Portrait of a Woman
Godefridus Schalcken(Made 1643 – 1706 The Hague)ca. 1675–85
oil on copper
13.4 x 10.9 cm
signed with a monogram in dark paint along
background, lower left quadrant: “G. S.”
GS-110© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Jansen, Guido. “Portrait of a Woman” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock
Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived December2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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The art of painting portrait miniatures in the Northern and Southern Netherlands has

Comparative Figureslittle to do with “the art of limning” as it was practiced in England and France.
English miniatures, which were usually executed in gouache, watercolor or enamel,differ from those produced in the Low Countries in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. In Holland and Flanders, such portraits were commonly painted in oil on a
support of wood or metal (usually copper). Moreover, unlike the English specialists inthis field, the artists who painted portrait miniatures in the Netherlands neverconsidered miniatures their main activity. They painted these tiny portraits alongside
their regular work.
The production of miniature portraits in the Netherlands was certainly not a Leiden
specialty.[1] Nevertheless, it is striking that many Leiden artists—among them Gerrit
Dou (1613–75); Frans van Mieris (1635–81), his sons Jan (1660–90) and Willem(1662–1747), and his grandson Frans II (1689–1763); Pieter van Slingelandt

Fig 1. Godefridus Schalcken, Portraitof Coenraet Ruysch (1650-1731), May
1674, 9.2 x 7.5 cm, Private Collection,
The Netherlands, © Dordrechts
Museum / Marco de Nood(1640–91); Ary de Vois (1630/35–80); Carel de Moor (1655–1738); and Godefridus
Schalcken—produced signed work of this kind, not to mention the portrait miniatures
attributable to Pieter Leermans (ca. 1670–85).[2] That such small likenesses enjoyed acertain degree of popularity was due in part to their relatively modest price, but above
all to their intimate nature: they were easy to carry around, and could even be worn onclothing. Schalcken’s Portrait of Maria Anna of Pfalz-Neuburg (1667–1740), Consortof Carlos II, King of Spain of 1690 is but one example.[3]Despite its considerable popularity among Dutch artists and sitters in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, the portrait miniature is no longer held in such high esteem,
certainly not in the art historical literature. Schalcken’s contribution to this specialty isdefinitely the least appreciated part of his oeuvre. Up to now, portrait miniatures byhis hand have been discussed merely in entries in catalogues raisonnés of his work.
Beherman’s book includes only nine, and not all of them are by Schalcken.[4] Since
Beherman’s publication, however, at least six more portrait miniatures signed by
Schalcken have been found.[5]One such recently discovered portrait is this exceptionally fine Portrait of a Woman,
which the painter signed in monogram at the lower left. We see the young womanturning her head to her left as she looks at us with wide open eyes. She wears a bluegreen dress with a low neckline, over which is draped a transparent ruche, held inplace by a bejeweled broach. A string of pearls adorns her neck, but her most striking
feature is her hairdo, a hurluberlu coiffure, in which the hair is drawn to the sides andfalls in large ringlets over the shoulders. The rest of her hair is combed back andbound up in a large knot, or chignon, consisting of rolled-up braids. The chignon isheld together by the string of pearls woven through it. The woman’s ears are© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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decorated with pendant earrings made of gold wire and a large cut stone, probably arock crystal. The light falls fully on her face and neck. The shadow at the leftemphasizes the contours of the young lady’s pretty face and sets it off from thebackground.
The hurluberlu coiffure makes it fairly easy to date the tiny portrait, because thishairdo became fashionable in Paris only after 1670. Moreover, the signature—themonogram G.S.—indicates that the portrait could not have been painted very early inthe 1670s. Until around 1675 Schalcken customarily signed even the smallest of hisworks in full. He did this on two miniatures with genre scenes, but more relevant in
the present context is the full signature on the portrait miniature of Coenraet Ruysch(1650–1731) (fig 1), which Schalcken must have painted before Ruysch embarked on
his Grand Tour in May 1674.[6] The other portrait miniatures by his hand were all
produced later and bear his monogram, which means that this Portrait of aWoman can be dated to between ca. 1675 and the early 1680s, before the hurluberlu
coiffure went out of fashion and was succeeded by the high Fontange coiffure (seeGS-106).
A recently discovered portrait miniature is Portrait of a Man in a White Wig.[7] It ispainted on copper, like the Portrait of a Woman, and is almost identical in size.
Furthermore, it also bears Schalcken’s monogram. This male portrait can be dated toaround 1680–85, so it is quite possible that these two portraits once formed a pair.
Incidentally, Schalcken’s activities in the field of miniature portraiture may well haveprompted other painters in Dordrecht to attempt something similar. Schalcken’s pupil
Arnoldus Boonen (1669–1729), at any rate, also painted portraits in miniature format,
as did Barend Kalraet and Arnold Houbraken.

- Guido Jansen, 2017

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Portrait of a Woman
Page 5 of 6Endnotes
1. Among the many Dutch masters who created portrait miniatures were David Baudringhien, Job
Berckheyde, Gerard ter Borch, Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen, Gerrit Lundens, Simon Luttichuys, Michielvan Musscher, Cornelis van Poelenburch, Abraham Snaphaen, Hendrick Sorgh, Jan Verkolje, DanielVertangen, and Adriaen van der Werff. Tiny portraits in oil remained popular remained popular ineighteenth-century Holland, which led such artists as Cornelis Troost, Jan Stolker, and Jan Maurits
Quinkhard to practice this specialty.
2. See Peeter Leermans, Portrait of a Man, PLe-100.
3. Johnny van Haeften, Dutch and Flemish Old Master Paintings 18 (London, 2011), no. 26; more examplesare to be found in Diana Scarisbrick, Portrait Jewels: Opulence and Intimacy from the Medici to theRomanovs (London, 2011).
4. Thierry Beherman, Godfried Schalcken (Paris, 1988), nos. 69, 70, 102, 108, 123, 124, 228, 230, and268. I am not certain that nos. 70 and 230 are by Schalcken. I define a miniature as having an admittedly
arbitrary maximum height of 15 cm.
5. The six portrait miniatures in question include portrayals of Pieter Teding van Berkhout (RKD
(Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) no. 123967)
and his wife, Elisabeth Ruysch (RKD (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands
Institute for Art History) no. 123968); her brother Coenraad Ruysch (RKD (Rijksbureau voor
Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) no. 208865); and a woman who
was probably the artist’s wife, Françoisia van Diemen (RKD (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische
Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) no. 198197); as well as the Portrait of a Man in aWhite Wig (see note 7), and the present painting.
6. Guido Jansen, “Ferdinand Voet and Coenraad Ruysch,” Burlington Magazine 153 (2011): fig. 20 (oil oncopper, 9.2 x 7.5 cm, oval). The portrait of the Leiden poet Willem van Heemskerck (oil on panel, 10 x7 cm, oval) of 1676 is, as far as I know, the earliest dated portrait miniature with Schalcken’smonogram. This small panel is not in Beherman, though it is included in Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A
Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on
the Work of John Smith, ed. and trans. Edward G. Hawke, 5: 411, no. 306. 8 vols. (London, 1907–28),
originally published as Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten
höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols. (Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28). For several earlyand fully signed genre pieces in miniature format, see Thierry Beherman, Godfried Schalcken (Paris,1988), nos. 133 and 135.
7. Sale, New York (Sotheby’s), 27 January 2011, lot 280; signed in monogram; oil on copper, 13.2 x 10.9cm.

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Portrait of a Woman
Page 6 of 6Provenance(Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 8 January 2008, no. 298).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2008.

Technical Summary
The support, an oval-shaped copper sheet, has burrs along the edges. There are no obvious hammer or rollmarks, but the copper has substantial weight and does not flex when handled.[1] The copper remains in planewith no indentations. There is a brown mottled oxidation layer followed by a hazy white layer along thereverse. There are no wax seals, stamps, stencils or labels along the reverse.
No ground is visible.[2] The paint has been applied smoothly wet-into-wet through the background and hair,smoothly with dry paint and visible brushwork through the flesh tones, and with low rounded dots to create
the highlights of the pearl necklace, gold earring, and jewel along the mousseline. Raised pin-sized dots ofpaint, particularly along the left half of the brown background, appear to be gritty inclusions or the result ofoxidation products.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers, and nocompositional changes are visible in the images or as pentimenti. There is no X-radiograph of the painting.
The painting is signed with a monogram in dark paint in the background along the lower left quadrant but isundated.
The painting was cleaned and restored in 2008 and remains in a good state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. According to Isabel Horovitz, Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece Paintings on Copper,
1575–1775 (New York, 1999), 67–68, “a highly worked sheet of copper will be less flexible than one
that is not highly worked, and this is why quite thin (0.5 mm) sheets of copper can provide suchexcellent rigid supports for paint films.”
2. The painting was examined on-site with no stereomicroscope. Magnification with 5X Optivisor.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection