Portret van Wallerant Vaillant 1752

Cornelis van Noorde made this portrait of Wallerant Vaillant using pen and gray ink, with brush and gray wash, around 1760 in the Netherlands. Vaillant was a successful and prolific portrait painter in the Dutch Golden Age. This work can be viewed as part of the growing appreciation for art history that developed in the late 18th century. The drawing is not simply a likeness, but a record of an artist from the past, for the benefit of artists in the present. The print room, where this drawing is kept, arose as a place of study and connoisseurship, tied into the academic training of artists. The Rijksmuseum and other national collections served a didactic function in the 18th century and beyond, teaching the public how to look at and appreciate art, and shaping the development of artistic taste. To understand the history of art, we can research archival documents and institutional records that tell us something about the purpose and audience of this kind of image.