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Amber Peut MA

PhD candidate

E-mail: [email protected]

University Profile URL: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/amber-peut#tab-1

Cohort/Start PhD: 2025-2026

Part of the project: Images on the Move. Friendship Albums as Pictorial Networks in Early Modern Europe (1550-1700)

Promotores: Prof. Stijn Bussels and Dr. Marika Keblusek

Leiden University

Duration of the appointment: 01-06-25 to 01-06-29

 

Kids these days Images embodying love and lust within the genre of the album amicorum

The use of images within the genre of the album amicorum is hardly discussed in current scholarship concerning friendship albums in the early modern period. When it is discussed, it is mostly in passing. These images however hold a wealth of information when it comes to image production in the early modern period. An international visual language can be revealed by studying these images in detail. Especially the ways in which images from different genres and visual mediums were reused and/or adapted within this genre.

One specific category within this visual language were images depicting love and lust. From emblems warning young students against the dangers of abandoning their studies in favor of lovers to hand drawn images depicting the pitfalls of marriage, love and lust were central recurring themes within the genre of the album amicorum. Album owners and inscribers took images from a wide array of sources to craft their takes on these specific emotions.

To modern eyes images of women fishing for male gentitalia, spinning while sitting on their older husbands backs, being plucked like flowers from pots and being given foxes and birds by hunters may seem purely comedic in nature. However they give scholars a wealth of information when it comes to the early modern visual language of love and lust. Especially in relation to early modern youth culture. A large portion of alba amicorum surviving today belonged to young male students and young noble women. Yet few scholars have actually studied the age demographic of the album owners in relation to the visual imagery they collected in their albums.

In recent works such as Benjamin Roberts’ Sex and drugs before rock ‘n’ roll: youth culture and masculinity during Holland’s golden age scholars have started to highlight the importance of emblems, songs and poems for Dutch young adults growing up in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. However this research is mostly concerned with printed materials such as the pedagogical (and visual) works of Zacharias Heyns (ca. 1566 – ca. 1638) and Jacob Cats (1577 – 1660). These works were meant to instruct the young adolescent readers on various topics including courting practices. Emotional control was an essential part of this culture. Singing and dining together was a valid way of getting to know each other, but more physical intimacy was highly discouraged. Especially for women.

Material like songs, poems and emblems from these pedagogical works also made their way into alba amicorum. However, this exchange also went the other way. Hubert Meeus argues in his article that the work of Heyns was directly inspired by the genre of the album amicorum and as such had a manuscript origin. The images which were first used in an erotic context in friendship albums were turned into moralising emblems to teach the ‘dumb youth’ who were too preoccupied with lust. By focusing solely on printed pedagogical materials scholars miss the unique reflections on love and lust offered by young people themselves in alba amicorum. Did these young people take the advice of these learned men to heart? Or did they develop a separate but reflective visual language for these materials?

This begs the question, how are the concepts of love and lust represented in images within the genre of the album amicorum and what does this say about the reuse and adaptation of images within this genre in general?

A few key points need to be discussed to answer this question. This will be done with the following chapters:

  • Originality, stereotyping and adapting. The methodology of artists and artisans in alba amicorum;
  • Albums, owners and inscribers. Visual representations of love and lust in the early modern period;
  • Between dominance and submissiveness. Visual representations of gender roles in the early modern period;
  • Young maidens and old crones. Motifs of love and lust in alba amicorum;
  • Laughing with joy or gasping in horror. The purpose of love and lust images in alba amicorum.

Not only will this research contribute to a better understanding of the use of images within the genre of the album amicorum, it also allows for an intimate glimpse at the ways in which love and lust were visually represented in early modern Europe. During a time in which talks about intimacy and sex were usually conducted away from paper and thus away from the eyes of scholars, these images form an invaluable and untapped source on early modern (juvenile) views on love and lust.