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© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Jansen, Guido. “Portrait of a Woman” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited by Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/portrait-of-a-woman/ (archived May2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrativeoccurs.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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The art of painting portrait miniatures in the Northern and Southern

Comparative Figures

Netherlands has little to do with “the art of limning” as it was practiced inEngland and France. English miniatures, which were usually executed ingouache, watercolor or enamel, differ from those produced in the Low
Countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Holland andFlanders, such portraits were commonly painted in oil on a support of woodor metal (usually copper). Moreover, unlike the English specialists in thisfield, 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 aLeidenspecialty.[1]Nevertheless,itisstriking

that

many

Leidenartists—among them Gerrit Dou (1613–75); Frans van Mieris (1635–81), hissons Jan (1660–90) and Willem (1662–1747), and his grandson Frans IIFig 1. Godefridus Schalcken,
Portrait of Coenraet Ruysch(1650-1731), May 1674, 9.2 x 7.5cm, Private Collection, TheNetherlands, © Dordrechts
Museum / Marco de Nood(1689–1763); Pieter van Slingelandt (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 a certain
degree of popularity was due in part to their relatively modest price, butabove all to their intimate nature: they were easy to carry around, and could
even be worn on clothing. Schalcken’s Portrait of Maria Anna of PfalzNeuburg (1667–1740), Consort of Carlos II, King of Spain of 1690 is but oneexample.[3]Despite its considerable popularity among Dutch artists and sitters in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the portrait miniature is no longer heldin such high esteem, certainly not in the art historical literature. Schalcken’s
contribution to this specialty is definitely the least appreciated part of hisoeuvre. Up to now, portrait miniatures by his hand have been discussed
merely in entries in catalogues raisonnés of his work. Beherman’s bookincludes only nine, and not all of them are by Schalcken.[4] Since
Beherman’s publication, however, at least six more portrait miniaturessigned by Schalcken have been found.[5]One such recently discovered portrait is this exceptionally fine Portrait of aWoman, which the painter signed in monogram at the lower left. We see theyoung woman turning her head to her left as she looks at us with wide openeyes. She wears a blue-green dress with a low neckline, over which isdraped a transparent ruche, held in place by a bejeweled broach. A string of© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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pearls adorns her neck, but her most striking feature is her hairdo, ahurluberlu coiffure, in which the hair is drawn to the sides and falls in large
ringlets over the shoulders. The rest of her hair is combed back and boundup 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 aredecorated with pendant earrings made of gold wire and a large cut stone,
probably a rock crystal. The light falls fully on her face and neck. The shadow
at the left emphasizes the contours of the young lady’s pretty face and sets
it off from the background.
The hurluberlu coiffure makes it fairly easy to date the tiny portrait, because
this hairdo became fashionable in Paris only after 1670. Moreover, thesignature—the monogram G.S.—indicates that the portrait could not havebeen painted very early in the 1670s. Until around 1675 Schalcken
customarily signed even the smallest of his works in full. He did this on two
miniatures with genre scenes, but more relevant in the present context is thefull signature on the portrait miniature of Coenraet Ruysch (1650–1731) (fig1), which Schalcken must have painted before Ruysch embarked on hisGrand 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 thehurluberlu coiffure went out of fashion and was succeeded by the highFontange coiffure (see GS-106).
A recently discovered portrait miniature is Portrait of a Man in a White Wig.[7]It is painted on copper, like the Portrait of a Woman, and is almost identicalin size. Furthermore, it also bears Schalcken’s monogram. This male portrait
can be dated to around 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 have prompted 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

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of a Woman
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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, Michiel van Musscher, Cornelis van Poelenburch, Abraham Snaphaen, HendrickSorgh, Jan Verkolje, Daniel Vertangen, and Adriaen van der Werff. Tiny portraits in oilremained popular remained popular in eighteenth-century Holland, which led such artists asCornelis 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 examples are to be found in Diana Scarisbrick, Portrait Jewels: Opulence and Intimacy
from the Medici to the Romanovs (London, 2011).
4. Thierry Beherman, Godfried Schalcken (Paris, 1988), nos. 69, 70, 102, 108, 123, 124, 228,230, and 268. 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 KunsthistorischeDocumentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) no. 123968); her brother CoenraadRuysch (RKD (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for ArtHistory) no. 208865); and a woman who was probably the artist’s wife, Françoisia vanDiemen (RKD (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for ArtHistory) no. 198197); as well as the Portrait of a Man in a White Wig (see note 7), and thepresent painting.
6. Guido Jansen, “Ferdinand Voet and Coenraad Ruysch,” Burlington Magazine 153 (2011): fig.
20 (oil on copper, 9.2 x 7.5 cm, oval). The portrait of the Leiden poet Willem van Heemskerck(oil on panel, 10 x 7 cm, oval) of 1676 is, as far as I know, the earliest dated portrait miniature
with Schalcken’s monogram. This small panel is not in Beherman, though it is included inCornelis 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 asBeschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen
Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols. (Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28). For several early andfully 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,© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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13.2 x 10.9 cm.

Provenance(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 roll marks, but the copper has substantial weight and does not flex when handled.[1]The copper remains in plane with no indentations. There is a brown mottled oxidation layer
followed by a hazy white layer along the reverse. There are no wax seals, stamps, stencils orlabels along the reverse.
No ground is visible.[2] The paint has been applied smoothly wet-into-wet through the backgroundand 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 themousseline. Raised pin-sized dots of paint, particularly along the left half of the brownbackground, appear to be gritty inclusions or the result of oxidation products.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers, andno compositional changes are visible in the images or as pentimenti. There is no X-radiograph ofthe painting.
The painting is signed with a monogram in dark paint in the background along the lower left
quadrant but is undated.
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 onCopper, 1575–1775 (New York, 1999), 67–68, “a highly worked sheet of copper will be lessflexible than one that is not highly worked, and this is why quite thin (0.5 mm) sheets ofcopper can provide such excellent rigid supports for paint films.”
2. The painting was examined on-site with no stereomicroscope. Magnification with 5X© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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