Friday, November 12, 2021

Seventeenth-Century Portraits by Dutch Painters

Cornelis de Man and Jacob van Spreeuwen
Portrait of an Artist framed by Putti
1642
oil on panel
Dorset County Museum

Cornelis de Man
Group Portrait in a Chemist's House
ca. 1670-80
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Leendert van der Cooghen
Portrait of Berber Ruertsdr van Juckema
1660
oil on canvas
Museum Catharijnconvent, Utrecht

Lodewijk van der Helst
Self Portrait
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Jacob Fransz van der Merck
Regents of the Loridanshofes in Leiden
1658
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Jan Mytens
Portrait of a Gentleman
ca. 1660-65
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Gerrit van Honthorst
Portrait of Elizabeth, Princess Palatine
1650
oil on panel
National Trust, Ashdown House, Oxfordshire

Gerrit van Honthorst
Portrait of Princess Henrietta Maria of the Palatine
1650
oil on panel
National Trust, Ashdown House, Oxfordshire

Gerrit van Honthorst
Portrait of Princess Sophia of the Palatine,
later Electress of Hanover

1641
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Princess Sophia was the twelfth child of Elizabeth Stuart, known as the Winter Queen, sister of King Charles I of England.  As the niece of Charles I, and first cousin to Charles II and James II, Princess Sophia (along with her many brothers and sisters) represented a northern European outpost of the British Royal Family in the later seventeenth century.  After the two daughters of James II had both ruled (as Queen Mary and Queen Anne) and had both died with no surviving heirs, the British government determined that their nearest living Protestant relative was the son of Princess Sophia and her husband, the Elector of Hanover.  That son (who spoke only German) became King George I of Great Britain in 1714.  The present Royal Family descends directly from him, and thus from Princess Sophia of the Palatine.    

Werner van den Valckert
Portrait of a Gentleman
1616
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Werner van den Valckert
Portrait of a Goldsmith
1617
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck
Regentesses of the St Elisabeth's Gasthuis, Haarlem
1641
oil on canvas
Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck
Portrait of a Gentleman
1641
oil on canvas
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck
Portrait of a Gentleman
1641
oil on canvas
Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

Marcellus Laroon the Elder
Portrait of William Savery of Slade
1690
oil on canvas
The Box, Plymouth, Devon

The Gaze

The Everywhere's keen glance of innocence, 
Pretending history has never been,
With alps and orchards glittering through events,
Takes charge of the results that drape the bone:
And dawn, a fire that burnt the past, now comes
With the vast brow, with large clean hands of winds,
And turns upon our rumors and our drums
The look that cauterizes all the wounds.

And while the soldiery of ignorance
Drag smoking gunwheels up a sloped surmise,
And death from thickets of the present tense
Aims airplanes at the grandeur in those eyes,
We feel it on us, though our days are halved,
That cloudless gaze in which we are resolved.

– Oscar Williams (1940)