Introduction Objects, Commodities and Material Cultures in the Dutch Republic : Exploring Early Modern Materiality Across Disciplines

The introduction to the volume demonstrates that material cultures of the Dutch Republic are studied in various disciplines, such as art history, economic history and religious history. This book, resulting from the collaborations between scholars working in different fields, brings these strands together. Their essays narrate the lives of objects that have been invisible or marginalized in current scholarship. In the wealth of methodological and disciplinary variation displayed by these essays, five dimensions of objects come to the fore: the artistic, commercial, knowledge, memorial and spatial dimension of objects. Together, the essays demonstrate that an object-oriented, interdisciplinary approach offers the opportunity to work towards a multilayered and in some cases more inclusive perspective on the early modern Netherlands.