Art as Gift in the Dutch Republic

This chapter explores the distinctive gift culture and the gifting of art in seventeenth-century Holland. Although gift giving has been marginalized in studies of seventeenth-century Dutch art, gift exchanges of various kinds, including art, were widespread in Dutch mercantile culture. Giving gifts was considered obligatory for nurturing burgher professional and personal relationships, and gifts of art played a key role in the Republic’s diplomatic engagements. Like their colleagues elsewhere, Dutch artists mixed gifts with sales transactions by offering their works as gifts to potential and established patrons, contacts, and familiars. Discussion of the special cases of Rembrandt and Vermeer is reserved for later chapters, but here examples of gifts by Hendrick Goltzius, Jan Lievens, Govert Flinck, and others are addressed.