Wednesday, March 16, 2016

European portraits, 1660-1670

Anonymous painter
Portrait of a man reading
ca. 1660
Rijksmuseum

John Michael Wright
Portrait of John Dryden
1668
National Portrait Gallery, London

Samuel Cooper
Miniature portrait of Frances Talbot
ca. 1665
National Portrait Gallery, London

Peter Lely
Double portrait of Anne Hyde, Duchess of York & James, Duke of York
1660s
National Portrait Gallery, London

Herman Verelst
Portrait of a woman
1667
Rijksmuseum

Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo
Portrait of the Infanta Margarita Teresa
1665-66
Prado

The Infanta Margarita (above) had posed at age five as the central figure in what would eventually become one of Europe's most famous works of art, Las Meninas by the favorite painter at her father's court, Diego Velázquez. Both artist and king were recently dead when Margarita posed at fifteen, shortly before embarking for Austria to marry her uncle, the Holy Roman Emperor. The tiny figure in the deep background with escorts is possibly her three-year-old brother, the new King of Spain.

Charles & Henri Beaubrun
Portrait of Queen Maria Teresa of France with the Dauphin
ca. 1664
Prado

Jan de Bray
Portrait of the printer Abraham Casteleyn and his wife Margarieta van Bancken
1663
Rijksmuseum

Jan Mytens
Portrait of a woman
1660s
Getty

Gerard and Gesina ter Borch
Memorial portrait of Moses ter Borch
1667-69
Rijksmuseum

Ferdinand Bol
Self-portrait
1669
Rijskmuseum

Karel Dujardin
Self-portrait
1662
Rijksmuseum

Gerard ter Borch
Portrait of Margaretha van Haexbergen
ca. 1666-67
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Peter Lely
Portrait of Barbara Villiers as the Madonna with her son, Charles Fitzroy
ca. 1665
National Portrait Gallery, London

Sir Peter Lely caused a predictable scandal in non-courtly circles when he painted Barbara Villiers as the Madonna embracing her illegitimate son, fathered by Charles II. This painting was inevitably interpreted as a gesture of libertine defiance emanating from the king himself.