Monday, August 16, 2021

Bartholomeus van der Helst (Portraits and Pastorals)

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Self Portrait
1655
oil on canvas
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

Bartholomeus van der Helst and Jan Baptist Weenix
Shepherd Boy with Sheep and Goats
ca. 1647
oil on canvas
private collection

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Diana the Huntress
ca. 1640-50
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Portrait of a Young Man
1662
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Portrait of a Woman with a Book
before 1670
oil on canvas
Musée Magnin, Dijon

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Portrait of a Young Man
1654
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Venus chastising Cupid
before 1670
oil on canvas
private collection

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Venus with the Golden Apple
1664
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Young Woman with Drapery
1658
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Young Woman with a Sunflower
1670
oil on canvas
private collection


Bartholomeus van der Helst
Portrait of a Burgomaster
ca. 1665-70
oil on canvas
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Portrait of Louis De Geer
1656
oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Portrait of a Woman
1644
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Portrait of Anna du Pire as Granida
(pastoral play Granida by Pieter Hooft)
1660
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Prague

Bartholomeus van der Helst
Self Portrait as Daifilo
(pastoral play Granida by Pieter Hooft)
1660
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Prague

"[Pieter Hooft's Granida], written about 1605, was the first pastoral play in the Dutch language.  Arcadian poetry, which had long been cultivated in Italy, France and England, thus became the fashion in Holland too.  Hooft's Granida remained very popular for a long time; this is born out by the numerous editions of the play in the course of the seventeenth century.  By the year 1679 these numbered no less than eight.  It is therefore not surprising that literary circles in Holland appreciated pictorial representations of this work just as much as those of Ariosto's Orlando, Tasso's Aminta, and Guarini's Pastor Fido."

"Granida, daughter of the King of Persia, has lost her way whilst out hunting.  She meets the shepherd Daifilo and the shepherdess Dorilea, from whom she asks the way, and the whereabouts of her attendants.  She reveals her identity to the shepherd who offers her a drink of water.  Daifilo, who has fallen in love with Granida at first sight, follows her to the royal court.  There he becomes a page to Tisiphernes, a prince who asks Granida's hand in marriage.  She has several suitors and it is decided that the one who defeats his rivals in a duel is to be rewarded by her hand.  Tisiphernes orders Daifilo to fight in his place.  The shepherd, having defeated the last of his adversaries, is sent to bring this message to the princess.  On this occasion Granida and Daifilo decide to flee together, with the intention of living in the woods as shepherd and shepherdess.  Immediately after their flight, however, they are discovered by the attendant of one of the defeated princes.  Daifilo is taken prisoner and is to be killed.  Fortunately Tisiphernes appears at the right moment, and moved by the love of the shepherd and the princess he intervenes in their favour.  Daifilo is made a prince and marries Granida."

– S.J. Gudlaugsson, excerpted from Representation of Granida in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Painting, published in the Burlington Magazine (August, 1948)