Facts and Feelings. Retracing Emotions of Artists, 1600-1800

This interdisciplinary volume is a unique combination of the history of early modern emotions and art history, bringing together case studies which provide us with new insights on early modern artists and their emotional lives, often based on archival and literary sources.
The history of emotions has gained more and more scholarly attention, evidenced by an 'affective turn' or 'emotional turn' in historical research. Many publications have appeared, and internationally oriented research centres and conferences have been set up and organized.
This volume brings the importance of a clear understanding of historical feelings into the research area of art historians. Even though the depiction of emotions is an important discipline in its own right, in this volume the concept of the artist and his or her own personal feelings, often in connection with the creation of a work of art, is prioritised. Although it is argued that a painter had to be able to feel emotions in order to depict them correctly, the articles brought together in this volume focus primarily on the traces of artist's emotions ("feelings") that can be derived from archival documents, secondary sources, and paintings ("facts"). Each author has tried in his or her own way to elucidate both the written and visual expressions of an artist's (personal) emotions.