Precis on Woodall Article

Prycis on Sovereign bodies : the reality of status in seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture ' by Joanna Woodall

Sovereign bodies : the reality of status in seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture ' - is an article published by Dr . Joanna Woodall , Courtauld Institute of Art in the Portraiture : Facing the subject . Woodall discusses the general opinion that the style of the Dutch seventeenth-century portrait has been determined by the bourgeois culture of Holland . Dutch painting is often seen as completely realistic and rational , lacking mysticism and admiration of aristocratic art According to Woodall , this understanding is too simplified

and the Dutch style of the period can not be explained only by reference to bourgeois values , since Dutch portraiture did preserve a number of features usual for aristocratic painting style

Woodall asserts that the rise of burgeons individualism in the early XVII century did play a certain role in the development of the portraiture , however , this influenced mostly the personalities of those portrayed , but not the style itself . She analyses a classification of nobility proposed by famous Dutch humanist De Holanda around 1550 , which included nobles of birth , nobles of virtue and nobles of arts and concludes that there is a number of cases persons who are not nobles of birth are portrayed with reference to traditional concepts of portraiture , inherited and adapted from aristocratic ideology . Even though the influence of nobles of birth ' has gradually decreased in Holland , their place as art models has been occupied by representatives of the dominating bourgeois class

Woodall identifies three strategies...