Novelty and Fashion Circuits in the mid-seventeenth century Antwerp-Paris Art Trade

Abstract

Often successful "new" products are not radical departures from the familiar but cleverly exploit established ideas, products, and tastes by offering improved design, performance characteristics, and packaging (including servic). The newness consists in their being recognizably familiar, yet sufficiently distinct to appeal to a tast for something novel. Familiarity, in the case of art products, presupposes long-standing traditions in visual culture which the artist (or more likely the dealer in the seventeenth century) who is seeking novelty can identify with and modify without overthrowing. This essay focuses on the Antwerp, Belgium-Paris, France art trade and the creative shifts that both artists and art dealers displayed in their appropriation and transformation of Netherlands imagery for exports to Paris in the 1650s and the early 1660s. Fashioning surrogate masterpieces and desirable copies in salon circuits; Specialized painting production for cabinets.