Overlay Videos for Quick and Accurate Watermark Identification, Comparison, and Matching: Creating and Using Overlay Videos

Identifying, comparing, and matching watermarks in pre-machine-made papers has occupied scholars of prints and drawings for some time. One popular but arduous approach is to overlay, either manually or digitally, an image of the watermark in question with its presumed match from a known source. For example, a newly discovered watermark in a Rembrandt print might be compared to a similar one reproduced in Erik Hinterding’s Rembrandt as an Etcher (2006). Such an overlay can confirm the pair as identical, i.e., as moldmates, or reveal their differences. But creating an accurate overlay for two images with different scales, orientations, or resolutions using standard image-manipulation tools can be time consuming and, ultimately, unsuccessful. Part One of this article describes advances in the emerging field of computational art history, specifically the development of digital image processing software, that can be used to semi-automatically create a reliable animated overlay of two watermarks, regardless of their relative “comparability.” Watermarks found in the prints of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) are used in three case studies to demonstrate the efficacy of user-generated overlay videos. Part Two discusses how searching for identical watermarks, i.e., moldmates, can be enhanced through the application of a new suite of software programs that exploit the data calculated during the creation of user-generated animated overlays. This novel watermark identification procedure allows for rapid, confident watermark searches with minimal user effort, given the existence of a pre-marked library of watermarks. Using a pre-marked library of Foolscap with Five-Pointed Collar watermarks, four case studies present different categories of previously undocumented matches 1) among Rembrandt’s prints; 2) between prints by Rembrandt and another artist, in this case Jan Gillisz van Vliet (1600/10–1668); and 3) between selected Rembrandt prints and contemporaneous Dutch historical documents.

JHNA Conversations 1: A Curatorial Roundtable on Expanded and Expanding Narratives in the Museum

As the cultural sector continues to grapple with the challenging and transformative events of 2020 spotlighting the exclusionary practices and social norms that structure museums, JHNA commissioned two roundtables to reflect on the challenges of curating Northern European art. This first one, “Expanded and Expanding Narratives in the Museum,” unites four curators in discussion about the evolving trajectory of art history and the possibilities for new narratives in the galleries. In addressing the increasing momentum for new art-historical ecologies in recent years, the participants discuss the inherently marginalizing effects of canonization; signal the tensions between the art market, perceived museum audiences, and historical collections that continue to shape museum presentations and collecting practices; and highlight some objects from the early modern period that suggest pathways forward for more expansive conversations in museum spaces. The discussion closes with a look at the global entanglement of early modern Europe. This point will be taken up by the next JHNA Conversation, to be published in the winter 2022 issue, which will reconvene the curatorial team for the groundbreaking exhibition Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age, organized by the Rijksmuseum and the Peabody Essex Museum in 2015–16. Discussants, including a member of their advisory committee from the cultural sector in Indonesia, will reflect on the humility and resourcefulness necessary to present shameful racist histories, the impact of sharing personal—rather than merely collective—stories in the galleries, and the need for museums to participate in the healing of historical wounds. It will also address new research methodologies that inherently expand inclusiveness and surface new types of historical data, leading to a more people-oriented presentation of art history. Both conversations, edited and condensed for clarity for publication in JHNA, have been organized and moderated by Yao-Fen You, Acting Deputy Director of Curatorial and Senior Curator and Head of Product Design and Decorative Arts, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York.

Jan van Goyen: Virtuoso, Innovator, and Market Leader

This article is a translation from the original Dutch, which first appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition Jan van Goyen (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, 1996). The essay examines the “strategies” regarding style, subject matter, technique, and price level that Jan van Goyen appears to have used to position himself in the art market. In particular, it discusses the radical change in style and the continuous innovations that Van Goyen introduced into his landscapes as he became a market leader. The Postscript offers insight into the origin and aim of the essay and refers to relevant information that emerged after the initial publication date.

Matter as an Artist: Rubens’s Myths of Spontaneous Generation

Three works by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) entail mythologized scenes of spontaneous generation, or the creation of species from nature’s raw matter: Head of Medusa (ca. 1613–1618), The Discovery of Erichthonius (ca. 1616), and the oil sketch Deucalion and Pyrrha (ca. 1636). In these works Rubens naturalizes the life of painting within its materials, implying matter—paint, with its pigments and mediating liquids—as an intrinsic, animating quality of his images and even as a counterpart to or collaborator with the artist. This essay explores these ideas to show how Rubens’s technical and artisanal understanding of painting and its materials could have informed his interpretation of ancient myths.

The Conversion of Saint Paul Series at the Courtauld: Rubens's Artistic Process Revealed by New Technical Discoveries

The Courtauld Gallery has three works by Peter Paul Rubens depicting the Conversion of Saint Paul, all dated to ca. 1610–1612: a compositional drawing, an oil sketch, and a finished painting. The serendipitous survival of these works provides insight into Rubens’s creative process and has long been a topic of discussion for art historians. Recent technical study and improved imaging techniques have highlighted Rubens’s extremely fluid approach to the development of the design and revealed complex reworkings of all three compositions. These findings suggest a much longer gestation of these ideas than the 1610–1612 date proposed, and they cast light on Rubens’s broader working practice and his ceaseless striving for aesthetic perfection, combined with a pragmatic approach to the reuse and reworking of his compositions. Building on research done by E. Melanie Gifford, the complex changes revealed by X-ray; by infrared, transmitted, and raking light; and by microscopic examination can be explored using enhanced image tools and navigation. Readers can compare works of art with each other and with their technical images using the “IIIF multi-mode viewer” to better understand Rubens’s artistic exploration of ideas and aid their own research.

Potter's Bull: An Heirloom and a Gift

Contrary to what we thought we knew about the provenance of Paulus Potter’s iconic The Bull (1647; Mauritshuis, The Hague), the painting served as a gift to Prince William IV of Orange in 1749, after a stay of many decades within the family of Barbara Schas and Willem Fabricius in Haarlem. The painting may have been produced, or adapted, as a giant piece of decoration for a private house in The Hague.

Art Ownership in Leiden in the Seventeenth Century

This article originally appeared as “Kunstbezit in Leiden in de 17de eeuw” in Th. H. Lunsingh-Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, vol. 5b, (Leiden: Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 1990), 3–36. The larger publication comprises eleven volumes on the architecture, interior decoration, residents’ histories, and contents of the houses in this section of the Rapenburg, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Fock’s chapter centers on art owned by collectors and others living on Leiden’s famous canal—their professions, social status, the kinds of art that they had in their possession, and the positioning of those works within their households. Works have been identified with the aid of auction catalogues and public notarial inventories.

Learned Fable, Living World: Artistry, Knowledge and Attention to Nature in Two Aesopic Paintings by Joannes Fyt

Now better known as a hunting painter, the Antwerp animal specialist Joannes Fyt (1611–1661) also produced several depictions of Aesopic fables. A notable feature of Fyt’s fables is their attentiveness to the appearances and behaviors of animals and how they inhabit their environment. Focusing on two paintings by Fyt featuring poultry birds, this essay uses period fable books, a key discussion of fable by Erasmus, and zoopoetic theory to explore how these works address both the allegorical realm of fable and a tangible living world that was increasingly coming under investigation from natural history and related modes of inquiry.