Portrait of a Clergyman (de Ville)
| 'The Unknown Clergyman' | |
 | |
| Artist | Guilliam de Ville |
|---|---|
| Year | 1639 |
| Type | Oil on canvas |
| Subject | Unknown clergyman |
| Dimensions | 129.5 cm × 107.1 cm (51.0 in × 42.2 in) |
| Location | Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport, Rhode Island |
Portrait of a Clergyman — sometimes called Portrait of a 17th Century Clergyman or The Unknown Clergyman — is an oil on canvas portrait painting by Guilliam de Ville (ca. 1614-1672) dated 1639. The identity of the subject, an elderly clergyman, is unknown. It is owned by the Redwood Library and Athenaeum (Identifier: PA.125), Newport, Rhode Island, USA, where it hangs.
De Ville was a Dutch painter of portraits and still lifes, born in Amsterdam and active in England. Only one other known painting by de Ville (a still life) survives.
Description
The portrait is of an older male European seen in 3/4th length view. He is standing and turned slightly to his left. His left hand rests on a large book, probably the Bible. He has light hair and blue eyes and wears a white clerical collar and a black cassock. To left of the breast is the inscription “Aetatis [i.e., aged] 59”. There are clear dates in two places, both 1639. The artist's signature is on the paper by the head of a gavel.
History and possible subject identities
The portrait may have been owned at one time by local Rhode Island historian Stephen Randall (1793-1874), who took special interest in one of his ancestors, Roger Williams (ca. 1603-1683), the Puritan, Baptist and Rhode Island Colony founder. Randall may have gifted it to Redwood. In 1927, the Providence artist Wilfred Duphinney suggested that the subject may in fact be Roger Williams himself. In 1938, Wilber Cheesman Nelson, author of a 95-page booklet on another Rhode Island founder, John Clarke (1609-1676), popularized the notion that he is the subject. [1] Clarke, a physician and Baptist minister, has been the popular choice ever since. (Another Clarke biographer, Louis Franklin Asher [d. 1996], featured the portrait on the dust cover of his 1997 book.) There is no evidence, however, for either of these two identifications. The subject of the painting is indicated as being 59 years old in 1639 and would therefore have been born about 1580, thereby ruling out both Williams and Clarke. Asher proposes that the dates on the painting are a mistake for 1659, but advances no rationale for how such a curious double error could have come about.[2])
References
See also
- James, Sydney (1999), John Clarke and His Legacies, T. Dwight Bozeman (editor); Pennsylvania State Univerisity Press, 240 pages.