Papers by Elsje van Kessel
Journal of the History of Collections, 2019
This article examines the impact made by the taking of the ship Madre de Deus in 1592 on the circ... more This article examines the impact made by the taking of the ship Madre de Deus in 1592 on the circulation of Asian material culture in England. As a Portuguese cargo ship on its way from Goa, the Madre de Deus was filled with precious and exotic objects – an immense treasure for the English privateers who seized it. An examination of the extensive archival record generated by the ship’s capture allows for a reconstruction of the cargo. Probing inventories and other documents for their material and formal qualities as much as for their contents, the article argues that written documents became an instrument with which the English authorities tried to control the uncontrollable movements of the booty. The pathways subsequently followed by some of the items recovered are traced, and the question of how they affected England’s artistic culture is addressed.
Review of the new galleries of Portuguese painting and sculpture at the Museu Nacional de Arte An... more Review of the new galleries of Portuguese painting and sculpture at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, Portugal.
Chapter in: Uwe Fleckner and Iris Wenderholm, eds, Magische Bilder: Techniken der Verzauberung in... more Chapter in: Uwe Fleckner and Iris Wenderholm, eds, Magische Bilder: Techniken der Verzauberung in der Kunst vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017, pp. 27-45
Andreas Beyer and Laurent Le Bon (eds), Silence. Schweigen. Über die stumme Praxis der Kunst (Berlin and Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2015) 169-182
Bibliografische information der Deutschen nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche nationalbibliothek verz... more Bibliografische information der Deutschen nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris abteilung deutsche Publikationen leitung: lena Bader redaktion: mathilde heitmann-taillefer assistenz: stephanie Krämer, Brigitte sahler, lucia seiß lektorat: maja stark, Berlin (dt. Beiträge), Françoise clausse, Paris (frz. Beiträge), catherine Framm, Berlin (engl. Beiträge)
Art History, 2010
Theatricality in sixteenth-century Venetian painting has long been understood as a characteristic... more Theatricality in sixteenth-century Venetian painting has long been understood as a characteristic of the paintings themselves. This article aims to give the concept a wider meaning by exploring its connection to the theatrical character of Venetian society and Venetian ritual. A portrait of the Venetian-born grand duchess of Tuscany, Bianca Capello (1548–87), painted by the Roman artist Scipione Pulzone (c. 1550–98) serves as an example. On the basis of a series of letters written by the owner, the Venetian nobleman Francesco Bembo, to Bianca Capello, the ways in which the Venetian audience approached this portrait can be reconstructed and the striking similarities between the manner in which people treated paintings and ritual behaviour in Venetian society are explored.
Studiolo, 2012
The problem this article aims to address is that of the relation between the perceived powers of ... more The problem this article aims to address is that of the relation between the perceived powers of the early modern miraculous image and the way it was presented to the viewer. In studies of miraculous images, some authors have emphasized the form of the image as the decisive factor in the production of power; others have stressed the role of the social environment. Yet it is precisely in the presentation that these two poles meet: the presentation connects the image with its public, and vice versa.
In my article, I examine one pregnant example, the miraculous Christ Carrying the Cross owned by the Venetian Scuola di San Rocco, in order to place this painting, which art historians and tourists nowadays primarily see as a “work of art”, not as a “miracle-worker”, in an alternative light, and to analyse the non-verbal means of presentation that lie at the very basis of such categories.
The Artist as Reader: On Education and Non-Education of Early Modern Artists (Intersections. Yearbook for Early Modern Studies), 2013
The Secret Lives of Art Works: Exploring the Boundaries between Art and Life, 2014
Books by Elsje van Kessel
Over the centuries viewers have attributed life, personhood and agency works of art; they kiss th... more Over the centuries viewers have attributed life, personhood and agency works of art; they kiss them, beat them, or claim that portraits look at viewers, and that statues move, breathe and speak. In the past decades such attributions of life to images have become a central topic in art history, anthropology and psychology.
The Secret Life of Art Works. Exploring the Boundaries between Art and Life is the first collection of essays to present case studies from the visual arts, architecture, sculpture and numismatics, and to engage critically with theoretical perspectives from art history, psychology, aesthetics and anthropology. It thus not only offers a state of the art overview of approaches to this wide spread phenomenon, but also identifies new avenues of inquiry.
In sixteenth-century Venice, paintings were often treated as if living beings. They attended dinn... more In sixteenth-century Venice, paintings were often treated as if living beings. They attended dinner parties, helped to heal the sick, made money, and became involved in love affairs. In this book, Elsje van Kessel presents a range of case studies offering a detailed examination of the agency that two-dimensional images could exert. This person-like agency was not only connected to the seemingly naturalistic style of Titian, Giorgione, and their contemporaries, but was also grounded in the works’ social and historical contexts, here reconstructed through meticulous archival research. The Lives of Paintings contributes to Venetian studies, as well as engaging with wider debates on the attribution of life and presence to images and things.
Fellowships by Elsje van Kessel
The period around 1600 was a tipping point in the history of globalisation. The Portuguese empire... more The period around 1600 was a tipping point in the history of globalisation. The Portuguese empire, which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had been built to stretch from Brazil to Japan, reached its zenith around this time. The Dutch Republic and England, meanwhile, were just beginning to take over Portuguese sea routes and trading posts. The immense success and subsequent stagnation of Portuguese expansion, and the concomitant rise of the Dutch and English ventures overseas, have so far been described as driven by a combination of imperial politics, religious motivation and economic gain. My project will use a different, new approach to understanding this key moment: I will study the successes and failures of globalisation through a focus on art objects and their interaction with human beings and ideas. Central to the project will be an analysis of the seizure of two Portuguese cargo ships by the English and the Dutch and the aftermath of these events. Thus the project aims, through exploring the redirection of a large group of art objects that these hijackings entailed, and the debates about art objects that these events engendered on all sides of the divide, to examine the historical workings and meanings of globalisation around the turn of the seventeenth century.
This project is funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. For the duration of the academic year 2017-2018, I will be hosted by CHAM - Centre for the Humanities at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
From the beginning of October to the end of December 2016 I will be working on my project 'Art in... more From the beginning of October to the end of December 2016 I will be working on my project 'Art in the Streets of Early Modern Lisbon: The Case of the Corpus Christi Processions'. The project is funded by the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and hosted by CHAM/Center for Global History at the New University of Lisbon.
Book Reviews by Elsje van Kessel
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
caa.reviews, Feb 21, 2014
24 color ills.; 53 b/w ills. $45.00 (cloth) (9780226309668) Social media networks like Facebook m... more 24 color ills.; 53 b/w ills. $45.00 (cloth) (9780226309668) Social media networks like Facebook make us anticipate the moment we turn into objects under another person's gaze. Yet this experience of becoming a spectacle, and organizing our lives accordingly, is hardly new. Nor is the very small size that our portraits will usually take in these types of media: as Hanneke Grootenboer points out in Treasuring the Gaze, the format of a photo on a smartphone screen is remarkably similar to that of the prephotographic portrait miniature. In her new book, Grootenboer focuses on a short-lived subgenre of the portrait miniature, the so-called eye miniature or eye portrait, which suddenly
Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften, Jun 15, 2012
Conference Presentations by Elsje van Kessel
Paper in panel 'Art and Law: Objects and Spaces as Legal Actors' at Association for Art History C... more Paper in panel 'Art and Law: Objects and Spaces as Legal Actors' at Association for Art History Conference, London, 5-7 April 2018
This paper addresses the relation between art and law in the Mare Liberum / Mare clausum debate of the early 1600s. The question about the freedom of the world seas – or rather who owns the seas and the material riches that are transported via their waters – occupied the most prominent jurists of the early seventeenth century. At the basis of present-day international maritime law, the debate had its origins in a specific historical event; namely, the Dutch capturing of a Portuguese cargo ship in the Straits of Singapore in 1603. The vessel, subsequently taken to Amsterdam, was full of spices, textiles, porcelain, furniture, precious stones and jewellery, yet accounts of the debate and the legal theory to which it gave rise have always ignored these objects. My paper, then, will examine the objects on board the ship as catalysts of the development of international law. Can we break open the categories of ‘booty’ and ‘spoil’ by looking at the objects’ aesthetics? How did such objects – of a variety of East Asian backgrounds, often produced for export – change as their legal status turned? And to what extent can we read Hugo Grotius’ Mare Liberum and the texts that reacted to it – legal treatises in the first instance – as interventions in material culture theory?
Paper given at the Society of Renaissance Studies Conference in Glasgow, 18-20 July 2016, in a pa... more Paper given at the Society of Renaissance Studies Conference in Glasgow, 18-20 July 2016, in a panel I coorganised with Bram van Leuveren and Andrew Horn: Word and Image, Performance and Time: the Early Modern Spectacle
Early modern Venice knew two major annually returning displays of paintings, one at Piazza San Ma... more Early modern Venice knew two major annually returning displays of paintings, one at Piazza San Marco and one at the Scuola di San Rocco, while numerous others were organized more incidentally in various streets and squares. Although some records of these displays exist, their essentially ephemeral character makes them elusive, which is undoubtedly one reason why scholars have largely focused instead on the more permanent structures of artistic production and patronage. My paper, besides giving an overview of the character and purpose of these displays, will engage the fleeting character of these proto-exhibitions directly, analyzing how their ephemeral nature articulated social time and space. In this period in which the Venetian state tightened its grip on all aspects of Venetian ritual and cultural life, my paper asks, is there any way we can consider ephemeral displays of paintings as part of an unofficial ‘history of the street’?
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Papers by Elsje van Kessel
In my article, I examine one pregnant example, the miraculous Christ Carrying the Cross owned by the Venetian Scuola di San Rocco, in order to place this painting, which art historians and tourists nowadays primarily see as a “work of art”, not as a “miracle-worker”, in an alternative light, and to analyse the non-verbal means of presentation that lie at the very basis of such categories.
Books by Elsje van Kessel
The Secret Life of Art Works. Exploring the Boundaries between Art and Life is the first collection of essays to present case studies from the visual arts, architecture, sculpture and numismatics, and to engage critically with theoretical perspectives from art history, psychology, aesthetics and anthropology. It thus not only offers a state of the art overview of approaches to this wide spread phenomenon, but also identifies new avenues of inquiry.
Fellowships by Elsje van Kessel
This project is funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. For the duration of the academic year 2017-2018, I will be hosted by CHAM - Centre for the Humanities at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
Book Reviews by Elsje van Kessel
Conference Presentations by Elsje van Kessel
This paper addresses the relation between art and law in the Mare Liberum / Mare clausum debate of the early 1600s. The question about the freedom of the world seas – or rather who owns the seas and the material riches that are transported via their waters – occupied the most prominent jurists of the early seventeenth century. At the basis of present-day international maritime law, the debate had its origins in a specific historical event; namely, the Dutch capturing of a Portuguese cargo ship in the Straits of Singapore in 1603. The vessel, subsequently taken to Amsterdam, was full of spices, textiles, porcelain, furniture, precious stones and jewellery, yet accounts of the debate and the legal theory to which it gave rise have always ignored these objects. My paper, then, will examine the objects on board the ship as catalysts of the development of international law. Can we break open the categories of ‘booty’ and ‘spoil’ by looking at the objects’ aesthetics? How did such objects – of a variety of East Asian backgrounds, often produced for export – change as their legal status turned? And to what extent can we read Hugo Grotius’ Mare Liberum and the texts that reacted to it – legal treatises in the first instance – as interventions in material culture theory?
In my article, I examine one pregnant example, the miraculous Christ Carrying the Cross owned by the Venetian Scuola di San Rocco, in order to place this painting, which art historians and tourists nowadays primarily see as a “work of art”, not as a “miracle-worker”, in an alternative light, and to analyse the non-verbal means of presentation that lie at the very basis of such categories.
The Secret Life of Art Works. Exploring the Boundaries between Art and Life is the first collection of essays to present case studies from the visual arts, architecture, sculpture and numismatics, and to engage critically with theoretical perspectives from art history, psychology, aesthetics and anthropology. It thus not only offers a state of the art overview of approaches to this wide spread phenomenon, but also identifies new avenues of inquiry.
This project is funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. For the duration of the academic year 2017-2018, I will be hosted by CHAM - Centre for the Humanities at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
This paper addresses the relation between art and law in the Mare Liberum / Mare clausum debate of the early 1600s. The question about the freedom of the world seas – or rather who owns the seas and the material riches that are transported via their waters – occupied the most prominent jurists of the early seventeenth century. At the basis of present-day international maritime law, the debate had its origins in a specific historical event; namely, the Dutch capturing of a Portuguese cargo ship in the Straits of Singapore in 1603. The vessel, subsequently taken to Amsterdam, was full of spices, textiles, porcelain, furniture, precious stones and jewellery, yet accounts of the debate and the legal theory to which it gave rise have always ignored these objects. My paper, then, will examine the objects on board the ship as catalysts of the development of international law. Can we break open the categories of ‘booty’ and ‘spoil’ by looking at the objects’ aesthetics? How did such objects – of a variety of East Asian backgrounds, often produced for export – change as their legal status turned? And to what extent can we read Hugo Grotius’ Mare Liberum and the texts that reacted to it – legal treatises in the first instance – as interventions in material culture theory?
In my paper, I will analyse the image of connoisseurship as it arises from Der Sammler and confront it with Goethe’s own practices as an art collector as well as with rivalling views within his circle. If in Goethe’s time connoisseurship as a method for cataloguing artworks in a rational and objective way seems to be at odds with the increasing focus of philosophical aesthetics on the subject’s experience of the work of art, Germany’s most prominent cultural figure offers an alternative. As I will demonstrate, Goethe’s approach to connoisseurship, which one could even call anthropological and which opposes a rigid subject-object dichotomy, by stressing instead the shared biographies of artworks and their viewers, provides us with a third way.
Occasional Papers | IASH (ed.ac.uk)
Deadline for submissions: 4 June 2017