Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd.Natuurkunde

1 total work

A Portrait of Dutch Seventeenth Century Brazil

by Peter James Palmer Whitehead and M. Boeseman

Published January 1990

This book documents very precisely the natural history, ethnographic and other drawings and paintings made in Northeastern Brazil by the professional and amateur artists who worked under Count Johan Maurits of Nassau during his period as Governor-General, 1637-1644. To these primary works are added all the secondary works that derived from them, including copied drawings, woodcuts, full-scale paintings, vignettes on maps and cartoons for tapestries, as well as the tapestries themselves. Where possible, the animals, plants, artifacts and people are identified and, in the subsequent works, their sources are explored. Much of the iconographic work is still of importance, both to science and to art. It has never been reviewed in such detail and breadth before. The close relationship between art and science is a central theme of the book. The extensive bibliography includes almost all works on the subject and indicates other important sources for references and manuscript material.