Between the heart and the mind: Ways of drawing in the seventeenth century

In this dissertation, I argue that drawing in the early-modern period engaged with modes of perception beyond the visual. I focus on a printed drawing book, the Artis Apellae liber (1650--56), designed by the Utrecht artist Abraham Bloemaert (1566--1651) and engraved by his son Frederik. This work teaches a student to draw by copying, leading the practitioner from sensory organs to bodily fragments (hands, legs, torsos), culminating in studies of the nude and historical compositions. I contextualize the Artis Apellae liber within the confessional debates of the seventeenth century, arguing that as the Catholic, Calvinist and Lutheran churches established official doctrines, questions about the body and its relationship to the divine and matter were re-examined. In turn, developments in early-modern natural philosophy challenged previously held beliefs about the body and its capacity for movement and rest. I situate the drawing of the body in the seventeenth century within these theological and philosophical revolutions, maintaining that the body as a corporeal instrument (beyond the field of vision) was integral to seventeenth-century artistic practice.;The first chapter, Books and Matter, grounds the process of learning to draw from a book in early-modern discourses on reading. This chapter examines the intersecting practices of reading as devotion and reading as a means to retire from the world to foster qualities of imagination and judgment. For both practices, the book acts as a metaphor for the body. The second chapter, Bodies (Universal and Particular), examines drawing the male nude in seventeenth-century practice and pedagogy. Through an investigation of the artistic vocabulary surrounding the study of the model in the studio---nae t'leven (from life), wel-dragen (to bear, endure) and wel-stand (well-being)---I suggest that Bloemaert's drawings of the male figure engage with a new sense "space," in which bodies stand and move in relationship to each other. The third chapter, Senses and Knowledge, looks at early-modern discourses on vision and the senses. While scholars have focused on perspective as a metaphor for seeing in early-modern artistic practice, there has been little attention to a divergent pedagogy grounded in the senses. I connect the roles of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching in artistic practice to a wider seventeenth-century Neo-Artistotelianism and its critics, who sought how, or if, all knowledge is founded in the senses. The fourth chapter, Faces and Passions, examines the role of drawing the face in artistic pedagogy, arguing for love (Caritas-divine love) as a mode of perception. Beginning with Alberti, many artist theorists discussed how the senses first perceive objects in the heart. I connect these dialogues on the heart and the senses with wider theological discourses, arguing that Bloemaert's lessons for drawing the face engage with the heart's ability to perceive the "other.";From books, hands, eyes, faces, skin and bodies, this dissertation examines the surfaces of seventeenth-century artistic processes and pedagogy, arguing that surfaces in the seventeenth-century were as much about the invisible as the visible. The Artis Apellae liber taught students not only to draw but also to understand their bodies as perceptive tools capable of shaping their worlds, represented and real.