Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: An Historiographical Perspective on Women Making Netherlandish Art History
- 2 Catharina Van Hemessen’s Self-Portrait: The Woman Who Took Saint Luke’s Palette
- 3 By Candlelight: Uncovering Early Modern Women’s Creative Uses of Night
- 4 In Living Memory: Architecture, Gardens, and Identity at Huis ten Bosch
- 5 Louise Hollandine and the Art of Arachnean Critique
- 6 Reclaiming Reproductive Printmaking
- 7 Towards an Understanding of Mayken Verhulst and Volcxken Diericx
- Index
7 - Towards an Understanding of Mayken Verhulst and Volcxken Diericx
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: An Historiographical Perspective on Women Making Netherlandish Art History
- 2 Catharina Van Hemessen’s Self-Portrait: The Woman Who Took Saint Luke’s Palette
- 3 By Candlelight: Uncovering Early Modern Women’s Creative Uses of Night
- 4 In Living Memory: Architecture, Gardens, and Identity at Huis ten Bosch
- 5 Louise Hollandine and the Art of Arachnean Critique
- 6 Reclaiming Reproductive Printmaking
- 7 Towards an Understanding of Mayken Verhulst and Volcxken Diericx
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Interrogating gender and the development of the print trade in the early modern Netherlands inevitably leads us to the murky historiographic territory surrounding the women who were so crucial to the medium's growth in the mid-sixteenth century. In particular, Mayken Verhulst (1518–1599) and Volcxken Diericx (active 1570–1600) appear as frequently used names concealing fragmented personae within the interwoven social and discursive patriarchal constructs of art history. This is despite their location at the epicenter of Netherlandish print production. Mapping the fragmented literary and visual evidence surrounding these two important women onto the backdrop of patriarchal Netherlandish art history's canon of praise suggests a new model for understanding their multivalent forms of creativity.
Keywords: Mayken Verhulst; Volcxken Diericx; Pieter Coecke van Aelst; Hieronymus Cock; sixteenth-century Netherlandish print; Aux Quatre Vents
Introduction: Erasures, Confessions, Sublimations
The timeline in Grand Design, Elizabeth Cleland's recent outstanding exhibition catalog on the work of Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502–1550), makes note of a key moment in the pioneering Brussels artist's career: the posthumous publication by Mayken Verhulst (1518–1599) of his majestic printed frieze-like scroll, Ces Moeurs et fachons de faire de Turcz, or “The Customs and Fashions of the Turks.” (Figure 7.1) An important figure in the mid-sixteenth century artistic milieu of the Netherlands, Verhulst painted miniatures and was also Coecke van Aelst's wife for a little over a decade (married c. 1538/39–1550). The catalog's notation is correct in suggesting that Verhulst deserves credit as the prime actor in the publication of the long, horizontal woodblock prints of Coecke van Aelst's designs. Nadine Orenstein's concise essay introducing the prints serves admirably the overarching agenda of the Grand Design catalog and exhibition – to detail Coecke van Aelst's achievements. Orenstein situates Ces Moeurs within Coecke van Aelst's career as a masterful draftsman, tapestry designer, and antiquarian painter who served Emperor Charles V (1500–1558). She discusses the origin of the prints and describes how they began life as designs for tapestries. Orenstein also accounts for the subjects that the prints portray and identifies some of Coecke van Aelst's figural sources in Italian art, particularly the paintings by Giulio Romano that Coecke van Aelst encountered during his Roman sojourn, which took place in the early 1530s.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Women Artists and Patrons in the Netherlands, 1500-1700 , pp. 157 - 178Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019