Self-Portrait, Paulus Moreelse, c. 1623

There are three extant painted self-portraits by Moreelse, none of which is dated.4 Both De Jonge and Domela Nieuwenhuis consider the earliest to be the Self-Portrait in Hannover (fig. a), in which Moreelse wears a hat and holds a round disk, most likely a mirror.5 By comparison with the Hannover Self-Portrait, the composition of the Rijksmuseum painting is much simpler; Moreelse shows only his hatless head and shoulders. Although the present painting retains the dynamic pose of the Hannover Self-Portrait, in which the artist looks over his shoulder, it has been tempered. There are no allusions to Moreelse’s vocation as an artist. Instead, the ruff and, especially, the tabbaard emphasize his position as a prominent member of the bourgeoisie.6 According to Domela Nieuwenhuis, Moreelse’s choice of clothing in this portrait might have been prompted by the artist’s desire to identify himself with the foremost Utrecht portrait painter of the 16th century, Jan van Scorel, who was portrayed wearing a tabbaard by Antonio Moro in 1559. The tabbaard, however, was not an unusual clothing item in the 17th century, making it unlikely that anyone would have noticed the comparison if, indeed, such was intended by Moreelse. De Jonge dated Moreelse’s Rijksmuseum Self-Portrait to between 1630 and 1635.7 Domela Nieuwenhuis, though, has convincingly shown that a date around the beginning of the 1620s would be more appropriate.8 The sitter’s ‘stitched and ragged’ ruff would already have been old-fashioned by 1625,9 and while the sfumato handling evident in Moreelse’s portraits from before 1622 is missing, nor is the detailed plasticity of the faces in the portraits from 1625, such as the Portrait of a Man, possibly Reijnier Pauw (SK-C-1440) in evidence. The Rijksmuseum Self-Portrait can be best compared to the 1622 Portrait of a Man in Buenos Aires.10 The traditional identification of the present Self-Portrait as the model for an engraved portrait of Moreelse has been rightly repudiated by Domela Nieuwenhuis.11 Jonathan Bikker, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 218.