Disputatio and Dedication. Seventeenth-century thesis prints in the southern Low Countries

This article analyzes the tradition of thesis prints in universities and Jesuit colleges of the Spanish Low Countries. It focuses on the origins and the iconography of these engraved broadsides in order to highlight their intellectual, artistic and socio-political dimensions. Being a direct source about teaching in Louvain and Douai, this visual material can provide insight into the learning practices in the Southern Netherlands, in particular the tradition of public defences and the significance of courtly patronage and dedications in an academic environment. The investigated examples are part of the aesthetics developed in Antwerp in the first half of the seventeenth century