Today’s offering is The 1642 Goodwyfe.
I came across this gem when searching for an image of the Tradescant family for my very first post. Like Tom’s blog, this is a learned miscellany on a particular topic. Here the material is political tracts and portraits from the 1640s.
I find the portraits particularly striking, as the number of Flemish artists operating in the 1640S suggests that an artists’ colony had developed beyond just the court artists Van Dyck, or Lely and Kneller in the following generation. It’s also interesting that these portraits often show their subjects in blacks and silvers. Is this an effect of war-time sobriety, the aesthetic influence of Dutch art of the time, or a response to the Puritans’ own deliberate style?
Catherine Pye, by Henry Giles and Sir John Pennington, by Gerald Soest.
