This issue of the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art begins with two essays on early Netherlandish art. The first is a contribution to our Perspectives series of state-of-research essays. Taking stock of the scholarship from roughly the late 1980s to about 2020, Ingrid Falque surveys debates about, and considers directions for future research in, early Netherlandish paintings as devotional objects. Taking a closer view, Olenka Horbatsch examines the earliest etchings made in the Low Countries—Lucas van Leyden’s Maximilian I and Jan Gossart’s Charles V—as imperial portraits made by leading artists for the Netherlandish court and as an important catalyst for the development of elite print projects in the first three decades of the sixteenth century.
Two further essays treat early modern difference in contrasting ways. Barbara A. Kaminska discusses the careers of prelingually deaf painters—Hendrick Avercamp, for example—and the conceptualization of deafness and muteness in the historiography and theory of Dutch art. In looking at one of the era’s most famous works from the perspective of difference, Aneta Georgievska-Shine provides new insights into Rembrandt’s Aristotle with a Bust of Homer in the contexts of the early modern perception of the philosopher’s “foreignness” vis-à-vis other classical thinkers.
We owe special thanks to our authors and the two colleagues who are indispensable to the production of JHNA, Managing Editor Jennifer Henel and copy editor Jessica Skwire Routhier.
In this issue we would also like to express our enormous gratitude to our readers, especially those who are members of our parent organization, the Historians of Netherlandish Art. With the exception of special issues that receive external support, JHNA is funded entirely by the HNA, whether through membership dues or donations. As an online journal, JHNA is not as costly as a print publication. Our Editor in Chief and Associate Editors volunteer their time as part of their service to the profession and the field. However, our expenses are mounting, as are those of the HNA. Our considerable costs are primarily for professional copy editing and for the managing editor’s transformation of manuscripts into interactive texts and images to produce the visually rich online journal that you read. Your funds will help support these processes and digital tools such as International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) images, as well as the development of new features to augment the Journal’s tools for future articles.
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 state-of-research essays, JHNA Conversations roundtables, and inquiries about special issues. Please consult our Submissions 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