I’ve noticed that there are some paintings from the Renaissance, especially the mid-1600s, that seem absurdly similar, as if they are based on the same pattern or template. For a really egregious example, here is Frederik Hendrik of Orange and Ambrosio Spinola, both by Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt. The two men, for those who don’t know the history, fought against each other; they were mortal enemies. And yet they are depicted wearing armour that is almost identical in decoration, right down to the placement of the little Roman gods and goddesses inside a circle. It’s almost comical how blatantly one is copied directly from the other (Spinola’s portrait was done earlier.)
How did this work exactly? Was there a sketch that was traced? Or did the painter (or his apprentices) copy the first painting directly?
Was anyone ever annoyed that his portrait came out so similar to someone else’s?
I think more likely the latter. Or (as copyists today) working off a sketch of the first one. You just have to look at various portraits of Gloriana to see this, the face is always the same. Plus certain poses were fairly standard - the 3/4 pose, the baton in the hand, etc. It’s what makes the differences stand out - the hand on sword vs hand on helmet, the ruff vs the lace falling band, the different trunkhose. I think each guy brought his own sword, though. It’s even possible that the armour isn’t either man’s, but a suit of prop armour in the artist’s studio, and each painting was fully original. Kind of like how modern photographer’s studios have all sorts of props and the like.
How would they know? People didn’t generally travel as much, and there were no arts magazines or the like, plus I think that kind of thing was accepted as par for the course. It prevented a long sitting, too .
These are two works by the same artist, done in the same style. Portrait painting was very common at that time, and it wouldn’t be unusual for an artist to use the same basic pose for several portraits. And regarding the armor: There’s no way that either of the men wasn’t wearing his own armor; that would be as important as his face, if not more so. It’s possible that although they were “mortal enemies,” there was some commonality in their backgrounds that would account for the similarity of the armor. Plus, the fashion of the day would dictate many of the details; similar to how two of today’s heads of state might be wearing the same label suit, even if they were mortal enemies.
Plus: if an artist comes up with a winning design, it’s not unusual to use elements of that design in subsequent works. But the proportions and angles are too dissimilar to have come from a template.
In the 1500s and early 1600s there were still distinctive schools of armour making with individual styles, and very rich people wore extremely decorated and artistic pieces such as this and this (another pair of very similar portraits by the same artist.) Or this, or this, or this.
By the mid-1600s the days of “name” armourers with individual styles and workshops had largely passed. It was not like the 1500s where there was an Augsburg school, a Greenwich school, a Milanese school, a French school, etc of armour making with distinctive artisans and unique styles. By the mid-1600s the standard suit of armour was a heavy cuirassier’s harness with very wide leg defenses, a relatively brief breastplate, and little ornamentation; as in here,here,here,here,here, etc. The day of the tournament was mostly over; the need for highly elaborate show-offy armour was not as great.
However there were still people making ornamented versions of the 17th-century armour; it was just rarer. Take note of this painting of four generations of Princes of Orange. The painting was done in 1662-1666. You can see Frederik Hendrik there, wearing a simplified version of the armour he wears in the Mierevelt painting, and likewise his brother Maurice (in the gold armour) is wearing a highly simplified version of the suit he wears in this portrait, also by Mierevelt. Clearly the four-generations painting was done after the originals and so tries to replicate the armour they wear, with far less detail. So whether they actually owned them or not, those suits became associated with those two Dutch noblemen.
But Frederik Hendrik and Ambrosio Spinola did not even remotely come from the same background; Spinola came from a very old Italian family of nobility, while Frederik Hendrik was a member of the House of Nassau-Orange and also a descendant of Gaspard de Coligny, the Huguenot admiral. I doubt that these two men would have both happened to come into possession of armour decorated with little drums, arrows, trumpets, swords, and Greek gods, since those are the only two examples of any such armour with those particular decorations that I have ever seen in portraiture, and I have seen hundreds of these portraits. So I am not sure I buy the theory that the two of them happened to have armours from the same workshop.
Just to complicate things further, the upper half of the same armour appears in this portrait of Frederik Hendrik, which Christie’s, when they sold it in 2004, attributed to Mytens. It is true that they note an alternative attribution to Mierevelt. But the engraving on which that attribution is based is probably a version of this one, which could just as easily be based on the painting that actually is by Mierevelt.
Note also that the size, pose, props etc. are all just conventional features of portaiture of that period, whether by Mierevelt or by most other northern European painters. Hence, no doubt, Christie’s hesitation.
Except that there is one moment at which their lives did intersect, which just happens to be the moment when the Spinola portrait was painted - his embassy to the United Provinces to conclude the Twelve Years’ Truce of 1609. That is why Mierevelt was able to paint him. Armour worn or given to him on that occasion is exactly what one would expect him to be painted in.
Nor would I be surprised if the same motifs recurred elsewhere. As is now very well documented, early-seventeenth century craftsmen in almost every medium rarely invented such decorative detail themselves. And military trophies were a real cliché. I strongly suspect that a thorough search would eventually turn up other examples. But the patterns could be anywhere - on silver, fabric, leather hangings, furniture, plasterwork, tapestries… And, yes, on armour.
You see an awful lot of repetitiveness in American Naive Art portraits. It those cases, the itinerant artists knew a few standard poses for the bodies, and just tried to make the faces customized. So they look awfully similar, except for faces. Sometimes even including the faces.
I’m not saying that the European artuists you give weren’t capable of greater variation, but there’s a tendency in human nature to stick with what has worked before. I’m not surprised at the uniformity.
CEO photos for corporate brochures are a contemporary equivalent to formal pre-industrial portrait paintings. And if anything they are more similar to each other than the examples shown in the OP.
(Disclaimers: there are always exceptions and things have eased up a bit in the last 15 years.)
Interesting stuff. The opinion of an armour expert who I consulted seems to be that the details on the armour were probably filled in by the artist (or his apprentice/s.) The form of the armours is different, in many ways, but the decoration is so similar that it’s likely it was just the embellishment for the portrait. The Christie’s portrait that APB linked to, whether by Mytens or Mierevelt, was painted decades after the one of Spinola, so either way it probably just copied the decoration.
