Cover PageArticle Contentsp. 168p. 169p. 170p. 171p. 172p. 173p. 174p. 175p. 176p. 177p. 178p. 179p. 180p. 181p. 182Issue Table of ContentsSimiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 20, No. 2/3 (1990 - 1991), pp. 121-224Front Matter [pp. 121-122]Foreword [p. 123]Elements of Continuity: A Finger Raised in Warning [pp. 124-141]Drawings as Intermediary Stages: Some Working Methods of Dirk Vellert and Albrecht Dürer Re-Examined [pp. 142-152]Netherlandish Artists and Art in Renaissance Nuremberg [pp. 153-167]Stilled Lives: Self-Portraiture and Self-Reflection in Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish Still-Life Painting [pp. 168-182]Jan Steen's Household Revisited [pp. 183-196]Real Dutch Art and Not-So-Real Dutch Art: Some Nationalistic Views of Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish Painting [pp. 197-206]Back Matter [pp. 207-224]http://www.jstor.orgStilled Lives: Self-Portraiture and Self-Reflection in Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish Still-Life PaintingAuthor(s): Celeste BrusatiSource: Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 20, No. 2/3, (1990 -1991), pp. 168-182Published by: Stichting voor Nederlandse Kunsthistorishes PublicatiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3780741Accessed: 07/07/2008 00:38Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. 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For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected] Stilled lives: self-portraiture and self-reflection in seventeenth-century Netherlandish still-life painting Celeste Brusati In the early decades of the seventeenth century, Nether- landish artists created a new, hybrid genre of self-por- traiture in the form of still-life easel paintings featuring one or more images of their makers. Among the earliest instances of this phenomenon is a still life of I6I I by the Antwerp painter Clara Peeters (fig. I), which shows di- minutive images of the artist at her easel reflected on the polished surfaces of the finely wrought gold gilt goblet which she has exquisitely re-crafted in paint at the center of her picture.I Similar images of artists, mir- rored in the worlds they paint, silently testifying to the imitative power of their art, soon became familiar tropes of both painter and painting in Dutch still lifes. Exam- ples abound in the works of Pieter Claesz, Jan de Heem, and Abraham van Beyeren, to name only a few of the better-known painters who depicted themselves in still lifes. A great many of these paintings employ reflective devices which, like the spherical mirror in Claesz's Vanitas still life in Nuremberg (fig. 2), draw into the picture an image of the artist ostensibly caught in the act of painting it. Other paintings, like David Bailly's ambi- tious Vanitas still life of I65I (fig. 3) incorporate paint- ings, prints or drawings of the artist into a larger collec- tion of objects presented for view. What is at once striking and noteworthy about all these self-representa- tions-as distinct from conventional self-portraits-is the conspicuous way in which they confound the repre- sentation of art and artist. Instead of appearing in their pictures as embodied human subjects according to the I Madrid, Museo del Prado, inv. nr. I620. This panel, which mea- sures 50 x 72 cm, is related in size and subject to three other still lifes by Peeters in the Prado, inv. nrs. 1619, 1621, and 1622. See Matias Diaz Padron, Escuelaflamenca siglo XVII, Madrid (Museo del Prado) 1975, nr. 1620, pp. 21-22, and Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women artists i550-I95o, New York 1976, p. 33. I am aware of only one still-life self-image which predates Clara Peeters's work usual conventions of portraiture, these still-life painters transform themselves into pictures, and appear as picto- rial images displayed among other representations and products of their art. Still-life self-images such as these depart significantly from what we generally think of as the humanist tradi- tion of self-portraiture, with its focus on the corporeal representation of individuals whose physiognomy, clothing, gestures and demeanor serve as the primary indicators of their social identity. Painters working within this figural tradition typically sought to upgrade or assert their professional status by identifying them- selves as courtiers or literati and by dissociating them- selves pictorially from the artisanal aspects of their art. Rubens's portrayal of himself in the group portrait known as The four philosophers (fig. 4) exemplifies such strategies. Here the artist excludes all traces of his man- ual labor to assert his supra-artisanal social and intellec- tual status. He presents himself, along with the Antwerp humanist Jan Woverius, as a fellow scholar and heir to the philosophical tradition embodied in the commemo- rative portraits of Rubens's recently deceased brother Philip, Philip's mentor Lipsius, and their ultimate men- tor, Seneca himself, whose portrait bust is ensconced appropriately in the niche at upper right. In marked contrast to this type of portrait, Nether- landish still-life self-images deploy a variety of pictorial strategies aimed at valorizing the artist on different terms. The makers of these works do not assert the intel- and that is an anonymous panel of 1538 now in the Kroller-Muller Museum at Otterlo which depicts an array of objects shelved in an open cabinet. The picture is illustrated in Miriam Milman, The illu- sions of reality: trompe-l'oeil painting, New York 1983, p. 44. The reflected image of