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Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art / Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 76 (2026)
On Failure: Error and Defeat in Netherlandish Art
Series:
This volume examines failure as a productive category in early modern Netherlandish art, demonstrating how error, risk, and defeat shaped artistic practice and cultural imagination. Rather than treating failure as a marginal or negative phenomenon, the contributions reveal its capacity to generate innovation, provoke reflection, and question narratives of success. The book challenges triumphalist models of art history. It offers instead a recursive historiography that highlights the creative and cultural potential of failure.
Contributors include Koen Bulckens, Stijn Bussels, Marianne Eekhout, Nicole Ganbold, Hanneke Grootenboer, Joost Keizer, Marte Sophie Meessen, Braden Lee Scott, Natasha Seaman, Laura Valterio, Minke Walda, and Clim Wijnands.
Contributors include Koen Bulckens, Stijn Bussels, Marianne Eekhout, Nicole Ganbold, Hanneke Grootenboer, Joost Keizer, Marte Sophie Meessen, Braden Lee Scott, Natasha Seaman, Laura Valterio, Minke Walda, and Clim Wijnands.
Stijn Bussels is Professor of Art History at the Leiden University. His research concentrates on visual culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Low Countries. A recent publication is The Sublime in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic with Bram Van Oostveldt (2023).
Hanneke Grootenboer is Professor of Early Modern Art and Visual Culture at the University of Amsterdam and a specialist in seventeenth-century Dutch art. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of art, philosophy and literature. Recent publications include The Pensive Image: Art as a Form of Thinking (Chicago University Press, 2021) and the co-authored Conchophilia: Shells, Art and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2021).
Joost Keizer is Professor of Art History at Radboud University Nijmegen. He has published on the relationship between art, nature, and history in Italian and Netherlandish culture, including Leonardoâs Paradox: Word and Image In the Making of Renaissance Culture and the co-edited Wetland. Shaping Environments in Netherlandish Art.
Natasha Seaman is Professor of Art History at Rhode Island College. She has published on Gerrit van Honthorst, Jacob Backer, and the semiotics of money. Her next book, Hendrick ter Brugghen: Utrechtâs Subtle Artist, is forthcoming with Lund Humphries Press in 2026.
Hanneke Grootenboer is Professor of Early Modern Art and Visual Culture at the University of Amsterdam and a specialist in seventeenth-century Dutch art. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of art, philosophy and literature. Recent publications include The Pensive Image: Art as a Form of Thinking (Chicago University Press, 2021) and the co-authored Conchophilia: Shells, Art and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2021).
Joost Keizer is Professor of Art History at Radboud University Nijmegen. He has published on the relationship between art, nature, and history in Italian and Netherlandish culture, including Leonardoâs Paradox: Word and Image In the Making of Renaissance Culture and the co-edited Wetland. Shaping Environments in Netherlandish Art.
Natasha Seaman is Professor of Art History at Rhode Island College. She has published on Gerrit van Honthorst, Jacob Backer, and the semiotics of money. Her next book, Hendrick ter Brugghen: Utrechtâs Subtle Artist, is forthcoming with Lund Humphries Press in 2026.
Introduction: The Art of Failure
Stijn Bussels, Hanneke Grootenboer, Joost Keizer, and Natasha Seaman
When Jan van Scorel Tried to Build Rome in the Sea
Braden Lee Scott
Remembering a Failed Rebellion: William of Orange and Bladder Stones at the Antwerp Citadel
Koen Bulckens
Disorienting Lines: Hendrick Goltzius and the Art of Failure
Laura Valterio and Clim Wijnands
âThus Appears the Murderersâ Bayâ¦â: On the Fateful MÄori-European Encounter Recorded in 1642 by Isaac Gilsemans
Nicole Ganbold
De Wittiana: A Response to Political Failure? Pieter de Graefffâs Attempts to Rehabilitate Johan de Witt
Marianne Eekhout
Exploring Gravity in an Early Modern Sketchbook: Force and Failure
Marte Sophie Meessen
Building on Demolition: Planning for Decline in the Early Nineteenth-century Dutch Shrinking City
Minke Walda
Stijn Bussels, Hanneke Grootenboer, Joost Keizer, and Natasha Seaman
When Jan van Scorel Tried to Build Rome in the Sea
Braden Lee Scott
Remembering a Failed Rebellion: William of Orange and Bladder Stones at the Antwerp Citadel
Koen Bulckens
Disorienting Lines: Hendrick Goltzius and the Art of Failure
Laura Valterio and Clim Wijnands
âThus Appears the Murderersâ Bayâ¦â: On the Fateful MÄori-European Encounter Recorded in 1642 by Isaac Gilsemans
Nicole Ganbold
De Wittiana: A Response to Political Failure? Pieter de Graefffâs Attempts to Rehabilitate Johan de Witt
Marianne Eekhout
Exploring Gravity in an Early Modern Sketchbook: Force and Failure
Marte Sophie Meessen
Building on Demolition: Planning for Decline in the Early Nineteenth-century Dutch Shrinking City
Minke Walda
Scholars in art history and visual cultures, (Humanities) scholars with an interest in concept of failure, ignorance, not-knowing, making/knowing, and alternative history writing. Keywords: risk, experimentation, innovation, creativity, artistic practice, Netherlandish art, Dutch art and architecture, Flemish art and architecture, early modern art, sixteenth century, seventeenth century, competition, reception, historiography, success, failure, triumph, visual culture, material culture imagination, cultural history, art theory, artistic failure, decolonialism, Golden Age (critique of).