Performing Early Modern Masculinity: A Study of a Seventeenth-Century Musket in the Wallace Collection

This article examines a little-researched, highly decorative Netherlandish seventeenth-century musket in the Wallace Collection. It interrogates the kinds of value and knowledge the material and visual properties embodied for the object’s contemporaries. It presents the argument that the gun was used in the exclusive, homosocial circles of city militias and hunting. Through analysing the work’s heroic, exotic and erotic connotations, this article explores the elite yet unstable codes of masculinity in the early modern period.

‘ANTE FERIT QVAM FLAMMA MICET (It strikes before the flash is seen)’ reads the inscription on a seventeenth-century mother-of-pearl encrusted musket in the Wallace Collection (ca 1624-1680, Fig. 1). This enigmatic motto appears to reference the original matchlock mechanism of this sophisticated weapon. According to the statement, the victim is shot before seeing the lit match igniting the gunpowder. Interestingly, the pronoun ‘it’ serves to simultaneously anthropomorphise the weapon and unite it with its owner. In arguments regarding subject-object agency, the gun is often used as an example because of the issue of culpability. The French sociologist Bruno Latour discussed this agent-actant relationship, considering the psychological change which occurs when a gun is placed in someone’s hand. It is neither the gun nor man which kills, it is the union; ‘the gunman’.^[1] Michel Foucault explored the military rifle drill as an example of what he termed the ‘body-object articulation’. Here, the structures of disciplinary power define the relationship that the body has with the object (the weapon), synthesising the two.^[2] Perhaps more obviously than other objects of material culture, the musket can be read as a literal and symbolic extension of personhood — it was held and brandished against the body in a way that was highly performative, almost akin to a dance. This article shall interrogate the significant relationship between objects of material culture and the formation of early modern, distinctly masculine, subjectivities. What kinds of value and knowledge did this elegant machine embody for its contemporaries?

Like many firearms of the period, the musket cannot fit neatly into one moment of production or one particular place. The various parts were usually made in disparate locations and then assembled by the gunmaker proper.^[3] The Wallace lock, which is pierced and chiselled with dolphins, is inscribed with the signature ERTTEL A DRESDEN, locating the production of the lock to Dresden ca 1680, when this family of gunsmiths was most active.^[4] However, while we might hope that this gives us a sense of the author of the unified whole, this is not necessarily the case, as the lock was a much later addition. It is very likely that this was an update on the original and less efficient matchlock. Similarly, the brass heel-plate is from the nineteenth century and it is conceivable that the Dresden lock was added by a nineteenth-century dealer wishing to increase the commercial value of the weapon.^[5] In this way, the musket served many individuals and presented many different values.

The octagonal barrel is inscribed with the date 1624 and the aforementioned motto, alongside running scrollwork. This maxim was used on a coin of Philip IV (1605-1665) and has led scholars to situate the barrel and the stock in the Spanish Netherlands.^[6] It is, however, very difficult to tell whether the stock, which is profusely decorated with oval mother-of-pearl plaques and smaller inlays, as well as scrolls of brass wire, is contemporary to the barrel. Perhaps it was a standard military weapon (corroborated by its length, 154 centimetres, as well as its heavy weight, 6.15 kilograms) and the rich ornamentation was added later during the update of the lock for a new, wealthy patron.^[7] The plaques on the butt are engraved with cavalrymen and architectural subjects, and those on the fore-end of the stock are engraved with hares and hounds (Fig. 2). Adorning the intervening spaces, small inlays engraved with fruit and flowers weave and entwine as stems and leaves. They frame theatrical profiles of heroic heads on the underside of the stock and plaques depicting classical men clad with laurels, placed either side of the characteristically Dutch deep thumb-groove. Overall, it is a frenzy of intricate detail.

Such pastoral subjects would support the argument that this was a military gun upgraded to be a hunting weapon for a member of the upper-middle classes or aristocracy. The wood is probably walnut. If it had been a tropical or more expensive wood, we would expect to see more of it exposed. Nonetheless, it is a most opulent object, with even the tip of the wooden ramrod inlaid with mother-of-pearl and brass. Alternatively, it was common for semi-military luxurious muskets with such rich decoration to be used in city militias.^[8] In Werner Jacobsz. van den Valckert’s portrait of the Civic Guards Company of Captain Albert Coenraetsz. Burgh and Lieutenant Pieter Evertsz. Hulft (1625, Fig. 3) a figure on the far right proudly holds his musket, profusely decorated with birds and flowers carved in bone. Upon closer inspection, the roundels, which punctuate the design, have a sheen which clearly suggests the use of nacre. Like the Wallace musket, his weapon is so heavy that it requires a rest, and this equally sumptuous implement is visible below the figure’s left hand. The weapon of his colleague, third from the right, also appears embellished with mother-of-pearl.

Although considering the ‘period eye’ is important, particularly for an object which constructs a powerful gaze, touch and sound are equally significant as this was not a static object.^[9] The way it was wielded and its percussive report are crucial to understanding why this was an impressive and distinctly modern object for its beholders. By interrogating militia portraits as well as Jacob de Gheyn’s (1565-1629) vastly influential drill manualWapenhandelinghe van roers, musquetten ende spiessen  (1607), shown being studied in figure three, it becomes clear that this was a highly performative instrument.^[10] The iconography in the engravings, the witty motto and the exotic materials will be analysed alongside contemporary written sources, prints and paintings, to show how the object constructed an upper-middle class, elite personhood, more pertinently manhood, in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. The main focus of this article shall be the subject-object relationship between the beholder and the weapon, however an analysis of the work’s construction and the kinds of knowledge it embodied for its makers is also essential.

MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE

As Bert De Munck argues, in studies of material culture emphasis is placed upon how ‘ […] cultural objects produce values that help to form contemporary subjectivities […]’, predominantly through consumption.^[11] In the vein of semiology, objects become legible — their signs read by the consumer’s gaze. This is exemplified by the omitting of the artisans, those closest to the materiality of objects, from the discussion.^[12] For early modern artisans, value and materiality were not distinct. Materials were at the heart of their practice. Quality control within guilds meant that artisans had a highly sophisticated understanding of the materials’ characteristics. In the Netherlands, iron and steel were imported from Sweden and Siegen, brass was made from Swedish copper and calamine brought from Limburg. Although the stock of the musket in question is probably walnut, tropical wood was also sourced from Brazil and Ceylon.^[13] Furthermore, guilds were organised by material. Craftsmen employed to work on a musket would be from Saint Eloy’s Guild (The Smiths’ Guild) who made barrels and locks and Saint Joseph’s Guild (The Carpenters’ Guild) who fitted iron parts into the stock.^[14] Usually, the ornamentation of the stock was executed in the gun-stocker’s shop, and decoration of the lock, barrel, mounts and engraving in the gunmaker’s shop. However, an elaborate piece such as the Wallace gun would require specialist engravers.^[15]

The carving of mother-of-pearl was rarely a stand-alone craft tradition. In its fifteenth- and sixteenth-century contexts, it was often executed as part of a larger production of luxury objects.^[16] Like our musket, these objects seldom had a single author. They were valued for the abundance of expertise displayed and the union of precious materials from disparate locations. This complex machine required an acute knowledge of the characteristics and constraints presented by each material. For example, the mother-of-pearl carvings are mostly less than five centimetres wide, limited by the amount of shell which is flat before it curves. As seen in figure two, these plaques were cut in a curved rather than a straight fashion to incorporate this restriction.

The engraving of nacre was similar to the engraving of copper plates, as a burin was used to incise the design. The lines were darkened with a mixture of charcoal and wax or oil and then the mother-of-pearl was polished.^[17] The plaques on the musket display a clever, economical use of line to articulate light and dark. Nacre varies in colour and shine, which could be manipulated by artists. The plaques representing flowers and leaves in figure two display a complex, polychromatic decorative scheme, while the varying reflectivity of the inlays allow the object to shimmer when moved. The preparation of the plaque required a specific technical understanding. Only four species of shells producing mother-of-pearl are thick enough for carving and inlaying, with only Pteria, oyster shell, possessing the flatness best suited for engraving. The process of dissolving the ‘periostracum’ (the hard, thick outer layer of the shell) in acid was described by contemporary botanist and employee of the Dutch East India company Georg Eberhard Rumphius (1627-1702), in his 1701 manuscript D’Amboinsche Rariteitkamer  (‘Ambonese Cabinet of Curiosities’).^[18] Although the similarities between the language of the artisanal world and the language of alchemy have been noted, clearly taxonomic discourse was also a close cousin.^[19] The execution of this elegant object required a significant degree of expertise — something that would be on display to visitors to the workshop. Therefore, we can argue that the beholder also understood and valued the sensuous materiality of the work.

Engraving mother-of-pearl in the Netherlands became popular during the seventeenth century, owing to the influx of Nautilus shells from the Indonesian Islands and the Persian Gulf as the Dutch East India Company grew.^[20] An integral part of its appeal was its perceived exotic nature. Shells, which could cost up to 500 guilders, were often displayed in kunstkabinetten.^[21] This knowledge was linked to much more extrinsic values of important trade networks and, later in the century, colonialism.

Decorative objects produced in the Netherlands and those in the East are actively compared in Dutch written accounts. Lacquered furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl was imported from China and sold in many East India shops in Amsterdam, the most important market for nacre in Europe.^[22] Philipp von Zesen (1619-1689) visited his friend, a master of mother-of-pearl inlaying, Dirck van Rijswijck (1596-1679), and claimed that his work was far superior to those skilful Chinese artists whose furniture he had observed in a local shop.^[23] Although it was accepted that firearms originated in China, the rediscovery and development of the use of gunpowder was eventually perceived by Europeans to symbolise their own superiority.^[24] Despite early resistance — Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) famously called the weapons ‘engines of hell’^[25] — Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) listed gunpowder as one of three inventions (including printing and the compass) which distinguished his period as innovative and modern, surpassing antiquity.^[26] Bacon’s definition of modernity rests on technological advancement and change. These inventions are characterised as completely altering the appearance and state of the world, starting with literature, warfare and navigation.^[27] The Invention of Gunpowder is an engraving by Jan Collaert I (1530-1583) after Jan van der Straet (1523-1605) in the book Nova Reperta (New Inventions of Modern Times) published by Philips Galle in Antwerp ca 1600.^[28] Therefore, the various materials and components of the musket were regarded as embodying European (Dutch) skill and economic power.

First invented and developed for its lethal capacities, the gun industry was particularly booming in the Netherlands due to the violent decades of the Dutch Revolt (ca 1566/8–1648). The demand for firearms in other conflicts such as the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) stimulated the production and development of technology, rendering the Dutch Europe’s chief producer and exporter of weapons.^[29] Although one could view the Wallace object as symbolising a European hegemony for its users— an instrument essential to the subjugation of foreign territories — the role of Dutch muskets in global encounters does not present such a rigid binary. Gábor Ágoston’s thorough investigation of the Ottoman empire contradicts ‘ […] a Eurocentric idea of an East-West technological divergence that supposedly occurred around the mid fifteenth century’.^[30] Owing to the continuous exchange of military knowledge between early modern powers in the seventeenth century, achieving technological superiority was practically impossible. Furthermore, the Ottoman lands contained considerable saltpetre deposits, an essential ingredient of gunpowder and Western European states could not easily match this level of self-sufficiency.^[31]

Moreover, David J. Silverman’s work on the significance of the firearm to Native American communities importantly ‘ […] challenge[s] the notion that a disadvantage in arms somehow accounts for indigenous peoples’ ultimate subjugation to Euro-American authority.’^[32] In an in-depth study of the encounters between seventeenth-century Dutch settlers and the indigenous communities in the colony of New Netherland, Silverman highlights that initially, ‘ […] the gun served less to intimidate the Iroquois than captivate them about what they could accomplish with European weaponry.’^[33] In fact, what subsequently developed was a thriving Dutch-Iroquois arms market. By the 1660s it appeared as though the Dutch were manufacturing guns specifically for the needs of the Iroquois in exchange for beaver fur and pelts, despite the authorities realising the very real threat of uprisings. Here, the musket was a useful commodity for the Dutch — an object whose value was dependent upon economic exchange.^[34] The security and economy of New Netherland was dependent on this exchange and relationship, particularly with the Mohawk people, their allies during Kieft’s War (1643-1645).^[35] In this conflict, the gun also maintained its lethal purpose. In 1643, the director of New Netherland, Willem Kieft, ignoring his advisors, forcibly demanded tribute, and when this was ignored, ordered troops to attack a group of Weckquaesgeek and Tappan refugees. One hundred and twenty of them, including women and children, were brutally murdered and mutilated. Now known as the Pavonia Massacre, a Dutch contemporary David Pietersz. de Vries described the horrifying barbarity of the event which could ‘ […] move a heart of stone.’^[36] By the end of the violent war which followed, many colonists had returned to Europe.^[37] As Silverman concluded, for Native Americans ‘ […] the colonial era and the gun age were one and the same, a period of terror and high-stakes gains and losses.’^[38]

The material properties, technological ingenuity and commercial value of the Dutch firearm made it an important item of global trade. The lavish appearance and precious materials of the Wallace musket suggests that this was an item of ceremony, or even gifting — a symbolic object whose theatricality competed with its operational, deadly function.^[39] According to Bacon’s understanding, it would have been perceived as a modern object, associated with notions of progress and innovation.^[40] The musket was introduced in the Netherlands by the Spanish in ca 1560 and only in 1599 were matchlock muskets issued to the army of the Dutch Republic.^[41] Similarly, the market for mother-of-pearl and the discourse surrounding conchology was also fairly new.

The wheel-lock was more sophisticated and expensive than the awkward matchlock it replaced, and could only be repaired by highly skilled artisans. Therefore, the object was costly both to purchase and to maintain, which poses the question: who owned such a novel and luxurious object?

LOCATING THE GUNMAN

The Wallace musket cannot be conflated with the identity of one artist, however it surely speaks to one type of consumer: an elite, white, male European. The inscription ‘ANTE FERIT QVAM FLAMMA MICET’ has been used to situate the production of the barrel in the Spanish Netherlands, as it was employed on a coin of Philip IV of Spain in 1626.^[42] The motto had originally been part of an emblem associated with Philip the Good (1396-1467) and the Order of the Golden Fleece. Reigning during the Thirty Years War, Philip IV, also a knight of the Order, may have wished to invoke the prosperity of his chivalric predecessor. Perhaps the barrel was used during this conflict, in support of the Hapsburg cause. There are more overtly patriotic inscriptions on other muskets which would suggest that mottos were employed in this bellicose manner. A single barrel in the Tower of London (no. xii: 997) is inscribed with the vernacular ‘ORANIEN GETROV TOT DER DOOT(Faithful to Orange Unto Death)’.^[43]

Interestingly, these inscriptions also anthropomorphise the gun. Another example in the Livrustkammaren (no.11673), incorrectly recorded as the same as the Wallace inscription,^[44] actually reads ‘FURIEVS IE SVIS MAIS SENS FVE IE NE PVIS (Furious I am, but I cannot do without fire)’, another pun on the matchlock type.^[45] A richly decorated Dutch musket in the Musée de l’Armée is inscribed with ‘pour maintenir la foi suis belle et fidel et aux ennemis du roi suis rebelle et cruel (To maintain the faith, I am beautiful and faithful, and to the King’s enemies, I am rebellious and cruel)’. ^[46] These adages all boast the sheer power of the device. The Wallace musket was a sophisticated piece of machinery. The length and weight allowed greater range and power to the large musket ball when fired.^[47] Its inscription, ‘It strikes before the flash is seen’, is analogous to Bacon’s observation:

Even in sight (whose action is most rapid), it is clear that a definite time is necessary for its exertion, which is proved by certain objects being invisible from the velocity of their motion, such as a musket-ball; for the flight of the ball is too swift to allow an impression of its figure to be conveyed to the sight.^[48]

The musket’s 1624 inscription united the strength of the machinery with the cunning of its owner. In ‘On Technical Mediation’, Latour similarly dismantled the subject-object distinction, considering the ‘composite agent’, the gunman: ‘You are different with a gun in your hand; the gun is different with you holding it.’^[49] Unlike the inscription, the 1994 observation does not glorify the machine-man complex. Instead, it provides a critical framework which serves to challenge the claim made by current opponents of gun control that it is people who kill, not guns.

Despite Bacon’s analogy, the inscription is surely hyperbolic. The matchlock was relatively inconvenient as the match had to be detached while the gun was being loaded to avoid igniting the gunpowder.^[50] In De Gheyn’s manual there are forty-two steps for a musketeer to shoot, reload and shoot again, taking at least twenty to thirty seconds for the most trained hand.^[51] The motto’s emphasis upon speed glosses over this lengthy process. For the inexperienced, there were opportunities for error, something that was occasionally referenced by contemporary artists.

In Rembrandt van Rijn’s (1606-1669)The Night Watch, three figures arguably enact the postures taken from plates in De Gheyn’s manual with varying degrees of success (1642, Fig. 4). One man behind the lieutenant’s left shoulder blows surplus powder away from the firing pan while, as Margaret Carroll has observed, the burning wick between his fingers creeps dangerously close to the firing mechanism.^[52] While she acknowledges that this may not be a purposeful parody of the drill manual, Harry Berger Jr. also highlights the ‘unruly musketeer’ behind the captain who prematurely fires his gun, visibly startling his neighbour.^[53] The combination of these two events suggests carelessness and ‘ […] the impression of a volatile, potentially dangerous situation’.^[54] The sitter in red pouring powder into the barrel of his gun appears absorbed in his adoption of De Gheyn’s instruction, however as Berger notes, the grip of his hand is far too weak to support the heavy weight of his weapon.^[55] There has been much debate about why ‘in a work supposed to commemorate discipline, it seemed a garish chaos’, as Simon Schama observed.^[56]

While a full discussion of this extensive discourse lies beyond the scope of this article, it is worth noting several key arguments.^[57] According to Norbert Schneider, this spontaneity of movement allows the sitters to gain autonomy, agency and embody a bourgeois lack of restraint, elevating this painting to a combination of group portrait and history painting.^[58] Schama argues that republican liberty could be expressed by representing the combination of both discipline and freedom.^[59] Mariét Westermann notes the misguided shooting ’ […] suggests abuse of the musket privilege’, while the alarmed colleague indicates the company’s usual respect for the art of musketry.^[60] For Berger, there could be a didactic meaning — a warning to the young about the proper handling of weaponry ^[61] These examples all, however, indicate that the power of the shot lay in the combination of sophisticated machinery and careful practice.

A likely place for the Wallace musket was in a Dutch Schutterij (‘civic guard’), similar to the theatrical group portrayed by Rembrandt. Indeed, the lustrous weapon would not look out of place alongside the glamour of the lieutenant’s richly ornamented costume. But why would a barrel inscribed with a motto associated with Philip IV be adapted and used in the Dutch Republic? While such witty wordplay was commonplace, its appropriation in a Dutch context could symbolise defiance and resilience in a similar way to the Vrijheidshoed (hat of freedom), an emblem of egalitarianism adopted by Dutch rebels during the Eighty Years War.^[62] This is the most difficult feature of the musket with which to grapple, as the various physical parts splinter its context, making it impossible to situate the object exactly.

Members of the Schutterij were citizens trained in shooting to protect the city, mimicking the organisational pattern of the army. By the date of the initial manufacture of the Wallace gun, social functions such as shooting competitions and parades were also increasingly gaining importance. Luxury firearms, therefore, became symbols of social standing.^[63] Officers were appointed from the political elite, thus the city militia assumed an aristocratic character.^[64]

It is striking that in group portraits like the Night Watch, firearms and pikes dominate the composition, becoming extensions of the guards’ bodies, indicating the direction of their movements or highlighting an emphatic gesture. Pikes and muskets also appear integral to a figure’s sartorial ensemble, something which was not new to the century — in sixteenth-century Florence, weapons were often considered items of apparel, fashioned to complement articles of dress.^[65] If we recall the figure on the right in van den Valckert’s Civic Guards Company of Captain Albert Coenraetsz. Burgh and Lieutenant Pieter Evertsz. Hulft, the musket encrusted with mother-of-pearl echoes the guard’s splendid belt (Fig. 3). Material culture was of great importance to the homosocial character of the civic guard.^[66] Militia-chains, awarded to winners of shooting competitions, are thought to have been inspired by decorations distributed by the Order of the Golden Fleece. These enduring chivalric traditions could explain the presence of the motto used by Philip IV in this context. The silver horn was a symbol of the peace that militias were tasked with maintaining. Communal drinking from it was an expression of their brotherhood.^[67] Here, we can draw a comparison with the collaborative character of the musket’s manufacture and such corporate identity. The weapon was, after all, the object which united the members most.

In group portraits, the handling of armaments is often rendered to be highly choreographed and flamboyant. In Cornelis Ketel’s (1548-1616) The Company of Captain Dick Jacobsz. Rosencrans and Lieutenant Pauw, (1588, Fig. 5), one man, whose body is turned away, holds up his pike, his other arm akimbo, and coyly looks back at us. These thirteen confident officers assure us of their ability to defend the city of Amsterdam.^[68] Certainly, these militias gained considerable political influence during the revolts and were, as B. Ann Tlusty summarises, regarded ‘ […] as heroes and guardians of Dutch Independence […]’.^[69] This perception would have been particularly relevant as this work was painted the year the Dutch Republic was established. Ketel places the officers on a monumental stage; their performance conducted close to the picture plane, dominating the compact composition. The depiction of sumptuous clothing and armaments decorated with bone and precious metalwork, which is comparable to the Wallace weapon, served to perform an elevated status and thus the ‘ […] right to represent authority’.^[70] Similarly, the several heroic heads and cavalrymen plaques adorning the musket perhaps reflect the Dutch Republic’s motto of the Eighty Years’ War: ‘every citizen a soldier’.^[71] This sense of civic protection and security is further evidenced in figure 3, in which we see Captain Albert Coenraetsz. Burgh connecting the map of the district and a book about fortifications with his compass.^[72] His status as a director of the Dutch West India Company fuses this civic authority with a global power.

And yet, Berger suggests that these militaristic representations overstate or perhaps over-perform the martial ethic of the civic guards.^[73] Group portraits have been compared to the yearly theatrical parades in which schutters displayed and choreographed their supposed warlike capabilities. In these interpretations, the guards ‘play’ at being soldiers, merely ‘ […] imitate[ing] the dress, gestures and virile postures of their professional counterparts’.^[74] We can view this performance through the lens of Judith Butler’s theories on gender as ‘ […] a sustained set of acts, posited through the gendered stylisation of the body’.^[75] In figures three, four and five men attempt the postures illustrated in de Gheyn’s manual and follow the text’s instructions which stressed the requirement of ‘grace’ when handling a musket.^[76] This stands in contrast to the ideal military body of today, reminding us to study masculinities within historical contexts, rather than generally.^[77]

Numerous popular manuals on civility in the Netherlands proclaimed the ideal, upright, graceful body to be of paramount importance to the upper classes. The corporeal appearance and the internal moral landscape were considered closely connected. According to Constantijn Huygens Jr. (1628-1697), his father stressed that ‘ […] in the same way that the mind is formed by exercises, so the bodies of well-to-do children should learn to move in a dignified and elegant way.’^[78] The elite youth maintained their posture through fencing, horse riding or dancing. This custom, and the manuals which accompanied it, suggested that the body played an active role in preserving elite identity through repetition and practice. The relationship between dance and the drill in the early modern period has been noted by many scholars.^[79] Habitual embodied memory, typified by de Gheyn’s Wapenhandelinghe, assumed greater importance to wealthy burghers who, as the century progressed, aimed to imitate an aristocratic way of life.^[80] This type of embodied culture, which required books, equipment and often an instructor, was expensive and therefore exclusive.

Conversely, Maurits of Nassau’s experiment in applying ancient military practices to infantry training, which gave birth to De Gheyn’s drill, sought to create an army that acted with unrivalled discipline and complete obedience, their bodies automatically responding to orders.^[81] This can be seen as the historical epitome of what Foucault termed the corps docile — that despite ‘ […] increasing the forces of the body […]’ such disciplinary routines ‘ […] produces subjected and practiced bodies […]’.^[82] This theory has been historically situated, considering the potential influence of ideas regarding the supremacy of the mind over the body propounded by René Descartes (1596-1650), who served his apprenticeship in the army under Maurits. Here the thousands of military bodies are subservient to the single mind of the general.^[83] However, even in Foucault’s text there is a tension between the soldier’s ‘ […] bodily rhetoric of honour […]’ (thus cultivated) and his somatic subservience — a cog in a military machine.^[84] Such corporeal control, epitomised by the stiff upright posture, perhaps advanced the humanist concept of Tranquillitas or was evidence of the Dutch elite’s interest in Neo-Stoicism.^[85]

It has been suggested that the Wapenhandelinghe focused the attention to the idealised, physical appearance of the body, distracting the viewer and the subject from destabilising, emotional effects such as fear.^[86] Analogously, the glittering appearance and the ceremonial spectacle of the Wallace gun veiled its lethal purpose.^[87] The object engages with both of these arguments in its original professional setting, employed throughout military campaigns, and in its later life in elite performative contexts.

The musket’s classicising iconography further emphasises elite usage. The heads on the underside and Roman profiles with laurels declared the user heroic and learned, which is supported by the Latin inscription. In the sixteenth century, the Dutch rediscovered Tacitus’s (ca 56AD-ca 120AD) narrative of the ancient Batavi, a Germanic warlike tribe who cultivated fertile land. This soon became a popular foundation myth for Netherlandish people, asserting impressive cultural ancestry.^[88] Indeed, the pastoral roundels connote a Dutch visualisation of the Arcadian landscape, as contemporary artists were taking inspiration from Virgil’s (70BC-19BC) Eclogues.^[89] These overtones are unsurprising, considering that the processions of the Amsterdam Schutterij were associated with Roman triumphal entries. As part of the civic guard, handling the gun thus allowed the upper echelon of Dutch society to cultivate their ‘graceful’ bodies and demonstrate cultural superiority. Yet, how this musket constructed a form of masculinity is not easily discerned.

PERFORMING ‘MANHAFTIGHEID’

It has been suggested that in representations of the soldier, the perceived binary codes of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ were challenged.^[90] In Adriaen van de Venne’s (1589-1662) satirical narrative of a military march, a peasant is excited by the loud noise and smoke of the gunshot and astonished by the soldiers’ silken clothes.^[91] This discourse was not confined to the military realm. As influential Dutch pastor Willem Teellinck (1579-1629) lamented ‘No one can miss how effeminate our men have become with all this [fashion] nonsense […]. Their manly [manhaftig] Dutchmen’s hearts are turning weak and womanly’.^[92] In 1693, Huygens wrote with indifference that his servant Pieter had attended a masquerade in women’s clothing. It was only later that he expressed his annoyance when he was informed that some of the garments worn by Pieter, a lace handkerchief and a blue and gold waistcoat, had been stolen from his own wardrobe.^[93] This juxtaposition of the manhaftig practice of shooting, alongside a penchant for elaborate and effeminate clothing is epitomised by the Wallace musket. The soldier’s glamorous attire, marvelled at or disparaged by contemporaries, is comparable to the iridescence of the nacre inlay. This suggests a moderate degree of freedom from the usual masculine scheme of dressing and decorum.

Alison McNeill Kettering has written that as the century progressed, attitudes toward social manners and sexual relations became more aligned with civility, refinement and elegance. This can partly be explained by the Dutch elite increasingly looking towards the English and French courts.^[94] Alongside this, the image of ideal masculinity was challenged by an ‘avant-garde’ group of elite sitters who posed for Van Dyckian portraits as gentlemen of leisure, with long, voluminous hair and dressed loosely in shimmering satin. This laissez-faire appearance suggested a sense of superiority, elevating the individual above ordinary custom.^[95] During the long eighteenth century, plays were staged retelling Dutch battles and those from antiquity, in which the language of theatre and special effects rendered the world of war to be an exotic place, separate from the life of the citizen.^[96] The soldier has also been represented in genre painting as the intruder or absent husband returning home. Perhaps this is implied by the peculiar contrast of the mother-of-pearl plaques representing small houses alongside those of cavalrymen (Fig. 2). This arrangement seems unusual, as a similar musket in the Rijksmuseum has no architectural features.^[97] More convincingly, these motifs accord with the pastoral decoration on the rest of the stock. The engravings of cottages, small street scenes, and modest churches are reminiscent of Claes Visscher’s (1587-1652) miniature landscape prints of 1612. These idealised village scenes appealed to an urban consumer who associated the countryside with leisure. The musket straddles the spheres of luxury and utility, much like the civic guard or the practice of hunting. It is surely important that the cavalrymen and the cottages are placed nearest the butt, while the small plaques of hares and hounds are by the muzzle, which is physically where the prototypes would be during a hunt. Only the nobility was legally allowed to hunt game, thus the depiction of hares asserts social prestige.^[98]

The hunting firearm also held erotic connotations for its contemporaries. Jonathan Tavares has published a study of an extraordinary German seventeenth-century hunting rifle in the Hessisches Landesmuseum which had been, until recently, hidden from museum display for over 70 years due to the ‘ […] perceived pornographic nature’ of the engraved panels.^[99] Furthermore, there is an Italian seventeenth-century firearm adorned with similar erotic scenes on display in the same room as the Wallace musket.^[100] This latter weapon contains more discrete illusions to sex. In a similar fashion to the German weapon, the barrel is decorated with hounds chasing hares, illustrating the expression ‘hunting hares’, a common metaphor in Dutch for intercourse.^[101] In English, the animal was associated with female genitalia in lewd tavern songs.^[102] Additionally, the verb ‘jagen’ (to hunt) was a synonym for courting.^[103] The hunter’s powerful gaze, concealed from its prey is almost voyeuristic in tone. His privileged ocular experience is not de-centred by the look of another.^[104] The weapon’s potential as a marker of patriarchal power, virility and as a phallic symbol is well recorded throughout contemporary literature, and its presence in oil painting is debated.^[105]

Dutch genre paintings often depict huntsmen engaged in subtly salacious conversations with women — usually indicated to the audience by the presence of a bird (the Dutch verb vogelen, ‘the mating of birds’, was also associated with sexual intercourse).^[106] In Self Portrait as a Hunter (ca 1660, Fig. 6) by Arie de Vois (ca 1632-1635 —1680), the subject fondles his erect weapon while foppishly holding the spoils of his hunt — a dead partridge. As Eric Jan Sluijter argues, the contemporary snaphaen (literally ‘snatchcock’) is in sharp contrast with his all’antica shoes, loose blouse, tunic and long hair, which distances the sitter from ordinary society, placing him among the enamoured classical hunters Adonis and Actaeon. In an eighteenth-century description of the painting, the word snaphaen was employed with a sexual undertone: ‘hoe noemt ghy den snaphaen daer ghy mede nae Venus doelen schiet? (How would you call the flintlock which you aim at Venus’s targets?)’.^[107] Presenting as a modish dandy, De Vois provided an alternative to the sober, restrained style of contemporary male portraiture, however this elegance was not at odds with its display of virility. In the seventeenth century, effeminate (verwijfd) could simultaneously mean ‘womanish’ as well as being a ‘womaniser’ fuelled by lust. It also held connotations of hedonism, lasciviousness and self-indulgence. This latter meaning was sometimes associated with military men devoted to luxury.^[108]

It is thought that figure 6 inspired an even more striking self portrait (ca 1654–56) by Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667) as a nude hunter, who exposes the viewer’s voyeurism with his penetrating gaze.^[109] The gun in these contexts signifies masculine virility and the prey, a sexual conquest. Such evidence certainly counters Peter Hecht’s argument against overtly erotic overtones in figure 6.^[110] Ben Broos has asserted that De Vois’s work is a pendant to a painting of a shepherdess plucking a rose, now believed to be the artist’s wife. He proposes that the pair symbolise chaste love.^[111] There are, however, clear visual connections between the pendant portraits, and De Vois’s depictions of classical lovers in the context of hunting: Actaeon and Diana (1672), and Dido and Aeneas (ca 1657).^[112] Both stories, recounted by Ovid (43BC-17/18AD) and Virgil, explore themes regarding the danger of lustful love and looking. Gunpowder and shot provided fresh metaphors for the strength and perils of love and sex in contemporary literature, from Shakespeare to John Donne.^[113] The continued use of the gun in countless aphorisms, idioms and metaphors, it has been averred, served to humanise it ‘ […] by masking its original purpose of killing and destruction in war.’^[114]

The musket’s relationship to the performance of gender is highly complex. Throughout Europe, tropes in literature and painting related the firearm to male virility and heroism. In Germany, masculine identity was conflated with bearing arms. This was strengthened by a consistent association of an unarmed state with femininity.^[115] However, these metaphors represented codes that were not necessarily reflected in everyday life. Gender ideals, as in any age, were unstable and constantly evolving.^[116] The schutters who often represented civic pride and safety were also criticised for neglecting the powder horn in favour of the drinking horn.^[117] While learning to shoot and fence was an integral part of an elite boy’s education, women throughout Europe, particularly among the aristocracy, were also known to shoot.^[118] Lois G. Schwoerer’s research also indicates that female artisans represented a small percentage of gunmakers in England.^[119] Women were also recorded or fictionalised as taking up arms when their community was in danger. A painting in the Rijksmuseum (anonymous, ca 1590-1609) depicts the fictitious story of Kenau (unafraid) Simonsdr. Hasselaer, who, depicted fully armed, supposedly defended Haarlem during the bloody Spanish siege in 1573.^[120]

The plaques of cavalrymen and heroic classical heads on the musket, however, suggest that the object aimed to construct a distinctly masculine subjectivity. This feature and the erotic symbolism appear to connote gendered distinction, yet the Wallace musket complicates this manhaftig narrative with what was perceived to be its elaborate, effeminate appearance. Hunting presented a pastoral escape from contemporary life, an activity of leisure associated with their ancient Netherlandish ancestors. Similarly, in the eighteenth-century, military action in theatrical productions was often portrayed being conducted in far-off, exotic lands.^[121] Even in the civic schutterij, the desire to dress boldly and wield arms that could constitute a work of art was criticised for not conforming to the standard codes of gender. Just as positing an exact place of production was unattainable, so too fixing the values and meanings this work presented is problematic, for communities were and are fluid entities.^[122]

Ultimately, while the weapon may be considered an extension of personhood, the Wallace musket is heterogeneous, resisting categorisation. The inscription complicates its geographical provenance, and its various components — crafted and incorporated at disparate times — diminish the likelihood of one distinct author. This collaborative character challenges the modern perception of the artwork requiring the individual hand of the artist. Indeed, it was valued for its multiplicity of artisanal skill. Although the meanings discerned by artisans and users have been discussed separately here, this distinction should be resisted — contemporary consumers of luxury goods were not alienated from the process of manufacture, thus meaning and matter were intimately connected. The limitations of mother-of-pearl instructed its working, which was appreciated by the consumer. Moreover, the employment of precious materials and improved firearm technology, instrumental in establishing colonies and trade relationships, contributed to the sense of modernity praised by contemporaries.^[123] The intricate beauty of the design communicated the owner’s admiration for firearms and his wish to identify himself with such prestige.^[124] As Amelia Jones averred, the idea of the autonomous individual and the elevated status of the artwork was born at this time when Europeans first sailed to distant lands and encountered different cultures.^[125] This is emphasised by the musket’s classicising, Roman decorative motifs.

This article has examined the often conflicting identities which the Wallace gun (and firearms in general) constituted in seventeenth-century Netherlandish culture. Thus it can be confidently argued that the object represented an elite manhood which distinguished itself as European. The practices and representations of the civic guard and hunting were overwhelmingly masculine. The skilful handling of the musket cultivated a graceful, noble body which also predominantly excluded the female sex, as most girls did not experience the same regimented upbringing as their brothers.^[126] The object expressed a discourse regarding homosociality and virility, however it also suggests a freedom from the ideal of manhaftigheid. ‘Masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ were, after all, unstable terms in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. Similarly, the purpose and values of the subject (user) and object (musket) were not fixed. Inextricably linked, they transformed each other during every exchange. The 1624 motto praised this ‘hybrid actor’, the gunman. The value, meanings and power of the machine were conferred on its user and vice versa.^[127] As Latour would later state: ‘You are another subject because you hold the gun; the gun is another object because it has entered into a relationship with you.’^[128]

Citations

¹ Bruno Latour, ‘On Technical Mediation— Philosophy, Sociology, Genealogy’, Common Knowledge, vol.3, no.2 (1994), 34. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/54-TECHNIQUES-GB.pdf. [Last accessed: 23 August 2022]
² Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish, The Birth of the Prison, transl. by Alan Sheridan, (New York, Vintage Books, 1995), 152-153.
³ John Forrest Hayward, The Art of the Gunmaker 1500-1660, 2 vols.,i (London, Barrie & Rockliff, 1962), 29.
⁴ ‘Wheel-lock gun with ramrod’, The Wallace Collection (Published: n.d., Last accessed: 28 August 2022, https://wallacelive.wallacecollection.org/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ResultListView/result.t1.collection_list.$TspTitleImageLink.link&sp=10&sp=Scollection&sp=SfieldValue&sp=0&sp=1&sp=2&sp=SdetailList&sp=0&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=F&sp=T&sp=0.)
⁵ Tobias Capwell et al., Masterpieces of Arms and Armour in the Wallace Collection (London, Wallace Collection, 2011), 205.
⁶ Sir James Mann, Wallace Collection Catalogues. European Arms and Armour, London, 2 vols, ii (London, Hertford House, 1962), 521.
⁷ Capwell, 205.
⁸ Johannes Bastiaan Kist et al., Dutch Muskets and Pistols (Den Haag, London, Graz, Arms and Armour Press, 1974), 33-38.
⁹ Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, (London and Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1974).
¹⁰ Jacob de Gheyn, [Wapenhandelinghe van roers, musquetten ende spiessen.] The exercise of armes for calivres, muskettes, and pikes. After the ordre of … Maurits Prince of Orange … Sett forthe in figures by Jacob de Gheyn. With written instructions for the service of all captaines and comandours, etc. (’s Gravenhage, 1607).
¹¹ Bert De Munck, ‘Artisans, Products and Gifts: Rethinking the History of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe’, Past and Present, 224, no.1 (2014), 39-40.
¹² De Munck, 39-74.
¹³ Kist., 33.
¹⁴ Kist., 35.
¹⁵ Hayward, 29.
¹⁶ Samantha Darell, A reassessment of mother-of-pearl carvings in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century: value, function and settings (MA thesis, The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2007), 2.
¹⁷ Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide, ‘Dirck van Rijswijck (1596-1679) a Master of Mother-of-Pearl’ in Oud Holland, 111, no. 2 (1997), 81.
¹⁸ Georg Eberhard Rumphius, d’ Amboinsche Rariteitkamer (Amsterdam 1705), cited in W.H. Van Seters, ‘Oud- Nederlandse Parelmoerkunst: Het Werk Van Leden Der Familie Belquin Parelmoergraveurs En Schilders In De 17E Eeuw’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 9 (1958), 176.
¹⁹ De Munck, 60.
²⁰ W.H. Van Seters, ‘Oud- Nederlandse Parelmoerkunst: Het Werk Van Leden Der Familie Belquin Parelmoergraveurs En Schilders In De 17E Eeuw’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 9 (1958), 173.
²¹ Karin Leonhard, ‘Shell Collecting. On 17th- Century Conchology, Curiosity Cabinets and Still Life Painting’, in Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in science, Literature and the Visual Arts, 2 vols. (Leiden, 2007), 177-214, 183.
²² Van Seters, 91.
²³ Kisluk-Grosheide, 84.
²⁴ Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2003), 1.
²⁵ Victoria Bartels, Masculinity, arms and armour, and the culture of warfare in sixteenth-century Florence, (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2019), 189.
²⁶ Sir Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, ed. by J. Devey (New York, P.F. Collier, 1902), 49, http://oll-resources.s3.amazonaws.com/titles/1432/Bacon_0415_EBk_v6.0.pdf. [Last accessed: 24 November 2019]
²⁷ Bacon, 49.
²⁸ ‘Nova Reperta: Invention of Gunpowder (Pulvis Pyrius)’, Royal Museums Greenwich (Published: n.d, Last accessed: 24 November 2019 https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/101942.html.)
²⁹ David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press 2016), 25.
³⁰ Gábor Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2005), 192-195.
³¹ Ágoston, 97-127.
³² Silverman, 19.
³³ Silverman, 23.
³⁴ Appadurai, 3.
³⁵ Silverman, 23-35.
³⁶ David Pietersz. de Vries, Voyages from Holland to America, A.D. 1632-1644, transl. by Henry C Murphy (New York, Billin and Brothers printers, 1853), 169-170.
³⁷ David Onnekink and Gijss Rommelse, The Dutch in the Early Modern World, A History of a Global Power (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019), 86.
³⁸ Silverman, 55.
³⁹ Lois G. Schwoerer, Gun Culture in Early Modern England (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2016), 4.
⁴⁰ Bacon, 49.
⁴¹ Kist, 33.
⁴² Mann, 521.
⁴³ Arne Hoff, Dutch Firearms, ed. by W.A Stryker (London, Sotheby Parke Bernet 1978), 13.
⁴⁴ A. V. B. Norman and Wallace Collection Trustees, Wallace Collection Catalogues European Arms and Armour Supplement (London, Balding and Mansell 1986), 220.
⁴⁵ Hoff, 14.
⁴⁶ Hayward, 36.
⁴⁷ Capwell, 204-205.
⁴⁸ Bacon, 106.
⁴⁹ Latour, 33.
⁵⁰ Chase, 25.
⁵¹ Silverman, 25.
⁵² Margaret D. Carroll, ‘Accidents Will Happen: The Case of the Night-watch’ in Alan Chong and Michael Zell (eds), Rethinking Rembrandt (Zwolle, Waanders, 2003), 91-105.
⁵³ Harry Berger Jr., Manhood, Marriage & Mischief: Rembrandt’s ‘Night watch’ and other Dutch group portraits (New York, Fordham University Press 2007), 185-190.
⁵⁴ Carroll, 96.
⁵⁵ Berger, 202.
⁵⁶ Simon Schama, Rembrandt’s Eyes (London, Allen Lane, 1999), 487.
⁵⁷ The literature on this most famous painting is too extensive to list a comprehensive collection of titles here. On this particular debate, see: Gary Schwartz, The Night Watch, Rijksmuseum Dossiers (Zwolle, Waanders, 2002) ; Kenneth Clark, An Introduction to Rembrandt (New York, Harper and Row 1978) ; Alois Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland (Los Angeles, Getty Research Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999) ; Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Rembrandt: The Night Watch (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1982)
^For a general reading list: Please see ‘Documentation’: ‘The Night Watch, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1642’, Rijksmuseum (Published: n.d, Last accessed: 29 August 2022) https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-C-5.
⁵⁸ Norbert Schneider, The Art of the Portrait: Masterpieces of European Portrait Painting, 1420-1670, transl. by Ian Galbraith (Cologne, Benedikt Taschen, 1994), 153-157.
⁵⁹ Schama, 488.
⁶⁰ Mariét Westermann, Rembrandt (London, Phaidon Press, 2000), 170.
⁶¹ Berger, 189.
⁶² Marieke de Winkel, ‘Rembrandt’s Clothes —Dress and Meaning in His Self-Portraits’ in Ernst Van de Wetering, (ed.), Jennifer Kilian et al.,(transl.), A Corpus of Rembrandt Painting, IV Self-Portraits (Dordrecht, Springer, 2005), 58.
⁶³ Hoff,10-11.
⁶⁴ Berger, 114.
⁶⁵ Bartels, 281.
⁶⁶ Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men, English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York, Columbia University Press, 2015), 1-5.
⁶⁷ M. Carasso-Kok and J. Levy-van Halm (eds), Schutters in Holland, kracht en zenuwen van de stad (Zwolle, Waanders, 1988), 402-3.
⁶⁸ Christian Tümpel, ‘De invloed van de Nederlandse Opstand op de iconografie van de Amsterdamse schuttersstukken’, De Zeventiende Eeuw, Jaargang 10, (1994), https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_zev001199401_01/_zev001199401_01_0015.php. [Last accessed: 5 August 2022]
⁶⁹ B. Ann Tlusty, The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic duty and the right^of arms (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan 2011), 274.
⁷⁰ Tlusty, 27.
⁷¹ Cornelis van der Haven, ‘Drilll and Allocution as Emotional Practices in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Poetry, Plays and Military Treatises’, in (eds), Erika Kuijpers and Cornelis Van Der Haven, Battlefield Emotions 1500-1800, Practice, Experience and Imagination (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 25-40.
⁷² Tümpel, 136.
⁷³ Berger, 117.
⁷⁴ Alison McNeil Kettering, ‘Gerard Ter Borch’s Military Men: Masculinity Transformed’, in Arthur W. Wheelock et al., (eds), The Public and Private in Dutch Culture of the Golden Age (Delaware, University of Delaware Press 2000), 100.
⁷⁵ Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London, Routledge 2006), xiv.
⁷⁶ De Gheyn, ‘Step 38’, n.p.
⁷⁷ Mathew McCormack, ‘Dance and Drill: Polite Accomplishments and Military Masculinities’, Cultural and Social History, vol. 8, issue 3, 327.
⁷⁸ Herman Roodenburg, The Eloquence of the Body, Perspectives on gesture in the Dutch Republic (Zwolle, Waanders 2001), 94.
⁷⁹ William H. MacNeill, Keeping Together in Time (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press 1995).
⁸⁰ Roodenburg., 25.
⁸¹ McCormack, 321.
⁸² Foucault, 137-138.
⁸³ Tümpel, 113.
⁸⁴ Foucault, 135.
⁸⁵ Elizabeth Sutton, Early Modern Dutch Prints of Africa (London and New York, Routledge 2017), 101.
⁸⁶ Van der Haven (2016), 26.
⁸⁷ Schwoerer, 4.
⁸⁸ Stephanie Porras, Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination (University Park, The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2016), 7.
⁸⁹ Robert Fucci, ‘Arcadia Unbound: Early Dutch Landscape Prints and the Amenissimae aliquot regiunculae by Jan van de Velde II’, Art in Print 4, no. 5 (Jan-Feb 2015), 17.
⁹⁰ McNeil Kettering (2000), 100-115.
⁹¹ Adriaen van de Venne, Tafereel van de Belacchende Werelt (’s Gravenhage, 1635) cited in McNeil Kettering (2000), 110.
⁹² Willem Teellinck, Den Spiegel der Zedigheyt (Middelburgh, 1620), 119 cited in Alison McNeil Kettering, (transl.), ‘Gentlemen in Satin: Masculine Ideals in Later Seventeenth-Century Dutch Portraiture’, Art Journal 56, no. 2,(Summer, 1997), 46.
⁹³ Rudolf Dekker, ‘Upstairs en downstairs: Meiden en knechts in het dagboek van Constantijn Huygens Jr.’, Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman, 25 (2002), 83-84. https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_med009200201_01/_med009200201_01_0011.php [Last accessed: 30 August 2022]
⁹⁴ McNeil Kettering (1997), 44.
⁹⁵ McNeil Kettering (1997), 47.
⁹⁶ Cornelis van der Haven, ‘Theatres of War and Diplomacy on the Early-Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam Stage’ In Cornelis van der Haven, Renger E. de Bruin, Lotte Jensen, and David Onnekink (eds), Performances of Peace: Utrecht 1713 (Leiden, Brill, 2015), 182.
⁹⁷ ‘Matchlock musket, anonymous, 1600-1650’, Rijksmuseum98 Scott A. Sullivan, The Dutch Game Piece (New Jersey, Allanheld & Schram, 1984), 34.
⁹⁹ Jonathan Tavares, ‘Hunting erotica, Print culture and a seventeenth-century rifle in the collection of the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt’ in Suzanne Karr Schmidt and Edward H. Wouk (eds) Prints in Translation 1450-1750, Image, Materiality, Space (Oxford, New York, Routledge, 2017), 86, 74-88.
¹⁰⁰ Capwell, 202-203.
¹⁰¹ Adriaan Waiboer, ‘Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing In Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt (eds), The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd (Published: New York, 2020, Last accessed: 5 August 2022) https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/self-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-hunter/.
¹⁰² Taveres, 81.
¹⁰³ ‘Arie de Vois, Self-Portrait as a Hunter’, Mauritshuis (Published: n,d., Last accessed 21 October 2022) https://www.mauritshuis.nl/en/our-collection/artworks/204-self-portrait-as-a-hunter/.
¹⁰⁴ Norman Bryson, ‘The Gaze in the Expanded Field,’ in Hal Foster, ed., Vision & Visuality (Seattle, Bay Press, 1988), 96
¹⁰⁵ Bartels, 221-222.
¹⁰⁶ Wayne Frantis, ‘Wily women? On sexual imagery in Dutch art of the seventeenth century’ in Theo Hermans and Reiner Salveda (eds), From Revolt to Riches, Culture & History of the Low Countries 1500-1700 (London, UCL Press, 2017), 227.
¹⁰⁷ Eric Jan Sluijter, Seductress of Sight, Studies in Dutch Art of the Golden Age (Zwolle, Waanders, 2000), 281.
¹⁰⁸ McNeil Kettering (1997), 45.
¹⁰⁹ Waiboer, n.p.
¹¹⁰ Pieter Hecht, De Hollandse fijnschilders. Van Gerard Dou tot Adriaen van der Werff [exhib. cat.] (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 1989), 231.
¹¹¹ Ben Broos and Ariane van Suchtelen (eds), Portraits in the Mauritshuis, 1430-1790 (The Hague and Zwolle, Waanders, 2004), 266.
¹¹² Sluijter, 281.
¹¹³ John Hale, ‘Gunpowder and the Renaissance’ in C.H. Carter, (ed.), From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation: Essays in Honor of Garrett Mattingly (London, Cape 1966), 133-134 ; John Donne, Poems of John Donne, ed. by E.K. Chambers (London, Lawrence & Bullen, 1896), 50-51.
¹¹⁴ Schwoerer, 190.
¹¹⁵ Tlusty, 45.
¹¹⁶ McNeil Kettering (1997), 47.
¹¹⁷ Berger, 118.
¹¹⁸ Schwoerer,125-141.
¹¹⁹ Schwoerer, 26-45.
¹²⁰ ‘Kenau Simonsdr Hasselaer, anonymous, ca 1590 – ca 1609’, Rijksmuseum (Published; n.d., Last accessed: 5 August 2022) https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-502.
¹²¹ Van der Haven, 182.
¹²² Tlusty, 45.
¹²³ See also the discussion of Francis Bacon’s idea of modernity, page 7.
¹²⁴ Schwoerer, 7.
¹²⁵ Amelia Jones, Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts. (London, Routledge, 2012), 20.
¹²⁶ Roodenburg, 32.
¹²⁷ Latour, 33.
¹²⁸ Latour, 33.