The Leiden Department of Art History cordially invites you to the online presentation of Claudia Swan’s Rarities of These Lands, published by Princeton University Press.
The seventeenth century witnessed a great flourishing of Dutch trade and culture. Over the course of the first half of the century, the northern Netherlands secured independence from the Spanish crown, and the nascent republic sought to establish its might in global trade, often by way of diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim powers. Central to the political and cultural identity of the Dutch Republic were curious foreign goods the Dutch called “rarities.”
Rarities of These Lands explores how these rarities were obtained, exchanged, stolen, valued, and collected, tracing their global trajectories and considering their role within the politics of the new state. Claudia Swan’s insightful, engaging analysis offers a novel and compelling account of how the Dutch Republic turned foreign objects into expressions of its national self-conception.
Rarities of These Lands illuminates the formative years of the Dutch Republic, offering a timely examination of the art, politics, and exoticism of this momentous period in the history of the Netherlands.
First, the author will present her book. This will be followed by a reflection of Marika Keblusek on the new insights the book provides into the arts and culture of the Dutch seventeenth century.
Claudia Swan is the Mark S. Weil Professor of Early Modern Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Art, Science, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II (1565–1629) and The Clutius Botanical Watercolors: Plants and Flowers of the Renaissance. Twitter @raritiesof