Samuel van Hoogstraten's Introduction to the Academy of Painting; or, The Visible World

“Superbly edited and translated, Introduction to the Academy of Painting reveals anew the variety and scope of Samuel van Hoogstraten’s great treatise on Dutch art, showing how it harnesses multiple genres of text to the task of affirming the epistemic authority of painting as an instrument of perception, judgment, and thought. Brusati and Jacobs allow us to see that Van Hoogstraten, even while deeply responsive to the circumstances his time and place, was yet sui generis: eschewing mere erudition, he placed a premium on artisanal expertise, gave voice to the inextricable connection between verisimilar description and optical deception, and argued that pictorial excellence results above all from the mutual attunement of the painter’s discriminating mind, attentive eye, and practiced hand.”;—Walter S. Melion, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History, Emory University; Foreign Member, KNAW, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences;;“This meticulous new translation of Samuel van Hoogstraten enables modern readers to encounter, finally and fully, the richly diverse content of that cosmopolitan, learned, and sophisticated practicing artist, as he attempts to provide both theory and practice for visual art as the worthy sister of the nine muses. Celeste Brusati's enlightening introductory commentary is another important contribution to art history's literature from the Dutch Golden Age. As with her monograph on Van Hoogstraten, Artifice and Illusion (1995), Brusati provides a springboard into Van Hoogstraten's dialogue about art, poised between Academy and Visible World.”—Larry Silver, University of Pennsylvania, Farquhar Professor of Art History, emeritus, and co-editor of Canons and Values (2019)