Art historians at work, looking. The four essays in this issue model four different ways of doing art history, each of which is grounded in questions of the visual. Fittingly, the issue’s second image is a photograph—a group portrait—that marks discovery as teamwork. It shows Jens Ludwig Burk, Dagmar H. Eichberger, Šárka Radostová, and Kristina Uhlíková on the day they reunited two rediscovered busts by Conrat Meit at Sychrov Castle in the Czech Republic. Their essay discusses these Renaissance marbles in the context of their original setting and in relation to the modernity of patronage at the Habsburg court.
Aaron Hyman’s contribution starts with the acute observation that, in a global age, Peter Paul Rubens rendered many globes that show no identifiable oceans or land masses. His article interweaves Rubens’s apparent inattention to such matters with the attention of certain Flemish artists of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the geographic specifics of the globe, making astute points about European mercantile and imperialist ambitions. Hymans suggests that the discovery of the Americas radically destabilized the worldview of a philosophy and a faith founded on ancient thinking that knew of no “New World.”
In another collaborative project, C. Richard Johnson and Andrew Weislogel further their research into Rembrandt’s use of paper and its implications for understanding his print production. Using searchable watermark libraries and digital overlays, they present watermark matches between Rembrandt’s etchings and dated seventeenth-century Dutch documents. These matches confirm the prior date designations of some of Rembrandt’s prints, narrow the estimated printing dates of other impressions, help assert lifetime or posthumous printings, and suggest dating for plate changes.
Adriaan Waiboer models the work of connoisseurship and, specifically, what happens when your eyes tell you that something is not what you had long thought it was. His article questions the attribution of The Glass of Wine (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie) and The Love Letter (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) to Johannes Vermeer. We urge you to read it with an open mind and open eyes.
Every JHNA issue is the product of teamwork. For their contributions as members of JHNA’s editorial board, our three associate editors, Jacquelyn Coutré, Bret Rothstein, and Joanna Woodall, deserve special thanks. Working collaboratively with the editor-in-chief and past editor-in-chief, they help to vet, solicit, and commission manuscripts. They serve as lead editors for articles, state-of-research JHNA Perspectives essays, and roundtable JHNA Conversations, a process that includes identifying and coordinating with peer reviewers and helping authors to develop and improve their essays. Associate editors collaborate with guest editors on JHNA special issues, and they work with our copy editor and managing editor in shepherding accepted essays through to online publication. They also participate in discussions about policy and related matters concerning the journal.
Managing Editor Jennifer Henel and copy editor Jessica Skwire Routhier are indispensable to the production of JHNA.
If you are a member of HNA, we thank you and encourage you to increase your membership level and/or donate to the organization. If you are a regular reader and not an HNA member, please consider joining.
As always, we encourage you to consider publishing in JHNA, with its outstanding digital image capabilities. In addition to open access, JHNA offers authors the opportunity to connect their articles to the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus. This structured vocabulary for describing and indexing the visual arts and architecture is a means of contextualizing articles and expanding their readership.
With your help, JHNA will remain one of the leading journals for early modern art of the Netherlands and its region.
The journal welcomes article submissions at any time. We also welcome proposals for JHNA Perspectives and JHNA Conversations, and inquiries about special issues. Please consult our Submission Guidelines.
H. Perry Chapman, University of Delaware, Editor-in-Chief
Jacquelyn N. Coutré, Art Institute of Chicago, Associate Editor
Bret L. Rothstein, Indiana University, Associate Editor
Joanna Woodall, The Courtauld Institute, Associate Editor
Alison M. Kettering, Carleton College, Past Editor-in-Chief