Art + Eco Exam 2

de Bry, Map of Nova Zembla, 1601

• Search for Northeast passage - trade

• Nova Zembla = New Land in Russia, the island is close to Russia

• Depicts the expedition of William Barentsz, who became stranded there and died - iceberg w/ shipwreck supposed to represent this

• Small cabin created on island out of shipwreck

• Lots of creatures, fantastical

Anonymous, Navigational Grid of Northern Hemisphere, in or before 1596, engraving, 31.5 cm x 57.2 cm

• Prints meant to be traded

• Geographic use and art collecting

• Conglomerated with the ice and snow, sat frozen since 1596

copy of Hendrick Goltzius after Bartholomeus Spranger, Adam and Eve, 1585-1596, engraving

• Copies of famous prints

• Art historians able to identify + tell that they were copies because it is flipped

• Prints conserved in 1977

Copy of Hendrick Goltzius, Maria Magdalena, 1582–1590, engraving, 36.9 x 32.3 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

• damage along creaselines, showing folds

• Biblical imagery

Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen, Battle of Gibraltar in April 1607, painted in 1621, oil on canvas, 136.8 cm x 187 cm

• Big battle scene, not idealized

• Dutch ramming into Spanish ship - Dutch superiority (even though the Spanish won this fight)

• Smoke and clouds mixed together - natural and manmade

• Nature not depicted benevolently^

Jan Luyken, Reimerswaal in 1634 long after the Flood and Former Times before the Flood, printed in 1696, Amsterdam

• Prosperous unflooded city on bottom, water is a source of benefits, with transportation and trade

• Water completely covers city on top, a small town compared to a big city with walls

• Big weather events as memorable phenomena worth reporting

• Tracking patterns to help with military strategy and trade

• Weather associated with divinity - before town is below

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on panel. 117 cm × 162 cm

• Panoramic view, vast scenery

• Small human details in vast landscape

• Tradition of calendar illustrations - “Labours of the Month”

• Little Ice Age and harsh winters

• Hunt unsuccessful

Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters, c. 1608, 77.3 cm x 131.9 cm

• Class differences - some people working, some out for enjoyment

• Horse frozen to death with dog and birds eating it

• Winters long and cold - lots or water, time on the ice

• Avercamp’s landscapes very popular

• More muted colors in background

• People pooping and peeing

Albert Eckhout, mameluca woman, 1641, oil on canvas, 271 x 170 cm

• Holding basket - labour

• White dress + jewelry

• Colonial project of categorizing people - ordering a “foreign world”

• Indigenous and white ancestry

• Guinea pig - idea of fertility

  • White dress is a symbol of Flora, Roman goddess of flowers and fertility

Eckhout, mulatto man

• sugarcane symbolizes role as “middle man” in slave trade

• military stance

• European and foreign garments

• Holding weapon - free state

Frans Post, View of Itamaraca, 1637, oil on canvas, 63.5 x 88.5 cm

• People are tiny and not the subject of painting

• Originally title “this is the way of riding of the Portuguese”

• ^previous colonizers

• In mainland Netherland, illegal to own slaves, so shows Portuguese in bad light that they have slaves here (reluctance to recognize that Dutch colonists owned slaves)

• Post traveled with Maurits

• Fort in background

• Posts’ first painting on this trip with Maurits

Frans Post, Brazilian Landscape with a House under Construction, 1655-1660, oil on canvas, 46 cm x 70 cm

• Different groups meeting - “Black” people dancing with instruments, other setting up fruit stands for trade

• Idealized image of European colonists living harmoniously with the indigenous Brazilians and enslaved Africans

Frans Post, View of Fort Ceulen, 1638, oil on canvas, 62 x 95 cm

• Supposed to show Tapuyas

• Gallows in the background near Portuguese fort, showing history of landscape

• ^site of Dutch victory

• Indigenous people as part of topography/landscape

Bronze doors, Hildesheim, c. 1015,

472 x 226 cm.

(16 feet high)

• One of the few (20) images of Eve nursing on here → Christian ancestry of human beings

• Old Testament scenes on left, New Testament on right

• Comparison scenes across doors: Garden of Eden on left, Crucifixion on right, showing cross made from wood

• Dynamic/cartoonish movements rendered in bronze

• Hand of God criticizing Cain in one depiction, God scolding Adam and Eve in another

• Monumental size

• Similar column w/ New Testament scenes in another place → Bernward column

• Ottonian art

• Bishop Bernward commissioned it

• Lost wax method

• Bernward went on pilgrimmage to Rome, saw monumental art, wanted his own big doors

Gospels of Otto III, c. 1000, ink, gold, paint, parchment, each page 33.4 x 24.2 cm 

• Allegorical representations of Sclavinia, Germany, Gaul, and Rome

• King Otto gaining all the wealth of his empire, being offered gifts by these different areas/women

• Slavs wiped out by Ottonians

• Otto in powerful stance, surrounded by members of his court (those who fight and those who pray)

• ^ Otto’s size in scale suggests his power

Small bronze deity, eleventh century, height 6.5 cm.

• Earlier usage of bronze to make deities for indigenous Slavic people - later bronze used for Christian art

• “Importance of small-scale objects to Slavic religious life. Standing in contrast to the complex lost-wax cast objects of Hildesheim, the simplicity of the design, fabrication, and execution of the Slavic bronzes may indicate a desire on Bernward’s part of exhibit a technologically advanced bronze creation that marked out the superiority of the Christian god” (Weinryb, 753-756).

• Ecologically sound bronze casting processes of the Slavs versus big efforts that required deforestation of the Christians

The Maypole Celebration, c. 1537–1540, manuscript illumination for Albrecht Glockendon’s Breviary

• Contrast between leafless, wintry tree on left and maypole with leaves and Rooster on top

• Owl on top of winter tree, which was seen as an evil bird (small birds are attacking it though which is good)

• Man climbing the maypole for the rooster!

• Breviary a structured prayer book

Theodore De Bry, Inside the Potosi mine, Americae part 6 (1596), engraving.

• Colonial mining city, in today’s Bolivia. Under Spanish control

• Intense slave labor in mines

• Fixed rawhide ladder that workers climb up and down

• Ore sack “backpacks”

• Candles

• Llamas

• Silver a very important material

Jan Sadeler I after Dirck Barendsz, America, 1581, engraving, 18.7 × 22.7 cm

• Wistful indigenous-coded person representing America under a tree

• Space and time abiguous

• Nervousness about ecological destruction

• Languid/defeated/tired

• Placer mining happening in background → idea of abundant wealth “The ground does not produce any metal except gold”

• Indigenous people collecting gold for own use, not under duress

• Part of a series of four allegories of the Continents

• Smoke behind mountains suggest war/colonists coming

• “Smoke from the mountain in the background seems to reveal the nightmare of her future, a world of environmental degradation alongside the enslavement and massacre of her peoples. The arrow, symbol of her courage and skill in hunting and war, is aimed at no one; it leans idle against her body. Pondering this uncertain future, and searching for a ground upon which to live, the American continent is sustained by the last of her strength” (Lee, 43).