| The purpose of this study was to determine the meaning and function of paintings, prints, and sculpture depicting Roman Republican history produced in the Netherlands from approximately 1600 to 1688. The most popular subjects produced by Dutch artists included the exemplary deeds of various Roman Republican leaders for the Amsterdam Town Hall, the suicide of Lucretia, and the Roman general Scipio Africanus returning a captive girl to her fiance. The artists who produced works from these categories included Rembrandt van Rijn and his pupils, followers, and admirers, among others, Ferdinand Bol, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Jan Lievens, Jan Victors, Salomon Koninck, Arnold Houbraken, and Gerard de Lairesse.;The images of Republican leaders, Lucretia, and Scipio, functioned as exempla virtutis, or models of virtue, a didactic concept that originated in Italian humanism. Chapter one discusses the evidence for exempla virtutis in seventeenth-century Dutch art as manifested in contemporary painting theory and didactic poetry composed for specific works of art. Chapter two illustrates how depictions of various Roman Republican leaders for the Amsterdam Town functioned to promote virtuous behavior for the civic leaders who used the Town Hall chambers for city business. The specific meanings of the Town Hall works are revealed through didactic poems placed beneath them and their functional similarity to Italian Renaissance public building imagery. Chapter three focuses on the image of the suicide of the 6th century B.C. Roman heroine Lucretia. Lucretia was presented as both a chaste martyr and patriot whose death precipitated the overthrow of the corrupt Tarquin dictatorship and established the Roman Republic. The evidence for these functions is found in seventeenth-century Dutch literature such as moral handbooks and prints which consistently presented Lucretia as a paradigm of personal and political chastity. Finally, chapter four investigates depictions of Scipio returning a young bride-to-be to her fiance. This image of Scipio's deed functioned in the public sphere as a symbol of justice and magnanimity, two virtues appropriate for princely rule. For private citizens, historiated portraits of Scipio and the Spanish girl may have symbolized continence and chastity in marriage. |
