Fashioning Holland: The hidden language of clothing in seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture
Written by Annabella Lawlor, McGill University
Edited by Beatrice Moritz and Marie Frangie
Depictions of costume and accessories in seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture indicate deeper meanings when analyzed in the context of the period’s social customs, economic status, and attitudes toward identity as a whole. The Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen (Fig. 1), Portrait of Aletta Hanemans (Fig. 2), and Portrait of Jacob Olycan (Fig. 3), all by Frans Hals, along with the Portrait of a Family in an Interior (Fig. 4) by Emanuel de Witte are primary examples of how clothing aids in constructing and strengthening Dutch identity. Due to the rising demand for the production of paintings, specifically portraits, in the Dutch Republic at this time, those who commissioned these pieces aimed to define their expanding burgher identities within the newly independent nation. Clothing takes up the majority of each portrait’s pictorial space, making it essential for artists and their sitters to choose a specific attire for depiction, one that would be memorialized on a wall for eternity. The pictorial choices of clothing should not be overlooked, as they are intrinsically tied to the nation’s ideals, helping illuminate the subdued messages of each painting by defining social attitudes and class through abundant draperies, ornately illustrated accessories, and demarcated costume motifs.
Figure 1. Frans Hals, Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen, oil painting, c. 1625, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
After the northern Dutch provinces became independent from Habsburg Spain in the late sixteenth century, portraiture became a powerful mode of navigating Dutch selfhood. Painters explored, through their creations, the many faces of this burgeoning wealthy society rid of the traditional aristocratic social structures established by their previous Spanish rulers. The independent Dutch provinces were becoming one the most economically advanced countries in all of seventeenth-century Europe due to the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and the many other mercantile pursuits towards international trade expansion.[1] Frans Hals’s Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen, produced around 1625, depicts the eponymous wealthy Haarlem textile merchant and is Hals’s only full-length portrait commissioned for an individual, exhibiting the immense amount of fortune amassed in Van Heythuysen’s trade (Fig 1).[2] Van Heythuysen commissioned his portrait in this particular style, traditionally favored by nobility, to convey effectively the wealth and glory acquired in his position as a textile trader. This painting motif rose to prominence amongst early seventeenth-century Dutch regent circles in conjunction with the rise of new social roles outside of the nobility and aristocracy. Van Heythuysen is proudly posed, with a sober gaze, leg extended confidently. Hand placed on hip in self-assurance, he grasps his sword tightly as if wielding his privilege in its metal length. He evokes the attitude of kings and sovereigns, yet he holds no high position, just the wealth that comes from his uniquely Dutch occupation. Though this implementation of pictorializations traditional to the very societies from which the Dutch province claimed to depart may seem counter-intuitive, it is entirely intentional. The equation of power to Spain’s empire establishes the Dutch Republic as an individualistic nation, remarkably expansive and fortified.
In the early seventeenth century, clothing was foundational in constructing the identities of the burgher class, specifically the newly dominant mercantile elite. Van Heythuysen’s clothing choices perfectly encapsulate this transitional period in which the Dutch established a new identity, independent, yet not totally separate, from the garment traditions of Spain (Fig. 1). He wears all-black attire consisting of a matching satin doublet and bouffant knee breeches paired with a falling ruff around his neck and wide-brimmed black hat atop his head to frame his gallant face.[3] His all-black ensemble reflects the common color trend in much of Dutch dress at the time, though this fashion originated in sixteenth-century Spain when Charles V of Spain adopted the dark color for his courts as a representation of sobriety and sensibility amongst the social elite. Black came to represent a sense of Spanish nationhood and trade abundance due to the dye being sourced from the logwood tree in Spain’s Mexican colonies.[4] Though Van Heythuysen’s black doublet and breeches still linger with Spanish influence, the accessorized details of his costume such as his collar and lace cuffs reflect a Dutch independence from this past. The falling ruff came into fashion in the Republic as a direct rebellion from the starched, stiff ruffs fashionable in Spain, perhaps to embrace the soberness of Dutch life through its sweeping softness and layered linen produced in the provinces to contradict their past constrictions under Spanish rule. His cuffs are adorned with handmade bobbin lace, originating in Flanders but popularized amongst Dutch lace-makers in the 1620s.[5] The process of creating the ruff and lace itself is inherently Dutch, for the Republic was known for its many craftspeople and artistic practices. Lacework and tailoring are physical manifestations of Dutchness, representative of a society reliant on creation and consumption. Van Heythuysen’s bobbin-lace cuffs and falling ruff are microcosms of the Dutch Republic, one that carves its new identity from the foundation of those who came before them.
Attire helps to reveal the intended self-definitions of the patron, appearing as motifs of the aristocratic, militaristic, upper echelons of traditional society. Attending to the details of Van Heythuysen’s garments illustrates the intricacies of fashion to form a visual language that communicates the nation’s thriving economy and social sphere. In Hals’s portrait of Van Heythuysen, his clothing and accessories alone indicate his high status and accumulated wealth. His doublet is of the highest quality from the time, made from a black-on-black acanthus patterned satin, one of the most costly processes of fabric manufacturing.[6] The delicate flourishes on Van Heythuysen’s costume depart from the typical trend of a solid black satin attire, possibly alluding to his exquisite taste and curation working as a textile merchant. Along with this, his elegant rapier of inlaid silver and expensive embellishment recall the sword-bearers of aristocratic portraiture. He extends the sword triumphantly, thrusting forward his social pretensions by choosing to depict himself as a man of military or sovereign status, neither of which he possessed. With the portrait displayed in his home after its completion, Van Heythuysen wished to portray himself as an influential and reputable man, one who has the means to acquire what he pleases, one who is successful occupationally, and one who exerts his power over others. The portrait serves as a promotional image for his name and brand, using the visual language of fashion to exhibit his blossoming wealth and high-class status.
Clothing showcases the trade relations of an empire, marking placeness and cultural origin through the inclusion of imported textiles for defining the many trade relationships of the Dutch Republic’s budding mercantile class. For Emanuel de Witte’s 1678 painting Portrait of a Family in an Interior, not much is known about the image’s depicted figures (Fig. 4). The family rests casually in their lavish sitting room, adorned with extravagant wallpaper with gold inlay, various displayed paintings and sculptural art pieces, and an embroidered table cover hailing from East Asian trading ports. The main article that exemplifies the affluent trade relationships of seventeenth-century Holland is the attire of the young girl who carries a fruit platter into the lush scene. Her dress is constructed with an imported Indian calico cotton textile or a Dutch reproduction of the style, as the textile style’s popularity and exclusivity among its wealthy wearers slowly trickled into local Dutch workshops to appeal to the nation’s increasingly diverse taste for imported fabrics. Calico textiles became visible in Dutch apparel in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Imported fabrics such as this one were most commonly found in the collections of merchants, perhaps indicating through the girl’s costume that this family has amassed their wealth through mercantile aspirations.[7] The Dutch East India Company, or VOC, was a large-scale chartered trading company that constructed and upheld Dutch trade connections in the Indian Ocean. The company was the reason that much of the rising mercantile class acquired such immense prosperity and wealth through trade.[8] This dress physically embodies the shifting trends of late-seventeenth-century Dutch consumerism, illustrating this newfound desire for Asian commodities and goods acquired through this trade.[9] The success of the VOC manifests in the girl’s costume; its depiction is a blatant indication of the booming economy’s stability, expressing how trade-reliant the Dutch nation had become near the end of the seventeenth century.
Figure 4. Emanuel de Witte, Portrait of a Family in an Interior, oil painting, 1678, Bavarian State Painting Collections, Munich.
Figure 2. Frans Hals, Portrait of Aletta Hanemans, oil painting, 1625, Mauritshuis, Den Haag.
While costume in male portraiture served as a demonstration of wealth and influence, marriage portraiture specifically engaged constricting costumes as demarcations of the implicative role of women in Dutch society. The 1625 painting Portrait of Aletta Hanemans, created by Frans Hals, was produced to mark the occasion of sitter Aletta’s marriage to Jacob Olycan in the same year (Fig. 2). Her costume consists of a flared pink satin skirt, an embroidered stomacher, or borst, a set ruff to hide her decollete, a diadem cap to cover her head, and a black velvet vlieger, a full-length overgown that pins to the ornate stomacher, covering the shoulders and arms.[10] Her dress is fanciful and of the highest quality of the period while also being traditional for the type of clothing married women wore. Hanemans resided in Haarlem, a city famous for their textile industry, therefore having access to the Republic’s finest garments, accessible to her due to the wealth her husband acquired working as a brewer and civic guardsman.[11] While the vibrancy of her attire indicates her affluent freedom of wealth, it is a costume of constraint and separation from this occupational sphere, one that deems her physically fit solely for the home. Hanemans’ vlieger is most representative of these instituted societal restrictions, as it was reserved for elite married women to wear. Upon marrying, Hanemans transitioned from sporting a traditional style of dress for unmarried women, called the bouwen, to the more conservative attire of the vlieger costume.[12] This vlieger style implies a physical manifestation of a woman’s societal limitations in being assigned to the domestic sphere of the private home, constricting the free female body to the duties of marriage and household care. Not only does her subdued dress represent the expected righteousness of married women, but it is quite literally restrictive for her movement. Her sumptuous collar and reinforced stomacher impede every motion, alluding to the daily constraints of women in the male-dominated Dutch society. The tulip and violet-like patterns of Hanemans’ golden embroidered borst carry connotations of marriage and loyalty to one’s husband, as per the many pattern books of the Dutch professional embroiderers and tailors in the early seventeenth century.[13] Traditionally adorning only bridal stomachers, these metallic floral motifs represent the fluidity of a growing love or the woman’s role in producing children for a transactional marriage. The ornately decorated borst contours her body, extending over the abdomen to resemble a potential pregnancy. With the distended shape of Hanemans’ costumed stomach referencing fertility and her accessories used to discern a sense of decency and concealment, her outfit symbolizes every role a wife should play in Dutch society: one constricted to bearing children, serving their households loyally, and being subservient to the working men of their Republic.
Figure 3. Frans Hals, Portrait of Jacob Olycan, oil painting, 1625, Mauritshuis, Den Haag.
Clothing became a marker of the new burgher middle class’s gendered separatism through the inclusion of calculated stylistic motifs in physical presentation. As previously stated, Aletta Hanemans and her husband Jacob Pietersz Olycan resided in Haarlem as members of its newly elite working class. Looking at their images beside one another, Hanemans stands meekly in contrast to the proud posture of Olycan (Fig. 2, Fig. 3). The hand on his hip evokes a notion of nominal power, reminiscent of the aristocratic nations that regularly implemented this stance in portraiture of sovereign male powers.[14] Hanemans’ obedience to him is apparent: her hand politely drapes above the stomacher, lightly grazing its form while closing off her body to the viewer. She is drowning in gold accessories, like her large and presumably expensive matrimonial ring that sits upon her right pointer finger and the golden cuff bracelet on her left wrist. The vibrancy of her dress notably differs from the soberness of Olycan’s “burgher black” costume; this use of contrasting color exemplifies the expectations of the two genders in Dutch society. In this world, he works as the caregiver for the family while Hanemans herself is an accessory to him, an extension of Olycan’s body to decorate for showing his wealth and accomplishment. Their dress separates them into two social spheres: Jacob claiming a serious role of purpose in the public working sphere and Hanemans assuming a virtuous role in the privately guarded domestic sphere. Hanemans physically embodies her husband’s empire of wealth through her dress; she serves as a proud ornamentation for displaying Olycan’s trove of riches accumulated as an elite working man. Hanemans is seen as entirely separate from the accomplishments of her husband, simply as his property that he can flaunt using excessive ornamentation and expensive finery when he pleases.
Attire can define social beliefs, costume can define gender roles, dress can define trade relationships, and fashion can define a nation. It is through this pictorial language of garment depiction that a painting’s message can operate in a higher, less literal figure plane. Clothing holds immense power in indicating the social pressures and expectations of a period, further heightening the intentions of a painting by working concurrently with paired pictorial elements to produce a vision of cultural definition.
Endnotes
[1] Emily Erikson, “State-Merchant Relations and Economic Thought: The Dutch Republic and England, 1580-1720,” Socio-Economic Review 20, no. 3 (2022): 967.
[2] Rudi Ekkart and Quentin Buvelot, eds., Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals (Royal Picture Gallery, Mauritshuis, 2007), 114-115.
[3] Ronni Baer, Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer (MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2015), 149.
[4] Aileen Ribeiro, Clothing Art: The Visual Culture of Fashion, 1600-1914 (Yale University Press, 2016), 102.
[5] Ekkart and Buvelot, 114.
[6] Ribeiro, 115.
[7] Beverly Lemire, “Revising the Historical Narrative: India, Europe, and the Cotton Trade, c. 1300-1800,” in The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850, eds. Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (Oxford University Press, 2009), 205-226.
[8] Giorgio Riello, “The Globalization of Cotton Textiles: Indian Cottons, Europe, and the Atlantic World,” in The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850, eds. Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (Oxford University Press, 2009), 261-287.
[9] François Boucher, A History of Costume in the West (Thames & Hudson, 1967), 271-273.
[10] Ekkart and Buvelot, 110-111.
[11] Bianca M. Du Mortier, “Costume in Frans Hals,” in Frans Hals, ed. Seymour Slive (Mercatorfonds, 1989), 46.
[12] Marieke de Winkel, “The Artist as Couturier: The ‘Portrayal’ of Clothing in the Golden Age,” in Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals (Royal Picture Gallery, Mauritshuis, 2007), 67-68.
[13] Du Mortier, 48.
[14] Joanna Woodall, “Sovereign Bodies: The Reality of Status in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Portraiture,” in Portraiture: Facing the Subject (Manchester University Press, 1997), 79.