Niekrasz, Carmen Cramer (Author)
Northwestern University
Swan, Claudia
Edition Details: Advisor: Swan, Claudia
Physical Details: 468 pp.
Language: English
Chambers of Flemish tapestry served as prestigious, portable decoration for early modern courts across Europe. In the second half of the sixteenth century, a number of noble patrons commissioned tapestries that prominently featured highly naturalistic zoological and botanical imagery. Drawing upon zoological treatises, medical and physiognomic literature, fables, printed emblemata, accounts of staged animal combats, and a variety of other sources, this dissertation offers a new interpretation of three cycles of animal tapestries that survive relatively intact. The study explores how the production, export, and display of animal tapestries, a largely overlooked genre, coincides with the beginning of a fundamental transformation of European natural knowledge, and with a burgeoning interest among sixteenth-century rulers in practices of natural history (defined as the acquisition, study, and display of natural objects and representations of them). The first chapter analyzes a set of ten grotesque spalliere commissioned by Cosimo de'Medici (1519-1574) from his own newly-founded workshops in Florence. The chapter reinterprets a puzzling band of naturalistic marine specimens found within the grotesques in light of an early modern discourse that cast nature as an artisan, and demonstrates that chambers of tapestry, like cabinets of rarities and illuminated albums of natural minutiae, could function as courtly theaters of nature. The second chapter examines the purchase by Polish king Sigismund II Augustus (1520-1572) of a massive unified series of Flemish tapestries, 138 of which survive at Wawel Castle in Cracow. As a large but seamless indoor garden, the series illustrates the most important account of the progress of natural knowledge in the early modern period: the biblical narrative of Creation. The third chapter takes up a set of seven tapestries now displayed at the Borromean palace of Isola Bella, which depict violent combats between feral predators and prey. The tapestries, which belonged to several prominent ecclesiastics before 1700, employ zoological imagery to illustrate the unruly presence of the humoral passions both in nature and within the postlapsarian human body. Early modern natural history illustration is often equated with paper images of flora and fauna: species represented individually in woodcuts in printed catalogues, or in watercolors collected into albums. This dissertation demonstrates that chambers of fine Flemish tapestry--splendid moveable environments for courts--likewise served as a medium for aristocratic patronage of natural history in the period. The study is a re-examination of three cycles of sixteenth-century tapestry renowned for their zoological iconography, through the lens of recent scholarship on natural history patronage at European courts, scholarship which has clarified the uses and appeal of natural history in courtly settings yet ignored the medium of tapestry almost entirely.
...MoreDescription “Explores how the production, export, and display of animal tapestries [coincides with a] transformation of European natural knowledge, and with a burgeoning interest...in practices of natural history.” (from the abstract) Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/11 (2008). Pub. no. AAT 3284161.
Similar Citations
Book
Sloan, Kim;
(2007)
A New World: England's First View of America
(/isis/citation/CBB000850550/)
Chapter
Smith, Paul J.;
(2008)
Sympathy in Eden: On Paradise with the Fall of Man by Rubens and Brueghel
(/isis/citation/CBB000952945/)
Article
Flora Vafea;
(2017)
The Astronomical Instruments in Saint Catherine's Iconography at the Holy Monastery of Sinai
(/isis/citation/CBB604794925/)
Book
Wintle, Michael J.;
(2009)
The Image of Europe: Visualizing Europe in Cartography and Iconography
(/isis/citation/CBB001230997/)
Chapter
Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi;
Paolo Tongiorgi;
(2006)
Natura, verbum, signum: brevi note su imprese e storia naturale
(/isis/citation/CBB955884338/)
Article
Lanska, Douglas J.;
(2014)
Vesalius on the Anatomy and Function of the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerves: Medical Illustration and Reintroduction of a Physiological Demonstration from Galen
(/isis/citation/CBB001420782/)
Book
McHam, Sarah Blake;
(2013)
Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance: The Legacy of the “Natural History”
(/isis/citation/CBB001201669/)
Chapter
Jordan-Gschwend, Annemarie;
Tudela, Almudena Pérez de;
(2007)
Renaissance Menageries: Exotic Animals and Pets at the Habsburg Courts in Iberia and Central Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB000773425/)
Article
Masseti, Marco;
(2008)
Sculptures of Mammals in the Grotta degli Animali of the Villa Medici di Castello, Florence, Italy: A Stone Menagerie
(/isis/citation/CBB000931207/)
Book
Charlotte Sleigh;
(2017)
The Paper Zoo: 500 Years of Animals in Art
(/isis/citation/CBB321065086/)
Book
Attenborough, David;
Owens, Susan;
Clayton, Martin;
Alexandratos, Rea;
(2007)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery
(/isis/citation/CBB000772794/)
Book
Neri, Janice;
(2011)
The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500--1700
(/isis/citation/CBB001221160/)
Book
Jorink, Eric;
Ramakers, Bart;
(2011)
Art and Science in the Early Modern Netherlands
(/isis/citation/CBB001201611/)
Book
Mason, Peter;
(2009)
Before Disenchantment: Images of Exotic Animals and Plants in the Early Modern World
(/isis/citation/CBB001231063/)
Book
Göttler, Christine;
Neuber, Wolfgang;
(2008)
Spirits Unseen: The Representation of Subtle Bodies in Early Modern European Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB000952141/)
Book
Fairman, Elisabeth R.;
Art, Yale Center for British;
(2014)
Of Green Leaf, Bird, and Flower: Artists' Books and the Natural World
(/isis/citation/CBB001500458/)
Article
Kusukawa, Sachiko;
(2011)
Patron's Review: The Role of Images in the Development of Renaissance Natural History
(/isis/citation/CBB001230614/)
Book
Roberta Ballestriero;
Owen Burke;
Francesco Galassi;
(2019)
Ceroplastics: The Art of Wax
(/isis/citation/CBB828682939/)
Chapter
Peter Mason;
(2006)
Il contributo del Libri Picturati A. 32-38 alla comprensione dell’iconografia del Brasile olandese nei dipinti di Albert Eckhout e di Frans Post
(/isis/citation/CBB045763201/)
Book
Giuseppe Olmi;
Giuseppe Papagno;
(2006)
La natura e il corpo. Studi in memoria di Attilio Zanca
(/isis/citation/CBB679826638/)
Be the first to comment!