Study Days

The Vermeer Exhibition in Amsterdam: Searching for Clues for an Enigmatic Artist

During the 17th-century, the ports of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Haarlem and Delft were international hubs from where the Dutch – expert seafarers and skilled mapmakers – developed a far-flung colonial empire and achieved prosperity unparalleled in the 1600s. This economic Golden Age was matched by an explosion of creativity in art. Of the many great artists that rose to prominence in this period, Johannes (Jan) Vermeer (1632-1675), remains by far the most mysterious. Born in Delft, where he spent the entirety of his relatively short life, on his death he left behind a remarkably small oeuvre of about 35 paintings, which is perhaps the reason that history was so swift to forget him until his eventual ‘rediscovery’ in the 19th-century. In the spring of 2023, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, in collaboration with the Mauritshuis in The Hague, will present the largest retrospective of Vermeer’s work to date, uniting masterpieces on loan from around the world. Perhaps most exciting is the new research both museums are currently undertaking, which will shed new light on Vermeer’s artistry, his compositional motivations and his creative processes.

The Ages of German Art

This course of five study days will cover 1100 years of German art, from Charlemagne’s days to the rise of Romanticism in the early 19th-century. Every study day consists of three lectures with a duration of 90 minutes exploring art including ivory carvings, goldsmith work, enamels, sculpture in wood and stone and ecclesiastical as well as secular architecture.

Part 1 will cover the period from the rise of the Carolingian dynasty under Charlemagne during the 8th-century to the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in the 12th-century.

Part 2 concentrates on the rise of Gothic art and architecture with a special focus on wooden carved altarpieces and works of the so called German “Sondergotik”.

Part 3 is dedicated to the art of the German Renaissance and Mannerism. With Albrecht Dürer leading the way, Germany opens up to the influence of Italy creating astounding works of art in bronze and stucco. The discovery of the individual, the nude and landscape as a worthy subject of painting are characteristic of this era.

Part 4 introduces the opulence of the Baroque “Gesamtkunstwerk” with examples of the exuberant southern German Baroque and the more sober Protestant Baroque of the North.

Part 5 contrasts the “noble simplicity and the quiet grandeur” of 18th-century Neo-Classical art with the mystery and emotional fervour tangible in the art of the early Romantics.