Body pose(d) : body posture in seventeenth-century Dutch male portraiture

Abstract

This transdisciplinary doctoral project reassesses body posture in seventeenth-century Dutch male portraiture. By focusing on unusual postures, and opposing strong visual traditions with deviating patterns, Body Pose(d) explores the complex relationship between body poses and their decorous use, thereby addressing structural methodological problems in Art History: the definition of uniqueness and the establishment of meaning. The project is divided into three parts, each focusing on an unusual pose or a closely connected group of poses. The central case studies in the first part are Frans Hals’s Willem van Heythuysen portraits (ca.1625, 1634), especially a portrait in which Van Heythuysen is sitting with his legs wide open and crossed - a highly unusual pose in contemporary portraiture. The second part focuses on Bartholomeus van der Helst’s portraits of Aert van Nes and Johan de Liefde, both painted in 1668. The last part explores Nicolaes Maes’s Portrait of a Young Man (ca.1675-1680) in which the sitter is shown looking over his shoulder. The project demonstrates that unconventional body poses make a portrait more appealing and effectively striking. In so doing, this project underscores the relationship between unconventional poses and genre fluidity, interrogating the role of conventional body postures as defining characteristics of the portrait genre. This focus further relates to the multiplicity of masculinity and diversity in representations of men, arguing against monolithic portrayals of masculinity. By concentrating on the specific origins of the portraits, this study further stresses that context is critical to the study of body postures, and that it is essential to incorporate contemporary visual and textual sources to understand the nuanced meaning of body postures.