The "Modern" Image and its Transformation in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art

FAIN: FT-52414-04

Hugh Rodney Nevitt, Jr
University Of Houston (Houston, TX 77204-3067)

I am applying for an NEH Summer Stipend to support research in The Netherlands for a book that will explore Dutch genre paintings in the second half of the seventeenth century (called "modern" paintings at the time) in relation to emerging narrative modes and notions of subjectivity in contemporary Dutch literature. Around 1650, Dutch genre paintings began to emphasize, in ways they had not before, subtle psychological interactions between figures in the scenes. My book will propose historical explanations for why the visual character of such paintings changed so radically, in part, by placing them in the framework of literary texts of the period that have never before been considered by art historians as interpretive contexts for the art.