Portret van een jongeman met muts 1646

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout made this etching of a young man wearing a hat in 1646. The Netherlands saw a surge in portraiture during this period because Dutch society at the time was becoming increasingly bourgeois. Portraits were commissioned as badges of status. As the centers of power shifted from the aristocracy to the merchant classes, so too did the conventions of art. The institutions of art began to reflect these cultural shifts. What can we make of the turban, then? The exotic nature of the sitter's dress throws the portrait into the fashionable category of the “tronie,” a character study that became an important form of artistic experimentation in the Dutch Golden Age. But these images also point to the vast trade networks that the Netherlands enjoyed at the time. As historians, we can look to costume books or trade records to learn more about the cultural significance of images like this one.