Portretbuste van admiraal Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen 1806

This engraving depicts Admiral Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen and was crafted by Charles Howard Hodges. Notice how Kinsbergen is portrayed in profile, a format popularized in ancient Rome for imperial portraiture. It’s no accident that he's draped in cloth, reminiscent of a toga, an explicit reference to classical antiquity. This echoes images of emperors, generals, and philosophers of old. The profile is a powerful tool in the Renaissance, employed to imbue subjects with an aura of wisdom, authority, and timelessness, and this artistic tradition continues in this work. The act of memorializing figures through classical symbolism, particularly in portraiture, speaks to the enduring human desire to connect with history. It is a method through which societies seek to immortalize their heroes and ideals. This image invites us to consider how we choose to remember and represent figures of authority, intertwining the past with the present.