This article appeared in the New York Times magazine section this week. I posted it on the International Organization of Lace's facebook page where it has been very popular. Jeri Ames has encouraged me to post it on arachne as well. Here is the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/magazine/rembrandt-jan-six.html There are several interesting things in this article. One is that the dealer Jan Six XI was immediately attracted to the lace on the painting which is a collar style that he claims was only in fashion between 1633-1635. I am extremely impressed with his lace knowledge. Gunnel and I actually did a bit of a survey on Friday, over Skype, trying to prove or disprove this theory using portraits and we think he is pretty much correct. There was an outlier in the form of a Swedish monarch, but it might be possible that the painting is not correctly dated. Also a popular style at the time was a thin lock of hair with a red ribbon which appears on two of the paintings. Another aspect of the article deals with a purported Rembrandt habit of painting the white of the lace first, then putting on the black. At one point I was looking at the lace in Rembrandts very acutely for an article I never wrote, and I think I concluded that he changed this pattern when the style of lace changed to be less heavy. He painted for quite a long time and lace styles changed.. Also, my theory is that, given it was a studio situation with Rembrandt probably painting the eyes and maybe the hands of the portraits but leaving costume details to others, I am not sure that we can go overboard with identifying all the portraits that have lace painted this way as being Rembrandts. Apart from the interesting lace details, is a story full of pathos about how members of the Six family have to become guardians of the family art collection, leading to inter-generational conflict about framing, for instance. They don't mention it, but I think that the Six family are also donors to the Rijksmuseum's lace collection. These 17th century laces of the 1630s are very hard to come by. I don't know that we have any in our collection. However, Frieda Sorber tells me that she knows of some in private hands and some will be loaned for Frieda's exhibit that is to take place in Antwerp in 2020. I have been speaking nonchalantly in front of my husband about going to this exhibit as though it was a foregone conclusion and he hasn't vociferously resisted the premise, so hopefully I may see them. Devon
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