Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History18- Plaster Casts the Life of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painters

This book offers a comprehensive account of plaster casts’ impact on seventeenth-century Dutch painters. Novel interpretations of paintings paired with period sources present plaster casts as critical signifiers of artists’ ambitions and as works of sculpture embedded in Dutch society. In the early modern Dutch Republic, plaster casts offered artists a way to overcome limitations of space and time, and to define themselves. This book presents the first comprehensive account of the impact of plaster casts on the artistic practice, intellectual endeavors, and social status of seventeenth-century Dutch painters. These modest objects were, in fact, real works of sculpture, incorporated into a variety of compositions where they signalled an artist’s ambitions and technical virtuosity. Marginalized in the history of Dutch art, plaster casts lie at the center of this study’s novel interpretations of paintings and drawings, paired with period sources.