Katherine Gobel Hardy

We are told, in one of the earliest accounts of the life and work of the Netherlandish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-1569), that his prints and paintings elicited laughter. From pictures of carnival celebrations and children’s games to peasant weddings and riotous hellscapes, the comic artist makes his viewers, both in the late 16th century and today, question whether any of it should be taken seriously. This course will explore the humor element in the work of Bruegel and many others in early modern Europe, examining the possible beginnings of a recognition of the artistic value of comedy and the contributions of these artists to the culture of laughter. Following art historians, as well as cultural historians who have theorized about the emergence of new comic techniques and the impulse to produce pictures in a “comic mode,” we will explore innovative creative practices and the social contexts of humor throughout Europe—from Bruegel in the Netherlands to Annibale Carracci in Italy to Albrecht Dürer in Germany to Jacques Callot in France and beyond. Topics of discussion will include early modern medical perspectives on laughter, shifting notions about humor in relation to civility and decorum, the functions of tragicomedy, the secularization of the image, and the dual roles of entertainment and didacticism in art. This course will involve visits to area museums to study paintings and prints in person.

The context of the 17th-century Dutch Republic presents a distinct case for a global approach to art history, poised for the exchange of images, objects, and knowledge through the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the West India Company (WIC), the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, and as both a young republic and a colonial empire. In this course, we will look at paintings, prints, drawings, maps, sculpture, and decorative art, investigating efforts by Dutch artists to visualize global encounters and distant places, Dutch interests in collecting and displaying rarities, and various types of artistic exchange and influence. We will consider connections not only between the Dutch Republic and its territories in current-day Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa but also those established through trade and diplomacy elsewhere, including cross-border with the southern Netherlands, with other European cultures, with Asia, and with the Americas. Rejecting methods of world history or of comparative history across cultures, as well as the fallacies of Eurocentrism and center-versus-periphery, this course will employ the lens of global integration. We will consider processes and mechanisms of early-modern globalization, including imperialism, enslavement, colonization, evangelization, trade, consumption, collecting, and the diffusion of prints. This course will involve visits to area museums to study 17th-century objects in person.