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Nicolaes Witsen and his Circle:
Globalization, Collecting, and Art
Patronage in Amsterdam circa
1700
Rebecca Parker Brienen, University
of Miami
My paper will be a preliminary case
study of the art patronage and
collecting practices of Nicolaes
Witsen (1641-1717) and his circle.
Thirteen times burgomaster of
Amsterdam, Nicolaes Witsen was also
a director of the Dutch East India
Company (VOC), a confidant of Dutch
Stadhouder Prince Willem III, and a
personal friend of Peter the Great.
Witsen’s political position,
financial resources, and overseas
contacts allowed him to send
artists around the world to make
eyewitness representations of
exotic places and peoples for his
cabinet of curiosities.
Unlike the images produced between
1637-1644 in the colony of Dutch
Brazil, which circulated only among
the highest-ranking European
nobility, the natural history and
ethnographic illustrations
collected and commissioned by
Witsen became objects of
fascination in cabinets of
curiosities in the Dutch Republic
and important commodities in a
world-wide scientific network.
Nonetheless, of the artists
supported by the Witsens, including
Cornelis de Bruijn, Herbert de
Jager, Michel van Musscher, Dirk
Valkenburg, and Maria Sibylla
Merian, only Merian and de Bruijn
have received serious attention
from scholars. In the case of de
Bruijn, however, the focus has been
on his travel accounts, not the
illustrations that he produced for
them or for collectors like
Witsen.
Given the importance of the Dutch
in the production of knowledge
about the world in the long 18th
century—in the form of books, maps,
paintings, and prints--it is
critical to investigate what a
central figure like Witsen deemed
visually significant. It is equally
important to examine how his
collecting practices were
influenced by his multiple roles:
connoisseur, scientific amateur,
statesmen, and director of the VOC.
This topic builds on my earlier
work on the ethnographic and
natural history illustrations
produced by painters and
naturalists in the colony of Dutch
Brazil (Visions of Savage
Paradise: Albert Eckhout, Court
Artist in Colonial Dutch
Brazil, AUP, in press). With
Witsen, however, I have exchanged
the tropical courtly context of
Dutch Brazil for the middle-class,
mercantile city of Amsterdam.
Because of the large scope of this
topic, in my HNA paper I will focus
on my recent research on Witsen and
his circle (especially that
conducted during the summer of
2006), identify some preliminary
results and trends of that
research, and address early 18th
century collecting practices as a
product of globalization more
generally.
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