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Winner of the 2023 Roland H. Bainton Prize for Art History
Written by the poet-painter Karel van Mander, who finished it in June 1603, the Grondt der edel, vry schilderconst (Foundation of the Noble, Free Art of Painting) was the first systematic treatise on schilderconst (the art of painting / picturing) to be published in Dutch (Haarlem: Paschier van Wes[t]busch, 1604). This English-language edition of the Grondt, accompanied by an introductory monograph and a full critical apparatus, provides unprecedented access to Van Mander’s crucially important art treatise. The book sheds light on key terms and critical categories such as schilder, manier, uyt zijn selven doen, welstandt, leven and gheest, and wel schilderen, and both exemplifies and explicates the author’s distinctive views on the complementary forms and functions of history and landscape.
Written by the poet-painter Karel van Mander, who finished it in June 1603, the Grondt der edel, vry schilderconst (Foundation of the Noble, Free Art of Painting) was the first systematic treatise on schilderconst (the art of painting / picturing) to be published in Dutch (Haarlem: Paschier van Wes[t]busch, 1604). This English-language edition of the Grondt, accompanied by an introductory monograph and a full critical apparatus, provides unprecedented access to Van Mander’s crucially important art treatise. The book sheds light on key terms and critical categories such as schilder, manier, uyt zijn selven doen, welstandt, leven and gheest, and wel schilderen, and both exemplifies and explicates the author’s distinctive views on the complementary forms and functions of history and landscape.
Price: $197.00
Pages: 574
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Publication Date:
09 January 2023
ISBN: 9789004508385
Format: Hardcover
“excellent … The chances are that even in Dutch universities, this translation will become the primary point of access for students of early modern Netherlandish art in the Low Countries.”
Koenraad Jonckheere, Ghent University. In: Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews, September 2023.
“Walter Melion is the ideal scholar, if not the only scholar, one would want to produce an English-language edition of Karel van Mander’s foundational treatise on the art of painting. From the rich and erudite introduction to the lively and eminently readable translation, this book — an invaluable resource for future scholarship — at last brings one of the key art-theoretical texts of the early modern Netherlands to a wider audience.”
Marisa Bass, Yale University
“Walter Melion’s superlative translation of Karel van Mander’s Foundation of the Noble, Free Art of Painting is cause for celebration, bringing us at long last an authoritative English critical edition of this singularly influential text. With deep erudition and sensitivity to Van Mander’s interconnected literary and artistic preoccupations, Melion reveals anew the originality of the great Flemish painter-poet and the ongoing salience of his work today.”
Celeste Brusati, University of Michigan
Koenraad Jonckheere, Ghent University. In: Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews, September 2023.
“Walter Melion is the ideal scholar, if not the only scholar, one would want to produce an English-language edition of Karel van Mander’s foundational treatise on the art of painting. From the rich and erudite introduction to the lively and eminently readable translation, this book — an invaluable resource for future scholarship — at last brings one of the key art-theoretical texts of the early modern Netherlands to a wider audience.”
Marisa Bass, Yale University
“Walter Melion’s superlative translation of Karel van Mander’s Foundation of the Noble, Free Art of Painting is cause for celebration, bringing us at long last an authoritative English critical edition of this singularly influential text. With deep erudition and sensitivity to Van Mander’s interconnected literary and artistic preoccupations, Melion reveals anew the originality of the great Flemish painter-poet and the ongoing salience of his work today.”
Celeste Brusati, University of Michigan
Walter S. Melion is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History at Emory University in Atlanta, where he directs the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry (Emory’s institute for advanced study in the humanities). He is author of three monographs and over eighty articles, co-author of two exhibition catalogues, and editor or co-editor of more than twenty volumes.