.), Het gedroomde land: pastorale schilderkunst in de Gouden Eeuw, Zwolle, 1993, 63-64; W. Vermeer, Den Nederduytschen Helicon, in: E.K. Grootes (Ed.), Haarlems Helicon: literatuur en toneel te Haarlem vóór 1800, Hilversum, 1993, 77-92.
85. D. Freedberg, Dutch Landscape Prints of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1980, 7.
86. Å. Bengtsson, Studies in the Rise of Realistic Landscape Painting in Holland 1610-1625, Stockholm, 1952, 27.
87. J.G. van Gelder, Jan van de Velde 1593-1641, teekenaar-schilder, The Hague, 1933; I. de Groot, Landscape: Etchings by the Dutch Masters of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1979.
88. Levesque, Journey Through Landscape.
89. B. Haak, The Golden Age: Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, New York, 1984, 139.
90. W.E. Gibson, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael, Berkeley, 2000, 176; Freedberg, Dutch Landscape Prints, 26, 31, 37.
91. Gibson, Pleasant Places, 2000, 175. Gibson's work adds to a current in art and literary history which calls attention to the significance of how different expressions of pleasure (recreation, humour, laughter) among various social groups are communicated in seventeenth-century images. While this is important, the preoccupation with pleasure also tends to preclude a clear appreciation of the further moralizing and didactic meanings that landscape imagery may have elicited for contemporary audiences, and to some degree sets aside consideration of the immediate political and geographical setting. See also Note 53. More thorough contextualizations of images can be found in, e.g. Haak, The Golden Age; M. Westermann, The Art of the Dutch Republic, London, 1996.
92. Levesque, Journey Through Landscape, 109-113; cf. Gibson, Pleasant Places, 85.
93. Levesque, Journey Through Landscape, 3.
94. Levesque, Journey Through Landscape, 119.
95. Levesque, Journey Through Landscape, 81; cf. E. Haverkamp Begemann, Willem Buytewech, Amsterdam, 1959, 18, 43.
96. Freedberg, Dutch Landscape Prints, 32; Levesque, Journey Through Landscape, 74.
97. Levesque, Journey Through Landscape, 56; cf. Gibson, Pleasant Places, 101.
98. For an almost complete set of maps of the Low Countries in the shape of the heraldic Lion, see H.A.M. van der Heijden, Leo Belgicus: An Illustrated and Annotated Carto-Bibliography, Alphen aan den Rijn, 1990.
99. Alpers, The Art of Describing, 136.
100. Haak, The Golden Age, 147;
101. Meijer Drees M. Patriottisme in de Nederlandse literatuur (ca. 1650-ca. 1750). De Nieuwe Taalgids 88 (1995) 255 258
102. Olwig, Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic, 17.
103. Haak, The Golden Age, 243.
104. Freedberg, Dutch Landscape Prints, 24.
105. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1954, 703.
106. D. Cosgrove, Apollo's Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination, Baltimore, 2001, 156-159.
107. Schiller, Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande, 39.
108. Freedberg, Dutch Landscape Prints, 58. The Dutch were intrigued with early travel accounts, graphical representations and descriptions of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. During the Dutch Revolt, closer attention was paid to the Spanish atrocities in the New World, which were subsequently mobilized in the rhetoric of the revolt, and inspired Dutch commerce to colonial exploration in the 1600s. See B. Schmidt, Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570-1670, Cambridge and New York, 2001.