Portrait of René Descartes (1596-1650)
Frans Hals (Dutch, 1581–1666)
1647-1648
- Medium
- Oil on oak
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- height 19 cm, width 14 cm
- Culture
- Dutch
- Museum
- SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark: SMK waives its rights in this photograph, 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 SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
About this work
This small painting has been harshly treated. Someone has scratched zigzagging lines across it. But why such vandalism? Perhaps because it depicts a philosopher and mathematician who introduced many new ideas. Provocative thinking Even though the portrait is only a painted sketch for an etching by Jonas Suyderhoef, and possibly for a painted life-sized portrait too, it has not survived unscathed. But what was so new and provocative about Descartes? His scientific discoveries within mathematics? Or perhaps his philosophical writings, where he concludes that human thought is the only absolute? Frans Hals is believed to have painted this sketch before Descartes left Haarlem in September 1649 to serve Queen Christina of Sweden. Eva de la Fuente Pedersen, 2017.
