The Religious Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen: Reinventing Christian Painting after the Reformation in Utrecht

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Routledge, Jul 5, 2017 - Art - 194 pages
The first in-depth study of the Utrecht artist to address questions beyond connoisseurship and attribution, this book makes a significant contribution to Ter Brugghen and Northern Caravaggist studies. Focusing on the Dutch master's simultaneous use of Northern archaisms with Caravaggio's motifs and style, Natasha Seaman nuances our understanding of Ter Brugghen's appropriations from the Italian painter. Her analysis centers on four paintings, all depicting New Testament subjects. They include Ter Brugghen's largest and first known signed work (Crowning with Thorns), his most archaizing (the Crucifixion), and the two paintings most directly related to the works of Caravaggio (the Doubting Thomas and the Calling of Matthew). By examining the ways in which Ter Brugghen's paintings deliberately diverge from Caravaggio's, Seaman sheds new light on the Utrecht artist and his work. For example, she demonstrates that where Caravaggio's paintings are boldly illusionistic and mimetic, thus de-emphasizing their materiality, Ter Brugghen's works examined here create the opposite effect, connecting their content to their made form. This study not only illuminates the complex meanings of the paintings addressed here, but also offers insights into the image debates and the status of devotional art in Italy and Utrecht in the seventeenth century by examining one artist's response to them.
 

Contents

Hendrick ter Brugghen and the Material Image
1
The Attraction and Critique of Caravaggio
11
2 Archaism and the Material Image in Rome
21
Art and Archaism within and without the Hidden Church
49
4 Materiality and the Presence of the Past in Hendrick ter Brugghens Crucifixion
73
5 Icon Narrative and Iconoclasm in the Crowning with Thorns
103
6 The Theology of Conversion in the Doubting Thomas and Calling of Matthew
117
The Denial of Peter
151
Bibliography
155
Index
171
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