An art cabinet in miniature the Dollhouse of Petronella Oortman
This case study examines the dollhouse of Petronella Oortman (1656–1716), which was, if not a fairly accurate copy, at least a version of Oortman’s impressive residence in the Warmoessstraat. This dollhouse is the largest and most extensive of surviving Dutch dollhouses, and Oortman’s collection sta...
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| Veröffentlicht in: | Women and the art and science of collecting in eighteenth-century Europe / edited by Arlene Leis and Kacie L. Wills |
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| 1. Verfasser: | |
| Format: | UnknownFormat |
| Sprache: | eng |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2021
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Tag hinzufügen | Zusammenfassung: | This case study examines the dollhouse of Petronella Oortman (1656–1716), which was, if not a fairly accurate copy, at least a version of Oortman’s impressive residence in the Warmoessstraat. This dollhouse is the largest and most extensive of surviving Dutch dollhouses, and Oortman’s collection stands out for the refinement of its furniture, the quality of its painting work (all done by genuine masters), its state-of-the-art technology (it had a working fountain!), and the amazing level of detail in the miniature household goods. She even commissioned Amsterdam painter Jacob Appel (1680–1751) to make a portrait of her life’s work, which doubled as a visual inventory. The highly detailed painting perfectly mirrors the dollhouse—with one great exception. In the picture, the house is inhabited. The poignant story of birth, life and death within a family home in Appel’s painting indicates that Oortman’s dollhouse had an additional function beside a female art cabinet. The Dutch were notoriously bad diarists, but family patriarchs usually kept large albums or scrapbooks containing miscellanies from political events and cut-outs, to dates of birth and death, occasionally including intimate expressions of grief over the loss of a beloved. Oortman’s dollhouse is an alternative to such a scrap album. Without having taken up the quill, she has reflected on what she possessed as much as on what she had lost, in material rather than verbal terms, finding the precious balance between the intellectual pleasures of collecting and the personal pain of loss. |
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| Beschreibung: | Illustration |
| ISBN: | 978-0-367-85666-3 |