Eduard Siegfried "Eddy" de Jongh (Amsterdam, 7 June 1931) is a Dutch art historian specialized in iconography. He was professor of art history with a teaching assignment in iconography at Utrecht University between 1976 and 1989.[1]
De Jongh (1931) studied art history in Utrecht with Jan G. van Gelder and William S. Heckscher. Between 1963 and 1966 he was librarian of the Utrecht Art History Institute, later working there as a teacher and research assistant. From 1966 to 1973 he was part of the Center for Advanced Study in Art History. In 1976 he was appointed professor of iconology and art theory at Utrecht University, a position he held until 1990. In 1976 he was guest curator of the exhibition Tot lering en vermaak[2] ('To instruct and entertain') at the Rijksmuseum. Central to this exhibition was the idea that signs in paintings provide explanations for the (moral) meaning of the art. This iconological method introduced by De Jongh proved influential and would be used for decades at the Rijksmuseum and elsewhere.[3]
De Jongh was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 1987.[4] He is a foreign member of The Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB), honorary member of the Historians of Netherlandish Art and doctor honoris causa of the University of Amsterdam (2002). In 2011 he received the Gijselaar-Hintzenfonds Prijs, intended for art historians who manage to reach a broad audience.[5] In 2019 he was awarded honorary membership of the Dutch Association of Art Historians (Vereniging van Nederlandse Kunsthistorici), which called him the "founding father of iconography in the Netherlands".[6]
In 1966 he was a co-founder of Simiolus. Netherlands quarterly for the history of art, and remained one of the editors of this magazine until 1976. From 1990 till 2016 he was one of the editors of Kunstschrift. His publications are mainly in the field of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Dutch art and art historiography.
| International |
|
|---|---|
| National |
|
| Academics |
|
| Artists |
|
| Other |
|
