Staande man met tas van opzij 1640 - 1660

Willem Drost made this pen and brown ink drawing of a standing man, seen from the side, sometime in the mid-17th century. Drost was working in the Netherlands at the time. A pupil of Rembrandt, Drost would have been part of a cultural moment in which the institutions of art were in flux. This image prompts questions about the politics of imagery, particularly how it relates to social class. The man's clothing seems to mark him as someone of lower status, a member of the working classes perhaps. His bag suggests that he carries tools, or perhaps something to sell. The image implies a certain social realism, but it is also romantic. Is Drost valorizing this man? What does it mean to take a member of the laboring classes as the subject of art? As art historians, we can look to the visual codes that are in play here, researching costume, class structures, and institutions of art during this time, so that we might better understand the social world in which Drost was working.