Paulus and Adam van Vianen and the artistic potential of silversmithing
This dissertation offers a new reading of the works of early seventeenth-century Dutch silversmiths Paulus and Adam van Vianen, who are best known for developing pliant, amorphic shapes today called kwab. Kwab has long been studied as a type of ornament, i.e., a disembodied motif. This dissertation instead seeks to understand the Van Vianens’ kwab by approaching it as part of the material and visual cultures of the Netherlands and Prague. This approach collapses the art historical divide between the fine and the decorative arts.
The first part of the dissertation examines the Van Vianens’ works from different angles. Ultimately, it interprets the Van Vianens' works, particularly kwab, as a significant response to the issues affecting artists in their milieu in the aftermath of the Dutch Revolt and Reformation, which saw the rise of a new type of patron, the liefhebber, the formation of a Netherlandish practice-theory through both artworks and writings, including Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck, and anxieties about the seductive power of images.
The case studies into the reception of the Van Vianens’ kwab that make up the dissertation's second part show that, already in the second half of the seventeenth century, viewers negated kwab's material and visual qualities. This correlated with criticism of late sixteenth-century Mannerism, which has been seen as evidence of a stylistic distinction between it and more lifelike seventeenth-century Dutch art. However, this dissertation shows that there was no such "artistic turning point" on the practical and theoretical levels.