Portret van een heer met een lange witte bef, in een ovaal 1639 - 1695

Curator: This delicate drawing, crafted using pencil, captures the likeness of Christiaan Huygens, and dates roughly between 1639 and 1695. It's presented as "Portret van een heer met een lange witte bef, in een ovaal"—A Portrait of a Gentleman with a Long White Collar, in an Oval. Editor: He looks...pensive, maybe a little melancholic? Like he’s just been told he has to sit for another portrait. The oval frame makes it feel almost like looking into a locket, doesn't it? Curator: It is interesting to see portraiture from this era. The sitters are almost always men who belonged to an elite and scholarly segment of society, their power displayed through controlled expressions and formal attire. How much of this enforced somberness was actually the subject and how much was convention, I wonder. Editor: Oh, convention, definitely. But you can still feel something of the person underneath all that heavy expectation, right? I mean, look at the way the light catches his eye – there's a little glint of... mischief, maybe? Curator: Or defiance, perhaps? He is wearing a ‘bef’ which was associated at this time with progressive gentlemen with some intellectual interest. And though the execution is formal, note how much freedom the artist allowed for the hair—curling in such an organic and carefree way. Editor: See? Even in pencil, you can sense the person trying to wiggle free from the frame, both literally and figuratively. Curator: Right, portraits were rarely innocent documents. These images also solidified hierarchies, often presenting sitters according to gendered or racialized ideas about who could hold authority. Consider who was absent from these portrait halls—usually anyone who wasn't a man from a powerful family. Editor: It makes you wonder about all the untold stories, doesn't it? The artists, like in this case, often don’t get the attention, their subjects becoming figures from our long lost past. But here we are, still thinking about them. Funny, isn’t it? Curator: Precisely—these absences remind us of how identities have been historically marginalized, and it prompts us to question the politics of representation within art. Editor: In the end, it always goes back to what isn't there, doesn't it? But thank goodness, they couldn’t erase the light in his eye. Curator: Yes, we are lucky to glean something of Huygen's spirit after all these years.