What does this project do?
This thesis takes a ‘jewellery first’ approach, beginning with surviving objects. These surviving pieces can tell us a great deal about materials, forms, and provide a way of thinking about the pieces of jewellery which no longer survive.
It explores how surviving seventeenth-century jewellery from the Dutch Republic can inform our understanding of jewellery described in contemporary inventories and represented in portraiture.
The project addresses three central questions: which types of jewellery survive, how they are described in inventories, and how these relate to their representation in portraiture.
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Summary of the thesis
This thesis takes a jewellery first approach to seventeenth-century jewellery from the Dutch Republic. Its foundation is a catalogue of nearly two hundred surviving jewellery objects associated with the Dutch Republic. Rather than beginning with portraits or inventories and using surviving jewels as supplemental illustration, the thesis starts from the surviving material itself. These objects have frequently remained marginal within art historical research, but they offer a necessary point of departure for reconsidering how jewellery functioned, circulated, and was represented.
The thesis builds on the foundational work of H. Gans, whose study remains the most important point of departure for Dutch jewellery of the period, while also responding to more recent scholarship on jewellery, dress and portraiture by scholars such as Monique Rakhorst, Suzanne van Leeuwen, and Eddy de Jongh. Its contribution lies in bringing these strands together from the perspective of the surviving jewels.
In Chapter 1, the corpus of surviving jewellery is assembled and analysed through patterns in type, material, and design, as well as through the conditions of survival that shape the material record. Taking Gans’s emphasis on symmetry and ‘representative’ display as a starting point, the surviving objects reveal a practice equally characterised by variation, playfulness, and personal meaning. By tracing recurring motifs across different object types, jewellery in the Republic emerges as a shared visual language that could be adapted across forms.
In Chapter 2, inventories are analysed through their historical function and terminology. Jewellery is considered not only as ornament, but also as an asset to be valued, divided, inherited, and transferred. The glossary makes this terminology searchable and comparable, while also revealing a broader diversity of jewels than the surviving corpus alone suggests.
In Chapter 3, jewellery in portraiture is examined through the combined use of the catalogue and glossary, supported by schematic visualisation. Painted jewellery is related to surviving objects and inventory terms, allowing painted details to be analysed with greater precision when connected to material evidence and contemporary terminology. In this final chapter, the three domains of evidence developed throughout the thesis are brought together.
The broader contribution of this thesis is both material and practical. It places jewellery at the centre of analysis, not treating it as a peripheral detail within portraiture or as a small category within material culture. In doing so, it provides three resources that can support future research in different ways. The catalogue offers a substantial corpus of surviving seventeenth-century jewellery from the Dutch Republic, creating a foundation for further object-based study. The glossary makes historical terminology more accessible and provides a new tool for working with archival sources. The schematic visualisations present a method for analysing and communicating the relationship between painted representations and material objects. Each of these contributions can be used independently, whether the focus is on jewellery, or broader questions of material culture.
By beginning with surviving jewels, this thesis has not attempted to recover a complete history of seventeenth-century jewellery in the Dutch Republic. The remaining jewels do not allow for such completeness. Instead, it has shown how this fragmented field can be made more usable. Surviving jewels are not simply remnants of luxury. Inventories are not merely lists of possessions. Painted jewels are not only symbols of status or wealth. Each is a partial witness to a wider jewellery culture, and each becomes more meaningful when read alongside the others. This thesis has shown that surviving jewels can deepen our understanding of jewellery described in inventories and represented in portraiture. It has also demonstrated that jewellery should be understood as a multifaceted form of material culture. Its small scale should not obscure its scholarly value. On the contrary, the jewellery’s smallness makes it an intriguing object of study: its size concentrates questions of form, value, ownership and display. In this way, jewels condense complex historical questions into objects that are easily overlooked but difficult to exhaust.
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