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Workshop Summaries
Down to Earth: The
Representation of Labor in Late
Medieval and Early Modern
Netherlandish Art
Alison McNeil Kettering, Carleton
College, and Annette de Vries,
University of Groningen
This workshop aimed to explore
representations of human labor in
late medieval and early modern art
of the Low Countries from a variety
of angles (professional, religious,
anthropological, social etc).
Although many of these images long
functioned as icons of cosmic
order, the representation of labor
gradually changed in character once
society grew more economically and
religiously complex. These images
reveal much about contemporary
perceptions of human labor, but
they can also be understood as
constructing meaning well beyond
the topic of labor itself.
Paralleling the complexity of the
material, workshop participants
presented a varied ‘corpus’ in
terms of time, genre, and research
method. Six of the participants
contributed short, illustrated
presentations that offered a good
cross-section of scholarly thinking
and investigation. Walter Gibson
discussed 16th and early
17th-century prints of agricultural
labor in relation to shifts in
national identity and changed
conceptions of the countryside.
Jeroen Vandommele, a literary
historian, commented on the
Landjuweel of 1561 (complementing
Gibson’s remarks on the
personification of labor by the
farmer). The Farmer, the
rhetoricians argued, answered the
question of which kind of labor
could be deemed most useful and
worthy. Alice Davies discussed the
17th-century version of country
work as represented in Allart van
Everdingen’s drawings of labor
(peat cutting, grave digging) for
several series produced within
allegorical frameworks. Turning to
urban labor, Lisa Vergara focused
on the maid as depicted in such
paintings as Vermeer’s Kitchen
Maid and Love Letter.
Comparing the maids’ standing
positions, bold arms akimbo, and
jaunty sashes with the body
language and attire of contemporary
civic guardsmen imagery, she argued
that Vermeer’s empowering of the
maid undercut standard social and
gender hierarchies. Urban work
imagery at the high end of the
social ladder prompted Martha
Hollander to raise questions about
the “labor” of the quill sharpener
in Rembrandt’s 1632 portrait of a
scholar in Kassel, and related
images of learned men. Diane
Scillia discussed various images of
the working woman artist, including
self-portraits, a quite separate
and hugely complex category of
early modern work imagery.
Each presentation stimulated many
specific questions which then
prompted a free-flowing discussion
touching on a wide range of topics
and questions. Among them: the
reasons for the persistence of
representations of agricultural
labor in 17th-century imagery; the
reasons for the paucity of
17th-century images both of hard
physical labor and
proto-industrialization, especially
in painting; the shifting balance
between notions of work (diligence)
and rest (otium, the latter
especially widespread in
literature); contemporary
perceptions of manual labor,
skilled labor, and intellectual
labor, in light of the
intermingling of those categories
in the visual language of many
images. Speakers, leaders, and
audience members all benefited from
the lively and enjoyable exchange.
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