Accords et désaccords : Les Chants d’oiseaux dans la peinture néerlandaise du XVIIe siècle

Résumé 0

A new artistic genre emerged in the 17th century, through the brushes of painters active in the Spanish Netherlands (Jan Bruegel I, Jan Breughel II, Jan van Kessel I, Frans Snijders, Johannes Fijt); then in the United Provinces (Melchior Hondecoeter). Described by the term “Birdsong” then as “Concert of Birds” (19th century), this genre consisted in the representation of numerous birds within a same landscape, where they seem to unite their song around an open partition. This article questions the origins and the development of this genre, characteristic of 17th-century Netherlandish art. It underlines the ties with biblical, pastoral, and idyllic poetry, as well as with the theories of the practice of landscape and animal portrait painting, and demonstrates beyond that how, through the years, it could offer certain painters the occasion for a metapictorial reflection on the relations between painting and music.