The human face became a theme in Dutch Baroque painting independently of the representative task of portrait art. As distinctive character heads with pronounced facial features, a new type of figure painting established itself.
Old and young people in plain clothes or extravagant costumes up to the self-representation of an artist were the preferred subjects, without the depicted being fixed to a certain role and identity.
In contrast to status portraits, which were commissioned works staging the status and rank of the models, faces sound out the spectrum of human expression.
Jacob Backer’s (1608-1651) recently acquired portrait of a boy with an axe(1645) is shown for the first time in the bilingual exhibition (Geschichten in Geschichtern. Porträt und Tronie in der niederländischen Kunst). Paintings by artists such as Ferdinand Bol, Samuel van Hoogstraten, and Jan Lievens are grouped around it, presented in an exquisite selection of historical, genre, and self-portraits by Rembrandt.