Hessel Miedema
Hessel Miedema was a leading Dutch art historian and the world authority on Karel van Mander.
Biography
He was born in Sneek, but grew up in Amsterdam, where he studied art history at the University of Amsterdam. After his studies in 1957 he became curator of the Princessehof Ceramics Museum in Leeuwarden. In 1963 he returned to Amsterdam to write his dissertation on Karel van Mander. Though best known for his work on Van Mander, he is also an artist and linguistics expert who has written poems and stories in his native Frisian. He wrote the poem De greate wrakseling with illustrations by his own hand in West Frisian in 1964 about a sculptor who fights for innovation against the strict structures of musea. The sculptor realizes at a certain point that he has forgotten to knock his art to pieces.Select bibliography
- The lives of the illustrious Netherlandish and German painters, from the first edition of the Schilder-boeck, preceded by the lineage, circumstances and place of birth, life and..., from the second edition of the Schilder-boeck , 1994-1997
- Karel van Manders leven der moderne, oft dees-tijtsche doorluchtighe Italiaensche schilders en hun bron : een vergelijking tussen van Mander en Vasari, 1984
- Kunst, kunstenaar en kunstwerk bij Karel Van Mander : een analyse van zijn levensbeschrijvingen, 1981
- De Archiefbescheiden van het St. Lukasgilde te Haarlem 1497-1798, 1980, Denkbeeldig schoon: Lambert ten Kate, opvattingen over beeldende kunst, 2007 Op 'e literaire toer, 1973, Bolswert Koperative Utjowerij