This article introduces a painting that has recently come to light after having remained in private ownership for centuries. It depicts a meeting of the States General in the Statenzaal at the Binnenhof in The Hague. This is of historical significance because, until now, no detailed representations of the interior of the assembly hall of the highest governing body of the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century were known. Moreover, on the basis of the identification of the figures portrayed – among them stadholder and military commander Maurice of Nassau and all members of the delegation representing the United Provinces at the peace negotiations that would culminate in the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-1621) – it can be established that the painting depicts a specific moment recorded in the resolutions of the States General. During the session of 4 February 1608, the assembly received news that the Spanish-Habsburg negotiators, led by Ambrogio Spinola, were willing to present themselves before the assembly. This visit, which took place the following day, could be interpreted as a performative confirmation of the Spanish-Habsburg recognition of Dutch sovereignty. The communicative event immortalised by an unidentified painter thus symbolised the emergence of the Netherlands as a sovereign state.
The aim of this article is to describe, for the first time, the general character and function of the town crier in the Dutch Republic, between the beginning of the seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth century. The stadsroeper belongs to a cast of early modern urban professionals that has been largely ignored as an object of study. This article seeks to reconstruct the world of the crier, based on extensive research in Dutch archives. Our analysis covers a discussion of the general distribution across the Republic of the town crier; a comparative examination of the services and duties of the crier; a reconstruction of the appearance and performance of the crier and their relation to the crier’s function; and a reflection on the remuneration, ancillary activities and general status of the crier in society. Overall, this article argues that the town crier was a figure central to civic society in the Dutch Republic, across villages, towns and cities, functioning as a vital communicative mediator of news and announcements of official, commercial, and private natures.
This essay examines how growing numbers of displaced men and women in the early modern Low Countries were incorporated into contemporary visual culture. It argues that evolving representations of the refugee were built on biblical and classical tropes, and shaped by the interests of stakeholders, notably religious minorities. Mapping this visual landscape, it proposes a typology of five, partly overlapping refugee types. Each drew on pictorial models and confessional scripts aligned with the sensibilities of target audiences. The iconographic development of the early modern refugee would have dramatic consequences for displaced groups who did not fit into such categories.
This article analyses two thus far unstudied Latin poems by the prominent humanist scholar Caspar Barlaeus (1584-1648): Argo Batava (1629), which celebrates the Dutch capture of the Spanish treasure fleet in 1628; and Triumphus super capta Olinda (1630), on the conquest of the Portuguese settlement Olinda in Brazil in 1630. These two poems, we argue, give significant clues regarding the ambivalence that characterised Barlaeus’s views regarding the Dutch pursuit of empire. By discussing these poems together within the contexts of the early modern reception of the classics and the development of Dutch empire in the Atlantic world, we show how Barlaeus’s baroque poetry mixed triumphalism with pessimism and celebrated as well as criticised Dutch colonialism as a project of laudable yet dangerous ambition. In creatively appropriating the classical narratives of the Argonauts, Aeneas’s arrival on Italian soil, and the imperial contest between Rome and Carthage, Barlaeus hinted that the Dutch Republic could succeed in outdoing the Spanish monarchy and in establishing settlements overseas but, blinded by the lust for gold and profit, would not be able to escape the perils of living in an Iron Age.
This article presents a computational approach to the relationship between gender and character speech in early modern Dutch drama. It evaluates the possibility of automatically classifying gender based on the speeches of 1141 characters and character groups from 98 early modern Dutch plays (1613-1786). The experiment combines three approaches to gender classification: lexical, semantic, and stylistic. The results show that each approach fails to reliably capture distinctions between male and female speech in early modern Dutch drama, in contrast to similar studies of gender distinctions in other literary corpora. The inability to measure a gender binary in Dutch dramatic discourse indicates that gender generally was not performed through the vocabularies of Dutch male and female characters. The absence of clear gender distinctions in character speech is read as a product of the persistent tradition of cross-dressing in the Dutch Republic, creating fictional realities in which gender became fluid and complex.
This article examines a letter corpus from the Prize Papers, sent in 1664 by Dutch seafarers’ wives to their men overseas, to explore what early modern letters can reveal about experiences of anxiety. These letters were sent in a time of crisis: the bubonic plague haunted Dutch port cities and the Second Anglo-Dutch War was looming. To overcome the experience-convention dichotomy of epistemic emotions, this article suggests a different approach to epistolary experiences by conceiving them not merely as internal sensations but as a series of affective practices in which the mindful body dynamically interacts with its environment. By approaching letters as sites where the body, the mind, and the environment intersect, this article reveals how women were turning their anxiety into concrete objects of fear, how they tried to communicate anxious feelings in interaction with their environment, and how they experienced these feelings in their bodies. Moreover, it encourages researchers to take formulaic language seriously when discussing the experiences of historical actors arguing that formulae reflect experienced reality and embodied feelings.
This article offers a new reading of Hugo Grotius’s early treatise De Jure Praedae Commentarius (Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty, 1604-1606), approaching this text from the perspective of material culture. Commissioned by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) after Dutch seafarers confiscated the Portuguese carrack Santa Catarina and its cargo, Grotius’s text, this article proposes, deliberately obscures the ways the Dutch valued objects as trophies, loot, and spoils. Analysis of De Jure Praedae reveals that Grotius argues against the display of material wealth that the Dutch had acquired as loot, negatively associating it with the Portuguese and Spanish empires and instead propagating the invisible dispersal of the booty. In this way, De Jure Praedae, an early work by a major apologist of the VOC, rationalised the continuous circulation of objects in the service of Dutch empire-building. The article’s broader project is to speak to scholars of the global circulation of material culture and of empire alike to contribute to a history of how looted objects were conceived as key instruments in Dutch imperial expansion.
The marriage of William II of Orange and Mary Stuart in 1641 has often been viewed as a social and dynastic alliance with far-reaching political consequences for the Houses of Orange and Stuart. The key appointments of the Anglo-Dutch couple Lady Katherine Stanhope and her husband Lord Heenvliet to supervise Princess Mary’s household have been seen as a deliberate power grab orchestrated by the couple themselves. This article argues a more nuanced view of their partnership, however, considering how intangible qualities such as status, motherhood, and widowhood shaped their diplomatic practices alongside more traditional advantages of political connections and access to wealth. The use of soft power and cultural exchange also shaped the couple’s reputation as they operated within the domestic realm of the princess’s household whilst juggling the political demands created by the exiled Stuarts and their supporters, highlighting the duality of their roles. Stanhope was also the wife of a Dutch diplomat and whilst appointed dame gouvernante and surintendant général respectively to the princess by Charles I, they operated without reference to Sir William Boswell, the king’s ambassador at The Hague until 1649. By examining concepts relevant to Stanhope’s agency, this article adds further perspectives to consider in relation to Anglo-Dutch diplomatic practice in the 1640s.
When wealthy widow Judith Stuyvesant died in her seventh decade of life, she left a will passing down her possessions to her descendants. Judith Stuyvesant’s 1684 will exposes the fraught connections between family, race, property, and power in colonial New Netherland. Her life intersected with diverse women, and her legacy was shaped by their lives as well. Among them was Mayken van Angola, an African woman who petitioned for her freedom and later married in Judith’s chapel, and Judith’s granddaughter, Anna, whose inheritance was marked by loss and violence. This article examines how wills, court petitions, and depositions offer insight into the lives of women who shaped, and were shaped by, a colonial world defined by landownership, labour, and enslavement. Through an analysis of Judith’s bowery, the family vault, and the chapel, it considers how material spaces reflected both privilege and dispossession in early New York.
From the late sixteenth century into the early eighteenth, the Southern Low Countries constituted one of the most important regions for artistic production and exchange in Europe. This essay reveals the understudied roles of women in the flourishing of that visual culture. I argue that this topic must be approached with a solid understanding of the gendered property laws and practices that shaped both how women used their wealth to finance art and architecture, and the sources through which we access that activity.
The history of women and their experiences of Reformation in the sixteenth-century Low Countries remains largely unexplored territory, especially compared to the rest of Europe and to the seventeenth century. Why this is the case is something of a puzzle, though it may have to do with available source material. Since the 1980s a handful of works have been published on the subject, mostly falling along confessional lines, with Anabaptist women receiving by far the most scholarly attention. Reformed and Catholic women have received comparatively less attention. This article surveys the current historiography on women’s experience of religious change in the Habsburg Low Countries and offers some suggestions for future research.
Hundreds of (semi-)religious women, so-called kloppen and Beguines, lived in early modern Amsterdam, many of them in a community at the Begijnhof in the city centre. This case study analyses, via an emblematically painted devotional print with a calligraphed poem on the verso, how they collectively visualised and experienced their communion with the bridegroom Christ. A significant proportion of the Dutch population remained Catholic throughout the seventeenth century. As monasteries were forbidden, many Catholic women turned to a religious life ‘in the world’, an act which was tolerated by the Reformed authorities. Such a life offered women the chance to develop independently, self-willed, and intellectually outside marriage, a path that was cut off for Protestant women after the Reformation. For their spiritual life, these Catholic women made intensive use of devotional prints, which they sometimes augmented with friendly poems or prayers on the reverse. Prayers were also exchanged for the salvation of deceased fellow sisters. Sometimes, texts and notes on the prints and drawings were inspired by songs that were included in their prayer books. These devotionalia thus provide an interesting, as yet unknown source for research into the daily life, practised spirituality, and agency of semi-religious women in the Low Countries.
The importance of the role of women as artists has been recognised and rightly continues to be researched. However, although there are exceptions, the scholarship that has been produced over the past two decades does not sufficiently challenge patriarchal, male-centric art historical research, with its focus on the so-called ‘creative genius’. The result, whether intentional or not, has been a continued emphasis on so-called stars, exceptional women, and trailblazers. Promising scholarship has focused on the role of women as artisan-makers or considered the gender-specific circumstances in which women operated. This scholarship, while of critical importance, unwittingly validates the assumption that the creation and production of (fine) art in the long seventeenth century in the Low Countries was primarily a man’s affair, with women relegated to more peripheral roles. If we are to truly write an inclusive art history, however, we must be willing to re-examine, expand, and even re-define traditional concepts in art history as they relate to the creation and production of art, pursue interdisciplinarity, and adopt the tools at our disposal, notably technical and object-based art history and the digital humanities.
The application dossiers for printer’s licences and privileges from the Privy Council in Brussels are a well-known source for book historians. To increase their chances of success, printers used a range of different arguments in their requests, including a family tradition in the trade. Using the application dossiers of the Boscard and Serrurier families in seventeenth-century Saint-Omer and Douai, I show that women frequently appeared in the applicants’ occupational lineage histories and that women printers also used family history as an argument in their own applications. These sources help us to rewrite the patrilinear narratives about the early modern printing business.
This article explores the overlooked involvement of women in supporting the University of Leuven during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite gendered regulations against the presence of women in early modern universities, archival evidence reveals their significant roles in providing scholarships to students. Through detailed analysis of testamentary records, the study uncovers women’s deep engagement with the university’s activities. Spanning various social backgrounds, these women demonstrated a profound understanding of the university’s operations and influenced its development through financial support and by designing instructions for student conduct and academic focus. Despite often being sidelined in historical narratives, their contributions challenge traditional views of male-dominated academia and underscore the diverse roles women played in shaping early modern universities.
Maria Ludovica Mortgat, a seventeenth-century Dominican sister, owned a Dutch Bible printed in Antwerp in 1556. On the flyleaf of this Bible, Mortgat made extensive annotations recalling how she entered the convent. She also collected some short prayers and meditations. This case study not only provides insight into textual practice in early modern female convents, but also shows how Bibles were used as paper spaces within which one might develop a sense of religious self. Like the annotations in medieval rapiaria or early modern family Bibles, Mortgat used the blank leaves in her Bible to create a personalised object. In addition, this Bible confirms the relevance of reading Scripture in early modern Catholic contexts.
This essay examines the defence strategies of women accused of witchcraft in early modern Ghent, focusing on their agency within restrictive societal frameworks. Cases like that of Adriaene Schepens illustrate how accused women refuted supernatural accusations through rational explanations that exploited societal and gendered expectations. Rather than relying solely on emotional pleas, these women employed logical arguments and constructed personas that undermined the charges against them. Analysing trial records reveals how gender stereotypes were strategically used to appear non-threatening, reflecting broader social and cultural dynamics. The findings challenge traditional legal and demonological perspectives, emphasising the resilience and agency of accused women. The article advocates for an accessible database of accused individuals to trace defence strategies across cases, enriching the historiography of witchcraft in the Southern Low Countries and advancing understanding of gendered interactions in early modern legal history.
While the field of technical art history has progressed tremendously over the last decades, there has been little technical research into paintings made by early modern women artists. As archival and documentary evidence on these women is often scarce, the objects made by them are our best sources for learning more about them as artists. This article explores the potential of this methodology: how can technical examinations of paintings provide us with more information on women artists, and more specifically their studio practice, training, and artistic and professional network? Michaelina Wautier’s Flower Garland with Butterfly serves as a case study. Technical research into this painting revealed a clear technical influence of Antwerp-based specialised flower painters on the materials and painting techniques employed by Wautier. The way Wautier used a lay-in to prepare the composition shows many similarities with a specific painting technique developed and employed by specialised flower painters from Antwerp. Moreover, Wautier’s use of the pigment orpiment shows more of this technical influence from flower painters.
Despite a recent surge in scholarship recognising the vital role of women in early modern diplomacy, the role of women in Dutch seventeenth-century embassies has been completely overlooked. This significant blind spot in Dutch scholarship skews our view of how the Dutch Republic, a new player on the international stage, practiced its diplomacy. This essay focuses on the role of ambassadresses, the wives of ambassadors, who joined their husband on a diplomatic mission. More specifically, it explores the potential of using digitised seventeenth-century Dutch newspapers as a valuable resource for finding more material to research the role of diplomats’ wives in shaping Dutch and European diplomacy.
Combining literary analysis with book history, this short essay examines how representations of women within a play may be complicated by considering the context of individual printed versions. Ariadne, by Katharina Lescailje, offers a translation of Thomas Corneille’s tragedy, with its complicated female protagonist, for the Dutch stage. In the 1693 single edition and the 1731 complete edition of Lescailje’s work, this ambivalent representation of femininity is accompanied by title pages, a frontispiece, and a dedicatory poem that present Ariadne as eroticised and victimised, conflating her with Lescailje herself. In addition, Lescailje appears on title pages as translator, author, and stationer. All of these representations together show how printed versions of plays can add to the depiction of women in drama to display a variety of female roles for the reader to contemplate and explore.
