‘Draw everything that exists in the world’

Author(s):  
Jaya Remond

This article examines the Amsterdam engraver and draftsman Crispijn de Passe’s art manual, ’t Light der Teken en Schilderkonst, in order to study the processes that turned image-making practices into forms of knowledge worthy of being preserved on paper. I argue that De Passe, who was born into a prominent family of artists, championed the multi-purpose functionality of drawing skills, and that De Passe’s experience at Antoine de Pluvinel’s riding academy in Paris played a key role in the manual’s genesis, as well as in the creation, codification and stabilization of artistic knowledge. By examining forms of haptic engagement (such as traces of manipulation), I show how such manuals were used, collected, and prized as valuable objects in early modern Europe. Acquiring and cultivating drawing skills would become imbued with great epistemic, material, and monetary value for different types of publics in the long seventeenth century

2020 ◽  
pp. 215-233
Author(s):  
Jonathan Scott

This chapter considers the possibility of building a maritime monarchy and how the Anglo-Dutch Revolution achieved this. Early modern Europe was governed by territorial monarchies and small, sometimes maritime, republics and/or cities. The former were culturally and socially aristocratic, and the latter mercantile. But in the later seventeenth century, a new European great power emerged that was a territorial monarchy within which a landed aristocracy, enriched by the economic changes of the period, beginning with those revolutionizing agricultural productivity, became fully participant in its new commercial economy. The way in which Britain's ruling class in both Houses of Parliament intertwined hereditary nobility and a mercantile, manufacturing, and financial oligarchy had no European parallel. The strict separation of the world of work from socially mandated aristocratic idleness which applied elsewhere had disappeared.


Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.


AJS Review ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-250
Author(s):  
David Malkiel

Ghettoization stimulated sixteenth-century Italian Jewry to develop larger and more complex political structures, because the Jewish community now became responsible for municipal tasks. This development, however, raised theological objections in Catholic circles because Christian doctrine traditionally forbade the Jewish people dominion. It also aroused hostility among the increasingly centralized governments of early modern Europe, who viewed Jewish self-government as an infringement of the sovereignty of the state. The earliest appearance of the term “state within a state,” which has become a shorthand expression for the latter view, was recently located in Venice in 1631.


1982 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip T. Hoffman

The paper examines the spread of sharecropping that followed a wave of investment in agriculture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. Using results from the modern theory of share contracts, it argues that sharecropping was a means of risk sharing that favored both landlords and tenants. Although the evidence used in this paper comes from France, the results may well apply to other areas of early modern Europe.


Costume ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-185
Author(s):  
Valerio Zanetti

This article discusses the wearing of bifurcated equestrian garments for women in early modern Europe. Considering visual representations as well as documentary sources, the first section examines the fashion for red riding breeches between the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Worn for their comfort and functionality in the saddle, these garments were also invested with powerful symbolic and affective meaning. The second section provides new insights about female equestrian outfits in late seventeenth-century France. Through the close reading of two written accounts, the author sheds light on the use of breeches as undergarments in the saddle and discusses the appearance of a hybrid riding uniform that incorporated knee-length culottes. By presenting horsewomen who wore bifurcated garments in the pursuit of leisure rather than transgression, this study revises historical narratives that cast the breeched woman exclusively as a symbol of gender upheaval.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 821-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEBASTIAN CONRAD

When European clocks first arrived in seventeenth-century Japan they generated a commotion. The highly complex but also very precise instruments had been brought to Nagasaki by the Dutch East India Company that monopolized the sparse and highly regulated trade between Japan and Europe for more than two centuries. As an expression of the technological sophistication achieved in early modern Europe, mechanical clocks were hi-tech products of their time. They operated with a spring to store the energy, and their making required highly developed skills in casting and metalwork. The new technology made it possible to emancipate the measurement of time from sunshine and to achieve an evenness of temporal rhythms, not only during the day, but also at night.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document