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Public Faces and Private Identities in Seventeenth-Century Holland: Portraiture And The Production Of Community

Public Faces and Private Identities in Seventeenth-Century Holland: Portraiture And The Production Of Community

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Ann Jensen Adams
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 5/5/2013
EAN 9781107698031, ISBN10: 1107698030

Paperback, 412 pages, 24.6 x 18.9 x 2.4 cm
Language: English

During the seventeenth century, Dutch portraits were actively commissioned by corporate groups and by individuals from a range of economic and social classes. They became among the most important genres of painting. Not merely mimetic representations of their subjects, many of these works create a new dialogic relationship with the viewer. Ann Jensen Adams examines four portrait genres - individuals, the family, history portraits, and civic guards. She analyzes these works in relation to inherited visual traditions, contemporary art theory, changing cultural beliefs about the body, about sight, and the image itself, as well as to current events. Adams argues that as individuals became unmoored from traditional sources of identity, such as familial lineage, birthplace, and social class, portraits helped them to find security in a self-aware subjectivity and the new social structures that made possible the 'economic miracle' that has come to be known as the Dutch Golden Age.

1. The cultural power of portraits
the market, interpersonal experience, and subjectivity
2. Portraits of individuals
physiognomy, demeanor, and the representation of character
3. Family portraits
the private arena and the social order
4. The history portrait
comprehending self through historical narrative
5. Civic guard portraits
personal friendships and the public sphere
6. Portraits and the production of identity
transitional objects and potential spaces.