Output details

Hoogstraten's Visible World

Medium: Samuel van Hoogstratens' Visible World, of 1678 is a website devoted to a new translation into English plus scholarly edition of the Grondt&Inleyding. Ford has translated Hoogstraten’s original text and created an interactive website that includes Prefaces, an Introduction, Method, Biography, and new translations of two of the books (called after the Muses). The ‘Biography’ section includes a new translation of an early ‘Life’ written by a former student of Hoogstraten’s. The website includes both Ford’s original translation of the books and extensive discursive and editorial content, also written by him.

Research imperatives and process: Hoogstraten published his Inleyding in 1678 as both an instruction manual for the young painter, and an encyclopaedic account of visual art directed at the connoisseur or patron; it is c. 125,000 in length. Ford has produced the first translation of this important manuscript into English and has adopted a distinctive method to the translation and its framing. The text is deliberately held at a place somewhere between the familiar and the strange in accordance with a didactic purpose as determined as the original author's, forcing the reader to 'translate' for themselves ideas and propositions that cannot quite be assimilated by our contemporary manners of expression. In part this is achieved through the process and strategy of translation: Ford presents the text in 'modern English', while retaining the punctuation and syntax of the original Dutch. These structural, strategic and methodological aspects of the website project are part of, as well as the product of, Ford’s research activity. Two of the nine books are currently on-line; the remaining books will be added as the research project continues. A scholarly version of the translation is available, complete with footnotes and apparatus, as a downloadable pdf.