Giovanni Georgi, Frontispiece Syntagma Anatomicum by Joannes Veslingius (Detail), 1647, Engraving, 202 x 147 mm, London, British Museum The term virtuoso was first used in Henry Peacham's Compleat Gentleman in 1634, In his guide book, first published in 1622 and substantially reworked and augmented...

Effective Virtues

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Jennifer Rabe (8 avr. 2022)

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Paulus de Kempenaer, Alchemy (Detail), 1606, Mixed Media, 420x290 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum In his study of the virtuoso at the interface between art, medicine and antiquity, Craig Hanson refers to the long tradition of the connection between the fields of medicine and art in England (The English V...

Strong Spirits

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Jennifer Rabe (20 mars 2022)

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Wenceslaus Hollar after Leonoardo da Vinci, Study of two Women, 1645, Etching, 84x115 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Links between the project of replicating and perfecting nature through alchemy and the parallel endeavors of the visual arts have existed since ancient times as William Newman has shown i...

Weak Flesh

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Jennifer Rabe (19 mars 2022)

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Peter Paul Rubens, Callisto, 1613, Oil on Canvas, 202 x 305 cm, Kassel, Gemäldegalerie The most fascinating example of an artist concerned with the human body as an object of both medicine and art is Lady Arundel’s Antwerp acquaintance Peter Paul Rubens. In his Theoretical Sketchbooks he offers a co...

Promethean Physicians

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Jennifer Rabe (27 févr. 2022)

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Abraham Jacobsz. after Jan Symonsz. Pynas, Alchemist, 1639-41, Etching, 250×205 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Lady Arundel's iatrochemical experiments and passion for the arts shaped her spaces in London, Amsterdam and Amersfoort. As Pamela Smith has shown for the Leiden physician Franciscus Sylvius, p...

The Amsterdam Inventory

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Jennifer Rabe (26 févr. 2022)

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Abraham Jacobsz. after Jan Symonsz. Pynas, Alchemist, Detail, 1639-41, Etching, 250x205 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum The inventory of Lady Arundel's house in Amsterdam, drawn up in 1655, provides information about the furnishings of the building on the Singel, which was subsequently sold for a rather...

Destillation

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Jennifer Rabe (26 févr. 2022)

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Johann Dürr, Still (Portrait of Johann Michaelis, Detail), 1653, Print, 276 x 167 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Although Natura Exenterata contains instructions for distilling and preparing chemical remedies such as aurum potabile and antimony, Tart Hall's 1641 inventory does not mention any stills. Th...

Fisheye

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Jennifer Rabe (19 févr. 2022)

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Matthias Stom, Tobias and the Angel, 1630/32, Oil on Canvas, 111x125 cm, Den Haag, Museum Bredius The only religious painting mentioned in the Pranketing Room is directly related to the medical practice of the Countess. The inventory lists the subject of Tobias in the “Roome where the Chimney is”: “...

Processes of Conservation

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Jennifer Rabe (17 févr. 2022)

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Peter Binoit, Chicken Dinner, 1600-1625, Oil on Wood, 56,4 x 77,2 cm, Paris, Louvre The still lifes and market scenes on the walls of the Pranketing Room gallery depict an idealized combination of foodstuff of a variety and freshness that practically unattainable in early modern reality. Enjoying su...

Eine Frau im Hafen

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Jennifer Rabe (29 juil. 2021)

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English Abstract PDF Abb. 1: Jan Baptist Weenix, Italienischer Hafen, 1651, Öl auf Leinwand, 136 x 188 cm, St. Petersburg, Eremitage, Inv.-nr. GE-374. Der von Jan Baptist Weenix 1651 gemalte sogenannte Italienische Hafen in der Eremitage in St. Petersburg hat als Fokuspunkt eine Frau zu Pferd in ein...

Sugar and Fire

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Jennifer Rabe (5 juin 2021)

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Abraham Bosse, Banketbakkerij, 1635, Etching, 264 x 342 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum The ambivalence of inventories, which rarely add the exact purpose of crucibles, pans and preserving jars, requires great caution when classifying rooms as laboratories. Places that obviously served as laboratories, s...

Domestic Laboratories

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Jennifer Rabe (28 mai 2021)

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Willem van Odekercken (attr.), The Servant, 1631-77, Oil on Panel, 31 x 23,9 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum The question of the places where early modern experiments took place is directly related to the social position and the way in which natural-philosophical research is framed. Neither the word expe...

Room of Experiment

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Jennifer Rabe (28 mai 2021)

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Jan van der Straet, Nova Reperta: Hyacum et Lues Venera (Detail), c. 1580-1605, Engraving, 203 x 270 mm, London, British Museum The Pranketing Room functioned as a kind of experimental kitchen laboratory for Lady Arundel and her servants. The paintings in the room can be read in relation to these pr...

Conspicuous Canteen

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Jennifer Rabe (17 mai 2021)

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Porcelain Ewer (Kraak, made in Jingdezhen), c. 1590-1610, 13,2 x 18,5 cm, London, British Museum The arrangements of porcelain and polished brass objects adorning the walls of the Pranketing Room were utterly ostentatious. Despite their obvious pompous decorative potential, most of the objects on di...

Distilled Life

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Jennifer Rabe (17 mai 2021)

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Frans Snijders, Still Life with Dead Game ("... the second of Hares, Hartichokes & Pigeons"), c. 1616-20, Oil on Panel, 55,9 x 87,3 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum A special feature of the Pranketing Room was the gallery in the upper part of the two-story room. This gallery was decorated with a cycle of...

Prank Banqueting

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Jennifer Rabe (16 mai 2021)

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Osias Beert, Banquet Still Life, 1620-50, Oil on Canvas, 64,5 x 115 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum The name and location of the Lady Arundel’s Pranketing Room at Tart Hall are the key to identify the building as a banqueting house. This kind of building was an English invention for the so-called banquet...

The Dutch Room

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Jennifer Rabe (13 mai 2021)

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Boëtius Adamsz. Bolswert after Joos Goeimare, Lavish Kitchen (Christ, Martha, Mary), 1600-1620, Engraving, 475 x 713 mm, London, British Museum The most lavishly furnished space in Tart Hall was the two-story Pranketing Room, a building separated from the main house. There exists a separate inventor...

Angel Closet

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Jennifer Rabe (5 mai 2021)

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Unknown Italian, Angel, c. 1600-50, Etching, 147x178 mm, London, British Museum In addition to the two galleries, three other rooms of Tart Hall stand out: a room with only one painting in it- a Holy Family- and a chessboard, a room with a representation of the goddess Diana and a room Elizabeth Che...

Tart Hall Experiments

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Jennifer Rabe (4 mai 2021)

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A Platt and Description of Tart Hall House with the Gardens (a nineteenth-century copy of a seventeenth-Century plan) c. 1800, Maps Crace Port.11, London, British Library In 1633 Lady Arundel acquired Tart Hall, a building built between 1611 and 1614 she had been renting for a long time. The extensi...

Casino

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Jennifer Rabe (4 mai 2021)

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Stefano Buonsignori, Map of Florence (detail with Casino di S. Marco), 1584, Florence, Palazzo Vecchio Tart Hall was a rural pleasure house, where otium, a concept essential for the elite since antiquity, could be pursued. Established in the Italian tradition, the villa was a popular archtetype conn...

Couple Goals

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Jennifer Rabe (3 mai 2021)

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Rubens after Titian, Charles V and Empress Isabella of Portugal , c. 1625 (?), Oil on Canvas, 114 x 166 cm, Madrid, Palacio de Liria Quand nous parlons des femmes pré-modernes comme mécènes et collectionneurs d'art, nous travaillons à réécrire un passé historiographique qui a systématiquement et de...

Italian Recipes

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Jennifer Rabe (27 avr. 2021)

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MD 339, Onguente o cerolo straord. dett. Gratia Dei Dama d'Arundell, Arundel Castle Archive. With the kind permission of the Duke of Norfolk Lady Arundel's passion for medicine left exceptional archival traces. the The Arundel Castle Archive stores handwritten bundles in folio and quarto format with...

Excerpts

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Jennifer Rabe (27 avr. 2021)

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MD 339, Elettuario cordialissimo della Contessa Arundell, Arundel Castle Archive, with the kind permission of the Duke of Norfolk I have compiled some excerpts from the Italian manuscripts. They follow in the order MD 339 (folio), MD 338, MD 337, MD 336 (quarto, smaller bundles). I have left out the...

Balsamo Locatelli

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Jennifer Rabe (27 avr. 2021)

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Lodovico Locatelli, Teatro d'Arcani, 1644, Frontispiece A recurring term in the Italian manuscripts in Arundel Castle is Balsamo Locatelli. In the recipes, numerous variants for the production of the apparently very popular healing ointment are listed. The ointment was primarily used as an antidote...

Guidebook Hierarchies

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Jennifer Rabe (26 avr. 2021)

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Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman, 1622, Frontispiece Publications addressing skills and duties of housewives and privileged gentlewomen had been widespread in England since the late sixteenth century. They date far earlier than Henry Peacham's Compleat Gentleman which seems to have been devised...