The Dutch Global Age: Worldly Images and Images of the World in Netherlandish Art

(funded by NWO-Vici, 2023-2028)

The art of the Dutch ‘Golden’ Age has many non-Western elements, from the Islamic scarf of Vermeer’s Girl with Pearl Earring to Rembrandt’s Chinese porcelain. The project ‘The Dutch Global Age’ examines how Netherlandish art has contributed to a global worldview and demonstrates the contemporary relevance of Netherlandish Old Masters in a globalising world.

The research team explores interactions between the arts of the Netherlands and the world beyond Europe. It combines different approaches:

• technical art history: how were non-European materials used and imitated by Netherlandish artisans,
• iconography: how did Netherlandish artists represent the world symbolically, and
• economic art history: what were the routes, volumes, and prices of artefacts that circulated globally

Meet the team and find out more about the project and the individual research foci.