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The Illusion of Flesh in Dutch Seventeenth-‐Century Portraiture

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The Illusion of Flesh in Dutch Seventeenth-‐Century Portraiture 1 The Illusion of Flesh in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Portraiture: Gender, Materiality and Immateriality in the age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals. It is the skill of an accomplished artist who can create the illusion of human flesh and breathe life into representations of the human figure. Art critics and art viewers alike have long scrutinized the illusion of flesh as a means of testifying to the illusion of the artwork as a whole. Not only does a competent (realistic) portrayal of flesh imbue a material representation of the human body with an immaterial essence, life, but also the act of creating skin in such a manner attests to a high level of skill. The artistic representation of skin is very complex and thus presents us with a rich topic for research. As in the words of Art Historian Anne-Sophie Lehmann, the study of flesh brings together three central elements of painting: ‘the painter’s materials, the craft of painting, and the lifelike depiction of the body’1. All these aspects take even more resonance when we consider that the Seventeenth Century was allowing for more experiments than ever with the oil medium, especially in the Netherlands. It was after all, as Dutch-American artist Willem de Kooning put it, ‘oil painting’, that was ‘invented to paint flesh’2. In my research, I will attempt to investigate the material processes that Dutch Seventeenth-Century artists employed to create the illusion of flesh and in doing so will draw connections between practical art history (the tools and materials) and representation. I also intend to explore the differences in the handling of flesh tones between men and women, looking at both the how and, eventually, why. 1 Anne-Sophie Lehmann is an Art Historian who specialises in artistic materials, tools and practices, developing a process-based approach to material culture. Ann-Sophie Lehmann, ‘Fleshing out the body, The ‘colours of the naked’ in workshop practice and art theory, 1400 – 1600’, Body and Embodiment in Netherlandish Art, Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 58, ed. By A. Lehmann & H. Roodenburg, (Zwolle: Waanders 2008) p103. 2 Anne-Sophie Lehman, Marjolijn Bol, ‘Painting Skin and Water: Toward a Material Iconography of Translucent Motifs in Early Netherlandish Painting’, Rogier van der Weyden in Context, (Leuven 2009) p216. 2 I will do this by, where possible, studying pendant pairs of portraits in which the illusion of flesh across the male and female was conceived by the artist at the same time. Pendant portraits are imagined by the artist as a pair and thus, although different grounds can be used and manipulated, the style and light that the figures are rendered in is often comparably similar. The comparable man and woman, or husband and wife, must be of a similar age to make sure their flesh is in more or less the same state. This allows for a fair comparison of the methods and tools used by the artist. I have also looked at a double portrait to compare the illusion of flesh across the sexes, although here, there are different considerations as the couple have been rendered on the same ground. The material processes employed by the artist to create the illusion have been examined with the naked eye, which where possible, has been supported with technical reports. This limits the examples possible for this research to portraits that are available to view in Dutch Collections. The comparable portraits, or pendant, must be in roughly the same condition and state of conservation. The portraits that will be examined have been picked to illustrate different examples that span the two of the most popular cities for portraiture production, Amsterdam and Haarlem; my sections have been organised thus. Within one city, the materials and craft of two artists, working at a contemporary time to each other have been examined. In my discussion of Amsterdam Portraitists I have chosen to look at Rembrandt (1606 – 1669) and Abraham van den Tempel (c. 1622 – 1672), looking at examples from both the early and late oeuvre of Rembrandt. From Haarlem, I will investigate the technical processes employed by Frans Hals (c. 1583 – 1666) and Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck (c. 1601/03 – 62). I will start my looking at some of the contemporary literature and recipe books that gave practical instruction as to how to transform paint into realistic flesh; the invention of oil paint and the affordances it gave to artists being a crucial part of this. 3 The Illusion of flesh: A Historiography. In exploring the illusion of flesh, it is essential to study the materials and artistic practices within their historical context. The precedence that was given to the processes of creating flesh in the contemporary literature illustrates how important the illusion of flesh was to the critics and artists of seventeenth- century Netherlands; it would seem that painting flesh was an integral part to the whole art of painting. One cannot help recall poet Lucas de Heere’s ode to the Ghent altarpiece when thinking about the affect that a convincing portrayal of human flesh had at the time. Although the ode was written in the 16th Century, it was recalled by Karel van Mander (1548 – 1606), a Flemish art historian and theoretician, who was also the student of de Heere, in the Seventeenth Century; it must then have been an example of illustrious artistry to be adhered to. In the ode, de Heere appears to be most struck by the lifelikeness appearance of the figures: ‘How frightened and lifelike Adam stands? Who ever saw more flesh-like body tints?’3. De Heere directly links the representation of the flesh specifically to the overall realistic illusion of the figures and thus demonstrates how it was the capabilities of a skilled artist who could apply flesh color in the right way to bring their figures to life. Lucas de Heere’s ode also brings to light one of the key concerns within the creation of flesh; flesh ‘tints’, or coloring. Karel van Mander certainly saw colouring as an essential part to creating a successful representation of skin and gives specific instructions as to what colours and paints to use. In the twelfth chapter of his instructive poem ‘Den grondt der edel vrij schilder-const’ (1604), van Mander explains the processes that one should take to achieve flesh tints that ‘glow like flesh’, including the instruction that one should use vermillion as opposed to carmine as carmine is too cold in tone4. To create a warm flesh tone, ochre is recommended instead. For Van Mander, a specific flesh colour ‘requires at least as many different hues as a landscape’ ; shadows and heightening was to be varied and subtle within the creation of flesh, avoiding the stark contrasts of 3 As cited by Lehmann in ‘Fleshing out the body’, p93 & p94 4 Karel Van Mander - As cited by Lehmann ‘Fleshing out the body’, p99 4 white and black5. Van Mander goes on to explain how different flesh tints should be mixed depending on the age, gender or profession of the subject; clearly flesh color is tied to the object it denotes. In her carefully researched article ‘Fleshing out the Body. The ‘colours of the naked’ in workshop practice and art theory 1400 – 1600’, Anne-Sophie Lehmann goes on to conclude, by looking at Van Mander’s Schilder-boeck also, that according to Van Mander, the depiction of flesh is so important to the success of a skilled artist that ‘a good colourist is by definition a good flesh painter’6. As Lehmann states, ‘flesh colour’ is the only specific colour that Van Mander uses, elsewhere just using the word ‘colour’ generically. Anne-Sophie Lehmann goes on to trace the first mention of ‘flesh colour’ in Dutch art theory to the writer, Jean Lemaire de Belges (c. 1473 – c. 1525), a Walloon poet and historian. Just as Van Mander gives specific instructions on pigments that should and shouldn’t be used in a realistic depiction of human skin, Lemaire’s attitude to the subject is just as complex. For Lemaire, flesh colour is the only colour that needs to be properly made and requires specific attention from the person who is mixing the pigments; it would seem yet again that a certain degree of innate skill comes into the creation of the illusion of flesh, seemingly above many other objects in a painting, at least in terms of correct colouring7. In fact, in the tenth chapter of his ‘Groot Schilderboek’ (1708), Gerard de Lairesse (1641 – 1711) thinks that the realistic depiction of flesh, or ‘Koleur der Naakten’ is such a complex issue that he says ‘I find there is so much to say about it that it is impossible to fit into one chapter’8. For the Art Theorists of the time, and in the wake of the new developments in oil paint which allowed for such a much more realistic portrayals, the illusion of human flesh was a key discussion, a discussion rooted in technical processes. Like Van Mander, De Lairesse notes that there needs to be a difference in flesh colour between subjects, ie. gender or age and talks specifically about which pigments to use for certain cases. 5 Lehmann ‘Fleshing out the body’, p99. 6 Lehmann ‘Fleshing out the body’, p99 7 As cited by Lehmann in ‘Fleshing out the body’, p93. 8 Lehmann ‘Fleshing out the body’, p87 5 The significance of the colour of flesh is again highlighted by the Dutch Art Historian, Ernst van de Wetering, in his fascinating book Rembrandt: The Painter at work, in which he discusses the artistic processes of Rembrandt as ‘a painter at work’.
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