Displaying Gift-Giving: Thesis Prints in the Spanish Netherlands
(2025) Placing Prints. New Developments in the Study of Print, 1400-1800 — ISBN: [978-90-04-26511-0], 188-212, published
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- (en) This essay focuses on the circulation of thesis prints produced in the Southern Low Countries, and explores how this circulation influenced their iconography. Such broadsides executed on the occasion of pro gradu disputations were mainly conceived to be given by the laureates to members of the social and intellectual elite. The act of gift-giving is expressed in the written dedication to the patron printed alongside the scientific conclusions on the thesis print. It is also visually staged through a mise en abyme, a device in which the broadside depicts its own presentation to the student’s sponsor. Beyond a mere playful representation, this visual and textual construction aids our understanding of the functioning and intentions of thesis engravings. The mise en abyme highlights the sociopolitical context of courtly patronage permeating teaching institutions during the seventeenth century.
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de Mûelenaere, G. (2025). Displaying Gift-Giving: Thesis Prints in the Spanish Netherlands. In Bryony Bartlett-Rawlings and Naomi Lebens (eds.) (ed.), Placing Prints. New Developments in the Study of Print, 1400-1800 (pp. 188-212). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004703834_010