My work is motivated by what I see as a fundamental question: how did easel painting come to occupy its central place in the hierarchy of media that has come to characterize early modern Netherlandish art? Painting occupied a decidedly marginal place within the visual culture of the Burgundian elite in the fifteenth century, which was dominated by a system of aesthetic values that privileged material cost, ostentation, and bodily performance. However, the sixteenth-century Netherlandish nobility demonstrated a burgeoning interest in paintings of various kinds, a fact that suggests the possibility that painting's privilege might better be understood as the result of a historical process rather than as a presumed fact. My scholarship attempts not only to come to grips with the rise of painting, but also to explore the survival of late-medieval aristocratic tastes and practices into the sixteenth century and beyond. As a means to address these broad historical concerns, my research draws upon performance studies, economic histories of the arts, visual and literary theory, and cultural history. I anticipate that these explorations will sustain three book-length projects, the first of which is currently being completed under the working title, The Rise of the Painted Panel in Early Modern Netherlandish Art. |
James J. Bloom