Summary Church interiors, cortegaerdjes, scenes of everyday life, tronies, landscapes, spoockerijen, group portraits, bambocciate, hunting scenes, history paintings, sottoboschi, still lives and many other subjects: the wide variety of pictorial genres and sub-genres in which Dutch artists specialized is a key component in our perception of Dutch seventeenth-century art. Yet the epistemological framework constituted by genre definitions, conventions and hierarchies is far from self-evident, nor does it necessarily reflect how people in the seventeenth-century thought about artworks. In fact, art literature of the period is largely silent on these matters and artists do not appear to have followed an established set of principles. This volume examines the way pictorial genres can be, and have been, defined by artists, theorists, audiences and art historians; how individual artists conceived the subject matter of their artworks; and how society and the art market contributed to the development of certain subjects. As such, it embraces the complex and often messy reality of pictorial genres in seventeenth-century Dutch art. TABLE OF CONTENTS Questioning Pictorial Genres in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art: Introduction Marije Osnabrugge (University of Geneva) I. Defining genre The So-Called Hierarchy of Genres in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art Theory Jan Blanc (University of Geneva) Spotting Specialists: A Digital Approach to Contemporary Concepts of Genre and Specialisation Weixuan Li (University of Amsterdam / Huygens - KNAW) The Seventeenth-Century Dutch Portrait: An Unstable Genre Ann Jensen Adams (UC Santa Barbara) The Bambocciata: Investigating a "Would-be genre" Suzanne Baverez (ENS ULM/EPHE, Paris) From Genre Scenes l'antique to genre s rieux : the Contribution of Gerard de Lairesse Tijana ?akula (Utrecht University) Definition through Appreciation: The Corporate Group Portrait from the Seventeenth until the Twenty-First Century Norbert Middelkoop (Amsterdam Museum) II. Artists and Genres Guns and Roses: Versatility and Variety in the Oeuvre of Jacques de Gheyn Susanne Bartels (University of Geneva / RKD The Hague) Otto Marseus van Schrieck and the Sottobosco Paintings: Hybrid Subject as a form of Automimesis. VE. Mandrij (Unversity of Konstanz) Rembrandt as Genre and History Painter: Picturing Pain Stephanie Dickey (Queen's University, Kingston) Defining the Hybrid Genre in the Context of Saenredam's Perspectives Helen Hillyard (Dulwich Picture Gallery, London) The 'Little Street' - Vermeer's Writing on the Wall Reindert Falkenburg (NYU Abu Dabi) III. The Market and Society The Dominance of History Painting: Social Class and Subject Matter of Paintings in Amsterdam, 1650-1700 Angela Jager (University of Geneva) Rethinking Swanenburg: The Rise and Fortune of New Iconographies of the 'Hell' in Italy and the Northern Netherlands Tania De Nile (MiBAC, Rome) La Sc ne de Corps de Garde comme Autorepr sentation L onard Pouy (Haute cole de la Joaillerie, Paris) Honour and Shame in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art and Culture Wayne Franits (Syracuse University)