(p.694) Among the chief delights of leisure is getting away from toil. This is not new. Why would a person at leisure want to look at a person who is working? More particularly, why would a well-to-do and well-educated viewer hang a painting of manual labor on his wall? Why would an artist paint such an image? In early modern Europe, these questions were easily answered: viewers did not seek such images and artists did not paint them. Like most generalizations, however, this one had its exceptions. In the early modern period, one European society produced more images of labor than...

(p.696) For some today, nineteenth-century images of labor are better known than their seventeenth-century predecessors. Ford Madox Brown’s mural-sized Work of 1852-65 (Fig. 4) comes immediately to mind. This and related paintings have recently occasioned a good deal of discussion about art that pictures labor in nineteenth-century Europe.” A plethora of texts, among them narratives by the artists, including Madox Brown himself and later Vincent van Gogh, and writings by such social critics as Thomas Carlyle, the foremost articulator of the Victorian “Gospel of Work,” allow historians to reconstruct the interpretative field for this kind of art with some confidence. Although...

(p.227) Moral views are bound up with particular periods of time and geographical areas, and are also subject to change. The desire to work, diligence and thrift are fairly late arrivals in the ethical system, and are seen by most historians as typically middle-class virtues, which did not achieve their ultimate place in the value system until the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.

(p.228) Weber's hypothesis has been immensely influential to this day, sometimes being quoted approvingly and so- metimes attracting criticism ranging from thoughtful analysis to vehement denunciation It has been pointed out, for instance, that "capitalist tendencies" can be found before the Reformation, and that to hold work in high regard is characteristic of Christianity in general. Thomas Aquinas saw work not only as a means of pro- viding the essentials of life, but also as a fulfilment of the commandment to practice Christian charity, a duty to the community (officium) imposed by God. The maxim ora et labora of monastic orders...

(p.239) In the sixteenth century, the concept of acedia was replaced by the term desidia, which was taken to mean idleness in both the biblical and modern senses of "not working" and the neglect of one's everyday respon- sibilities (see Ecclesiasticus 33:27: "Send him to labour, that he be not idle, for idleness teacheth much evil")

(p.242) Another of Junius's verses, "In tabellam de otiosis" (On a picture of idlers), describing an unknown print or painting, conveys an equally clear message: "He who squanders his time in vulgar idling, and wilfully puts too much trust in chance, strikes a blow at the source of bounty, and he who has once given generously becomes a beggar. Wealth often grows for one who, though afflic- ted by want, lives frugally by toiling diligently in a seem- ly manner."68 So beggars have only themselves to blame. This point is also made in Den rechten weg nae 't gasthuys (The best...

(p.16) In his portrayal of labour, Ryckaert applied a formula derived from his paintings of drinking, smoking, courting and gambling peasants. However, like the works of his colleagues in the Northern Netherlands,37 his paintings of artisans’ workshop interiors must be interpreted as expressions of the early modern civic virtue of industry and diligence (De Vries 2003:135). In the earlier representations which are still rooted in traditional iconography related to the peasantry, the milieu of the craftsman is openly subjected to criticism. The artisan himself, on the other hand, is always seen at work, the focus being on the process of labour,...