Tuesday, April 18, 2017

17th-century European Portraits

Annibale Carracci
Head of a man in profile
ca. 1588-95
oil on canvas
Royal Collection, Windsor

Annibale Carracci
Portrait of bearded man
before 1605
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

"Every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably."

Ciro Ferri
Portrait of unknown man
before 1689
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous miniature painter
Henry Duke of Gloucester, 4th son of Charles I
ca. 1650
watercolor on vellum
Royal Collection, Windsor

Giambologna
Self-portrait
ca. 1600
painted plaster
Rijksmuseum,  Amsterdam

"Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate.  According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession.  They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with curious detachment.  For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror.  They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries.  There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism."

Ottavio Leoni
Portrait of Giovanni Baglione
1620s
engraving
British Museum

Bernardino Poccetti
Portrait of Gengio Ferravecchio
ca. 1563-1612
drawing
British Museum

Rembrandt
Portrait of Cornelis Claesz. Anslo, clergyman
1641
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Rembrandt
Portrait of Haesje van Cleyburg
1634
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

"To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it "the way it really was" (Ranke).  It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.  Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history in a moment of danger.  The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers.  The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes.  In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it."   

 quoted passages are by Walter Benjamin, from Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940) translated by Harry Zohn and published in English in Illuminations (1968) edited by Hannah Arendt

David Teniers
Portrait of Bishop Antonius Triest
and his brother Eugene, a Capuchin

1652
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Samuel van Hoogstraten
Portrait of Mattheus van den Broucke
ca. 1670-78
canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Francisco de Zurbarán
Portrait of a  Military Commander
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

François Dieussart
Portrait of Pieter Spiering
ca. 1645-50
marble
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

François Dieussart
Portrait of Johanna Doré
ca. 1645-50
marble
Rijksmusesum, Amsterdam