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Flemish versus Netherlandish: A Discourse of Nationalism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Lisa Deam
Lisa Deam*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Abstract

This essay shows how scholarship on fifteenth-century Flemish panel painting became intertwined with efforts at national identity-building in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Europe. Paintings such as Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece were not only dispersed across regional and national boundaries, but were intellectually appropriated for competing national programs. The paintings consequently became a site of conflict between the Latin and Germanic traditions. These conflicts are clearly visible through the shifting terminology of this art, variously claimed as “Flemish” and “Netherlandish.” Such nationalist discourses shaped future scholarship on Flemish painting and contributed to its perceived inferiority vis-à-vis the Southern artistic tradition.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 1 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1998

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the College Art Association of America, January 1995. I would like to thank Katherine Crawford Luber and Joel Snyder for their suggestions on drafts of the paper, and I am especially indebted to Linda Seidel for her generosity and insight.

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