Family Portrait 1671 - 1676

Gerard Hoet created this oil on copper painting of a family portrait, enclosed by a gilded frame, likely sometime between 1648 and 1733 in the Netherlands. The family is adorned in fine garments, and the cherubic frame suggests a regal bearing. The patriarch looms in the background dressed in what appears to be armor. But what does it mean to portray a family in this way? The Dutch Republic was a place of massive mercantile expansion in the 17th and 18th centuries. This small portrait gives us a glimpse into the self-fashioning of wealthy Dutch families. The armor may speak to the father's military past, or perhaps to the family's aspirations to nobility. To better understand, we might look further into the family's genealogy and historical fashion. As historians, we use these resources to interpret the social and institutional contexts that shape artistic production, remembering that the meaning of art is always contingent on those contexts.