Spanish school; second third of the XVII century.

Spanish school; second third of the seventeenth century.
"Portrait of a gentleman.
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Measurements: 104 x 83 cm.

The upper area of the work offers the viewer the coat of arms of the protagonist, a feature that was common at the time as the heraldic designs were widespread among the European nobility in the century, in Spain largely caused by the reconquest. Hereditary and systematic heraldry had developed by the early 13th century. Exactly who had the right to use arms, by law or social convention, although this law varied to some extent between countries. The work stars an elderly man in sober pose and dress, seated on a chair and with his hand on his desk, indicating that he is an enlightened man. The recognition of the liberal arts, during the 1600s, led to the development of portrait painting, generating a great interest in the pictorial capture of emblematic figures belonging to the world of the arts.

In the 17th century, the panorama of European portraiture was varied and broad, with numerous influences and largely determined by the taste of both the clientele and the painter himself. However, in this century a new concept of portraiture was born, which would evolve throughout the century and unify all the national schools: the desire to capture the personality of the human being and his character, beyond his external reality and his social rank, in his effigy. During the previous century, portraiture had become consolidated among the upper classes, and was no longer reserved only for the court. For this reason, the formulas of the genre, as the seventeenth century progressed and even more so in the eighteenth century, would relax and move away from the ostentatious and symbolic official representations typical of the Baroque apparatus. On the other hand, the eighteenth century will react against the rigid etiquette of the previous century with a more human and individual conception of life, and this will be reflected in all areas, from the furniture that becomes smaller and more comfortable, replacing the large gilded and carved furniture, to the portrait itself, which will come to dispense, as we see here, of any symbolic or scenographic element to capture the individual instead of the character.