Painters’ Playbooks in the Art Market of Early Modern Amsterdam
9789048564514
372 pages
Amsterdam University Press
Overview
The art market in seventeenth-century Amsterdam is renowned as a competitive, multi-layered arena where diverse artists catered to a broad and varied clientele. How did this intricate market function? How did individual painters navigate this system, making business and artistic decisions that eventually gave shape to the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Dutch art? Existing economic and art historical methodologies have fallen short of providing holistic explanations. Painters’ Playbooks introduces an innovative socio-spatial approach, using digital methods to examine the art market, shedding light on the artistic development in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. By synthesizing various historical sources digitally, this book delves into artists’ collective behaviours – or the ‘playbooks’ – discernible in their location choices, social relations, and use of house interiors. Analysing historical data through a socio-spatial lens, this book illustrates how the changes in artists’ playbooks not only shaped the multi-layered market structure but also influenced artistic innovation in seventeenth-century Amsterdam.
Author Bio
Dr. Weixuan Li is an art historian and digital humanist. Her work explores seventeenth-century Dutch art and the art market using digital methods, with a focus on spatial analysis, network modelling and data visualisation. She has published on domestic art display, workshop practices, and painting production in the Dutch Republic, and on its artistic exchange with Asia.
