Detailed project information

This project regards a book-length study on 'Pieter Aertsen and humanist art discourse in the Low Countries.' Pieter Aertsen (ca. 1508-1575) has long been recognized as the inventor of a new genre of peasant scenes and kitchen still life paintings. While current research understands these works as testimonies of the painter's aesthetic preferences for humble subject matter and its realistic representation, or, alternatively, sees these paintings as symbolical representations of moral values, I intend to show that they were created as contributions to an emerging humanist art discourse, i.e. as self-referential expositions on art theoretical notions, such as the relationship between art and nature, the 'rules' of art, the imitation of classical and Italian Renaissance art in the North, and the paragone (the contest) of the sister arts.