The restrained child:Imaging the regulation of children's behaviour and emotions in Early Modern Europe, The Dutch Golden age

For the study of the restraining of children's behaviour and emotions in Early Modern Europe, genre paintings, drawings, and emblems, thus images, were used as sources. They seem to be manifestations of an educational discourse of Early Modern Europe that was deeply influenced by Humanism, Renaissance, and the Reformation. This discourse emphasizes that children should be educated into emotionally balanced adults so that they could behave according to the virtues. Apart from analysing the selected images, the article addresses the methodological issue of the interpretation of images and the epistemological question of how the concept of representation could clarify the relationship between sources and reality. The analysis of the images, including a drawing by Rembrandt and a painting by Jan Steen, confirms that notwithstanding fundamental religious differences there was almost unanimity of stimulating the Renaissance ideal of adults with a balanced personality by teaching parents to regulate children's behaviour and emotions. Genre paintings, drawings and emblems could gave insight in this missionary educational movement, this notwithstanding the main differences - in style and in public - between the sources used. Although the case of the Dutch Republic in the Golden Age was specific in many ways, it also seems to be a manifestation of a transnational European phenomenon. The emblem book Mirror, produced for a Dutch readership, has an international scope by using proverbs from and in many languages and cultures, and by extensively referring to texts from the Bible and from Ancient Greece and Rome, so providing its Dutch readership with a European moral and educational discourse. The European dimension was also caused by the great transnational influence of Renaissance, Humanism and Reformation on the educational discourse, with Erasmus of Rotterdam as one of the most important contributors.