People, Place, and Power in Eighteenth-Century Ghent

Images and Image makers

Many famous artists are known to have contributed, over and above their main artistic activities, to the designing of provisional structures such as theatre built for important ceremonies, and to producing the illustrations for festival books. Among them are Pierfrancesco Giambullari, Antonio and Lorenzo Landi, Palladio, Ronsard, Rubens, and Vasari.

The artists involved in the illustrations of the Festival Book printed to celebrate the entry of Charles VI into Ghent are local, though their number included experienced illustrators or engravers.

In particular, Jacobus Harrewijn, Jean-Baptiste van Volsom and Jean-Baptiste Berterham also contributed to the making of the festival book printed in Bruxelles to commemorate the royal entry that happened there the week before. While the two festival books represented similar scenes such as the theater, the fireworks and the triumphal arch, nevertheless the particular artists chose to depict different scenes in the different books (different artists represented for example the theater in the two different books), thus showing some range and variability in their interest).




Also interesting is that the representation of the same item changes according to time and place. For example, illustrations of the theater in Bruxelles (1717), in Messina (1720) and in Ghent (1744)



 

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