Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the Gift in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Dutch Golden Age ◽  
Symbolic Economy ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Economic Rhetoric ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective

This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a "love of art," not materialistic gain. In the merchant republic's vibrant market for art, networks of gift relations and the anti-economic rhetoric of the gift mingled with the growing dimension of commerce, revealing a unique chapter in the interconnected history of gift giving and art making.

Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the Gift in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Dutch Golden Age ◽  
Symbolic Economy ◽  
The Gift ◽  
New Perspective

This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a love of art

Art as Gift in the Dutch Republic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Gift Exchanges

This chapter explores the distinctive gift culture and the gifting of art in seventeenth-century Holland. Although gift giving has been marginalized in studies of seventeenth-century Dutch art, gift exchanges of various kinds, including art, were widespread in Dutch mercantile culture. Giving gifts was considered obligatory for nurturing burgher professional and personal relationships, and gifts of art played a key role in the Republic’s diplomatic engagements. Like their colleagues elsewhere, Dutch artists mixed gifts with sales transactions by offering their works as gifts to potential and established patrons, contacts, and familiars. Discussion of the special cases of Rembrandt and Vermeer is reserved for later chapters, but here examples of gifts by Hendrick Goltzius, Jan Lievens, Govert Flinck, and others are addressed.

scholarly journals The gift economy and the development of sustainability

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 493-509
Author(s):  
Niels Thygesen
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Economic Situation ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Positive Contribution ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
The Gift ◽  
New Perspective

This article contends that a new perspective on the economy – a gift economy – would be beneficial to the development of sustainability. The principles and practices of the gift economy (giving, receiving and reciprocating) are exemplified by a case study of the Danish island of Samsø, which has used it to achieve environmental sustainability, improve its economic situation and generate social value. In order to illustrate the values and principles that underpin the gift economy, the article shows the underlying exchange mechanisms used in this modern version of ‘gift-giving’ and contrasts them to using money as the medium of exchange. One of the mainstays of the gift economy is the willingness and obligation to reciprocate, and the case study highlights some of the original ways of organising that have emerged from the gift economy on Samsø and how significantly they differ from organising and managing by budgets. As such, the article attempts to reframe the understanding of the economy and, in particular, to qualify and illustrate the potential of the organising principles behind the gift economy and encourage readers to conduct further research and engage in initiatives that will make a positive contribution to the development of sustainability.

scholarly journals From credit to debt: A political history of English sovereign finance and money from the seventh century to the seventeenth

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-60
Author(s):  
Nicolas Dorn
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Sovereign Credit ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
New Perspective

This article provides a new perspective on sovereign finance and money in England from pre- modern to early modern times. Re-reading the literature on sovereign fiscality through the lens of sovereign jurisdictions and religious authority, it describes two distinct forms of sovereign finance: the rise and fall of sovereign credit from the seventh to eleventh century, followed by sovereign debt developing from the eleventh century into ‘modern’ sovereign debt from the seventeenth century onwards. In the early Anglo Saxon period, sovereign credit was given and received in non-monetised forms. It was when sovereign jurisdictions became too wide for labour and bulky produce to travel that tax was monetised. However, the monetisation of credit undermined the very sovereign-subject relation on which sovereign credit was based. After the introduction of short-term sovereign debt by the Normans, for the next five hundred years, the two distinct fiscal mechanisms of sovereign credit and sovereign debt ran in parallel, although the latter was restrained by the church’s prohibition of usury. In the seventeenth century, sovereign credit and sovereign debt became conjoined elements within one fiscal system, rather than separate mechanisms.

Rembrandt’s Art as Gift

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Art World ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Unique Position ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
The Gift

This chapter examines Rembrandt’s embrace of gift exchange over his career and analyzes the works he created to function as gifts among favored patrons, collectors, and intimates. Rembrandt’s gifts to important patrons and other figures in the 1630s largely conform to the conventions and courtesies expected of gift transactions. From the late 1640s through the 1660s, as Rembrandt’s primary supporters shifted to liefhebbers, gentlemen-dealers, and cultured members of the burgher class, however, he intensified his engagement and became more experimental with gift giving. Through highly distinctive prints designed to circulate as gifts, Rembrandt enlisted the gift economy to nurture ties with his inner sanctum, harnessing the ethics of gift giving to cultivate a unique position in the Dutch art world.

Religious Ethics, Gift Exchange and Capitalism

2003 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARCEL HENAFF
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Religious Ethics ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
The Gift ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism ◽  
Catholic Ethic

This study intends to reread Max Weber's Protestant Ethic with the following question in mind: where is the Catholic ethic with respect to “the spirit of capitalism”? The few short comments that Weber makes on this topic nevertheless suggest an interesting notion which he had developed in earlier texts, i.e., the “religious ethic of brotherhood”. I intend to show here that this notion could be further illuminated by the findings of the anthropology of gift giving since Marcel Mauss. This would enable us to understand how the problem of grace, so central to the debate between Protestants and Catholics, is linked to the history of the transformations in the gift giving practices; we will also discover that this problem was at the origin of the schism. While such a hypothesis leads to a different reading of Weber, it is confirmed by a work of the historian B. Clavero which brings out the complex links that existed in 16th century Catholic Spain between the order of business and that of charity. Besides the antagonism that has marked the two Christian traditions in the West, what seems to be at issue is the way in which economic practices weight on the social bond. These questions invite us to rethink the connections between them.

scholarly journals GIFTING CULTURES AND ARTISANAL GUILDS IN SIXTEENTH- AND EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 865-887 ◽  
Author(s):  
JASMINE KILBURN-TOPPIN
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Gift Books ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Craft Guilds ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractThis article reconsiders the gift within London's sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century livery companies. Previous research into guild gift-giving cultures has focused exclusively upon substantial bequests of money and property by mercantile elites to the ‘great twelve’ livery companies. Through charitable gifts, citizens established godly reputations and legacies, perpetuated through the guild institution. It is argued here that a rich culture of material gift-giving, hitherto overlooked by historians, also thrived within London's craft guilds. Drawing on company gift books, inventories, and material survivals from guild collections, this article examines typologies of donors and gifts, the anticipated ‘returns’ on the gift by the recipient company, and the ideal spatial and temporal contexts for gift-giving. This material approach reveals that master artisans negotiated civic status, authority, and memory through the presentation of a wide range of gifted artefacts for display and ritual use in London's livery halls. Moreover, this culture of gift-giving was so deep-rooted and significant that it survived the Reformation upheavals largely intact. Finally, the embellishment of rituals of gifting, and the synchronization of gifting and feasting rites from the second half of the sixteenth century, are further evidence for the resurgence of English civic culture in this era.

Nine Letters from Émile Zola to Frans Netscher

PMLA ◽  
1941 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-265
Author(s):  
Emile Zola ◽  
Robert J. Niess
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Emile Zola ◽  
New Realism ◽  
New School ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Literary Renaissance

Few periods have been more important in the history of Dutch art and letters than the decade between 1880 and 1890. Those years saw the rise of the painters of the “Hague school”—Josef Israëls, Blommers, the Maris brothers—and a reorientation of Dutch art toward the realism of the masters of the seventeenth century. A literary renaissance of some importance accompanied this artistic revolution. Dutch authors turned more and more from the insipid idealism of earlier days toward a new realism, strongly reminiscent of that prevailing in France. Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, the Goncourt brothers, Zola—these were the idols of the new school. The naturalistic doctrines of Zola carried an especial appeal to the young critics and novelists, and a small but vocal group of imitators carried his banner in Holland during the years 1880–90.

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