An Old Man with Folded Arms, Simon Kick, 1639 – (Simon Kick) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Simon Kick

Date: 1639

Size: 71 x 54 cm

Technique: Oil On Panel

The museum bought this picture in 1920 because it wanted to have at least one representative work by every seventeenth-century artist.4 This study of an unknown man, though, is from Simon Kick’s early career, before he made his name with genre scenes.5 The long-haired, bearded figure features in many of his tronies, including a signed one of 1637,6 and another of roughly the same date which Sumowski has convincingly attributed to Kick.7 Mention has been made of the affinity of depictions like these to the early Salomon Koninck.8 The old men with their fleshy hands, the massive drapery folds and the chiaroscuro also recall the study heads of the late 1620s by the young Jan Lievens. The present figure’s physiognomy is even related to that of the model used by Lievens for his Head of an Old Man of around 1640.9 The figure in Kick’s aforementioned 1637 tronie is characterized as East Asian by his turban, but here his greenish-brown clothing has no exotic or historicizing touches. Folded arms of this kind are also found in a painting of a monk and in a picture of a man with a hand in front of his chest, both of which were made by someone in the circle around the early Lievens and Rembrandt.10 The positioning of the arms in the Rijksmuseum work may be an expression of contrition as described by Ripa in the text accompanying his personification of conversion: ‘She has her hands crossed on her breast, displaying signs of great remorse and regret.’11 The pose also often signified religious contemplation and humility on the part of hermits and penitents, as in the extremely popular print series published in 1612 after designs by Abraham Bloemaert.12 Gerbrand Korevaar, 2023 See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements