Connoisseurship and the knowledge of art / Kennerschap en kunst

Connoisseurship – once foundational, then controversial, and currently critically reconsidered – is fundamentally about knowledge. Focusing on the distinctive history of the connoisseurship of Netherlandish art, this volume investigates early modern connoisseurship as revealed through pictorial practice, texts, and pictures featuring art lovers. An interplay between possessing and knowing about art emerges in the collecting of Chinese porcelain in the eighteenth century. With the professionalization of art criticism in the nineteenth century, Rembrandt’s art becomes a locus of scrutiny. In the twentieth century, the introduction of scientific data complicates the art historian’s expertise, whereas the case of Mondrian shows how modernist criticism and connoisseurship are intricately interwoven. Finally, persisting tensions between connoisseurship, authorship, and the market are brought to the fore.