The Erotics of Looking

The Erotics of Looking: Early Modern Netherlandish Art presents a collection of provocative essays that explore the material qualities of early Dutch art to reveal ways new forms of visual imagery solicit a beholder’s involvement.

• Explores how descriptive pictures during the early modern Dutch art period operated as social things and were designed to pleasurably engage the eye and prompt discussion and debate
• Shows how these works potentially raised ethical and political questions about the interconnectedness of engaging with pictures and the material world
• Represents a major contribution to the field of early modern Netherlandish art and to general debates about the status and functions of descriptive art
• Features essays addressing a variety of aspects of the field, from the historiography of Dutch art to closely attentive readings of particular works
• Crafts an original theoretical framework by applying recent insights about the making of early modern publics and the study of material things to the analysis of Netherlandish art