Portret van een man in profiel 1751 - 1816

Reinier Vinkeles made this engraving of a man in profile in the Netherlands in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. It's an intriguing example of how the cultural elite sought to connect themselves with the glory of antiquity. The profile view, framed in an oval, immediately recalls ancient Roman portraiture. Likewise, the man's hairstyle and simple garment are intended to evoke a classical ideal. Even the lettering below the image appears to mimic the kind of inscription one might find on an ancient coin or bust. The man is almost certainly not meant to be seen as a Roman, however, but as a contemporary of the artist who has adopted classical culture as a model. This was a common trope in the period, and we might consider it as a symptom of the Enlightenment's faith in reason and its rejection of the recent past as barbaric. As historians, we can look at documents from the period to understand this phenomenon and the social forces that shaped it.