Abstract

Esprit or ?ingenuity? was one of the principle qualities sought by the connoisseurs who populate seventeenth?century Flemish pictures of collections. This essay scrutinizes the ways in which the flourishing discipline of connoisseurship was depicted, explored and fashioned in Antwerp gallery interiors. Placing these images within the context of Early Modern writings on discernment, Gage explores the ways in which the directed gazes, postures and gestures of cognoscenti reflect the growth of trained artistic judgement within the period?s elite, concluding that such images exemplify a major social and epistemological shift in which one can make apparent one?s universal understanding and keen judgement, and to rightly claim membership in a nobility, no longer defined solely by lineage, but also by learning