Paper Knives, Paper Crowns: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic

Prescient prints from the golden age of Dutch satire

Winner of the IFPDA Foundation Book Award, 2023This volume explores the satirical visual strategies that early modern Netherlandish printmakers—such as Joan Blaeu, Romeyn de Hooghe, Willem Jacobsz and Claes Jansz Visscher—used to memorialize historical events, lionize (or demonize) domestic and international leaders, and instigate collective action. While some of their prints employ visual puns that even the illiterate could enjoy, others were captioned in Latin, French or Dutch, prompting educated elites across Europe to consider the relationship between text and image in earnest. Published for an exhibit at Krannert Art Museum, Paper Knives, Paper Crowns provides a chronological arc and thematic overview of Netherlandish political prints, addressing multiple types of printmaking as well as the medium’s relationship to other art forms, engaging with art historical scholarship and studies of early modern political history and theory in the process.

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