Portret van Johann Christian Lehmann 1717

Martin Bernigeroth created this print of Johann Christian Lehmann, sometime between 1685 and 1733. It's now part of the collection at the Rijksmuseum. Consider how the visual language of this portrait constructs status. Look at the trappings of wealth: the elaborate wig, the fine lace, and the classical column that gestures towards learning and taste. Bernigeroth was German, and this image would have circulated in the German states of the late Baroque period. Thinkers of the era were concerned with the problem of how images create meaning. The very act of producing and circulating this print was part of a project of defining what it meant to be an educated and influential man in the early eighteenth century. To understand it better, we can look at the history of portraiture, and the role of academies and other institutions in promoting certain kinds of images and certain ideas about social status. Art historians use such resources to better understand the social life of images.