Colloque international : « The Dutch Golden Age : a new aurea aetas ? The revival of a myth in the seventeenth-century Republic »

The ambiguity of the Dutch notion of the Golden Age (gulden ou gouden eeuw), which first appears during the second part of the sixteenth century, is intriguing. It refers firstly to the golden age, as it was described by Greek and Roman authors, a mythical society that existed under the protection of Saturn, in peace and happiness and in harmony with nature. But the notion is also used by the Dutch themselves to designate the society that they were part of – or wished to be part of – , after the independence of the United Provinces from the Spanish reign. As a model of an ideal society that aimed to revive, reactivate, indeed to reinvent, the ‘aurea aetas’ functions as one of the founding myths of the emerging ‘Golden Age’. The different aspects of this myth (its emergence, time, society and place) will be explored during this international and interdisciplinary conference.

This conference is the first of a series of conferences and seminars organized in the context of the project «Un Siècle d’Or? Repenser la peinture hollandaise du XVIIe  siècle», directed by Prof. Jan Blanc and funded by the Swiss Fonds national de la recherche scientifique (2017-2021).

Programme

THURSDAY 31 May

8h30: ACCUEIL / WELCOME

9h : Jan Blanc (Université de Genève): Le siècle d’or hollandais : une modernité paradoxale 

I. MYTHES / MYTHS

9h30 : Liza Méry Spector (Université de Poitiers): D’Hésiode à Ovide: le mythe de l’Âge d’or dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine  

10h: PAUSE / BREAK

10h30: Jeroen Jansen (Universiteit van Amsterdam): The very oldest and best poets. Originality in Dutch Golden Age poetics

11h: Céline Bohnert (Université de Reims): L’âge d’or ovidien au xviie siècle: textes, commentaires et gravures

11h30 : DISCUSSION

12h DÉJEUNER / LUNCH

II. TEMPS / TIMES

1.  Aetas aurea et gulden eeuw au début du XVIIe  siècle / Aetas aurea and gulden eeuw in the early 17th century

14h : Ralph Dekoninck (Université de Louvain): Concordia Mundi. La quête iréniste d’Otto van Veen entre passé et présent 

14h30: Saskia Cohen-Willner (Universiteit van Amsterdam): Karel van Mander and the invention of the Golden Age

15h : DISCUSSION

15h30 : PAUSE / BREAK

2. Nostalgies et utopies / Nostalgia and utopias

16h: Maria Aresin (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz): From Peace to Pain: the Four Ages of man as a historiographical model and as images

16h30: Elinor Myara Kelif (CNRS–Centre André Chastel–LabEx EHNE): «Iustitia et Pax osculatae sunt»: messianisme politique et âge d’or, de Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn à Johan Wierix

17h-18h : DISCUSSION

FRIDAY 1 JUNE 

8h30 :  ACCUEIL / WELCOME

III. SOCIETÉS / SOCIETIES 

3. Honneur et profit / Honour and profit

9h: Judith Noorman (Universiteit van Amsterdam): «Eer voor goet» in 17th-century Dutch art and honour culture 

9h30: Juliette Roding (Universiteit van Leiden): «Honour and profit» in 17th-century Dutch art and art theory 

10h: DISCUSSION

10h30 : PAUSE / BREAK

4. Identités et représentations / Identities and representations

11h: Lotte Jensen (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen): The Dutch Golden Age and the shaping of a Dutch sense of identity 

11h30: DISCUSSION

12h : DÉJEUNER / LUNCH

IV. ESPACES / SPACES 

5. Ici / Here

14h: Marije Osnabrugge (Université de Genève): Localizing Dutch Italianate landscape painting: artistic practice and the formation of a sub-genre 

14h30:  Miriam Volmert (Universität Zürich): Creating Spaces for a Golden Age. Visions of Past and Present in the Dutch Vernacular Landscape

15h: Stijn Bussels & Lorne Darnell (Universiteit van Leiden): Discourses on modern architecture, or how the Dutch created a sacred and native Golden Age 

15h30: DISCUSSION

16h30 PAUSE / BREAK

6. Là-bas / There

17h: Sarah Walsh Mallory (New York University): Memory spaces and far away places: printed images of Dutch Mauritius, c. 1600 

17h30: Maria Holtrop (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam): Aurea aetas, Golden Age or Age of Gold: different ways of looking at the Dutch seventeenth century 

18h: DISCUSSION

19h FIN DU COLLOQUE / END OF THE CONFERENCE

ORGANISATION

Prof. Jan Blanc (UNIGE) , Dr Léonie Marquaille (UNIL), Susanne Bartels MA (UNIGE), Dr Marije Osnabrugge (UNIGE)

assistants: Léa Eigenmann, Constantin Favre, Jeanne Gressot, Léa Hernot, Clara May, Leïla Thomas, Maeva Velasquez

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