291 Image of the beautiful black
One in so many Western works of art contains an image of a person we would call black. The phenomenon attracts relatively little attention in art history. The Menil Foundation went after it seriously,...
View Article300 O Solomon, where art thou?
A painting by Jan Steen of a wedding night disturbed by a demon and saved by an archangel was cut in two in the distant past and put back together again in 1996. Ownership of the larger, more...
View Article311 Love in the huiskamer
Between the 1610s and 1650 an enchanting form of painting was produced in Antwerp and Antwerp alone: the kunstkamer painting, an evocation of an art collection in which actions of various kinds take...
View Article339 Latest Rembrandt
Rembrandt’s last dated drawing and the painting that was on his easel when he died both depict the same subject – Simeon with the Christ child in the Temple – in much the same way. In honor of the...
View Article340 Jheronimus Bosch and the Book of Nature
Key features of the art of Jheronimus Bosch are illuminated by a book published in the Netherlands in the artist’s early years. Raymond Sebond’s Natural theology, or Book of the creatures, can help us...
View Article343 A medical opinion from Jheronimus Bosch
Jheronimus Bosch painted a man having a flower removed from his head, with an inscription speaking of a stone being cut out. Schwartz cannot explain why, but he nonetheless proposes a new theory of...
View Article346 Bosch’s dry Haywain and his sopping wet Garden of Delights
The opposition between the parched land in Bosch’s Haywain and the unquenchable thirst of its inhabitants for dry hay is contrasted to the mouthwatering abundance of the aqueous Garden of Delights....
View ArticleEine Welt ohne Sünde: Hieronymus Bosch als Visionär
Lead essay in the catalogue of an exhibition at the Bucerius Forum, Hamburg, 4 June-11 September 2016: Verkehrte Welt: das Jahrhundert von Hieronymus Bosch, edited by Michael Philipp The essay argues...
View Article351 The emotional turn
That strong emotions have irresistible power over us is undeniable. What can be denied, or ignored, is the all-pervasive influence of even low-grade emotion on society and its members. The Australian...
View ArticleThe Temple Mount in the Lowlands
Talk of iconic! What could be more so than the Temple in Jerusalem? Countless are the chapels, churches, synagogues, mosques and palaces modelled on an idea of what the Temple of Solomon looked like,...
View Article359 The Temple Mount in the Lowlands
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem emanates a bewitching lure over Jews, Muslims and Christians. Not even the famously sober Dutch Calvinists could escape its spell. At least four seventeenth-century...
View Article291 Image of the beautiful black
One in so many Western works of art contains an image of a person we would call black. The phenomenon attracts relatively little attention in art history. The Menil Foundation went after it seriously,...
View ArticleMy reflection in Clio’s mirror
Schwartz looks back on his beginnings as an art historian. Grad student blues and release through new loves. The Nexus Institute is a standard-bearer of high culture in a Low Country. It holds...
View Article363 Saenredam and Huygens; Rubens and Rembrandt
“Saenredam, Huygens and the Utrecht bull” was Gary Schwartz’s first publication as an art historian. He looks back on how it came into being and what it meant in his life. Schwartz would like to think...
View ArticleCity fathers as civic warriors
The 350th anniversary of the Treaty of Münster and the Peace of Westphalia was celebrated with symposia in Münster, Osnabrück and the Louvre. My contribution in Paris was a lecture on the image of...
View Article373 Putting ourselves and Rembrandt to the test
For Peter Hecht, who following his retirement from a celebrated professorship in art history at Utrecht University, entered the fray of interpreters of Rembrandt’s notoriously treacherous Leiden...
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