Portrait of a Man in Profile(Previously “Portrait of a Jew inProfile”)

oil on panel
20 x 14.1 cm
RR-121Attributed to Govaert Flinck© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of a Man in Profile (Previously “Portrait of a Jew in Profile”)
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How To Cite
DeWitt, David. "Portrait of a Man in Profile (Previously “Portrait of a Jew in Profile”)." InThe Leiden
Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
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© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of a Man in Profile (Previously “Portrait of a Jew in Profile”)
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This small panel bears the bust of a young bearded man turned to the left,

Comparative Figures

his profile emphatically set off by his shoulder-length curly hair. Only asliver of the right eyebrow and an indication of the right eyelid are visible,
suggesting a slight turn toward the viewer. The torso is ensconced in abrown garment, which blends into the color of the background, and so theviewer’s eye comes to rest on the man’s face, lit from the upper left. The
expression of this smooth visage—the closed mouth and the half-closed
eyes staring unfocused into the distance—suggests the serious andinternalized gaze of the model.
The man’s appearance—in particular the dark brown hair, short beard,
and lightly curved eyebrows—points to the description of Jesus appearing
in Samuel van Hoogstraten’s treatise on painting, published in 1678:
His hair is of the color of the ripe hazelnut, parted on the top in the mannerFig 1. Hans Burgmair, Lentulus
Letter with Jesus in Profile, 1512,
woodcut, 254 × 169 mm,
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung,
Munich, inv. 67874Dof the Nazarites, and falling straight down to the ears, but curling further
below, with blond highlights and fanning off his shoulders. He has a fairforehead and no wrinkles or marks on his face, his cheeks are tinged withpink . . . his beard is large and full but not long, and parted in the middle.
His glance shows simplicity adorned with maturity, his eyes are clear andcommanding, never apt to laugh.[1]Van Hoogstraten (1627–78) drew his description from the so-called
Lentulus Letter, which was then thought to provide a contemporary
description of Jesus’s physical appearance.[2] Indeed, a group of twelve
bust-length oil studies of the head of Jesus painted by Rembrandt van Rijn
(1606–69) and his pupils from the late 1640s to the mid-1650s seems tofollow the description in this letter. As Lloyd DeWitt has demonstrated,these representations of what was thought to be an eyewitness description

Fig 2. Govaert Flinck, The
Lamentation, 1637, oil on canvas,
90.1 x 71.9 cm, signed, National
Museum of Western Art, Tokyo,
inv. P.2006-001

formed a radical break with the existing iconographic tradition.[3] Instead offollowing the tradition of icon painting, Rembrandt and his pupils “broughtto life” an image of Jesus by portraying him with his head slightly turned orinclined. In these works, the facial expression is “turned inward,” and thefigure is rendered in loose, painterly brushwork. That these artists based
their images on living models is confirmed by contemporary sources.
Rembrandt’s own inventory of 1656 includes, alongside two Christus
tronie van Rembrandt (“head of Christ by Rembrandt”), a Christus tronie
naar het leven (“ head of Christ from life”) that must be connected to thisgroup of head studies.[4] The poet Jan Vos (1612–67), furthermore,

Fig 3. Govaert Flinck, Isaac
Blessing Jacob, c. 1635, oil oncanvas, 124 x 151 cm, signed,
Museum het Catharijneconvent,Utrecht, on loan from the InstituutCollectie Nederland, The Hague,© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of a Man in Profile (Previously “Portrait of a Jew in Profile”)
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indicates that Rembrandt and his pupils used Jewish models in theirinv. NK 2487

depictions of Jesus. In writing about a painting by Govaert Flinck(1615–60), the author explains with a sarcastic (and anti-Semitic) tone
why Jesus is shown with a closed mouth: “because the model was aJew.”[5]The present painting relates closely to this group of head studies, but it
diverges from them in one critical aspect: it is the only one that represents
the head of Jesus in profile. One of the few precedents for this pose is awoodcut of 1512 by Hans Burgmaier (fig 1), which accompanied thepublication of the Lentulus Letter. Burgmaier’s print depicts a profile imageof Jesus in a circle, thereby alluding to portraits of rulers from antiquity andthe Renaissance in which the profile pose emphasized the status andcharacter of the sitter.[6]According to dendrochronological analysis, the panel for this head study
could have been available for painting as early as 1625, which opens thepossibility that this work was executed at an earlier date than were theheads of Jesus created in the Rembrandt workshop in the late1640s.[7] Indeed, the handling of the figure relates more closely to theworks that Rembrandt and his students created in the 1630s than in the1640s. The painting’s execution most closely resembles Govaert Flinck’s
manner of painting figures when he was working in the workshop ofHendrick van Uylenburgh (1584/89–ca. 1660) during the late 1630s.
There, under the inspiration of Rembrandt’s powerful effects ofchiaroscuro, as well as that master’s muted palette and heightenedobservation of emotion, Flinck gradually moved away from the aesthetic of
his first teacher, Lambert Jacobsz (ca. 1598–1636). Flinck’s The
Lamentation, 1637, in Tokyo, demonstrates the smooth modeling andblunt chiaroscuro that marks the young artist’s works from this transitional
period of his career (fig 2).[8] The pinkish flesh tones, white highlights, andheavy black eyes in the Leiden Collection painting are entirely consistentwith the faces in The Lamentation.
As is evident in the Tokyo painting, as well as in his Isaac Blessing Jacob,
datable to about 1635 (fig 3), Flinck had a penchant for painting heads inprofile.[9] With most of these profiles, Flinck used the telling device of aswath of dark hair that falls down the far side of the face, coming forward a
bit artificially, and sets off the lighter contour. Flinck may have adapted this© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of a Man in Profile (Previously “Portrait of a Jew in Profile”)
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way of arranging hair from Rembrandt’s early self-portraits, but he quickly
abandoned this approach in his later works as he gained mastery of thehuman head and its lighting from a variety of angles. Perhaps Flinck had
another Passion scene in mind when he made this relatively direct study,
which is both powerfully observed from life and rendered in a compelling
fashion.[10]-David DeWitt© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of a Man in Profile (Previously “Portrait of a Jew in Profile”)
Page 6 of 8Endnotes
1. “Zijn hair is van rijpe hazelnoten verwe, boven, na gewoonte der Nazareen, gescheyden, en
tot de ooren toe effen, maer voort nederwaerts rond krullende, geelachtich blinkende, en vanzijne schouderen afwaejende; hy is schoon van voorhooft, zonder rimpel of vlekke in `taengezicht; zijn wangen zijn versiert met Roozeverwe, hebbende niets aen zijn lichaem dat
te berispen is; zijn baert is groot en overvloedich van hair, niet lang, maer in `t midden
verdeelt; het opslach zijner oogen vertoont wel een simpelheyt, maer versiert met rypicheyt;zijn oogen zijn klaer en ontsachlijk, noyt bereyt tot lichen.” Samuel van Hoogstraten,
Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst: Anders de zichtbaere werelt (Rotterdam,1678), 105. For the English translation, see Gary Schwartz, The Rembrandt Book (NewYork, 2006), 303.
2. Erik Inglis, Faces of Power and Piety (Los Angeles, 2008), 23; and Lloyd DeWitt, “Testing
Tradition Against Nature: Rembrandt’s Radical New Image of Jesus,” inRembrandt and theFace of Jesus, ed. Lloyd DeWitt, Blaise Ducos, and George S. Keyes (Exh. cat. Paris,Musée du Louvre; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts)(Philadelphia, 2011), 121–22. The letter, which was purportedly sent by a certain Publius
Lentulus to the Roman senate during Christ’s lifetime, described his physical appearance.
The text of the letter was transmitted in various publications over the years, and was wellknown in the seventeenth-century (see fig. 1).
3. Lloyd DeWitt, “Testing Tradition Against Nature: Rembrandt’s Radical New Image ofJesus,” in Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus , ed. Lloyd DeWitt, Blaise Ducos, and George
S. Keyes (Exh. cat. Paris, Musée du Louvre; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Detroit, Detroit
Institute of Arts) (Philadelphia, 2011), 109–45.
4. Franziska Gottwald, “The Heads of Christ in the Context of the Tronie,” inRembrandt andthe Face of Jesus, ed. Lloyd DeWitt, Blaise Ducos, and George S. Keyes (Exh. cat. Paris,Musée du Louvre; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts), 154–55. For
the definition of the painting category tronie, see ibid., 147–51.
5. “Dit beeldt is naar een Joodt gemaalt.” Jan Vos, “Christus, voor Joris de Wyze, door Govert
Flinck, naar een Joodt, geschildert,” in Alle de Gedichten van den Poëet Jan Vos , vol. 1(Amsterdam, 1662), 512. See also Gary Schwartz, The Rembrandt Book (New York, 2006),303.
6. See Lloyd DeWitt, “Testing Tradition Against Nature: Rembrandt’s Radical New Image ofJesus,” in Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus , ed. Lloyd DeWitt, Blaise Ducos, and George
S. Keyes (Exh. cat. Paris, Musée du Louvre; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Detroit, Detroit
Institute of Arts) (Philadelphia, 2011), 122.
7. Peter Klein, letter of 22 February 2008. See also the Technical Summary.
© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPortrait of a Man in Profile (Previously “Portrait of a Jew in Profile”)
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8. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Bänden, 6 vols. (Landau,1983), 2:1019, no. 612, 1044 (ill.).
9. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Bänden, 6 vols. (Landau,1983), 2:1019, no. 613, 1045 (ill.). He appears to have inherited this penchant from his firstteacher.
10. It is probably not the painting criticized by Jan Vos in his poem, however, as he describes
the face of Jesus as “shining”: “Het hart is anders dan het aanzicht dat hier straalt” (Theheart is different than the face that shines here). Jan Vos, “Christus, voor Joris de Wyze,
door Govert Flinck, naar een Joodt, geschildert,” in Alle de Gedichten van den Poëet Jan
Vos, vol. 1 (Amsterdam, 1662), 512.

Provenance[Bijl-Van Urk B. V., Alkmaar, by 2006, as by School of Rembrandt].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2006.

Exhibition History
Paris, Musée du Louvre, “Rembrandt et la figure du Christ / Rembrandt and the Face ofJesus,” 21 April–18 July 2011; Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 3 August–30
October 2011; Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, 20 November 2011–12 February 2012, no.
42, as by School of Rembrandt [lent by the present owner].

References
DeWitt, Lloyd. “La tradition à l’épreuve de la nature: Rembrandt et son image radicalement
neuve du Christ.” In Rembrandt et la figure du Christ . Edited by Lloyd DeWitt, Blaise Ducos,
and George S. Keyes. Exh. cat. Paris, Musée du Louvre; Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museumof Art; Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts. Calenzano, 2011, 133–34, no. 4.15, 244, no. 42, as by
School of Rembrandt.
DeWitt, Lloyd. “Testing Tradition Against Nature: Rembrandt’s Radical New Image ofJesus.” In Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus . Edited by Lloyd DeWitt, Blaise Ducos, and© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Portrait of a Man in Profile (Previously “Portrait of a Jew in Profile”)
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George S. Keyes. Exh. cat. Paris, Musée du Louvre; Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum ofArt; Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts. Philadelphia, 2011, 130, 133, no. 4.15, 242, no. 42, asby School of Rembrandt.

Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of thin, vertically grained, rectangular oak, has a tree-ring sequencethat was not found to match eastern Baltic, western European, or other dated or undated
reference data.[1] The unthinned and uncradled panel has bevels along all four sides. The panel
reverse has a label but no wax seals, import stamps, inscriptions or panel maker’s mark.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied followed by a brown imprimatura. Theground remains visible through the brown glazes along the shoulder of the figure’s jacket. The
paint has been applied with visible brushwork throughout, including along the background;however, it is most pronounced through the figure’s face, hair and jacket. More opaque paintapplied along the background extends up to the curls. The contour line that defines the nostril
along the underside of the nose and the one between the two lips form two pronounced raised
horizontal lines.
No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at
780–1000 nanometers.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition and remains in agood state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The identification of the wood is based on Ian Tyers’s 2010 dendrochronology report.
Dendrochronology undertaken by Peter Klein in 2006 found “an earliest felling date can bederived for the year 1617, more plausible is a felling date between 1621..1623….1627 + x.
With a minimum of 2 years for seasoning an earliest creation of the painting is possible from1619 upwards. Under the assumption of a median of 15 sapwood rings and 2 years forseasoning a creation is plausible from 1625 upwards.”© 2017 The Leiden Collection