Caught ! 👀
A Boy Holding a Fruit: An #Allegory of Taste
#Brussels #Belgium
by #flemish painter #MichaelSweerts 5 senses painting , a common theme in Northern Europe #17thCArt
This #Tronie Beautifully captures and allows us to contemplate the role of the senses in human experience #ArtHistory

A light-skinned woman, her thin hair tightly wrapped in a white scarf, looks forward with teary eyes and a toothless smile. The urban poor of Rome and the peasants of the neighboring countryside inspired Flemish artist Michael Sweerts during his stay in Italy in the mid-1600s. The practice of painting the lower classes was relatively new at the time, and pictures of the poor were often derisive caricatures. Sweerts treated his subject with compassion, vividly capturing the woman's inner beauty while accurately recording her external appearance: the loose skin, thinning hair, and wart on the left side of her face. Although the painting is highly finished, Sweerts's rich brushwork is evident in alternately blended and separated strokes of different shades, creating a strong sense of three-dimensional form. This brushwork is especially striking in the head scarf and the collar. Though a Flemish painter Michael Sweerts worked in Italy, Syria, and India. By the age of twenty-eight, Sweerts was living in Rome and was a member of the painters' academy there. In subsequent years, Sweerts worked as a representative at the papal customs house, collecting wool for a wealthy Antwerp merchant. At the age of thirty-eight, he returned to his native Brussels, where he founded an academy of drawing and joined the painters' guild. Almost all of Sweerts's existing paintings date from his time in Rome. Sweerts painted religious and secular works, but he is most noted for his realistic portraits like this one. His paintings exhibited his interest not only in the observation of daily life but also in the study of classical sculpture, which he pursued in Rome. Four years after returning to Brussels, Sweerts left again, this time to Asia as a missionary. In Aleppo, Syria, Sweerts painted and proselytized, but he was dismissed from the mission after only two years because of his unstable and undisciplined character. He eventually reached Goa, India, where he died two years later.

Head of a Woman by Michael Sweerts (Flemish) - Oil on panel / c. 1654 - Getty Museum (Los Angeles, California) #womeninart #art #oilpainting #womensart #MichaelSweerts #artwork #portraitofawoman #FlemishArtist #FlemishArt #oldage #GettyCenter #GettyMuseum #Sweerts #TheGetty #paintingofawoman

Portrait of Joseph Deutz, Michael Sweerts, 1648

Portrait of Joseph Deutz, #MichaelSweerts, 1648. This is an unusual portrait: a young man directly engaging the viewer, as though he is about to speak. Deutz, a member of one of the wealthiest families in Amsterdam, is painted by Michael Sweerts in Rome.
www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collectio...

Portrait of Joseph Deutz, #MichaelSweerts, 1648. This is an unusual portrait: a young man directly engaging the viewer, as though he is about to speak. Deutz, a member of one of the wealthiest families in Amsterdam, is painted by Michael Sweerts in Rome.
https://t.co/8jqIakjhdY

@mauritshuis_museum.

Many of Sweert’s paintings have a mysterious atmosphere, created by the contrasts between light and dark, and often by the unclear situations he painted.

Draughts Players (1652) - Michael Sweerts

#michaelsweerts #mauritshuis #thehague

#Sweerts