'Tracing a pose', Simiolus 33-4 (2007-2008)

221

Tracing a pose: Go vert Flinck and the emergence of the van Dyckian mode of portraiture in Amsterdam*

Hilbert Lootsma

"But because Rembrandt's manner was generally praised at the time, such that everything had to be based on that example if it was to please the world, he [Govert Flinck] felt it advisable to study with Rembrandt for a year."1

Although presented here by Houbraken in a greatly ex aggerated form, when Govert Flinck arrived in Amster dam in or around 1633 Rembrandt was decidedly the most sought-after painter in town. It was only logical, then, that Flinck chose to pursue his studies with him.

That Flinck was a good student is clear from the first works that he made as an independent master. Indeed, when we look at his Isaac blessing Jacob of 1638 (fig. 1), Houbraken's statement that the artist's early paint ings owed so much to Rembrandt that some of them were actually passed off as such, no longer seems mere rhetoric.2

If, on the other hand, one looks at Flinck's portrait of Margaretha Tulp painted some 17 years later it is hard to believe that he ever studied with Rembrandt at all

(fig. 2). The differences between this portrait and those by Rembrandt, whether made around the same time or

* This article is based on my graduate thesis of 2008. I owe a great debt to Peter Hecht for his critical reading, his corrections to my English and, above all, his patience. I am also grateful to Annemieke Meijer and Gijsbert van der Wal for their comments on style and structure. Lastly, I would like to thank Thijs Im merzeel, with whom I had many helpful conversations about the topic discussed here.

1 A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, vol. 2, pp. 20-21: "Maar alzoo te dier tyd de handeling van Rembrant in't algemeen geprezen wierd, zoo dat alles op die leest moest geschoeit wezen, zou het de Waereld behagen; vond hy [Govert Flinck] zig geraden een jaar bij Rembrant te gaan leeren."

2 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 21. 3 Houbraken already observed that Flinck's departure from

in the period when Flinck was working in his studio, are almost too obvious to mention. Apart from the fact that Rembrandt generally used less bright colors, he never placed his sitters in a garden setting, nor did he portray them in such extremely elegant poses. Flinck's painting is actually much more indebted to the style of another artist, Anthony van Dyck. It is especially the latter's portraits of English noblewomen, such as that of the Countess of Devonshire (fig. 3), which have evident similarities to Flinck's portrait.

Flinck's conversion from Rembrandt's style to that of van Dyck did not take place overnight. In fact, it was a process that took him several years.3 One of the first of his paintings in which van Dyck's influence is apparent dates from 1646, which also makes it one of the first van Dyckian portraits to have been painted in Amsterdam. It is a double portrait of a couple at a table (fig. 4). While the combination of the thick column and broadly draped curtain is typical for Flemish seventeenth-century por traiture in general, and was used by several artists in Amsterdam long before Flinck, the sitter's elegant poses are unmistakably van Dyckian.4 In fact, the woman's

Rembrandt's style proceeded slowly: "But later he turned aside from that manner of painting [Rembrandt's] with great difficulty and labor, since the eyes of the world had already been opened before Rembrandt's death by the introduction of the Italian art of painting by true connoisseurs, when painting brightly again came into fashion" ("Dog hy heeft die wyze van schilderen [that of Rembrandt] naderhand met veele moeite en arbeid weer af gewent; naardien de Waereld voor't overlyden van Rembrant, de oogen al geopent wierden, op 't invoeren der Italiaansche penceelkonst, door ware Konstkenners, wanneer het helder schilderen weer op de baan kwam"); see ibid., vol. 2, p. 21.

4 Amsterdam artists who used the combination of curtain and architectural motif in their portraits before Flinck included Cornelis van der Voort, Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy and Thomas de Keyser.

This content downloaded from 131.211.201.71 on Thu, 16 Jun 2016 11:03:52 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

222 HILBERT LOOTSMA

i Govert Flinck, Isaac blessing Jacob, 1638. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

pose is virtually copied from the Flemish master. It was this pose, one hand resting in the lap with the palm upward, the other loosely hanging over the edge of a table or the arm of a chair, in which van Dyck portrayed

5 Van Dyck's pose seems to have been inspired by one that Titian used in his portrait of the Empress Isabella, painted in 1544-45. It is now l?st> but copies have survived. They show the empress in a pose very comparable to the one the Flemish

master used for his portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria. The only real difference is that the empress's left hand is not hanging off the edge of the table but resting on top of it. Van Dyck would probably have known the pose in which Titian portrayed the empress through a now lost copy after the Venetian master's

Queen Henrietta Maria (fig. 5) and Lady Margaret Hamilton, among others (fig. 6).5

While several authors have long recognized the influ ence of van Dyck in Flinck's work from around 1645

painting made by Rubens during his first trip to Spain in 1603. He may very well also have been familiar with the engraving after Rubens's copy by Pieter de Jode. See H.E. Wethey, The paintings of Titian: complete edition, 3 vols., London 1969-75, vol. 2, pp. 200-01, cat. nr. L-20, and E.S. Gordenker, "As pects of costume in Van Dyck's English portraits," in H. Vlieghe (ed.), Van Dyck i$gg-iggg: conjectures and refutations, Turnhout 2001, p. 221.


Tracing a pose: Govert Flinck and the emergence of the van Dyckian mode of portraiture 223

2 Govert Flinck, Portrait of Margaretha Tulp, 1655. Kassel,

Staatliche Museen, Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister

3 Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Elizabeth, Countess of

Devonshire. Sussex, Petworth House, Collection of Lord

Egremont

4 Govert Flinck, Portrait of a lady and a gentleman, 1646.

Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle

5 Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria.

San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art


224 HILBERT LOOTSMA

6 Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of John Hamilton, later ist Lord

Belhaven and Stenton, and Margaret, his wife. New York, private collection

onwards, much is still unknown as to how he first en countered it. The few attempts to answer this question were practically all made by von Moltke, the first to have seriously studied Flinck's work. None of them seem very convincing.6 In this article, all of von Moltke's and several other suggestions are tested to see wheth er any of them convincingly leads to the source from which Flinck adopted the van Dyckian pose used for the woman in the Karlsruhe double portrait, and if not, what else might have given him the idea.

trip to Antwerp Some authors have suggested that Flinck's change in style was prompted by a study trip to Antwerp.7 Works by van Dyck were indeed plentiful there, although his portraits would perhaps not have been so easily accessible. While Flinck does not seem

6 J.W. von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, 1615-1660, Amsterdam 1965.

7 For example, P. Jeroense, "Govaert Flinck (1615-1660): eine Kiinstlerbiographie," Niederdeutsche Beitrage zur Kunstge schichte 36 (1997), pp. 82-84.

8 F. Baldinucci, Notizie de'professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, 6 vols., Florence 1681-1728, vol. 6, p. 484: "...molto avendo peregrinato per la Fiandra, e molto faticato intorno alle pitture di valenti uomini di quella provincia, e particolarmente d'Anversa"; Houbraken, op. cit. (note 1), vol. 2, pp. 23-24: "But his spirit inclined towards greater undertakings, and spurred on

to have been much inclined to travel (apart from an oc casional visit to Cleves to see his family or to work for the Elector of Brandenburg there are no indications that he made any long journeys after settling in Amsterdam), it is likely that he visited Antwerp at least once. Such a trip was not unusual for artists from the northern Neth erlands in the seventeenth century, and besides, both Baldinucci and Houbraken, Flinck's two earliest biogra phers, state that he went there.8

It is unlikely, though, that it was from a work by van Dyck in Antwerp, that Flinck adopted the pose for the figure of the woman in his 1646 double portrait, for it is only in the Flemish artist's British portraits that it is used regularly. In fact, there is only one portrait that van Dyck made in Antwerp containing a pose comparable to that of the woman in Flinck's portrait. It is the likeness of a lady of the Vincque family, now in a private English collection.9

FOLLOWERS OF VAN DYCK's STYLE IN HOLLAND Flinck would not, however, have needed to travel as far as Antwerp to see examples of a van Dyckian style. Be fore elements of van Dyck's style first became visible in Flinck's work, several Dutch artists were already work ing in a fashion indebted to that of the Flemish master. Von Moltke mentions three of them: Adriaen Hanne

man, Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen and Jan Lievens.10 They had all been in London for a while when van Dyck was living there, and returned to the Netherlands around 1640. Of these three, Hanneman was the one most in fluenced by van Dyck during his stay in England. The style he worked in during his final years abroad, which he retained after his return to the Netherlands around

1638, is so markedly van Dyckian that it has even been suggested that he worked in the Flemish master's studio for a while.11

by the art of Rubens and van Dyck, which he had examined closely in Antwerp, he later turned down those who wanted him to paint portraits" ("Dog zyn geest geneigt tot grooter ondernemingen en aangespoort door de Konst van Rubbens en Van Dyk, die hy te Antwerpen met veel opmerken had wezen beschouwen, wees de genen die hem pourtretten wilden laten schilderen naderhand af').

9 See SJ. Barnes et al., Van Dyck: a complete catalogue of the paintings, New Haven & London 2004, p. 109, cat. nr. 1.117.

10 Von Moltke, op. cit. (note 6), p. 33. 11 This suggestion has been raised by, for example, O. ter


Tracing a pose: Go vert Flinck and the emergence of the van Dyckian mode of portraiture 225

Some five years after Hanneman moved from Eng land to the Netherlands, so too did Jonson van Ceulen. A British-born artist of Flemish descent, Jonson van Ceulen had already made a career in London when van Dyck came to England, and he does not seem to have been very susceptible to the influence of his slightly younger colleague. Nevertheless, some of the works he made in the final years of his time in London, as well as many of the ones he produced in the Netherlands, do show van Dyckian traits.

Other than Hanneman, who stayed in The Hague after returning to the Netherlands, Jonson van Ceulen tried his luck in several Dutch cities, one of them being Amsterdam, where he settled in or around 1646 and re mained for about ten years, albeit intermittently.12

When he arrived in Amsterdam, Lievens was al ready living there. This Leiden-born artist had settled in Amsterdam in 1644 after a staY ?f about ten years in

Antwerp, his first place of abode after his return from England. Back in his native country, Lievens kept work ing in the style he had developed abroad. It brought him

many commissions, including some of the most pres tigious of the time. In 1650, for example, he executed a painting for the Oranjezaal in Huis ten Bosch, and in 1656 and 1661 he contributed to the decoration of the new Amsterdam Town Hall. The commission for this

1661 painting was in fact originally assigned to Flinck, who died, however, before it could be completed.13

That Flinck and Lievens knew each other is beyond doubt. They worked on many of the same projects, like the Amsterdam Town Hall and the decoration of

Schloss Oranienburg, and they also had mutual friends, such as the famous poet and playwright Joost van den Vondel. The question is just when the two first met. It is not at all improbable that this was shortly after Lievens moved to Amsterdam from Antwerp, in other words a year or two before the influence of van Dyck first be came apparent in Flinck's work.

Was it then perhaps from a work by Lievens that Flinck adopted the pose he used for the figure of the

Kuile, Adriaen Hanneman, 1604-1671: een Haags portretschilder, Alphen aan den Rijn 1976, p. 13.

12 R. Ekkart, "Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen," in J. Turner (ed.), The dictionary of art, 34 vols., London & New York 1996, vol. 17, p. 645.

13 E. Domela Nieuwenhuis, "Jan Lievens," in Turner, op.

woman in his double portrait? This is very unlikely, for while Lievens's known portraits (whether those made in the Netherlands after his return from Antwerp or those

made before then) owe much to van Dyck's inspira tion, none of them show a pose which even remotely resembles the one used by Flinck. The same can be said of Jonson van Ceulen's extant works (both from his English and Dutch periods), some of which Flinck is likely to have known. Hanneman, on the other hand, did portray some of his sitters in poses resembling the one Flinck used, but the resemblance is slight and does not seem to occur before the 1650s.14

Among the other artists in Holland who were suscep tible to van Dyck's influence, two must be mentioned briefly: Jan Mijtens and Joachim von Sandrart. Mijtens, an artist who was born in The Hague and worked there throughout his life, picked up elements of van Dyck's style from the late 1630s onwards, but never used the pose which Flinck adopted in the Karlsruhe paint ing. Like Hanneman, Mijtens seems only to have ap proached this motif from a distance, and nothing like it can be found in his work before the mid-1650s.15

Sandrart, who also executed works in a van Dyck ian style before Flinck did, stayed in the Netherlands twice, the first time in Utrecht in the late 1620s to study with Gerrit van Honthorst, the second time in Amster dam from 1637 to 1645. During this second stay he un doubtedly met Flinck, whom he included in his Teutsche Akademie of 1675-79.

Sandrart's first known extant work showing his in debtedness to van Dyck is his 1639 portrait of Jacob Bicker, which seems to have been modeled on the Flem ish master's portrait of Sandrart's nephew, Michel le Blon.16 While Sandrart did not stay as close to van

Dyck's style in subsequent years as Hanneman, for ex ample, he did portray many of his sitters in typical van Dyck poses. None of them, however, corresponds to the one used by Flinck for the figure of the woman in the Karlsruhe double portrait.

Actually, it seems that this particular pose only start

cit. (note 12), vol. 19, pp. 347-50. 14 See ter Kuile, op. cit. (note n). 15 See A.N. Bauer, Jan Mijtens (1613/14-1670): Leben und

Werk, Petersberg 2006. 16 C. Klemm, Joachim von Sandrart: Kunst-Werke und Le

bens-Lauf, Berlin 1986, p. 20, and p. 73, cat. nr. 18.


226 HILBERT LOOTSMA

7 Caspar Netscher, Portrait of a lady, 1672. Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

ed to appear in the work of other artists active in the Netherlands in the early 1670s. Among the first to adopt it in his standard repertoire at the time was Caspar Net scher (fig. 7).17

17 It was probably through his work that this motif was transmitted to Adriaen van der Werff. See B. Gaehtgens, Adri aen van der Werff, i6^g-ij22, Munich 1987, p. 401, cat. nr. 135. My thanks to Marjorie Wieseman, who kindly lent me her photograph of Netscher's painting.

18 Von Moltke, op. cit. (note 6), p. 33. 19 For early Dutch owners of van Dyck prints, see G. Luij

ten and S. Sombogaart, "'...with the hand': the collecting of Van Dyck prints," in C. Depauw and G. Luijten (eds.), exhib. cat. Anthony van Dyck as a printmaker, Antwerp (Museum Plantin Moretus, Stedelijk Prentenkabinet), Amsterdam (Rijkspren tenkabinet) & New York 1999, pp. 8-18, esp. pp. 9-11, and G. Luijten, "The Iconography. Van Dyck's portraits in print," in ibid., pp. 72-91, esp. p. 90.

20 W.L. Strauss and M. van der Meulen, The Rembrandt documents, New York 1979, p. 371: "...boek, vol contrefijtsels soo van van Dijck, Rubens en verscheijde andere oude meesters." See also Luijten and Sombogaart, op. cit. (note 19), p. n.

21 S. Dickey, "Van Dyck in Holland: the Iconography and

prints Another suggestion made by von Moltke is that the van Dyckian elements in Flinck's work, or some of them anyway, could have been transmitted through prints.18 This is not at all unlikely, for engravings after paintings and designs by van Dyck were produced in great quantities during Flinck's lifetime, and they found their way onto the Dutch market relatively quickly.10

The early owners of van Dyck prints included several artists, Rembrandt among them. According to the inven tory of the Desolate Boedelkamer of July 1656, he owned a "book, full of portraits by van Dyck, Rubens and vari ous other old masters."20 As Stephanie Dickey argues, Rembrandt himself used some of van Dyck's prints as a source.21 If so, he was not the only one. There is no doubt that many of the van Dyckian poses in Dutch seven teenth-century portraiture were derived from engravings after paintings or designs by the Flemish master.

According to Ger Luijten, it was above all van Dyck's Iconography that was used extensively as a source.22 This series of portraits of prominent men was first issued as a complete set in Antwerp in 1645 by Gilles Hendricx. According to its frontispiece, that edition originally comprised 100 portraits (it seems that all the sets have been broken up). Van Dyck etched the outline of the features for around 17 of them, while the rest were en graved after his designs.

Interestingly, Flinck, who was also an ardent art col lector, seems to have owned eight of van Dyck's pre liminary drawings for the Iconography. These, at least, were in the collection of his son Nicolaes, which con sisted mostly of what his father had put together.23 It is

its impact on Rembrandt and Lievens," in Vlieghe, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 289-303.

22 Luijten, op. cit. (note 19), p. 88. Before Hendricx pub lished the Iconography, many of the prints included in the series had already been issued individually, albeit most likely in very limited editions. See Luijten, op. cit., p. 74.

23 After Nicolaes's death in 1722 they were bought by Wil liam, 2nd Duke of Devonshire. They have remained in Chats

worth until the present day. The portrait sketches in question are those of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Paulus Halmalius, Inigo Jones, Karel de Mallery, Jan Snellincx, Hendrik van Balen,

Hans van Mildert, Don Emanuel Frockas and Caspar de Cray er. See M. Jaffe, The Devonshire collection of Northern European drawings, 5 vols., Turin & London 2002, vol. 1, pp. 32-41, cat. nrs. 953-61. There was also a painting by van Dyck in Flinck's collection: a portrait of a woman holding a rose, now in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden. See Barnes et al., op. cit. (note 9), p. 134, cat. nr. 1.155.



very likely that Flinck not only owned studies for the Iconography, but also a copy of the finished product. That he was familiar with van Dyck's engraved series, is suggested by one of his civic guard pieces, The company of Captain Albert Bas and Lieutenant Lucas Conijn in the Rijksmuseum (fig. 8). It was painted the same year that the Iconography first appeared as a set.24 While not exactly the same, the pose of the guardsman leaning on the balustrade at upper right shows a remarkable resem blance to the one used by van Dyck for his portrait of Hubert van den Eynden (figs. 9, 10). Furthermore, sev

24 That sheets from the Iconography appeared in Amster dam shortly after their publication is demonstrated by a 1646 vanitas still life by Simon Luttichuys, which includes van Dyck's second state of his portrait print of Rubens; see Luijten, op. cit. (note 19), p. 90.

8 Govert Flinck, The Company of Captain Albert

Bas and Lieutenant Lucas Conijn, 1645. Amsterdam,

Rijksmuseum

9 Detail of fig. 8

Ant t-?? XXyA j>?v'- Mtrt. vmutu E*Ln r*cmiti C** j/MtuLiia.

10 Lucas Vorsterman after Anthony van Dyck,

Portrait of Hubert van den Eynden, engraving.

Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet


228 HILBERT LOOTSMA

11 Detail of fig. 8

eral of the rhetorical gestures Flinck used in this paint ing are also to be found in the Iconography (figs. 11 and 12, 13 and 14).

Although The company of Albert Bas may lend some support to von Moltke's suggestion that Flinck did in deed use van Dyck's prints as a source for poses at the time of his change of style, we can be fairly sure that none of them served as a model for the figure of the woman in his 1646 double portrait, for her pose does not seem to have appeared in any of the van Dyck prints published in the first half of the seventeenth century.25

VAN DYCK IN THE DUTCH REPUBLIC Von Moltke does

not mention van Dyck's painted work among the pos sible sources from which Flinck might have adopted ele ments of the Flemish artist's style. This is remarkable, because a great many of van Dyck's paintings were al

25 See C. Depauw (ed.), The new Hollstein Dutch & Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts 1450-1700: Anthony van Dyck, 7 vols., Rotterdam 2002.

26 J.G. van Gelder, "Anthonie van Dyck in Holland in de zeventiende eeuw," Bulletin Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kun sten 8 (1959), PP- 43-86.

PICTOR. HVJAANAR5TM. FICVRABVM BRVXEJLI/IS

12 Paulus Pontius after Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Caspar

de Crayer, engraving. Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet

ready to be found in the Dutch Republic during Flinck's lifetime. Van Gelder thoroughly investigated in which collections they were in a 1959 article.26 One of the main observations presented there is that the largest group of van Dyck's paintings in the Republic before the middle of the seventeenth century was owned by Stadholder Frederik Hendrik. The 1632 inventory of his collection lists as many as six of the Flemish artist's paintings: four

mythological pieces, a portrait of Maria de' Medici and a portrait of Isabella Clara Eugenia, the archduchess of the Spanish Netherlands.27 Not included in the inven

27 Three of the four mythological pieces can be identi fied with certainty. They are Rinaldo and Armida (Paris, Lou vre), Amaryllis and Mirtillo and Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes (both in Pommersfelden, Kunstsammlungen Graf von Schonborn). The fourth painting was identified by Amy

Walsh, "for reasons of iconography, and judging from later nota



13 Detail of fig. 8

tory, but certainly in the stadholder's possession at the time, were van Dyck's portraits of Frederik Hendrik himself, his wife Amalia, and their son Willem.28 As van Gelder argues, the stadholder may have acquired at least 11 more paintings attributed to van Dyck.29

Van Dyck painted the portraits of Frederik Hendrik and his family when he was in Holland. The precise moment of his visit is a matter of conjecture, however. Most authors believe that he traveled north only once, in the winter of 1631, but Baudouin has shown that he may also have visited the Republic earlier that year.30

During his stay or stays there van Dyck not only painted the portraits of the stadholder and his family, he also produced many other works, among them several

tions in the inventory," as Thetis at the forge of Vulcan (Potsdam, Bildergalerie Schloss Sanssouci). See A. Walsh, "Van Dyck at the court of Frederik Hendrik," in SJ. Barnes and A.K. Whee lock (eds.), Van Dyck 350, Washington 1994, p. 231.

28 The portrait of Frederik Hendrik is in the Baltimore Mu seum of Art, and that of his son Willem is in Schloss Mosigkau, Dessau. The present whereabouts of the portrait of Amalia are unknown.

29 Van Gelder, op. cit. (note 26). 30 Baudouin's starting point for his assumption that van

Dyck had already visited Holland before he went there in the winter of 1631 is a note in Constantijn Huygens's diary. On

- ANDRXAS COLYNS DE NOLE 5TATVARIV8 AVTVRRPIJ&. . .

...

14 Pieter de Jode after Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Andreas

Colyn de Note, engraving. Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet

studies for his planned Iconography. Unfortunately, only a few of them have survived. The only extant ones are the drawn portraits of Cornells Saftleven and Jan van Ravesteyn.31 Others are only known through the engrav

4 July 1631, Huygens wrote that it was then that Prince Wil lem was wearing a pair of trousers for the first time, instead of children's clothes. From the fact that van Dyck's portrait of the young boy shows him while he was still wearing children's clothes, Baudouin concludes that it must have been painted be fore that date. He further assumes that van Dyck did not visit The Hague to paint the prince's portrait until after 20 May, prior to which a long absence from Antwerp does not seem to agree with what is suggested by his known activities there. See F. Baudouin, "Van Dyck in The Hague," in Vlieghe, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 53-64

31 The portrait of Jan van Ravesteyn is now in Vienna (Al


230 HILBERT LOOTSMA

ings made after them. One of these is the portrait of Constantijn Huygens, painted by van Dyck on 28 Janu ary 1632, the day, as Huygens writes in his diary, when a tree fell on his house.32

It was also while he was in the north that van Dyck painted the portraits of Joris de Caullery and his wife, both of which are mentioned in a notarized document of

1654.33 As van der Veen points out, it is not inconceiv able that van Dyck spent some nights at de Caullery's chic inn in The Hague and painted the likeness of the innkeeper and his wife on that occasion, perhaps even by way of payment.34 Another work which van Dyck probably painted in the Republic is the portrait of Pieter Soutman, which is mentioned in one of the Haarlem artist's letters.35

The paintings by van Dyck to be found in the Neth erlands during Flinck's lifetime included many from the Flemish artist's English period. Since it was precisely in those portraits that van Dyck used the pose Flinck adopted for his Karlsruhe painting, it is important to find out where these paintings were and if Flinck could have seen any of them. It seems that most of those from

bertina), that of Cornelis Saftleven in Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum). Van Dyck's drawing of Jan van Goyen (also in the Amsterdams Historisch Museum) was certainly also

made in the Republic. Given the informal nature of the portrait, it is unlikely, though, that it was ever intended to serve as a design for a print.

32 J.H.W. Unger (ed.), Dagboek van Constantijn Huygens, Amsterdam 1885, p. 20: "Pingor a VAN DYCKIO, cum arbor in aedes lapsus esset." See also Luijten, op. cit. (note 19), p. 73.

Among the engraved portraits which are almost certainly based on models that van Dyck made while he was in the Republic, are those of Willem Hondius, Michiel van Miereveld, Gerrit van Honthorst, Palamedes Palamedesz and Cornelis van Poelen burch. See van Gelder, op. cit. (note 26), p. 50.

33 See A. Bredius, "De portretten van Joris de Caullery," Oud Holland n (1893), PP- 127-28.

34 J. van der Veen, "Het kunstbedrijf van Hendrick Uylen burgh in Amsterdam: productie en handel tussen 1625 en 1655," in J. van der Veen and F. Lammertse, Uylenburgh & Zoom kunst en commercie van Rembrandt tot De Lairesse, 1625-1675, Zwolle & Amsterdam 2006, pp. 135-36. As stated in the notarized docu ment of 1654, de Caullery owned nine portraits: six of himself and three of his wife. They were painted by six different artists, one of them being Rembrandt. His portrait of de Caullery is now in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. According to a 1661 abstract of the notarized document of 1654, Rembrandt also made a portrait of de Caullery's son, Johan, which is con sidered by some to be the Portrait of a young man in a private collection in Sweden. See J. Bruyn et al., A corpus of Rembrandt paintings, in progress, The Hague etc. 1982-, vol. 2, pp. 243-48,

van Dyck's English period to be found in the Nether lands in the second and third quarters of the seventeenth century were in the collection of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. Arundel and his wife Alathea Talbot moved

to the Republic in 1642 in order to escape the political upheaval back home. They brought 60 crates of their belongings with them, including an astounding number of paintings.36 After short stays in The Hague, Am sterdam and Utrecht, they chose to settle in Antwerp in 1644. Shortly thereafter, Arundel moved to Padua, where he would stay until his death in 1646. His wife initially remained in Antwerp, but eventually settled in the Republic. The collection, which she inherited in its entirety, moved with her, or at least a great part of it did.

When exactly Lady Talbot left Antwerp is not certain, but it is known that she was in Amersfoort by 1649.37 She died five years later in Amsterdam.38 A list of her belongings was drawn up not long afterwards. The orig inal has not survived, but an eighteenth-century copy is preserved in London. It mentions an optimistic 50 or more works as being by van Dyck.39 This may be a bit too much, and it is equally uncertain that they were all

cat. nr. A6o. Just like the portrait of his father it is dated 1632, the year when van Dyck was in The Hague. While there is no firm evidence, it is not inconceivable that van Dyck and Rem brandt were in The Hague at the same time, both of them stay ing at de Caullery's inn. Dickey, op. cit. (note 21), p. 296, has already suggested that Rembrandt and van Dyck met while the latter was working in the Republic.

35 His portrait is mentioned, together with four other paint ings by van Dyck, in a letter to the Antwerp art dealer Matthijs

Musson. See J. Denuce, Na Peter Pauwel Rubens: documenten uit den kunsthandel te Antwerpen in de ijde eeuw van Matthijs Mus son, Antwerp & The Hague 1949, p. 28, and van Gelder, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 82-83.

36 J. Brown, Kings and connoisseurs: collecting art in seven teenth-century Europe, New Haven & London 1995, p. 61.

37 F.H.C. Weijtens, De Arundel-collectie: commencement de la fin, Amersfoort 7655, Utrecht 1971, p. 16.

38 Ibid., p. 18. 39 Forty of these works are listed as (chiaroscuro) portrait

sketches (probably identifiable with the 40 portrait sketches now in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch at Boughton). See van

Gelder, op. cit (note 26), pp. 84-85, and M.F.S. Hervey, The life, correspondence & collections of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arun del, New York 1969, p. 478, nrs. 118 and 121. It was not just Arundel's van Dycks that left England during the English Civil War. In 1648, to prevent future sequestration or to help cover the cost of a possible exile, George Villiers, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, had shipped abroad a large part of his late father's personal belongings. See P. McEvansoneya, "The sequestration and dispersal of the Buckingham collection," Journal of the His



in the Netherlands at the time of Lady Talbot's death.40 Unfortunately, no descriptions are given of the alleged van Dycks in her estate, so it is not known if a portrait of a woman in a pose comparable to the one used by Flinck was among them. Even if there was, though, it is unlikely that Flinck had seen it, for there is no evidence to suggest that he ever met either Arundel or his wife.

That a portrait by van Dyck showing the pose used by Flinck was in the Republic before 1646 is, however, known from a note by van Dyck himself. In a list of pictures for which payment was due to him from the English Crown, drawn up in 1638, the Flemish artist mentions "A queen robed in blue given to the Count of Holland, ?60."4I This is undoubtedly the seated three quarter length of Queen Henrietta Maria, of which sev eral versions exist (fig. 5). Frederik Hendrik apparently owned one of them.

Although access to the stadholder's palaces would not have been granted that easily, we do know that art ists were occasionally allowed in. This at least is what is suggested by a painting by Caspar Netscher of Time clipping Cupid's wings.*2 It is a direct copy of a painting by van Dyck, which was in the collection of Stadhold er-King Willem in at the time. Actually, it would not have been strange for Netscher to have had access to the

tory of Collections 8 (1996), pp. 133-54. This transport included many paintings, at least two of them by van Dyck. The greater part of these works was sold at Antwerp in 1650. Around the same time, in October 1649, the English Parliament had begun selling the collection of King Charles 1 (who had been executed in January of that year). The sale, often referred to in the litera ture as "the sale of the century," was largely completed by the end of 1651. Over 20 of the pictures sold were by van Dyck. See O. Millar (ed.), The inventories and valuation of the King's goods, 164^1651, Glasgow 1972. It is known that some of these even tually also appeared on the continent.

40 According to Weijtens, op. cit. (note 37), p. 22, many of the works mentioned in this list were in England or were by then already sold. A document concerning the valuation of some 80 paintings from the estate of Lady Talbot, compiled in Amers foort by Jacob van Campen, Paulus Bor and Matthias Withoos, lists only three works by van Dyck: a portrait of Arundel with his grandson and two chiaroscuro portrait sketches. See Weijtens, op. cit., pp. 30-31.

41 W.H. Carpenter, Memoires et documents inedits sur An toine van Dyck, P.P. Rubens et autres artistes contemporains, Ant werp 1845, p. 68: "Une Reyne vestu en blu donne au Conte d'Ollande. 60 Van Gelder, op. cit (note 26), p. 80, confused this painting with another portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria, which, together with a portrait of Charles 1, was presented to Frederik Hendrik by George Goring in Noordgeest on 26 June

stadholder's collection, for he knew Amalia van Solms and Willem in, whose portraits he painted.43 Flinck, too, painted Amalia's portrait, albeit only in 1654, so it is not impossible that he too was given the chance to see some of the van Dycks in the stadholder's collection.44

Yet it seems that Flinck would not have needed Ama

lia's permission, nor even to have traveled outside his own city, to see a portrait by van Dyck in which the sitter is portrayed in the same pose as the woman in his 1646 double portrait. For it so happens that in 1645, the very year in which Flinck started showing evidence of the influence of van Dyck, seven portraits by the Flem ish artist arrived in Amsterdam. This we know from a

letter written by Michel le Blon to his fellow art dealer Matthijs Musson in Antwerp. It is dated 24 July 1645. "In the meantime a friend has arrived from England with the entire cabinet of the late Sir van Dyck, consist ing of 15 or 16 choice portraits by Titian and several by

Tintoretto, 3 or 4 by Anthonis Mor, 1 by Mad [Cornelis van] Cleve, all to the knees, 2 fine pieces by [Frances co] Bassano the Elder, 1 pleasing watercolor landscape by [Willem?] Tons, and 7 large portraits by van Dyck himself, all to the knees and of the greatest ladies in England etc."45

The Englishman who brought over van Dyck's col

1638. These two paintings, which were described by Huygens in a letter to Princess Amalia, are the two companion pieces now in Oranienburg. See Barnes et ai, op. cit. (note 9), p. 473, cat. nr. iv.54, and p. 525, cat. nr. iv.121.

42 See P. Hecht, exhib. cat. De Hollandse fijnschilders: van Gerard Dou tot Adriaen van der Werff, Amsterdam (Rijks museum) 1989, pp.178-79.

43 A portrait of Amalia by Netscher is mentioned in the sit ter's "Dispositieboek" of 1673 as hanging in Noordeinde Palace in The Hague. According to M.E. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and late seventeenth-century Dutch painting, Doornspijk 2002, pp. 320-21, cat. nr. B15, this is probably the painting former ly in Dessau (Staatliche Galerie), which was destroyed during

World War 11. Netscher painted Willem ill's portrait at least twice. One of them is in Berlin (Jagdschloss Grunewald), the other in the Rijksmuseum. In Apeldoorn (Rijksmuseum Paleis Het Loo) there is another portrait of Willem 111 which Wieseman believes is a copy after a lost original by Netscher. See Wiese man, op. cit., pp. 261-63, cat. nr. 132, pp. 279-80, cat. nr. 160, p. 326, B25.

44 I am here referring to the Allegory in memory of Frederik Hendrik in the Rijksmuseum, which includes a portrait of Ama lia in mourning.

45 Denuce, op. cit. (note 35), p. 34: "So is hier ondertus schen uyt Engeland gecomen eenen vriendt met het heele cabi net van den overleedenen Sir van Dyck, bestaende in 15 a 16


232 HILBERT LOOTSMA

lection of paintings was almost certainly Richard An drew, whose name is mentioned by Patrick Ruthven, the father of van Dyck's widow, in a petition of 25 March 1645 addressed to the English Parliament. Ruthven ac cused Andrew of illegally exporting a part of van Dyck's collection of pictures and works of art which the Flemish artist had left in his house in Blackfriars, and requested legal action to prevent Andrew from removing the rest.46

This clearly failed, for two years later Ruthven renewed his petition with further complaints against Andrew.

Andrew must have arrived in Amsterdam before 22

September 1644, when le Blon notified Musson that an Englishman had come over with portraits by van Dyck.47 Andrew must have then contacted le Blon somewhat

later to ask him to sell them for him, and probably re turned to England to pick up the rest of van Dyck's studio estate. This would, at least, explain why Ruthven added further complaints against Andrew in his petition to Parliament. Le Blon probably had some trouble sell ing these paintings, which is why he in turn asked Mus son to help him find buyers.

To contact le Blon was not a strange choice on An drew's part. In addition to being a prominent figure in Amsterdam society and one of the best-known art deal ers active in the Republic (for example, he negotiated the famous purchase in 1625-27 of Rubens's collection by George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham), le Blon was also a friend of van Dyck's, who, as mentioned above, even painted his portrait once.48

But let us turn to the seven portraits by van Dyck given to le Blon for sale. All were three-quarter lengths of English noblewomen. Since they came from van Dyck's estate, most of them were probably studio copies

uytgecoosene conterfeytselen van Titian ende eenige van Tin toretto, 3 a 4 van Antoni Moor, i van sotte Cleef alle ter omtrent de knien, 2 puyck stucken van den ouden Bassan, 1 aerdich wae terverf landschap van Tons ende 7 groote conterfeytselen van van Dyck selven, alle tot de knien ende van de grootste vrouwen van Engeland, etc."

46 See C. Brown, "Van Dyck's collection: a document re discovered," in S. Urbach et al.y Essays on Van Dyck, Ottawa ^83, PP- 69-72, esp. p. 70, and C. Brown and N. Ramsay, "Van Dyck's collection: some new documents," The Burlington

Magazine 132 (1990), pp. 704-09, esp. p. 705. See also J. Wood, "Van Dyck's 'Cabinet de Titien': the contents and dispersal of his collection," The Burlington Magazine 132 (1990), pp. 680-95, esp. pp. 683-84.

47 Denuce, op. cit. (note 35), p. 20. 48 On le Blon see H. de la Fontaine-Verwey, "Michel le

or copies which van Dyck had made himself. As it was precisely in portraits of English women at three-quarter length that van Dyck used the pose borrowed by Flinck for the figure of the woman in the Karlsruhe double portrait of 1646, it is very likely that at least one of the portraits that le Blon received from Andrew showed a woman in such a pose. This is supported by the fact that several versions of such portraits have survived.49

Flinck, as a passionate art collector and society art ist, would certainly have known le Blon. Like Flinck and Lievens, le Blon was a close friend of Vondel, who wrote a great many poems about him.50 If Flinck had not met le Blon before he met Vondel then the latter

would certainly have introduced the two to each other.51 Flinck could also have met le Blon through Joachim von Sandrart, with whom le Blon had traveled to Italy. They must have been quite close, for when Sandrart came to live in Amsterdam in 1637, le Blon seems to have bought a house for him and his family.52 Sandrart could very well have introduced Flinck to le Blon, if Flinck did not already know him. Art dealers and collectors are, after all, likely to know each other, and the circle involved is small.

Let us briefly summarize what has been said so far. There are several ways through which Flinck could have first encountered van Dyck's influence. As we can tell from his 1646 double portrait, however, some are more likely than others. Since there is no evidence that the typical van Dyck pose in which Flinck portrayed the woman in this painting had been used previously in the Netherlands, he most probably adopted it directly from a work by the Flemish master. A painting by van Dyck showing this particular pose is mentioned in 1638 as

Blon: graveur, kunsthandelaar, diplomaat," jfaarboek van het Genootschap Amstelodamum 61 (1969), pp. 103-25, esp. p. 105. For the sale of Rubens's collection to George Villiers see J.M. Muller, Rubens: the artist as collector, New Jersey 1989, p. 62.

49 See Barnes et al, op cit. (note 9), p. 635, cat. nr. IV.A19, p. 641, cat. nr. IV.A36, and p. 642, cat. nr. IV.A37.

50 For Vondel's poems on Flinck and le Blon see J. van den Vondel, De tverken van Vondel, 10 vols., annot. C.C. van de Graft et al, Amsterdam 1927-40, index, pp. 24-25 and 15-16.

51 This would probably have taken place, however, after le Blon received van Dyck's portraits, for Flinck, so it seems, only got to know Vondel in the early 1650s. See von Moltke, op. cit. (note 6), p. 34.

52 See Klemm, op. cit. (note 16), p. 18, and de la Fontaine Verwey, op. cit. (note 48), p. 117.



being with the stadholder, but it is unlikely that Flinck had seen it. It is more plausible that he adopted the pose from a work by van Dyck then in Amsterdam. Here, in 1645, seven portraits by the Flemish master arrived at Michel le Blon's, whom Flinck would certainly have known. According to their description, it is very like ly that at least one of those pictures showed the pose Flinck used for the woman in Karlsruhe.

THE VAN DYCKIAN MODE OF PORTRAITURE IN AMSTER

DAM In the 1650s the van Dyckian mode of portraiture gained huge popularity in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, its success in the city came relatively late, for a portrait style based on that of van Dyck had already been in vogue in The Hague since the early 1640s. Why it did not immediately become a hit in Amsterdam as well is a question which has been raised by Joanna Woodall. In her 1990 article she proposed that the van Dyck ian mode of portraiture failed to become successful in Amsterdam in the 1640s because at that time the city's elite was engaged in a power struggle with the court at The Hague which required that it maintain a distinctive identity.53

The fight between the Amsterdam regents and the Dutch court ended in 1650, when Stadholder Willem 11 unexpectedly died. His death marked the beginning of the First Stadholderless Period (1650-72), a time when the Amsterdam regents formed the dominant force in the Dutch political arena. Woodall suggests that this al lowed the Amsterdam elite freely to adopt conventions prevalent in The Hague, including those in the field of portraiture.

Should we believe WoodalPs contention? I think not.

It is true that in the 1640s the Amsterdam ruling class competed with the stadholder for political power, but it is hard to imagine that their rivalry brought even por trait painting within its grip. Woodall's theory opposes the notion first expressed by the historian Daniel Roor da that the sudden boost in popularity of the van Dyck ian mode of portraiture in Amsterdam in the early 1650s reflected a shift of the city's elite from a bourgeois to an

53 J- Woodall, "Status symbols: role and rank in seven teenth-century Netherlandish portraiture," Dutch Crossing 42 (1990), pp. 34-68.

54 D.J. Roorda, "The ruling classes in Holland in the sev enteenth century," in J.S. Bromley and E.H. Kossman (eds.),

aristocratic outlook.54 Roorda suggests that after around 1650 the majority of the wealthy citizens of Amsterdam developed a more extravagant lifestyle, based on that of Dutch and foreign nobility. In this view, it makes perfect sense that the van Dyckian mode of portraiture became successful in Amsterdam in the 1650s, for it was prevalent among contemporary aristocracy, most nota bly the English. As Woodall argues, though, there is no reason to believe that the Amsterdam elite was opposed to an aristocratic portrait type earlier in the century. She shows that in the 1620s and 30s, in particular, several members of the Amsterdam upper class chose to rep resent themselves according to an iconography and in portrait formats (full-length and life-size) traditionally reserved for the nobility.55

This is fair enough, although there is much to say for Roorda's theory that a change in outlook did take place among the Amsterdam elite around 1650. There is no doubt that after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 (when the Dutch Republic was officially recognized) and the start of the First Stadholderless Period in 1650, the Am sterdam regents received a boost in status. We see it expressed most brilliantly in the new Town Hall, with its enormous dimensions and dazzling richness of inte rior decoration. Perhaps the newly acquired status of the Amsterdam upper class is also what underlies the sud den popularity of the van Dyckian style in Amsterdam at around this time. If a citizen of Amsterdam in those

days was looking for a new way of self-representation, one that could emphasize his wealth and self-confidence, the van Dyckian mode of portraiture must have seemed an excellent choice. Besides that, it was also available now, most notably from Flinck.

Yet, there is another way of explaining why the van Dyckian style only became fashionable in Amsterdam portrait painting after 1650. What if the van Dyckian mode of portraiture in Amsterdam was suggested by art ists to their clientele, rather than the other way around,

as is traditionally assumed? Instead of being a response to a presumed change in taste among his potential clien tele, Flinck's decision to model his style on that of van

Britain and the Netherlands, Groningen 1964, pp. 109-32. 55 Woodall, op. cit. (note 53), pp. 35-36 and 42-43, men

tions Cornelis van der Voort's portrait of Laurens Reael in the Rijksmuseum and Pickenoy's portrait of Catharina Hooft in Ber lin as examples.


234 HILBERT LOOTSMA

15 Gerard van Honthorst, Portrait of Amalia van Solms, 1632.

Utrecht, Centraal Museum

Dyck could after all have been prompted by an encoun ter with examples of the Flemish master's art. It is re

markable, to say the least, that it was exactly in the year Flinck started changing style (1645), that van Dyck's Iconography was published and that seven of the Flem ish artist's portraits were entrusted to an Amsterdam art dealer whom Flinck would almost certainly have known. Perhaps by 1645 Flinck was looking for a way to obtain more, or more important, commissions, and upon seeing work by van Dyck felt that he had found the avenue to serve his purpose.

56 Houbraken, op. cit. (note 1), vol. 2, p. 22: "Shortly after his marriage he had a large painting chamber built with high lights, on the top shelf of which stood the emperors' busts, together with many fine casts after the most highly esteemed

marble antiques, and between the two hung with all kinds of strange robes, clothes, bits of armor, guns and edged weapons, as well as old, costly velvet and other hangings embroidered with gold which came from the old court of the Duke of Cleves" ("Kort naa zyn trouwen had hy een groote schilderzaal met hooge ligten gebouwd, op welker bovenlyst de Borstbeelden der Keizeren geplaatst stonden, vorder vele fraaije afgietsels naar de

16 Govert Flinck, Portrait of a Lady as Venus with Cupid, 1648.

Jerusalem, The Israel Museum

If so, he was right, for his new, van Dyck-inspired portrait style made him one of the most successful art ists of Amsterdam. In the late 1640s, Flinck was doing so well financially that he was able to have a large studio built for himself which, according to Houbraken's de scription, must have been no less splendidly equipped than that of Rubens or Rembrandt.56 That it was only after 1650 that other artists in Amsterdam started to adapt their style to that of van Dyck, may have been because Flinck had only then proved how profitable it could be.

geagtste marmere Antiquen, en tusschen beide met velerhande vremde gewaden, kleederen, harnassen, schiet- en steekgeweer behangen; als ook oude kostelyke fluweele, en andere met goud geborduurde behangsels die gekomen waren uit het oude hof van den Hertog van Kleef'). Von Moltke, op cit. (note 6), p. 33, mentions 1649 as the year in which Flinck had his new studio built. Dudok van Heel, however, puts forward evidence that it must have been finished before 1648. See S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, "Het 'schilderhuis' van Govert Flinck en de kunsthandel van Uylenburgh aan de Lauriergracht te Amsterdam," Jaarboek van het Genootschap Amstelodamum 74 (1982), pp. 74-75.


Tracing a pose: Go vert Flinck and the emergence of the van Dyckian mode of portraiture 235

17 Go vert Flinck, 77?^ Company of Captain Joan Huydecooper

van Maarsseveen and Lieutenant Frans Oetgens van Waveren

(detail), 1648. Amsterdam, Amsterdams Historisch Museum

That it took Flinck some time to establish a viable

market for his new portrait style is not that remarkable. When Hanneman returned to The Hague in or around 1638 he did not immediately receive many commissions either. In fact, the van Dyckian mode of portraiture, which he helped introduce in the court capital did not start to make headway there until the early 1640s. Be sides, the conditions for a van Dyck-inspired portrait style to become successful in The Hague at the time of

57 Y. Yapou, "Who was Flinck's 'Venus'?," The Israel Mu seum Journal 2 (1983), pp. 58-61.

58 The face of the man in the Karlsruhe double portrait also bears a strong resemblance to that of Flinck in Wallerant Vail lant's portrait of him. See D. de Hoop Scheffer (ed.), Hollstein's

Dutch (5 Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, in progress, Amsterdam 1949-, vol. 31, p. 171, nr. 174.

59 Dudok van Heel seems to have been the first to have published the two pendant pieces as portraits of Flinck himself and his wife. See S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, "Enkele portretten 'a

Hanneman's arrival were far more favorable than they were in Amsterdam at the time when Flinck started

changing style. Amsterdam portraiture of around 1645 was still dominated by Rembrandt's style, which was to tally different from van Dyck's and accordingly hard to overcome. The leading portraitist in The Hague around 1638 was Gerard van Honthorst, who was not at all in susceptible to van Dyck's style, as we can see from his 1632 portrait of Amalia van Solms (fig. 15). In a sense, then, when Hanneman returned to The Hague, the road for the van Dyckian portrait style had already been par tially paved there.

It is time now to return to Flinck's Karlsruhe double por

trait. In 1983, Yonna Yapou published an article in which she proposed a possible identification of the man and woman.57 What she noticed is that the face of the woman

in this painting shows remarkable similarities to that of the Venus in a portrait historie which Flinck painted in 1648 (fig. 16). She argues that these two women are in all likelihood the same model. As to her identity, Yapou leaves little doubt that this is Ingitta Thoveling, Flinck's first wife. She puts forward two arguments to support this identification. The first is that the Israel Museum

picture has strong erotic implications and was therefore probably intended for Flinck himself, instead of being painted on commission. Her second argument is that the Karlsruhe man has many of the facial features of Flinck's

self-portrait in his 1648 civic guard piece, now in the Amsterdams Historisch Museum (fig. 17).58

When claiming that the Karlsruhe picture is a self portrait of Flinck and his wife, Yapou should perhaps have compared it with two pendant pieces by Flinck that are traditionally believed to depict the artist and Ingitta (figs. 18 and 19).59 A comparison between these works certainly lends support to Yapou's claim, for the physiognomic resemblances between the two couples are unmistakable.60

Pantique' door Rembrandt, Bol, Flinck en Backer," De Kroniek van het Rentbrandthuis 32 (1980), p. 7. Dudok van Heel's identi fication was accepted by Sumowski. See W. Sumowski, Gemdlde der Rembrandt-S'chiller, 6 vols., Landau (Pfalz) 1983-94, vol. 2, p. 1035, cat. nrs. 680, 681.

60 A preparatory drawing for the figure of the man in the Karlsruhe double portrait is in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amster dam. See P. Schatborn, exhib. cat. Figuurstudies: Nederlandse tekeningen uit de iyde eeuw, Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1981-82, p. 89, fig. 3.


236

18 Go vert Flinck, Portrait of a man, presumably the artist

himself 1643. Present whereabouts unknown 19 Govert Flinck, Portrait of a woman, presumably Ingitta

Thoveling. Sweden, private collection

If the Karlsruhe double portrait indeed depicts Flinck and his wife, it may have served a very specific function. A painting of that size (152 x 168 cm) would certainly have had a prominent place in Flinck's house. To Flinck's visitors, many of them potential customers, it could have served as an example of the portrait style for which Flinck, as I have argued, was attempting to establish a market.

DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT


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