S. Alpers. The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century

Abstract

   The review deals with the Russian publication of the 1980s’ bestselling study of art history, whose author polemises with Michel Foucault by invoking Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, and Jan Komenský. The core premise of Alpers’ book is a thesis about the decidedly describing rather than narrating character of the Northern Renaissance as opposed to the Italian model. In its reliance on the ‘optical’ method in order to create images (using a lens, a microscope, or a camera obscura), as opposed to the use of perspective by Italian artists, Dutch painters are not merely engaged in copying nature but instead depict the state of mind, ‘the storage of visual images.’ They also abolish the priority of the verbal over the visual described as  ut pictura poesis. Among other topics, the author pays tribute to Rembrandt. She argues that his uniqueness comes from the fact that he dismisses both the lofty Catholic miracle of the incarnated Word and the humble Dutch faith in the world’s outer shell, and thus rejects not only the Dutch art of describing but also the Italian idea of narrative painting.