Contents -- Preface -- Part I: Visible becomes Invisible Gender Construction in Rembrandt's Works -- 1 On Female Representation or On the disappearance of male protagonists from the field of representation -- An alternative to traditional patterns of femininity? - Bathsheba -- Reversals - Woman in Bed -- Discourses on femininity -- Dangerous gazes - Susanna -- Fatal looks and a laughing nymph - Diana and her Nymphs Bathing, with Actaeon and Callisto -- Where have all the men gone? -- On the discourse of rape - Lucretia -- Sources and their re-interpretations -- Lucretia fever -- Social practice -- Rembrandt - An entirely different Lucretia? -- Radical positions -- Querelle des Femmes -- 2 On Male Representation or On the disappearance of female protagonists from the field of representation -- Differences -- The impossible reversal I - women as 'rapists' or Potiphar's Wife -- The impossible reversal II - erotic images of men for a female gaze? -- Self-Images - Self-Portraits -- De Staalmeesters or Public representation is male -- Historical summary -- The group portrait -- De Staalmeesters -- 3 Asymmetry. Gender Relations in the Field of Sexuality -- Danaë or How the male sex partner was made invisible -- Pornography? -- One objection and three possible answers - Rembrandt's erotic graphic works -- 4 Summary -- Part I: Plates 1 - 8 -- Part II: Invisible becomes Visible Painting, not Mimesis -- 1 Mirror, Mirror on the Wall … Woman before the Mirror by Frans van Mieris -- 2 The Picture within the Picture or Conveying the world through media Woman Holding a Balance by Vermeer -- The Final Judgment as the norm? -- The balance -- A Catholic work of art? -- Aesthetic staging -- New views on Vermeer -- Contemporary discourses - Spinoza -- The Final Judgment as an outdated image.

3 Farewell to Lessing's Laocoon: Leaving behind a Methodological Dispute Gabriel Metsu's A Woman Reading a Letter -- (Love)Letters -- Metsu's A Woman Reading a Letter -- Language and images - a methodological dispute among art historians -- The dichotomy of language and image -- Farewell, Laocoon … -- 4 The Gender of Letters -- 5 Affect / Emotion / Imagination -- Affects: Dirck Hals -- Emotion: Rembrandt -- Affect awareness (Affekt-Wissen) -- Interiorization: Vermeer -- Imagination: Hoogstraten -- Coda -- Part II: Plates 9 -14 -- Literature -- Illustrations -- Image credits -- Publisher's note.