Abstract

This paper explores and highlights the value given to craftsmanship or technê in the community of liefhebbers and artists associated with the pictures of collections genre. Taking as its case study a group of gallery interiors by the probable inventor and leading light of the genre, Frans II Francken, it places pictures of collections within the reform of attitudes towards manual dexterity and the mechanical arts that took place in the Early Modern period. Antwerp gallery interiors exemplify the intellectual metamorphosis of the hand, urging us to see in them an appeal both to the senses and to the intellect, which are fused together by the skilled artist?s technical facility