As we did with our discussion of the Renaissance, we started our discussion off in Italy than slowly made our way up North. For today’s class, we focused specifically on the seventeenth century art of the Low Countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We started off with some historical context, focusing on how the reformation and subsequent counter reformation affected the Catholic Belgium (particularly Flanders) and the Protestant Dutch. It’s hard to imagine how culturally significant the Protestant Revolution was, and how it had humongous ripple effects in everything from geopolitics to art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We started off with a discussion of the Flemish master Pieter Paul Rubens. I like when Professor Plesch gives us short biographies of the artists we discuss. Like the Baroque ideals, it really brings their identities into the classroom in a way that makes it easier for us to understand their works and the influences on their style. I think Rubens’ paintings look a lot like any other Baroque painter, but I saw some aspects of Northern tradition like the detail-oriented Naturalism visible in the depictions of Roman soldiers in the Raising of the Cross<\/em>. Rubens’ Marie de Medici Landing in France<\/em> didn’t do much for me, though I appreciate the creativity required for the allegorical representations of France and showing mythical figures at the service of the queen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We then moved on to discussing the United Provinces of the modern day Netherlands. It was cool that the growing middle class were the primary patrons of Dutch artists — it really seems to have opened the door for many more secular images that I personally prefer to religious ones. I think Frans Hals is a really good painter, his visible brushstrokes and colorful images capture the feelings and personalities of figures in a less literal, yet certainly more impactful way. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As we did with our discussion of the Renaissance, we started our discussion off in Italy than slowly made our way up North. For today’s class, we focused specifically on the seventeenth century art of the Low Countries. We started off with some historical context, focusing on how the reformation and subsequent counter reformation affected […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2122"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2195,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122\/revisions\/2195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ar112-spring2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}