“We Take Care of Our Own”: Talking about ‘Disability’ in Early Modern Netherlandish Households

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter investigates how people in the Netherlands talked about disability, poverty, and charity in the privacy of their homes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Around the middle of the sixteenth century, we observe a growth in the ownership of works of art depicting disability that were displayed in dining and reception rooms meant to stimulate conversations among family members and guests. The chapter argues that the more positive iconography of disability that we begin to see at the time was influenced by a direct, lived experience of disability. Kaminska’s contribution offers new insight into how art was able to bring the disability witnessed in the streets into one’s home, sparking private conversations about disabled people, bodies, accessibility, and responsibility within the confines of the domestic realm.