Portret van de staatsman Johannes Gerardus Luyken 1786 - 1809

Reinier Vinkeles made this print of the statesman Johannes Gerardus Luyken using etching around the late 18th century. We see Luyken represented as a portrait on a pedestal, a common trope for honouring public figures at this time in the Netherlands. The theatrical curtain in the top left gives the image a sense of the performative nature of politics and the way the statesman occupies a stage. But who was Luyken and why was he important? The inscription on the pedestal tells us he was a lawyer. The fact that this print exists in the Rijksmuseum today tells us about the public role of art at the time. What are the politics of representing someone in this way? What can we know about the social conditions and institutional histories that shaped Vinkeles' artistic production? These are the kinds of questions a social art historian might ask and can be answered with more research into archives, historical records, and other cultural products of the time.