Klaes molenaer biography of martin luther king

Open Inquiry Archive Vol. 1. No. 2 (2012)

Issue Introduction

Kimberlee Cloutier-Blazzard’s provocative essay, “One Flesh… Two (Wise) Fools: Evidence for Artistic Collaboration Between Judith Leyster and Jan Miense Molenaer in Four Festive Paintings,” (below) explores the working dynamic of an artistic couple in seventeenth-century Haarlem. Her proposed pairing of several genre works draws our attention to the subtleties of a unique husband-and-wife partnership, and to the artists’ contributions to pictorial invention as well. Cloutier-Blazzard skillfully relates Leyster and Molenaer’s newly formed alliance to diverse manifestations of an increasingly influential Christian humanistic tradition. Her stimulating interpretation of these pendant paintings connects these genre works to the practices of low and high culture, from the popular customs of carnivalesque festivities to the bawdy rituals of erudite rhetoricians. By providing new insight into the social and religious milieu of artistic Haarlem, Cloutier-Blazzard presents a revealing case-study of how artists negotiated Protestant and Catholic interests in early modern Holland.

~ Sandra Cheng

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One Flesh… Two (Wise) Fools:

Evidence for Artistic Collaboration Between Judith Leyster and Jan Miense Molenaer in Four Festive Paintings

by Kimberlee A. Cloutier-Blazzard

“Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves ’em still two fools.” ~William Congreve, The Double Dealer (1694) Act II, scene iii.

It is generally assumed that husband-and-wife artists Jan Miense Molenaer (c.1610–1668) and Judith Leyster (1609–1660) worked collaboratively, both before and after their wedding in 1636. [note 1]  This paper examines the broader concept of artistic collaboration as intellectual endeavor by Molenaer and Leyster, focusing on four thematically-related comic paintings from before their marriage:  Leyster’s slightly earlier The Merry Company (Figure 1