Artist: Palamedesz Anthonie (Stevaerts)
Date: 1647
Size: 38 x 52 cm
Technique: Oil On Panel
This painting of 1647 is apparently Palamedesz’s earliest dated cortegaarde (a Dutch derivation from the French corps de garde, or guardroom). In the late 1640s and early 1650s, he painted many such works.5 His guardroom scenes employ a darker palette and more dramatic contrasts of light and shade than his early works.6 They are close to works by Jacob Duck and Willem Cornelisz Duyster, although Palamedesz’s technique is looser and less refined, as Sutton rightly observed.7 The elegant figures in Palamedesz’s guardroom scenes can also be compared to those by Simon Kick (1603-52), who moved from Delft to Amsterdam in or before 1624.8 Kloek has noted similarities between Palamedesz’s painting and Rembrandt’s Night Watch of 1642.9 The pose of the central figure is very close to that of Rembrandt’s Willem van Ruytenburch, and the composition with the highlighted officers standing out against the dark background is also comparable, as is the detail of the drum on the right. As Palamedesz appears to have been in Amsterdam on several occasions, it is not improbable that he knew The Night Watch. If so, this might also account for the darkening of the palette in his guardroom scenes. The standing officer with the halberd appears to begiving an order to the seated man reaching for a cuirass on the right. Five of the men in the background are busy with their uniforms, dressing or undressing; the others are relaxing. The figure of the standing officer in his buff jacket features in a number of Palamedesz’s guardrooms, and his pose is also repeated several times.10 The recurrence of specific figures and motifs in Palamedesz’s paintings indicates that he used figure studies, but relatively few of these have survived.11 However, a drawn study for the man tying his shoelaces is in Paris (fig. a). Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 227.
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