I’ve recently been amassing an image library of paintings by the likes of Frans Hals, Adrian Brouwer, Gerrit Dou, Gabriel Metsu and Jan Steen — Dutch painters who were contemporaries of Rembrandt and Vermeer and, though less well known, were in my view almost as good. I suspect that Vermeer’s popularity has given us a …
Continue reading “Smokers and Drunkards in the Dutch Golden Age”
Below are some vivid paintings and engravings of enslaved peoples in the colonial Americas compiled by Professor Jerome S. Handler (his personal site) and Michael L. Tuite, Jr. in a joint project funded by the University of Virginia and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Contextual details for these images are scarce, but the pictures …
Philadelphia’s Chemical Heritage Foundation maintains a wonderful Flickr page of images relating to the history of chemistry, pharmacy and alchemy. While perusing their image banks, I came across this collection of 17th and 18th-century paintings of alchemists practicing their occult art — paintings which include some revealing glimpses into the private life of those who …
Benjamin Breen