As the world struggles with a global pandemic, as commerce, industry, and education deal with social distancing and work-from-home mandates, scholarship marches on. Internet publishing in particular continues undaunted, a touch of normalcy in an abnormal time. Our Summer 2020 issue includes a remarkably timely article, focusing on the Leiden plague hospital. After the hospital was built, it turned out (unexpectedly) that Leiden never experienced another plague outbreak. Let us take this as a good omen, but no reason to let down our guard.
This issue confirms the rich diversity of approaches now current in art history. In addition to the article that contextualizes hospital decoration, we present an essay discussing a lost devotional painting, another on a dynastic portrait for an English prince, and another offering a new understanding of a perspective box. The final paper discusses a method for identifying watermarks.
Molly Faries, Henri Defoer, “Jan van Scorel’s Crucifixion for the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam: the ‘finest painting in all of the regions of Flanders’.” The article identifies the composition of van Scorel’s lost Crucifixion for the Oude Kerk and discusses its influence.
Sara Ayres, “A Mirror for the Prince? Anne of Denmark in Hunting Costume with her Dogs (1617) by Paul van Somer.” The essay concerns a dynastic portrait that provides a mirror of majesty.
Jun Nakamura, “Seeing Outside the Box: Reexamining the Top of Samuel van Hoogstraten’s London Perspective Box.” The article argues that a corrective apparatus was constructed for viewing the box; it also analyzes the implications of that apparatus with respect to the box’s exterior decoration and Hoogstraten’s writings.
Hanneke van der Asperen, “Nothing Else Than Decay: Theodoor van der Schuer’s Allegory of Human Deprivation for Leiden’s Plague Hospital.” The painter of this little-studied canvas for the regents’ room in a pesthouse combined an evocative image of the plague with an allegory of human deprivation that refers back to Juan Luis Vives’s tract on poor relief.
C. Richard Johnson, Jr.’s “Decision Trees for Watermark Identification in Rembrandt’s Etchings” explains the decision-tree-based approach to rapid identification of watermarks in Rembrandt’s etchings and uses it to identify watermarks in seven prints in The Frick Collection, New York.
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For the current issue, we once again thank Jessica Skwire Routhier for copyediting the texts with admirable attention to detail. We also acknowledge our managing editor Heidi Eyestone, Visual Resources Librarian of Carleton College. Heidi’s generous aid with images, uploading, and much else connected with this issue, as well as her long-range planning, technical expertise, and commitment, have made her an indispensable colleague. Our student assistant, Brendan Glenn, provided important help in preparing the issue. For financial support, we thank Carleton College.
In other news, JHNA is grateful to the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation for a grant to support a digital project on textile mapping that will articulate the diverse ways in which textiles shaped identity in the European and colonial worlds. This is the second time that the Delmas Foundation has provided support to JHNA; the first (2016) was a grant to upgrade the HNA web platform in order to accommodate publications such as the textile project.
JHNA is archived by Portico, an electronic service initiated by JSTOR and supported by the Mellon Foundation, Ithaka, and the Library of Congress. Preserving scholarship published in electronic form indefinitely, it ensures long-term access to our content. Our membership in CrossRef allows us to register each of our articles with a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI) that provides a persistent link to its location on the internet. It allows libraries and other organizations as well as readers of online journals to find and connect to these articles. All articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
We encourage you to consider JHNA as a venue for your own publications. With your help, JHNA will remain one of the premier journals of the early modern art of the Netherlands and its region.
The Journal welcomes submissions at any time. Please consult our Submission Guidelines.
Alison M. Kettering, Carleton College, Editor-in-Chief
Jacquelyn N. Coutré, Art Institute of Chicago, Associate Editor
Dagmar Eichberger, Universität Heidelberg, Associate Editor
Bret Rothstein, Indiana University, Associate Editor