Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Magnus, Hannelore

Titel

The Seventeenth-Century Young Gentry at Hot Cockles: Investigating a Southern Netherlandish Novelty as a Prelude to the Rococo Fêtes Galantes

Ist Teil von

• Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, 2015-07, Vol.39 (2), p.128-149

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Taylor & Francis Online

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This article studies the iconographical tradition of depicting the game of 'hot cockles' ('handjeklap', or 'la main chaude') in order to understand the innovative treatment of the subject by the Antwerp seventeenth-century genre painters Christoffel Jacobsz Van der Lamen (1606/7-51/2) and his pupil Hiëronymus Janssens (1624-93). Within this iconographic tradition, these painters were the most representative of the Southern Netherlands. Van der Lamen and Janssens appear to have been the first to add the game in paintings within the context of well-to-do bourgeois and aristocratic play and courting. Since the subject of the game of hot cockles might, at first sight, have raised primarily negative associations in the minds of the seventeenth-century audience (in the Northern Netherlands the game is repeatedly depicted in paintings as a form of low-class, peasant entertainment), their addition of the game in the iconographical tradition of elegant or merry company scenes (rich and elegant youngsters enjoying themselves, without a clear moralizing theme), seems remarkable. This article thus offers some hypotheses to understand what visual traditions and cultural notions may have influenced Van der Lamen and Janssens to depict the game as a high society amorous love game. It is suggested that their depictions were influenced by the notion of French aristocratic and bourgeois culture of leisure as an example for Antwerp's wealthy commercial elite, and by the seventeenth-century escapist view on Arcadian pastoral leisure.