In the Manner of Vasari: Italian Loanwords and Calques in Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck (1603-4)

Karel van Mander’s Schilder-boeck (1603-4) is the first specimen of imitation and adaptation of Vasari’s Vite appearing in book form in Europe. It also represents the seminal text in the development of a discourse on Dutch and Flemish art history: as such, it provides precious information on the lives, techniques, styles and works of Northern masters, as well as laying the foundations of the Dutch art lexicon. This paper concentrates on the lexical choices made by its author in terms of Italian loanwords and calques, in the context of a language progressing towards its standardization and specialization in different fields of knowledge, as Dutch was in Van Mander’s time. Different sections of the Schilder-boeck will come under scrutiny: the introductory didactic poem, where Van Mander discusses his adoption of Italianisms, as well as the well-known Dutch, Flemish and German lives, where the echo of Vasari’s vocabulary is quite audible. The vitality and polysemous quality of some terms in this corpus will be discussed with the help of data from Dutch historical dictionaries.