Contending Representations I: The Dutch Republic and the Lure of Monarchy

Abstract

This volume is the first book-length study to thematise the representation of power in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Bringing together scholars from different backgrounds, the volume aims to stimulate a cross-disciplinary dialogue about representations in art, literature, ritual, and other media. Within the Dutch Republic, different state actors – the city, the provincial states, the States General, the stadtholders, and individual power-holders – vied for the supremacy of power. A vital aspect of this persistent struggle was its representative dimension. In making representative claims about their place in the balance of power, these institutions all faced the challenge of developing a republican language that was both distinctive enough and universally understood. In the cultural repertoires available to political figures, artists, and intellectuals, republican models contended with monarchical ones. In visual and literary depictions, public ritual, and diplomatic encounters alike, the temptation to stand up to the grandeur of powerful European monarchies by borrowing from their representative traditions was not always easy to resist.