A portrait of the artist in his studio

Michiel van Musscher was the leading painter of portraits and genre scenes in Amsterdam in the late seventeenth century. The confidence he gained from this success is reflected in the self-portraits he painted, seven of which are known today, each employing a different formula and stemming from a different moment of his career. This painting is one of the earliest and arguably the most remarkable. It is clearly modelled after Johannes Vermeer’s famous allegory of The Art of Painting (fig. 1; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), which Musscher must have seen during a visit to Vermeer’s studio in Delft. It shows the self-assured twenty-five-year-old painter, dressed in a costly Japanese robe, seated at his easel, portraying a client. When van Musscher’s second wife died in 1699, an inventory was drawn up of the couple’s belongings, which lists among the paintings: ‘The portrait of the accountholder in his studio’ ('Het pourtrait van den rendant in syn schilderkamer'). It has been suggested that the shop sign depicting ‘the art of painting’, mentioned in 1705 in van Musscher’s estate, refers to this painting as well. After the artist died, in 1705, one of the appraisers of the 1699 inventory, the well-known dealer Jan Pietersz. Zomer, organised the sale in Amsterdam of 17 paintings from van Musscher’s possession, including ‘a Painter in his room, very beautiful’, no doubt the same work. This evidence indicates that the work remained with the artist until his death, suggesting that it held special significance for him, just as Vermeer never parted with his The Art of Painting.

The subject ultimately originates in sixteenth-century depictions of Saint Luke painting the Virgin and other similar themes featuring an artist painting a sitter from life, such as Apelles painting Campaspe. The seventeenth-century Netherlands produced a wealth of studio scenes, often with the artist painting, or showing a work to a potential buyer or connoisseur. Van Musscher would certainly have been familiar with those examples by Frans van Mieris and Gabriel Metsu, both of whom he clearly admired, judging from the many quotations from their work that can be found in his other paintings. Just like Vermeer’s allegory, van Musscher’s A Portrait of the Artist in his Studio contains allusions to the illusionistic power of painting, for instance the tapestry serving as a curtain, and to the supreme example set by the art of classical antiquity; note, for example, the inclusion of a cast of the famous Borghese Gladiator on the table beside the painter. Many of the props in this intriguing work recur in van Musscher’s later compositions, notably in his 1679 Self-portrait in the Rotterdam Museum. Widely published, this picture glorifies the art of painting and constitutes one of van Musscher’s early masterpieces.