A Digital Spatial Approach to Decoding Domestic Art Display across Early Modern Antwerp Society

The SPADArt project addresses a significant gap in our understanding of early modern European art by reconstructing the private domestic settings in which artworks were originally displayed and enjoyed.

Despite the prominence of these artworks in museums today, little is known about their original spatial and material contexts such as the interiors and objects that surrounded them.

This gap in our knowledge makes it impossible to fully understand the cultural and social implications of art display in historical daily lives and it hinders effective communication of these insights to the public in museums.To bridge this gap, SPADArt develops a holistic spatial methodology that adds a critical spatial dimension to study artworks within their original contexts at home.

Focusing on early modern Antwerp, the project leverages underexplored sources from the host institute, including extensive databases of probate inventories and digital historical maps, in combination with the researcher’s expertise in art history and digital methods.

Drawing on these areas of expertise, SPADArt will mine large inventory databases and collect architectural evidence to develop typologies of premodern Antwerp houses in schematic 3D models and identify object ensembles around artworks and their spatial positions in houses across social strata.

These outcomes will be integrated into a novel spatial methodology, which will be applied across case studies analyzing class-based and gender-specific art display as well as the role of art in religious practices at home.SPADArt will add the critical yet missing expertise in material culture to the researcher’s skillset, providing a crucial foundation for future research and an independent research career.

SPADArt's spatial methodology will offer new perspectives for historical research in social history, gender and religious studies while assisting museums worldwide in better contextualizing their collections, thereby enhancing public engagement.