Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Preserved Faces II

John Hoskins (England)
Miniature portrait
James Stuart, Duke of Richmond and Lennox

ca. 1635
watercolor on vellum
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Della Robbia Workshop (Florence)
Relief portrait of Julius Caesar
ca. 1450-1500
enameled terracotta
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"The vulgar are commonly ill-natured and always grudging against their governors," Ben Jonson wrote, "which makes that a Prince hath more business with them than ever Hercules had with the Bull . . . there was not that variety of Beasts in the Ark as there is of beastly natures in the multitude." 

– quoted in Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England by R. Malcolm Smuts (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987)

Sofonisba Anguissola (Italy)
Portrait of a young woman
ca. 1585
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Pierre Mignard (France)
Portrait of Édouard Colbert, Marquis de Villacerf
1690s
oil on canvas
private collection

Roman Empire
Relief-portrait of Augustus
known as The Blacas Cameo
AD 14-20
sardonyx
British Museum

Claude Mellan (France)
Portrait of a young woman
early 1640s
pastel
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Peter Lely (Netherlands/England)
Portrait of Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth
ca. 1671-74
oil on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Godfrey Kneller (Germany/England)
Portrait of sculptor Grinling Gibbons
before 1690
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Isaac Oliver (France/England)
Miniature portrait
Anne of Denmark, Queen of England
ca. 1611-12
watercolor on vellum
Royal Collection, Great Britain 
darkened patches represent jewels
in metallic paint that has degraded

Antoine-Jean Gros (France)
Napoleon on the bridge at Arcole
1796-97
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Giambattista Moroni (Venice)
Portrait of a man
ca. 1565
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Adriaen Thomasz Key (Flanders)
Portrait of William I, Prince of Orange
ca. 1579
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Frans II Pourbus (Flanders)
Portrait of Infanta and Regent, Isabella Clara Eugenia
ca. 1600
oil on copper
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Frans II Pourbus (Flanders)
Portrait of Marie de Medici, Queen of France
ca. 1610-20
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

"What preserves you kings more than ceremony," the Earl of Newcastle wrote in the late 1630s to his royal ward, the Prince of Wales, "the cloth of estates, the distance people are with you, great officers, heralds, trumpets, martials men making room, disorders to be labored by their staff of office . . . I know these master the people sufficiently, aye even the wisest, though he know it and be not accustomed to it, shall shake off his wisdom and shake for fear of it, for this is the mist that is cast before us and masters the Commonwealth."