Hessel Miedema
KAREL VAN MANDER - DEN GRONDT DER EDEL VRY SCHILDER-CONST
1973. 2 vols. in 4to. IX, 704 pp. and 102 ills. Cloth bound

Karel van Mander's 'didactic poem' of over 5000 lines covering the first 144 pp. of the Schilder-Boeck is one of the few Dutch works of poetry to have been written completely in accordance with the iconological-allegorical process, and it is, moreover, of the greatest interest as a document of Dutch late-Renaissance philosophy of life. The significance of this poem, reprinted in 1618, and of which Wybrandt de Geest published a badly-understood paraphrase in 1702, has been recognized only at the beginning of the 20th century. The translation is now antiquated. That was the starting point for Hessel Miedema's plan: to subject Karel van Mander's text to new, deep research, on a broad basis, so as to render it more effectively available to science