When Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck moved to England in 1632 to become court painter to Charles
The introduced an entirely new way of representing dress in portraiture. In women's portraits. he left off fashionable accessories, depicted subjects in unbuttoned sleeves and collars, and added lavish drapery and jewels. For the first time an artist actively participated in dressing his subjects, creating an amalgam of fantasy and reality. While Van Dyck was most innovative when representing women, he used similar elements in portraits of men.
Van Dyck's Portrait of Thomas Killigrew and Willian. Lord Crofts (1638) demonstrates how the artist relaxed and unbuttoned men's dress to accord with an underlying theme. The double portrait may be seen as an essay in grief: Killigrew. a poet and playwright, had lost his wife Cecelia to the plague shortly before the sitting, and Crofts was her nephew. The painting contains clear references to the situation at hand. The background features a broken column, a traditional emblem of earthly transience. A drawing in Killigrew's right hand depicts two Itinerary monuments. Crofts holds a blank sheet of paper, seen by some scholars as an analog to the drawing Killigrew holds: a symbol of what is gone.
At historians have interpreted the clothing depicted in this portrait, particularly Crofts' doublet which is worn unbuttoned in back, as an allusion to the subjects' grief-stricken distraction. It is true that Killigrew's dress includes references to his loss--he wears a cross inscribed with his wife's initials. There is an intimate nature to this painting, which seems underscored by the loose clothing worn by both subjects. However, diis reading of the costumes as signs of grief does not take account of seventeenth-century fashion
conventions. Only Killigrew appears in noticeably disheveled attire; Crofts" dress would be quite
appropriate for a formal portrait. Though black clothing, such as that won by Crofil, was common for mourning, it was also ordinary on other occasions. Furthermore, during the first stage of mounting no shiny surfaces, such as Crofts' satin doublet, would be permitted. The unbuttoned slit on Crofts" doublet was probably a matter of style: a French courtier in a 1635 fashion print by Bosse. who is gallivanting rather than grieving, wears a similarly undone doublet. Evidence suggests that by the late 1630s a certain calculated looseness was conventional in men's formal dress. Ribeiro. for example, cites the writings of moralists objecting to this style.
Killigrew's attire, though even looser than Crofts", should not necessarily be associated with grief. Other seventeenth-century subjects depicted in melancholic states do not dress this way. Although Killigrew's"undress" lends this portrait a distinctive intimacy, it might also refer to Killigrew's literary career. Many of Van Dyck's other subjects who engaged in literary pursuits are depicted in loose clothing. The blank sheet held by Crofts may be a reminder not only of Killigrew's loss but also of his solace: he had but to express his grief in writing.
The author's reference to the "cross" worn by Killigrew serves primarily as
