Picturing Devotion in Dutch Golden Age Huiskerken

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorWheelock, Arthur Ken_US
dc.contributor.authorHarrington, Margareten_US
dc.contributor.departmentArt History and Archaeologyen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2018-07-17T06:02:39Z
dc.date.available2018-07-17T06:02:39Z
dc.date.issued2018en_US
dc.description.abstractAlthough the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic was officially Protestant, Catholics made up nearly one-third of the population. To circumvent laws prohibiting public worship, Dutch Catholics celebrated Mass in private homes converted into lavishly decorated huiskerken (house churches). Unfortunately, most huiskerken have been destroyed or poorly documented, and previous scholarship has examined altarpieces out of their historical contexts. This dissertation examines the decorative programs of two well-documented huiskerken: St. Bernardus in den Hoeck in Haarlem, rebuilt in 1638 and part of a large community of lay religious women (kloppen) in Haarlem, and ’t Hart, founded in 1663 in Amsterdam, and preserved today as the Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder (Our Lord in the Attic). This is the first English-language study of the complete decorative programs of these two huiskerken and their liturgical functions, and I argue that devotional paintings are best understood as pieces of these decorative programs, which included embroidered textiles, illustrated sermon manuscripts, and liturgical silver. I employ reception theory to show that the imagery in these two huiskerken aided the celebration of Mass and meditation of laypeople, especially lay religious women. The examples of St. Bernardus and ’t Hart demonstrate that the decorative programs of huiskerken are largely indebted to lay religious women, who acted as patrons and creators of devotional objects. I prove that crafts like embroidery and inexpensive engravings, commonly considered “low” art, in fact served as creative sources for “higher” art forms like paintings. Furthermore, I conclude that the use of imagery in huiskerken is more closely related to medieval devotional practices than has previously been assumed.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/M2ZS2KG9P
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/20912
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledArt historyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledbaroqueen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledCatholicismen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledmanuscriptsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledNetherlandsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledpaintingen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledwomenen_US
dc.titlePicturing Devotion in Dutch Golden Age Huiskerkenen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Harrington_umd_0117E_18895.pdf
Size:
1.5 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download

Collections

UMD Theses and Dissertations
Art History & Archaeology Theses and Dissertations