AbstractsHistory

During the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was amid the religious conflict of Protestantism and Catholicism. While the country emerged under the Protestant flag, the conflict inundated the lives and work of the artists especially in town of Utrecht, the Catholic stronghold in a Calvinist nation. Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651), a Catholic artist, and his Calvinist counterpart, Joachim Wtewael (1566-1638) both treated the field of religious history painting as a means to place their religious beliefs into their art in order to further their religious affiliation’s mission. I address these artists’ work through formal analysis, an iconographical study, as well as placing them inside the socio-historical context of Utrecht from 1590 to 1625. Each chapter is centered on various religious history themes that both artists depicted. Chapter one focuses on the predominantly Protestant theme of Moses Striking the Rock in order to show how both artists took this motif and adapted it to the context of Utrecht. In chapter two, I identify how both Bloemaert and Wtewael take the Catholic theme of Adoration of the Shepherds and infuse the images with multiple levels of meanings. The last chapter is on moralizing genre scenes in which both artists began to place religious messages inside scenes of everyday life.