Caesar van Everdingen

How does a boy born in Alkmaar come to be called Caesar Boetius? These names really do not occur in the Netherlands. This can be explained by his mother’s Italian roots; the painter was named after his great-grandfather, who was born in Mantua.

Caesar van Everdingen was a successful painter in his own time, but subsequently fell into oblivion. However, he has been making quite a comeback in the past decades. The Rijksmuseum only managed to acquire important paintings by him in 1991 and 2009.

Caesar Van Everdingen's style is called classicist. His work is characterized by bright colours, clear contours and balanced compositions. The folds of the dress in the Girl in a Large Hat recall those of classical sculptures.

The woman warming her hands over hot coals actually personifies Winter. This season is usually depicted as an old person, because it is linked to the final, difficult phase of human life. For his allegory, Caesar, however, chose a young lady instead.

The young woman warming herself over glowing coals wears a costly pearl necklace and earrings. Her hat and shirt are decorated with lace and her pink jacket is even trimmed with ermine. These kinds of bed jackets were very fashionable back then, and also occur in paintings by Vermeer, such as The Love Letter.

Van Everdingen enjoyed making sexual allusions in his paintings. For instance, the woman personifying Winter has lifted her skirt to warm herself. And the woman with the wide-brimmed hat has bared her shoulder alluringly and proffers a basket of plums to the viewer.

While his erotic paintings suggest otherwise, Caesar van Everdingen was a faithful follower of the Dutch Reformed Church. In their will, he and his wife even left a considerable sum of money to support poor students wishing to study theology.

The basket the woman holds up is from western Africa or Brazil. Her remarkable hat gave rise to the idea that it originally came from Egypt. Van Everdingen's painting evokes an exotic, foreign atmosphere.

Caesar was a master in painting fabrics. He masterfully observed how the skin colour can be reflected in the clothing. Notice the right sleeve of the Girl in a Large Hat, where he applied touches of pale pink paint in the grey shadow of a fold.

Caesar's younger brother Allaert was also a painter, but their works could not differ more. Allaert painted exclusively landscapes, which were mainly inspired by a sojourn in Scandinavia. For the extremely wealthy arms dealer Hendrik Trip, Allaert painted a large picture of his cannon foundry in Julita Bruk, Sweden.