16th CENTURY BAROQUE ART

16^TH CENTURY BAROQUE ART

By Libby Clay

A recent art-oriented visit to Holland with fellow docents inspired much pre- and post-trip reading. In the process of

 relearning about the Dutch and Flemish artists of the seventeenth century, I also found out a great deal about how the people of the time lived---what they wore, some of their customs, what they valued.  I would like to pass on some of what I’ve learned.

I’ll start in MAG’s Baroque gallery. The gentleman in the corner with the “big hair” (Portrait of a Gentleman 55.77) was painted by Nicholas Maes. He is wearing a flowing cloak, a shirt open at the throat and a full-bottomed wig. It is said that King Louis XIV of France was responsible for the wig fashion. Although heavy and cumbersome, these wigs were especially favored by elderly and professional men. English and American barristers wore them into the late eighteenth century. This gentleman’s wig would not have been powdered, for that did not come into use until 1703.

Snow white powder was the most fashionable.

Portrait of a Gentleman

Maes (1634-1693) was a pupil of Rembrandt. There was some uncertainty about his earliest works because no paintings dated before 1654 had been found. However, a small Maes painting dated 1653 has turned up and new research is being conducted on works thought to have originated in Rembrandt’s studio. Eventually some may be attributed to Maes. MAG’s painting is a later work, when Maes adopted the then current fashion of painting his models in elegant poses against a park-like background and with much use of draperies.

In contrast to the Maes portrait, the gentleman in the neighboring picture, painted by Frans Hals (1538-1666) is dressed in somber, conservative, no-nonsense black, proper attire for a Calvinist. Portrait of a Man (68.101) shows a gentleman wearing a wide-brimmed, high crowned black hat typical of his time. He wears his hair long and curled slightly above a modest starched white collar, or “whisk.” He is holding something in his right hand, perhaps his gloves.

Portrait of a Man

The tradition of the time was that you should be un-smiling for your portrait. Hals’ gentleman has just the hint of a smile, for Hals often “broke the mold” and painted people happy and smiling. The portrait is apparently true-to-life, for the man’s eyes do not quite tally. One eye appears to “wander” slightly. Hals painted hands quickly and impressionistically. Unfortunately it is difficult to see that in this painting because of the craquelure.

Portrait of Eva Bicker (55.72) is by Dirck van Santvoort, another artist who came under Rembrandt’s influence. Santvoort was primarily a portrait artist, and he came from an old Amsterdam family of painters. Dirck was wealthy and apparently gave up painting about 1645, for there are no known works after that date.

Eva Bicker wears her hair loose and gently curled. She must be wearing her entire jewelry box, for she has garnet earrings          and brooch and a pearl necklace. She also has a pearl fillet around the crown of her head and pearls criss-crossing her boned corset-bodice. It is no doubt false lacing. She has given up the old-fashioned ruff and is wearing a flat, starched lace collar which allows her to wear her hair “down.”

Eva Bicker

For examples of the ruff, we need to look at the Flemish couple in the Renaissance room in Portrait of Man and Woman (79.69 and 79.70) by Pieter Jansz. Pourbus. They are pendant portraits, meant to be hung together, with the man always on the viewer’s left. A docent at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem explained that this was because the husband, being more important, is always on the right side of his wife. She is subservient to him. Often these companion portraits were commissioned by couples to celebrate their marriage.

They are wearing ruffs, hers larger than his. These portraits date to the 16^th  century, but ruffs were worn into the early 17^th century. They were a kind of stiffly starched collar, varying in width and sometimes worn several at a time.  This was hard because wearing too many made it difficult to turn one’s head or eat. There were even special spoons for eating while wearing a ruff! The wife wears a starched cap as well, with her hair swept back and tucked under the cap.

Speaking of caps, peek around the corner of the Baroque room at Heershop’s The Doctor’s Visit. The woman behind the patient is wearing a cap that comes to a point or peak in the center of her forehead. The name for this cap is “widow’s peak,” hence the name for hair that comes to a peak on the forehead. These were mourning caps, black with a black veil falling behind them.

In the Baroque room, try standing in front of Jan van de Cappelle’s seascape, View off the Dutch Coast (68. 99). Stand there until you feel you are in the painting. The low horizon makes the painting work like a unified whole, versus looking through a window. There are no framing devices to funnel our eyes toward the center. We can look around us and see the vague forms of the big ships in the mist. The smaller boats may be bringing passengers to shore. Cargoes would be off-loaded by cranes. The ships’ pennants have the colors of the House of Orange.

View off the Dutch Coast

The Dutch were without rivals in shipbuilding between 1590 and 1600. Their greatest achievement was called the fluit, or flute, a modest, practical and businesslike seagoing barge, especially suited for out-bound bulky cargoes of corn, timber, iron, hemp, and flax, the products of the North. The Dutch West and East Indies Companies brought back  spices--pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, camphor and opium, and from Turkey, the tulip. Trade created a prosperous middle class, which in turn created a market for paintings. We are fortunate that MAG has so many fine examples of this great period in art and in Dutch history.

Sources: Haak, Bob, The Golden Age: Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century; Laver, James, Costume and Fashion: Lucie-Smith, Edward, Art and Civilization; Wilcox, R. Turner, The Dictionary of Costume.