The place of mirrors in the domestic culture of sixteenth-century Bruges

ABSTRACT

The sixteenth century saw an exponential increase in the number and the diversity of objects people surrounded themselves with. Some objects have already been widely discussed, while others, like mirrors, remain hidden from scholarly view. The mirror was widely popular in the more wealthy households of cities like Bruges, but it was also frequently discussed and used in moralistic writings and paintings as a metaphor for a wide range of very different symbolic meanings. According to literature, however, a transition took place during this period from the mirror being a tool for contemplation and private devotion, to the mirror being used as a luxury item. Moreover, the literature argues, this transition also reflected a large-scale social and cultural change towards secularisation, humanism and emerging subjectivity. In this article, however, I argue that, especially in the Bruges context, reality - as is often the case – was much more layered than that. Indeed, their increasing popularity in the sixteenth century should be explained both by a changing consumer culture, and by the mirror's continued connection with spirituality and private devotion. The resulting new insights are of great importance for our understanding of early modern daily life and material culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Mirror
• material culture
• domestic space
• interior decoration
• early modern Bruges

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As a commercial centre, Bruges was home to several ‘nations’ of international merchants already since the Middle Ages. The nation of the Castilians, the largest of the foreign nations in Bruges in the sixteenth century, kept a foothold in the city until well into the seventeenth century. These international merchants, most of whom had already lived in Bruges for generations, were fully integrated in Bruges society. The lay-out of the home of Fernando de Castere was similar to that of the houses of his Bruges peers. The material culture with which he surrounded himself, however, differed somewhat from that of his fellow townspeople in Bruges. This will be discussed in more detail in another publication.

2 City Archives Bruges, Staten van Goed 1e reeks – 65, 1568; Inventories are lists of all the household movables and/or stocks people owned at a given moment in time, and in Bruges, as like anywhere else at the time, they were drawn up for a variety of legal and administrative reasons. The most common event in which an inventory was produced was the death of a citizen and property owner. But they were also drawn up when men or women had debts and estates needed to be valued for reimbursement. So inventories, but to some extent also wills, were not necessarily intended to learn more about people's cultural, social and emotional lives, but they prove to be often very revealing about a specific use context of objects in the personal sphere of its user. More about inventories: Giorgio Riello, “‘Things Seen and Unseen’ The Material Culture of Early Modern Inventories and their Representation of Domestic Interiors”, in Early Modern Things. Objects and their Histories, 1500-1800, edited by Paula Findlen, 127. London: Routledge, 2013; Katherine French, Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021, 12–13.

3 Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta and Flora Dennis, At Home in Renaissance Italy (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2006); Marta Ajmar-Wollheim, Flora Dennis and Ann Matchette (eds), Approaching the Italian Renaissance Interior. Sources, Methodologies and Debates (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007). Inneke Baatsen, Bruno Blondé, Julie De Groot and Isis Sturtewagen, “At home in the city: the dynamics of material culture”, in City and Society in the Low Countries, 1100–1600, edited by Bruno Blondé, Marc Boone and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, 192–219. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Blondé, Bruno and Wouter Ryckbosch, “In ‘Splendid Isolation’. A Comparative Perspective on the Historiographies of the ‘Material Renaissance’ and the ‘Consumer Revolution’”, History of Retailing and Consumption 1, no. 2 (2015).

4 Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature. Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Berkely/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1994, 298–99.

5 Ibidem, 302; Maria Ruvoldt, “Sacred to Secular, East to West: the Renaissance Study and Strategies of Display”, Renaissance Studies 20, no. 5 (2006): 648.

6 Cited in Dora Thornton, The Scholar in his Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy. Yale University Press, 1998, 167.

7 Elizabeth Currie, Inside the Renaissance House. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2007, 76.

8 Peter Stabel, “Selling paintings in late medieval Bruges: marketing customs and guild regulation compared”, in Mapping Markets for Paintings in Europe, 1450-1750, edited by Neil de Marchi and Hans J. Van Miegroet, 89–90. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.

9 Nancy Frelick, (ed.), Specular Reflections. The Mirror in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016.

10 Ibidem, 1. See also: Chris Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007, 147; Mark Pendergrast, Mirror Mirror: A History of the Human Love Affair with Reflection. New York: Basic Books, 2009; Sabine, Melchior-Bonnet, The Mirror: A History. London: Routledge, 2001; Debora Shuger, “The ‘I’ of the Beholder: Renaissance Mirrors and the Reflexive Mind”, in Renaissance Culture and the Everyday, edited by Patricia Fumerton and Simon Hunt. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.

11 De Groot, At Home; Andrew Brown and Jan Dumolyn (eds.), Medieval Bruges c. 850 – c. 1550. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

12 De Groot, At Home.

13 Inneke Baatsen, Bruno Blondé & Carolien De Staelen, “‘Antwerp and the Material Renaissance’, Exploring the social and economic significance of crystal glass and majolica in the sixteenth century”, in The Ashgate research companion to early modern material culture, edited by David Gaimster, Tara Hamling & Catherine Richardson, 9 Aldershot: Farnham/Ashgate, 2015.

14 Rayna Kalas, “The Technology of Reflection: Renaissance Mirrors of Steel and Glass”, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32, no. 3 (2002): 519.

15 Johan Veeckman and Claire Dumortier, “La production de verres à Anvers: les données historiques”, in Majolica and Glass from Italy to Antwerp and Beyond. The Transfer of Technology in the 16th and 17th Century, edited by Johan Veeckman et.al., 69–70 Antwerp: City of Antwerp, 2002.

16 Kalas, “The Technology of Reflection”, 520.

17 Ibidem, 519–20.

18 David Whithouse, “Introduction”, in Majolica and Glass from Italy to Antwerp and Beyond, 17; Patrick McCray, Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999, 122–23.

19 Kalas, “The Technology”, 520; Patricia Fortini-Brown, “The Venetian Casa”, in At Home in Renaissance Italy, edited by Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis, 54–55. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2006.

20 Veeckman and Dumortier, “La production de verres à Anvers”, 70.

21 De Groot, At Home, 16–26.

22 Kalas, “The Technology”, 520.

23 Riello, “Things Seen and Unseen”, 135; De Groot, “Uncovering Daily Life”, 194.

24 Kalas, “The Technology”, 520

25 De Groot, At Home; De Groot, “Uncovering”.

26 Katherine French, Household Goods, 26; Julie De Groot, “Uncovering Daily Life in the Archive? Framing Domestic Culture in Sixteenth-Century Bruges Inventories”, in The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700, edited by Katherine Anne Wilson and Leah Clark, 189-207. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022.

27 Mark Pendergrast, Mirror Mirror, 141.

28 Diane Wolfthal, In and Out of the Marital Bed: Seeing Sex in Renaissance Europe. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010, 54.

29 The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things, 1500s, attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, oil on wood, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

30 Woman at Her Toilet, date unknown, attributed to or after Jan van Eyck, oil on oak panel, original lost.

31 Kalas, “Technology of Reflection”, 520.

32 Ibidem, 520–21.

33 City Archives Bruges, Staten van goed, 1e series – 70, 1559.

34 City Archives Bruges, Klerken van de Vierschaar, Gheeraerts (1584-1585), 84v–85r, 1585.

35 City Archives Bruges, Staten van goed, 1e series – 334, 1584.

36 City Archives Bruges, Staten van goed, PSD – TBO112 3e serie – 1482, 1596.

37 State Archives Bruges, Wettelijke Passeringen, reg 1292, 1467.

38 City Archives Bruges, Staten van goed, 1e series – 271, 1584.

39 City Archives Bruges, Klerken van de Vierschaar, Dingne (1568–1570), 1569.

40 City Archives Bruges, Klerken van de Vierschaar, Gheeraerts (1566–1569), 1567.

41 City Archives Bruges, Klerken van de Vierschaar, Gheeraerts (1566–1569), 1568.

42 Henri Michelant (ed), Le Livre des Mestiers; dialogues français-flamands composes au XIVe siècle par un maître d’école de la ville de Bruges. Paris : Librairie Tross., 1875.

43 State Archives Bruges, PSD – TBO112 3e serie – 1270, 1560.

44 Pendergrast, Mirror Mirror, 141.

45 Allison Stielau, “The Case of the Case for Early Modern Objects and Images”. Kritische Berichte, [Theme of the issue: “Die Kunst und die Dinge. Perspektiven einer schwierigen Beziehung”] 3 (2011): 5–16

46 Baatsen, Blondé, De Groot & Sturtewagen, “At home in the city”.

47 General Archives Brussels, Council of Troubles, n°249, 1567, 1r-4v.

48 City Archives Bruges, Klerken van de Vierschaar, Mommengy (1541–1543), 1541.

49 City Archives Bruges, Staten van Goed, 1e series, 1563.

50 Debora Shuger, “The ‘I’ of the Beholder: Renaissance Mirrors and the Reflexive Mind”, in Renaissance Culture and the Everyday, edited by Patricia Fumerton and Simon Hunt, 22. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.

51 Elizabeth Currie, Inside the Renaissance House. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2006, 76.

52 Dora Thornton, The Scholar in his Study, 167.

53 Mirror or Light Reflector, on view at The Met Cloisters in Gallery 19, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/471727

54 Vickery, Behind closed doors, 29

55 Ibidem, 29

56 Kalas, “The Technology of Reflection”, 521–22.

57 Margaret A. Morse, “Domestic Portraiture in Early Modern Venice: Devotion to Family and Faith”, in Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy, edited by Maya Corry et.al., 117–38. Brill: Leiden, 2019, 120.

58 De Groot, At Home, 164–65.

59 Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, 1434, Jan Van Eyck, Oil on Oak, National Gallery, London. © The National Gallery, London.

60 James Symonds, “Introduction”, in A Cultural History of Objects in the Renaissance, edited by James Symonds, 27. Bloomsbury: London, 2021.

61 Morse, “Domestic Portraiture”, 122.

62 Genevieve Carlton, “Viewing the World: Women, Religion, and the Audience for Maps in Early Modern Venice”, Terra Incognitae 48, no. 1 (2016): 15–36.

63 Morse, “Domestic Portraiture”, 123.

64 Ibidem.

65 Elizabeth Tingle, “Pilgrimage in Early Modern Catholicism”, Oxford Bibliographies, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195399301/obo-9780195399301-0503.xml, accessed 24/06/2024.

66 Robert Maniura, “Crossing Boundaries with Pilgrim Badges”, in Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700, edited by Katherine A. Wilson and Leah R. Clark, 83–100. Liverpool University Press: Liverpool, 2022; Jos Koldeweij et al. Geloof & Geluk onderweg. Pelgrimstekens en profane insignes. Antwerpen, 2006; Hanneke van Asperen. “The Book as Shrine, the Badge as Bookmark: Religious Badges and Pilgrims’ Souvenirs in Devotional Manuscripts.” In Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World, red. Marco Faini en Alessia Meneghin, 288–312. Leiden, 2018.

67 Michael Lewis et.al., “Characterising Transformation in Religious Material Culture AD 1000-1700. Through the Study of Archaeological Small Finds Discovered by the Public in England and Wales”, in Mobility of Objects, edited by Wilson & Clark, 59-81.

68 Koldeweij et al. Geloof & Geluk onderweg: exhib. cat. Stadt im Wandel. Kunst und Kultur des Bürgertums in Norddeutschland 1150-1650, edited by Cord Meckseper, vol. 1, 212–13. Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt, 1985.

69 Kurt Köster, Gutenberg in Straßburg. das Aachenspiegel-Unternehmen und die unbekannte “Afentur und Kunst”, Eltville: s.l., 1973.

70 Heiltumsweisung am Schopperschen Haus, Nürnberg Holzschnitt von 1487 aus einem Heiltumsbüchlein, Staatsarchiv Nürnberg, Rst. Nuremberg Manuscripts 399a.

71 Master of the legend of Saint Lucia, St. Jacob’s Church, Bruges, ca. 1480–1483

72 De Groot, At Home, 164.

Additional information

Funding

The research of this work was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).

Notes on contributors

Julie De Groot

Julie De Groot is a postdoctoral researcher and guest professor at the University of Antwerp, both at the Centre for Urban History and the research group Antwerp Cultural Heritage Sciences. She completed her PhD in History at the University of Antwerp in 2017. Her doctoral thesis was reworked in a book that was published in 2022 by Leuven University Press: At Home in Renaissance Bruges. Connecting Objects, People and Domestic Spaces in a Sixteenth-Century City. De Groot is expert in material and domestic culture, (interior) design history and traditional crafts.