ABSTRACT
Was there such a thing as a theory of the art of the baroque? What conclusions can be drawn from the multiplicity of material that has been discussed in this study, in which the issue of investing seventeenth-century painting with theoretical legitimacy has served as a heuristic guideline? This study of the Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst has proved, one may hope, that the barrenness of Hoogewerff's ‘arctic expanse’ was an ill-chosen metaphor for the climate of art theory in the Netherlands. Contrary to Julius von Schlosser's view of Van Hoogstraten as an uninspired exponent of official theory, a study of his treatise yields an abundance of viewpoints and theoretical themes. These arise from the wide scope of Van Hoogstraten's own project of elevating the status of painting, and from the way in which he selects material from the tradition of art theory and applies it in a new chapter structure, at the heart of which he places the concept of the ‘visible world’. Although his treatise, following established tradition in rhetoric, says almost nothing about living masters, Van Hoogstraten presents numerous views that are relevant to the art of his century, which in his opinion had evolved into ‘a revived Greece’; he takes the fijnschilders, in particular, as an extreme against which to contrast his own views, while praising his master Rembrandt in terms borrowed from the theory of rhetoric.
