Thursday, March 16, 2017

Portrait Drawings and Prints, 17th century

Jascob Jordaens
Head of a man
before 1678
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

"In a discussion of how human beings come to take pleasure in the wrong things, Julius Caesar Scaliger (1576) points out that the intelligent man will take pleasure in a perfect painting even though he knows that it is a work of fiction. He will prefer a beautiful image to a precise likeness of nature. Art in this does better than nature: the symmetria (due proportion, harmonious form) with which men were originally endowed has been corrupted by many events in their history. But nothing prevents the sculptor from rendering features prominent or the reverse, from adding, removing, turning (or bending), rearranging. For my part, says Scaliger, I think this: 'not a single body – except for the first man and that other who is the true God – was ever made so ingeniously by nature as he can today be created by the well-taught hands of an artist.'"

editor's note to Book One (chapter one) of The Painting of the Ancients by Franciscus Junius, first published in English in 1638  edited by Keith Aldrich, Philipp Fehl and Raina Fel for University of California Press, 1991

Moses ter Borch after Rembrandt
Woman reading
ca. 1660-61
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jan Lievens
Young woman reading
mid-17th century
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Willem Basse
Woman reading
ca. 1633-72
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Willem Drost
Woman reading
ca. 1650-55
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Frederick Bloemaert after Abraham Bloemaert
Woman reading
ca. 1670-1706
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Mozes van Wtenbrouck
Self-portrait
before 1646
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Rembrandt
Portrait of Johannes Wtenbogaert
1635
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Rembrandt
Portrait of Jan Cornelis Sylvius
1633
etching
Rijkmuseum, Amstserdam

Rembrandt
Self-portrait with hat
1631
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Hendrik Goltzius
Courtesan
1606
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Hendrik Goltzius
Bust of an angel
1609
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Peter Lely
Order of the Garter portrait study
ca. 1663-71
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Peter Lely
Order of the Garter portrait study
1663-71
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg