CHAPTER T W E LV E The Three-Quarter Length Life-Sized Portrait----­ in Seventeenth -Century Holland THE CULT URAL FUNCTIONS OF TRANQUILLITAS* Ann Jensen Adams N seventeenth-centUlY Holland, portraits were resistant to reexamination and has generated two I everywhere, from finely wrought miniatures empiricist approaches to the portrait: one reflec­ enclosed in filigreed lockets and informal sketches tionist, and the other expressionist. These were the in alba amicora to imposing life-sized figures of premises on which Pope-Hennessy based his pio­ political officials dominating town halls and castles neering study of (mostly Italian) Renaissance por­ of the nobility; from the genealogical portrait gal­ traiture published in 1966 whose opening sentence leries lining the halls of Honselaersdijk, a residence reads, "Portrait painting is empirical." A similar of Frederik Henry, Prince of Orange, to the meet­ sentiment underlies Jakob Rosenberg's description, ing rooms of such civic institutions as the Amster­ in his monograph on Rembrandt (initially pub­ dam Kloveniersdoelen displaying Rembrandt van lished in 1948), of the portraits by most Dutch Rijn's Nightwatch; from the family portrait collec­ painters who "satisfied the primary demands of tions of Pieter de la Court or Michael de Ruyter, [Dutch] burghers for a good likeness and realistic through the interiors of the front rooms of brothels rendering of costume."l lined with portraits of the women available to VVhile describing portraiture as transcriptive, clients; to such portrait prints as Rembrandt's etch­ both Pope-Hennessy and Rosenberg attribute to ing of the Reformed preacher Jan Cornelisz. the genre the capacity to reveal the human psyche, Sylvius, all providing to a broad audience images the depths of the human soul. Pope-Hennessy that served as a model of a life well lived for the devotes a chapter to "The Motions of the Mind," viewer to admire and imitate. These images of fam­ while Rosenberg claims for Rembrandt the ability ily members, public leaders, and esteemed historic "to express his [man's] inner life, his spiritual exis­ figures fulfilled a wide range of personal, social, and tence ... [his] portraits strongly reflect Rem­ political functions. brandt's susceptibility to the spiritual side of man Until recently, studies of sixteenth- and seven­ and show both his breadth and profundity in the teenth-century Dutch portraits have been caught in interpretation of human character."2 Both authors the topos of the portrait itself - that of faithfully imply that the artist probes their subject's character recording an individual's physiognomy - which left through a keen attention to empirical detail and these cultural functions unexplored. That Dutch paintings do not merely illustrate the world in • I am grateful to Wayne Franits for his g·enerous comments on which the artist lived and worked is fairly well an earlier draft, and to Abigail Solomon-Godeau for thought­ established for most genres of Netherlandish art. ful conversation about the theoretical armature of this essay and her close reading of the text. Moreover, I would like to Nonetheless, inherited notions of the "realism" of thank Raine)· Mack for his help with the translation of the the genre of portraiture have proved tenaciously Latin titles that appear in the text. Three-Quarter Length Life-Sized Portrait 159 conveys it through an expressive handling of paint The assumption of portraits' transparency to and the effects of light and shadow. their sitters' physiognomies follows seventeenth­ At the same time, both authors acknowledge that century Dutch theorists who describe portraits as in spite of transcribing reality, a portrait may ideal­ transcriptions of an objective reality, as unmediated ize the features of its subject almost beyond belief. visual analogues for actual persons. It lies behind Rosenberg notes that "when Sophie of Hanover met Karel van Mander's disparagement of portraiture in Henrietta Maria of England, whom she had known these oft-quoted lines from his life of the portraitist only from Anthony van Dyck's portraits, she was Michiel van Miereveldt, "painter of Delft," who amazed at the queen's crooked and ill-proportioned figure and her ugly, protruding teeth."3 Pope-Hen­ from among other talents with which Nature nessy admires the art produced by idealization, such abundantly endowed him, chose portrait as the "new poetry and depth" of Titian's portrait of painting... , [In] our Netherlands there is Philip II (whose Hapsburg jaw is softened by shad­ this deficiency or unfortunate situation, espe­ ow), and the elaboration of fine detail in the man­ cially in these present times, that there is lit­ nered portraits of Bronzino. Yet he simultaneously tle work to be had that requires composition accuses the patron of responsibility for any deviance so as to give the youngsters and painters the opportunity to become excellent at histories, from likeness by the artist who otherwise would figures and nudes through practice. For it is have been more honest: "It is important to remem­ mostly portraits that they get the opportunity ber," he writes, "that the determinant in many ruler to paint; so that most of them, because of the portraits was the sitter's self-conceit."4 allure of profit, or for their survival, usually Such an empirical approach to portraiture makes take this side-road of art (that is: portrait possible a-historical conclusions about a sitter's painting) and set off without having time or character from the author's interpretation of their inclination to seek out or follow the road of face. Projection in the study of portraiture has been history and figures that leads to the highest a fundamental and longstanding problem, fre­ perfection.6 quently illustrated through a comparison of dra­ matically variant readings by different authors. For Van Mander grudgingly admitted, however, that example, the sitters in Frans Hals's Regents ofthe Old because it depicted the noble subject of the human Men~ Alms House (Fig. 101) and Regentesses of the body, it should be accorded at least some respect: Old Men~ Alms House (Haarlem, Frans Hals Muse­ "One can also make something worthwhile from a um; c. 1664) were praised by a poet at the end of portrait: that a face, after all the most important the eighteenth century as "gods toward humanity" part of tlle human body, contains quite enough so as and "wise and beneficent almoners." They were to be able to disclose and reveal the quality and effi­ viewed subsequently in a highly negative light from cacy of art."7 At the end of the century, Samuel van the mid-18 70S when]. de Vries described the third Hoogstraeten disdained "the portrait makers, who figure from the right as portrayed in a drunken stu­ can render reasonably good likeness, and properly por, and Eugene Fromentin attributed Hals's free imitate eyes, noses and mouths, I wouldn't even paint handling to a "painter [that] is three-quarters place beyond, or above the firstlevel [of painting] ."8 dead." These regents were finally rehabilitated in Although the empirical approach represented by 1963 by P.]. Vinken and Eddy deJongh, who plau­ the work of Pope-Hennessy and Rosenberg could sibly proposed that the countenance of the seem­ result in interpretations based on viewers' subjec­ ingly drunken regent was due to Hals's faithful tive responses, the work of these authors was transcription of his partial facial paralysis. S Both instrumental in focusing attention on, and provid­ reflectionist and expressionist approaches credit ing a new appreciation for, early modern portrai­ portraiture with providing direct access to the once ture as a genre. Their books were followed by a living subject and artist. large number of important studies of aspects of the 160 Ann Jensen Adams single-figure Dutch portrait, each of which differ­ A originalJy Jescribed by Erwin Panofsky in the ently frames its subject. In 1967 A. Wassenburgh 1930S, iconol gy investigate. an image through surveyed the seventeenth-century portraits pro­ tlu-ee steps. F irst, the "primary r natural . ubjc L duced in the northern province of Friesland from matter of the image is describe I on the basis If the perspective of attribution and style.9 R. E. O. "empirical observation." Second, the "secondary Or Ekkart's publications of early portrait collections conventional meanings" of "symbols" are identified and his essays identifying little known artists have through "iconographical analysis" with recourse to given new life to portraits that had languished as literary (and as practiced today, more broadly cul­ attributions to anonymous artists or incorrectly in tural) sources. Finally, an "iconological interpreta_ the margins of the oeuvres of better known mas­ tion" is made by specifying the larger cultural sys­ ters.1O Important archival discoveries by 1. H. van tems that may, often unconsciously, have directed Eeghen and S. A. C. Dudok van Heel in notarized the interpretation of the work in its time.1 4 As prac­ documents and inventories, especially when com­ ticed, however, iconology all too often collapses bined with inscriptions and coats of arms on por­ back into iconography. Michael Ann Holly and traits themselves, have allowed scholars to identify others have pointed out that studies rarely investi­ an increasing number of sitters and provide new gate the larger cultural "assumptions" and "habits information about the lives of artists and their of mind" that Panofsky outlines in his third step patrons. Many of their findings have been pub­ and that he arg'ues inform the "meaning" of a lished over the past twenty-five years in the Dutch work. IS journal Amsteloda11Zum and continue to be funda­ The leading proponent of this approach to mental for the study of portraiture from nearly all Dutch art, Eddy de J ongh, devoted his earliest perspectives and methodological approaches.