Emotions

Fear, sorrow, surprise, anger, lust and love – little was more important in the painting of the Golden Age than conveying human emotions convincingly. Seventeenth-century connoisseurs believed that the beauty of a painting was not half as important as the passions it portrayed: these were ‘the soul’ of the work. Artists like Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Maerten van Heemskerck and Cornelis van Haarlem were masters in depicting very diverse emotions. Art historian Gary Schwartz calls on a magnificent selection of masterpieces to demonstrate how painters could represent particular feelings with infinite subtlety, and at the same time how difficult it is to interpret emotions correctly without context. From the perspective of psychology and neuroscience, the philosopher of science Machiel Keestra explores reasons why painted emotions still fascinate and amaze us to this day.