Monday, July 10, 2017

Fashionable Black Clothing in 17th-century Portraits

Joachim Wtewael
Portrait of Christina Wtewael van Halen
1601
oil on canvas
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

Hendrik Goltzius
Portrait of Jan Govertsen van der Aer, shell collector of Haarlem 
1603
oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam

"Now for these wals of flesh, wherein the soule doth seeme to be immured before the Resurrection, it is nothing but an elementall composition, and a fabricke that must fall to ashes; All flesh is grasse, is not onely metaphorically, but literally true, for all those creatures we behold, are but the hearbs of the field, digested into flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in our selves.  Nay further, we are what we all abhorre, Anthropophagi and Cannibals, devourers not onely of men, but of our selves; and that not in an allegory, but a positive truth; for all this masse of flesh which wee behold, came in at our mouths: this frame wee looke upon, hath beene upon our trenchers; In briefe, we have devoured our selves.  I cannot beleeve the wisedome of Pythagoras did ever positively, and in a literall sense, affirme his Metempsychosis, or impossible transmigration of the soules of men into beasts: of all Metamorphoses or transmigrations, I beleeve onely one, that is of Lots wife, for that of Nabuchodonosor proceeded not so farre; In all others I conceive no further verity then is contained in their implicite sense and morality: I beleeve that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and is left in the same estate after death as before it was materialled into life; that the soules of men know neither contrary nor corruption; that they subsist beyond the body, and outlive death by the priviledge of their proper natures, and without a miracle; that the soules of the faithfull, as they leave earth, take possession of Heaven: that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandring soules of men, but the unquiet walkes of Devils, prompting and suggesting us into mischiefe, bloud and villany, instilling, and stealing into our hearts that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of the affaires of the world.  That those phantasmes appeare often, and doe frequent Cemiteries, charnall houses, and Churches, it is because those are the dormitories of the dead, where the Devill like an insolent Champion beholds with pride the spoyles and Trophies of his victory in Adam."

 from Religio Medici (1635) by Sir Thomas Browne

Paulus Moreelse
Portrait of the artist Abraham Bloemaert
1609
oil on panel
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

Peter Paul Rubens
Portrait of Lady Aletheia Talbot, Countess of Arundel
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Marchesa Balbi of Genoa
ca. 1623
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Frans Hals
Portrait of a man
1630
oil on canvas
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Thomas De Keyser
Portrait of Frederick van Velthuysen
 and his wife Josina
1632
oil on panel
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Rembrandt
Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III
oil on panel
1632
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Isaac Fuller
Portrait of a man
ca. 1645-50
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Adriaen Hanneman
Portrait of a man
1655
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Isaac Luttichuys
Portrait of Martijn Gaertz
1656
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

John Michael Wright
Portrait of Sir Robert Rookwood
1660
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Claude Lefèbvre
Portrait of a man
1670s
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

John Riley
Portrait of William Chiffinch
ca. 1680
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London