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A Boy Blowing on a Firebrand
Gerrit van Honthorst (Dutch, 1592–1656)
1621–22
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 75.5 × 64.5 cm (30 × 25 3/8 in.); Framed: 100.7 × 88.6 × 5.4 cm (39 5/8 × 34 7/8 × 2 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Purchased with funds provided by the Old Masters Society, Julius Lewis and the Rhoades Foundation, Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan in memory of Alice Welsh Skilling and in honor of Marlene Welsh Phillips and Martha Wolff, Anne Searle Bent…
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Depictions like this one of a boy blowing on a burning ember were popular among European painters studying illumination. Artists like Michelangelo and El Greco used this subject to showcase their skills at imitating nature, particularly the fleeting reflections of fi relight. In Gerrit van Honthorst’s version, the youth gazes quizzically at the viewer while blowing on the titular fi rebrand, which he is using to light the candle in his right hand. The boy wears a slashed doublet and a slouched, feathered beret, which in the artist’s day would have been viewed as an antiquated costume of the previous century.
Born into a family of artists, Honthorst followed the traditional path of many Dutch and Flemish artists by moving to Rome to study. A Boy Blowing on a Firebrand was painted shortly after he returned to his native Utrecht in 1620. The subject itself derives from antiquity: Roman author Pliny’s Natural History (77–79 CE) not only profoundly influenced the principles of Renaissance art but also described lost paintings of the classical period, including one of a boy blowing on an ember. Aft er spending several successful years working in Rome, Honthorst brought this theme back with…
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
