Between 1723 and 1737, the immensely popular Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde was published in Amsterdam under the direction of editor, compiler and author Jean Frédéric Bernard. This multi-volume work offered a comprehensive analysis of the world’s religions, with a particular focus on ceremonies, customs and rituals. It gained widespread acclaim largely due to its rich visual content, primarily the engravings by renowned French artist Bernard Picart. In recent decades, Cérémonies has gained renewed scholarly attention. Several studies have analysed the comparative methodology adopted by both Bernard and Picart. Seen as revolutionary for its attempt to present religious practices objectively and without overt judgment, this methodology has earned the label of a proto-anthropological study of religion. In the section of Cérémonies devoted to African religious practices, a similarly comparative approach is applied, while likewise drawing on a variety of earlier sources. Nevertheless, this section of the book has largely escaped critical analysis. This article seeks to address that gap by asking: To what extent does the Africa section of Cérémonies offer a distinctively nuanced portrayal of African religions in comparison with contemporary European stereotypical depictions? Through the visual analysis of a Khoikhoi mother figure, this article draws on engravings primarily held in the Rijksmuseum collection. It examines the sources on which Bernard and especially Picart relied, among them works by De Marees, De Bry, Kolb, De Hooghe, Dapper and Philips.
At first glance, the Rijksmuseum collection seems to lack materials relating to seventeenth-century Indigenous and Dutch colonial history in ‘New Netherland’ (encompassing parts of present-day Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut). In 1614, the governing body of the Dutch Republic, the States General, claimed exclusive rights to trade in these Indigenous homelands. Dutch colonists, including the Dutch West India Company (formed 1621), were primarily interested in the fur trade. North American beaver pelts were a lucrative material transformed into a ubiquitous seventeenth-century status symbol: broad-brimmed hats. The colonial fur trade, shaped by and dependent upon Indigenous knowledge, was marked by the complexities of intercultural diplomacy and the disorientation and violence of settler colonialism. By combining prints and paintings, mostly held in the Rijksmuseum, with archival records, this article traces a global history of the New Netherland fur trade, contributing to new insights into Indigenous political economies, Dutch artisan and consumer cultures, and colonialism and its legacies.
Among the many objects held in the Rijksmuseum’s H.L. Visser arms collection is a 1665 flintlock hunting gun signed ‘Eduardt Abrahams de Moor tot Utrecht’. Archival research reveals that Eduardt was a Black man who succeeded in establishing a career within the luxury gunmaking industry of the city Utrecht. The signature on the Rijksmuseum hunting gun effectively serves as a claim of authorship, indicating the importance of Eduardt’s participation in the process of gunmaking, a cooperative endeavour. By examining his firearms as a starting point, this article resituates the understudied craftsman at the intersection of artisanal collaborations, international commerce and the multicultural perspectives on which the early Dutch Republic was built.
This contribution highlights the work of Elisabeth Rijbergh (1672-1721), a Rotterdam papercut artist who enjoyed great renown in her day. From her art cabinet, Rijbergh showed her complex papercut depictions to the public for a fee and sold her works to a clientele willing to pay considerable sums. These images were highly diverse, ranging from scenes of gardens and landscapes to battle scenes and portraits. Although Rijbergh's name was preserved in historical travelogues, she essentially fell into obscurity. Over the years, her reputation faded, with her oeuvre thought to have been lost. The recent discovery of a signed and dated papercut held in the Rijksmuseum collection-a diorama long attributed in error-has produced new insights into Rijbergh's work. Supplementary stylistic and material-technical research has moreover facilitated the attribution of two additional, previously anonymous dioramas. Together, these three papercuts offer the first tangible insight into Rijbergh's technical skill, narrative power and artistic strategies. With humour, illusion and refinement, she transformed paper into vibrant, narrative worlds that once captivated and still amaze viewers today. The present study places this woman artist again in the art historical spotlight, showing that Rijbergh's dioramas are not just visual spectacles for enthusiasts to behold, they also provide a window into the creative versatility of late seventeenth-century Dutch art.
