Head of a man, bust-length, wearing a turban and black cloak

With his contemporary Salomon de Bray, Pieter de Grebber was a pioneering Dutch Classicist active in Haarlem. Like de Bray, de Grebber was a pupil of Hendrick Goltzius, who likely introduced the young artist to the innovations of Roman painters like Annibale Carracci at the end of the sixteenth century. The artist’s father, the painter and art dealer Frans Pietersz. de Grebber, probably served as another influence on the young artist. The elder de Grebber had served as Rubens’ agent in negotiations with Sir Dudley Carleton, English ambassador to The Hague, and Pieter accompanied his father to Antwerp in 1618, where he may have personally met the Flemish master. Rubens’ classically inspired art was to become a prime mover in the development of de Grebber’s style. Contemporaries, including the Haarlemers Samuel Ampzing (1628) and Petrus Scriverius (1648), as well as the Leiden painter and author Philips Angel (1642), recognised de Grebber’s contemporary importance. Following in Angel’s footsteps, in 1649 de Grebber published his own theoretical treatise, the Eleven Rules of Art, which was printed on a single broadside.

This painting is an intriguing addition to de Grebber’s known body of work, which numbers approximately seventy paintings, most of which are religious in nature. De Grebber maintained close ties with prominent members of the Church in Haarlem, for whom he painted altarpieces for the so-called hidden churches, or ‘huiskerken’, as well as for Catholic churches in Flanders. The artist’s characteristic combination of thinly executed clothing and more thickly applied paint for the face is evident in this secular painting by the artist. More unusual is the comparatively loose handling of the flesh tones, which displays a knowledge of the early work of Jan Lievens (fig. 1). While Lievens had long since abandoned his earlier Rembrandtesque influences, it is perhaps not entirely coincidental that he and de Grebber were among the artists chosen to provide paintings for the Oranjezaal at the Huis ten Bosch in The Hague in the early 1650s.