Rozemarijn Landsman

This essay investigates the significance of sulfur in Ms. Fr. 640, by exploring contemporary artisanal writings and by reconstructing the process of casting in sulfur and wax, using different additives found on fols. 12r and 140v. While casting in sulfur may seem unusual to modern eyes, our experiments show that sulfur, especially in combination with additives such as soot black and “sanguine,” yields results which live up to the author-practitioner’s emphasis on hard, long-lasting and detail-rich casts. Furthermore, they shed light on the author-practitioner’s preoccupation with bubble-like impurities forming in the cast. While Ms. Fr. 640 contains no theorizing about sulfur as alchemical prime matter, we suggest that the material was a metaphor for the process of experimentation itself.

This essay explains and reconstructs the method of casting medals as described on fols. 83v and 92r. This type of medal, which is cast with a convex relief on the obverse and an exact concave negative of the relief on the reverse, was widespread throughout Europe by the late sixteenth century. Modern scholars frequently refer to these medals as “without reverse,” “hollow cast,” “incuse-reverse cast,” or “uniface.” Little is known about the methods of their production. Ms. Fr. 640 presents at least one entry describing a previously unknown method for casting this type of medal. This essay sheds new light on their facture, and discusses their broader significance within Ms. Fr. 640 and in other contemporary sources.

Caspar van Wittel—the Dutch painter who left for Rome and never came back. Or so we thought. New archival evidence demonstrates that the vedute painter did undertake a journey home, in the winter of 1684-1685, and also adds significantly to our knowledge of his family and roots.

In line with growing scholarly attention currently being given to painters' tools, this paper examines a hitherto unstudied candidate: the sponge. Textured areas depicting moss and foliage in paintings by late 17th-century Dutch artists have led to the assumption that these were painted with a sponge or moss — without questioning the natural properties, availability, and both practical and conceptual connotations of such potential tools. This paper addresses those questions in order to determine more precisely if, and why, a sponge might have been used. From a wide variety of primary sources, two tentative patterns emerge: firstly, a substantial difference in the presence of sponges between Italy and the Netherlands due to their distinct geographies; secondly, an increase in the number of records and references referring to sponges in the Netherlands towards the end of the 17th century coinciding with a shift in their conceptual connotations. The sources support the hypothesis that the sponge could have been used as a painters' tool, although its apparent overall scarcity raises further questions as to the implications of such potential use.

This dissertation offers a new reading of Jan van der Heyden's art through an analysis of his depiction of bricks. The minuteness with which the artist rendered bricks is frequently mentioned, their significance however, both in relation to his art and in relation to the early modern Dutch city has largely gone unnoticed. This in-depth study of Van der Heyden's work and methods not only enriches our understanding of his paintings, but also stresses that his practice as an artist was fundamentally linked to his work as an inventor of technology. Both in his art and inventions Van der Heyden exhibited a profound interest in materials, experimentation, and the urban fabric. Additionally, this study has implications for our interpretation of the Dutch seventeenth-century painted cityscape more broadly. Cityscapes have rarely been examined in light of art theoretical treatises. Van der Heyden's art, as well as the earliest known commentaries on his paintings however, underscore that such lack of interest is unfounded.