Shown from the hips up, a man with pale skin and shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a long-sleeved, rose-pink satin jacket and pants, props a flagpole with a voluminous blue flag against one shoulder in this vertical portrait painting. He stands with his body facing our left in profile with his left hand on his hip, elbow jutting out at us. He turns his face to look directly at us with dark eyes. He has a straight nose, rosy cheeks, and a mustache and narrow goatee below his lips, which are slightly parted. He wears a wide-brimmed black hat generously adorned with pale blue, turquoise, pale yellow, and orange plumes. The fabric of his pink clothing reflects the light in wide patches of white, creating the impression of a satin sheen. Wide, pale gray lace lines the front opening of the jacket, the shoulders, the arms, and the sides of the trousers. His white lace collar is tied with a pale celery-green bow and a bow of the same color ties the lace cuff of the wrist we can see. A baby-blue sash wraps around his waist and is tied in a large rosette at the back. Both hands are covered with ivory-white gloves. His left wrist rests against his hip so the underside of those fingers dangle down, while the other hand supports the flag pole, which is wrapped in blue fabric. A sword hangs from his front hip. The topaz-blue fabric of the flag, or standard, drapes down from the flag pole, which extends off the top right corner of the canvas. A coat of arms, about the size of a person’s palm, hangs from a nail with a string in the upper left corner on the taupe-colored wall behind the man. The coat of arms is made up of three fleur-de-lis lined up in a diagonal band and the remaining two corners are filled with stylized lions, long tongues curling out. The artist dated the work “1640” in the lower left corner.
Read the visual description

Shown from the hips up, a man with pale skin and shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a long-sleeved, rose-pink satin jacket and pants, props a flagpole with a voluminous blue flag against one shoulder in this vertical portrait painting. He stands with his body facing our left in profile with his left hand on his hip, elbow jutting out at us. He turns his face to look directly at us with dark eyes. He has a straight nose, rosy cheeks, and a mustache and narrow goatee below his lips, which are slightly parted. He wears a wide-brimmed black hat generously adorned with pale blue, turquoise, pale yellow, and orange plumes. The fabric of his pink clothing reflects the light in wide patches of white, creating the impression of a satin sheen. Wide, pale gray lace lines the front opening of the jacket, the shoulders, the arms, and the sides of the trousers. His white lace collar is tied with a pale celery-green bow and a bow of the same color ties the lace cuff of the wrist we can see. A baby-blue sash wraps around his waist and is tied in a large rosette at the back. Both hands are covered with ivory-white gloves. His left wrist rests against his hip so the underside of those fingers dangle down, while the other hand supports the flag pole, which is wrapped in blue fabric. A sword hangs from his front hip. The topaz-blue fabric of the flag, or standard, drapes down from the flag pole, which extends off the top right corner of the canvas. A coat of arms, about the size of a person’s palm, hangs from a nail with a string in the upper left corner on the taupe-colored wall behind the man. The coat of arms is made up of three fleur-de-lis lined up in a diagonal band and the remaining two corners are filled with stylized lions, long tongues curling out. The artist dated the work “1640” in the lower left corner.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Andries Stilte as a Standard Bearer

Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck

Date
1640
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 104 x 78.5 cm (40 15/16 x 30 7/8 in.) framed: 137.2 x 111.8 x 8.9 cm (54 x 44 x 3 1/2 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1998.13.1
Credit line
Patrons' Permanent Fund
Time span
1601 to 1650
Department
CNE-B

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • Baroque
  • Dutch
  • male
  • portrait
  • Acquired after launch of Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (NGA Online Editions)
  • Stilte, Andries
Provenance

(Jacques Goudstikker, Amsterdam), before 1917. Dr. Walter von Pannwitz [1856-1920], Berlin, by 1917;[1] by inheritance to his wife, Catalina von Pannwitz [1876-1959, née Roth], Heemstede; by descent in the Pannwitz family; (Otto Nauman, Ltd., New York); purchased 1988 by Mr. and Mrs. Michal Hornstein, Montreal; (sale, Sotheby's, New York, 30 January 1998, no. 69); purchased through (Bob P. Haboldt & Co., New York) by NGA. [1] The Pannwitz family lent the painting to the Mauritshuis, The Hague, from 1917 to 1923. Walter von Pannwitz was a Munich lawyer who, with his second wife Catalina Roth, relocated to Berlin in 1910. He acquired an extensive collection of paintings and applied arts in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Inscription

lower left: :1640:

NGA object ID 104729. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.