1983 Articles

Fame, Convention and Insight: On the Relevance of Fornenberg and Gerbier

Freedberg, David A.

Two seventeenth century texts form the subject of this paper. The first has occasionally been refereed to by historians of sixteenth and seventeenth century Flemish painting, but has never been adequately analyzed; while the second, although it contains sixty-three lines on Rubens, has been almost entirely overlooked by scholarship on him. This latter text is also of considerable interest for the study of Dutch art in the first quarter of the seventeenth century; and yet it has scarcely been acknowledged since it was first presented by Hirschmann over sixty years ago. There is no obvious connection between the two texts; but since concern with issues raised by the firs led to a reexamination of the second, both will be discussed in some detail.