ABSTRACT
In his treatise on painting of 1678, the Dutch artist Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678), one of Rembrandt's pupils, pleaded for the inclusion of the art of painting among the liberal arts. One of his strategies was connecting the visual arts to ideas about language and letters developed by influential philologists such as Gerardus Vossius (1577-1649) and Franciscus Junius (1591-1677). In this context, Van Hoogstraten's book touched on the subject of pictography, the ideal of a script based on pictures rather than letters. He discussed this in connection to the art of the Chinese. Just like the Egyptians and the Mexicans, they have ‘written their books with meaningful pictures, instead of letters; and their way of expressing themselves has reached us now in the art of painting’. 1
