Fall issue Oud Holland
This month Oud Holland opens its pages with a striking technical analysis and reconstruction of the cup of Veere – an exceptional fire-gilded silver ornamental piece from circa 1547-1548. Hanne Schonkeren now offers a new perspective on the circumstances of its creation in Antwerp, and presents the anonymous ‘Master with the lion head in a shield’ as the artist.
With Pieter Pourbus’ quintessential Last Supper of 1548 as a starting point, Bram de Klerck discusses the iconography of the theme in a larger context of this imagery in Medieval and Renaissance art. Notably, the figure of Judas plays a pivotal role in some of these paintings and, conspicuously enough, also in the viewer’s personal experience of participation in the biblical story.
Finally, through a detailed analysis in conjunction with contemporary reviews, Joan Mut i Arbós is able to reconstruct the late-nineteenth-century perspective on Alma-Tadema’s work. The question is how his contemporaries may have seen his work. With access to classical sources available at the time, two of this key paintings suddenly become a social critique of the wealthy class.
Summaries of all three articles can be found on the Oud Holland website.
Oud Holland – Journal for Art of the Low Countries 2024 – 3, volume 137:
- Hanne Schonkeren
Master with the lion head in a shield: A new attribution of the ornamental cup of Veere (c. 1547-1548) - Bram de Klerck
Trading places with the traitor: Pieter Pourbus (c. 1523-1584) and sixteenth-century Last Supper iconography - Joan Mut i Arbós
Lawrence Alma-Tadema and the nineteenth-century 'period eye': Classical sources for his Entrance of the theatre (1866) and An exedra (1869)
