ABSTRACT
Jan Lievens (1607–74) was a Dutch painter who collaborated with Rembrandt in the first half of the seventeenth century. His oil painting Still Life with Books (c. 1630, reproduced on the cover of this book) is full of early modern ‘stuff’, or ‘different varieties of artefact that can be used in practising history’. 1 In other words, the painting depicts a rich range of early modern primary sources; thus, it is an excellent starting point for this volume. What can it tell us?
