I studied History and Art History at Groningen University and passed my Masters in History there in 1977. Awarded with several scholarships, I went to Tuscany and in 1979 I was apointed lecturer and librarian at the Dutch Institute of Art History at Florence. There I began studying the topic the sixteenth-century Medici court and its artistic and artistic policies, a subject that held my attention for many years.
While in Florence, I also did extensive archival research on the cultural relations between Tuscany and the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In 1985 I was appointed Assistent Professor and the Open University of the Netherlands. In 1986 I passed my Ph. D at Groningen University with Prof. Henk van Os, and in 1990 I became Associate Professor at the Open Univeristy. In this positon I set up and supervised the production of a series of advanced academic courses in art history and cultural history and I contributed to these. Meanwhile, amongst other activities, I edited the first translation into Dutch of (a selection from) Vasari's Lives.
In 1994 I was appointed Professor in the History of art at Groningen University.
Selected publications
Authored and (co-)edited books
Tuscany
and the Low Countries : an introduction to the sources and an inventory of four Florentine libraries, Henk Th. van Veen & Andrew P. McCormick ed.,
Florence
: Centro Di, 1985.
Letteratura artistica e arte di corte nella Firenze granducale : studi vari,
Florence
1986.
Giorgio Vasari, De levens van de grootste schilders, beeldhouwers en architecten, gekozen en ingeleid door Henk Th. van Veen, vertaald door Anthonie Kee, 2 dln., Amsterdam 1990-1992.
Pieter Blaeu: Lettere ai Fiorentini: Antonio Magliabechi, Leopoldo e Cosimo III de’Medici, e
altri, 1660-1705: edizione con commento e saggio introduttivo in Italiano e Inglese, Alfonso Mirto & Henk van Veen ed., Florence/Amsterdam 1993.
The Golden Age of Dutch Painting in Historical Perspective
, Frans Grijzenhout, Henk van
Veen ed., New York/Cambridge 1999.
Vruchten der verbeelding. Vier eeuwen kunst en kunstzin aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Met een inleidend essay van Henk Th. van Veen. onder redactie van Eva Boom & Carolien ten Bruggencate, Groningen 1999.
Polyptiek : een veelluik van Groninger bijdragen aan de kunstgeschiedenis / red.: Henk Th. van Veen, Victor M. Schmidt, Joost Keizer. Zwolle : Waanders, 2002.
Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception and Research
, Bernhard Ridderbos,
Anne van Buren & Henk van Veen ed., The Getty Centre, Los Angeles 2005.
Cosimo I De’ Medici and His Self-Representation in Florentine Art and Culture, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press 2006.
The Translation of Raphael’s Roman Style
, Henk Th. van Veen ed., Leuven [e.a.]: Peeters, 2007 (Groningen studies in cultural change, 22).
Articles
'L. B. Alberti and a passage from Ghiberti's Commentaries,'
in
Lorenzo Ghiberti nel suo tempo : atti
del convegno internazionale di studi, Florence : Olschki, 1980, 343-348.
'Erasmus on the Carmelite taboo,' Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et de Renaissance, 1981, 335-339.
'Pieter Blaeu and Antonio Magliabechi,'
Quaerendo 12(1982), 130-158.
'Un dilemma vasariano,'
Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance 44(1982), 353-356.
'Art and Propaganda in Late Renaissance and Baroque Florence: The Defeat of Radagasius, King of the Goths,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 47(1984), 106-118.
'Theodoor Hartsoeker of de ongewone voorkeur van een 18de eeuwse lief hebber,'
in
De arte et libris : Festschrift Erasmus 1934 - 1984. Abraham Horodisch ed.,
Amsterdam : Erasmus, 1984. 421-426.
'A note on Bandinelli's Giovanni delle Bande Nere' in Piazza San Lorenzo, Florence,'
The Burlington Magazine 128(1986), 346-347.
'L'ultima generazione dei Blaeu,' Quaderni storici 72(1989), 840-847.
'A Tuscan plan of action for Joan Blaeu's book of Italian cities,' Lias 18/2(1991), 221-223.
‘Republicanism in the visual propaganda of Cosimo I de' Medici,'
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 55(1992), 200-209.
'Republicanism", not "triumphalism" : on the political message of Cosimo I's Sala Grande,'
in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 37(1994), 475-480.
'Devotie en esthetiek bij Lambert ten Kate,' Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 21(1995), 63-96.
'The Uffizi as a re-evocation of the Florentine republican past,'
Mededelingen van het Nede
rlands Instituut te
Rome, 55 (1996/1997), 252-273.
‘Circles of Sovereignty. The Tondi of the Sala Grande in Palazzo Vecchio and the Medici Crown,’ in Vasari’s Florence. Artists and Literati at the
Medicean Court, Philip Jacks ed., Cambridge/New York 1998, 204-217.
'The crown of the Marzocco and the Medici Dukes and Grand Dukes',
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 43(1999), 653-664.
'Nanne Ottema (1874-1955), verzamelaar van een vervlogen verleden,' in Nanne Ottema: een kleurrijk verzamelaar. Saskia Bak red.
Franeker : Van Wijnen, 1999, 11-32.
'Philips Galle naar Johannes Stradanus, Giovanni de' Medici doodt zijn tegenstander in een duel, 1583,' in Uit het Leidse Prentenkabinet : over tekeningen, prenten en foto's, bij het afscheid van Anton Boschloo. Nelke Bartelings ed. Leiden : Primavera Pers, 2001, 40-42.
'Het Quartiere degli Elementi in het Palazzo Vecchio en Vasari's Ragionamenti,' in:
Polyptiek : een veelluik van Groninger bijdragen aan de kunstgeschiedenis, Henk Th. van Veen, Victor M. Schmidt, Joost Keizer eds.
Zwolle : Waanders, 2002, 131-139
'Florence
's sovereignty and imperium depicted : the Sala di Gualdrada in the Palazzo Vecchio / Henk Th. van Veen.
In Aux quatre vents : a Festschrift for Bert W. Meijer / Anton W. A. Boschloo e.a. ed. Florence : Centro Di, 2002, 231-235.
'Princes and patriotism : the self-representation of Florentine patricians in the late Renaissance'. In
Princes and princely culture 1450 - 1650, Martin Gosman ed., 2 vols., Leiden [e.a.] : Brill, 2003 - 2005. (Brill's studies in intellectual history, 118), vol. 2,
63-78.
‘Keeping Sight of the Piazza, Gabriello Chiabrera and the art of praising the Medici,’ in L’arme e gli amori. Ariosto, Tasso and Guarini in Late Renaissance Florence. Acts of an International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, June 27-29, 2001. Massimiliano Rossi, Fiorella Gioffredi Superbi ed., 2 vols., Florence 2004, vol. I, 99-118.
'True universal art : the Florentine answer to the Roman Raphaelesque mode'. In
The translation of Raphael's Roman style. Henk Th. van Veen ed. Leuven [e.a.] : Peeters, 2007, 105-118
