Journal of Art Historiography (Jun 2020)
The Truth in Painting . Review of: Lexicographie artistique: forme, usages et enjeux dans l Europe moderne, edited by Michèle-Caroline Heck with Marianne Freyssinet and Stéphanie Trouvé (Montepellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2018)
Abstract
Reviews two important contributions to the study of Early Modern Northern European art theoretical literature, a dictionary of art terms and an edited volume of case studies on writings on art published between 1600 and 1750 in German, French, English, and Dutch. These two volumes are the first systematic comparison of artistic vocabulary in four languages as the terms appeared in a range of publications indebted to Italian sources. They study the literature from c. 1604, when Karel Van Mander s Schilder-boek was first published, until c. 1750, when Alexander Baumgarten introduced the term “aesthetics” to establish the analytical philosophy of art. Broadening the study to several countries and languages shows both the fragmentation of a received discourse and the emergence of common elements in an evolving, dynamic conception of painting.
