This welcome and erudite book explores the theory and practice of art in the seventeenth-century Netherlands through the lens of the Dutch philologist Franciscus Junius’s The Painting of the Ancients. The main theme is the privileging of the countries bordering the North Sea over those of the Mediterranean region in the historiography, etymology, archaeology, and art of Northern Europe. Focusing on the often-overlooked literature of the Low Countries around 1600, Thijs Weststeijn presents the arguments for the importance of the Batavian/Teutonic/Saxon origins of the peoples of Northern Europe.

In 1622, Junius went to London under the patronage of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. There he embarked on a number of projects, of which The Painting of the Ancients, published in Latin in 1637 and translated by himself into English in 1638 and into Dutch in 1641, is the most relevant for art historiography. In examining the differences in these editions, Weststeijn notes that each edition had its own audience. The Dutch edition is concerned with the contemporary painter’s vocabulary. In an extensive chart, Weststeijn provides Dutch terminology with current English translation. Junius’s book had notable reception throughout Europe. An extensive table at the end of the book charts the reception of the three editions until 1809. Junius’s book had particular appeal in the Netherlands, because of his own Dutch connections and the flourishing of art production and collecting in the Netherlands. Additionally, the most recent book in Dutch on art theory and practice was Karel van Mander’s Schilderboeck (1604 and 1618), which must have seemed outdated. Dutch authors quoted Junius’s Dutch edition as soon as it appeared, and it is listed in several artists’ libraries in the seventeenth century.

Chapter 1 examines the relationship between Junius and the Arundels. Thomas Howard and his wife Aletheia Talbot were major patrons of the arts, and collected antiquities, Italian Renaissance drawings and paintings, and Dutch paintings. Their art and antiquities were housed in Tart House and Somerset House, where visitors included Constantijn Huygens, Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Joachim von Sandrart, Francis Bacon, and John Peacock. Chapter 2 concerns terminology and painterly goals, using Dutch terms that seem to originate in painters’ studios and that are also used by Samuel van Hoogstraten and Gerard de Lairesse in their later treatises. These terms are applied to select art works, notably Rembrandt’s Oath of Civilis (1662, National Museum, Stockholm), to discuss how the painter handles contour and space. Junius’s terminology would have been understood by Rembrandt and his circle, as he sought Germanic root words, rather than Latin, and worked on an etymological dictionary to support his terminology.

Chapter 3 examines the scholarship on the ancient inhabitants of England and Northern Europe as the ancestors of the English and the Dutch, and the antiquities of England and the Netherlands as they were known in the seventeenth century. Weststeijn applies Junius’s ideology to Rembrandt’s Oath of Civilis for the Amsterdam town hall; he suggests that its rough vernacular style is related to the martial qualities of the Batavians. Chapter 4 concerns the relationship between Junius and his brother-in-law Gerardus Iohannes Vossius (1577–1649). Their families were intertwined and they shared many interests. Vossius admitted his indebtedness to Junius in his own De Graphice, sive de Arte Pingendi, published in 1650, a small book that advocates that the four popular arts of music, sports, art, and literacy be incorporated into the curriculum. Weststeijn’s own English translation of De Graphice as the Art of Painting is included in an appendix, which will make this text more widely known and also emphasize its importance in applying rhetorical principles to painting. Ancient painters offered examples of behavior and art that could be applied to the moderns. Junius gave examples of ancient painters who followed nature and gave legitimacy to Caravaggio, Pieter van Laer, and Rembrandt. The typology of the ancients foreshadowing moderns called for a translation from Junius’s Latin to the vernacular, so discussion of modern art could harmonize with the standards of classical scholarship.

Chapter 5 examines Junius’s conception of the “presence” of painting (in Latin praesentia, and in Dutch, tegenwoordigheydt) to demonstrate its relationship to the painterly goals of immediacy, power, persuasion, and form. In sum, Junius finally gets his due recognition as a key figure in the shift toward a vernacular language and local history that offers an alternative to the general emphasis on the art and theory of Rome and Tuscany.