A tronie (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈtroːni] ) is a type of work common in Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that depicts an exaggerated or characteristic facial expression. These works were not intended as portraits or caricatures but as studies of expression, type, physiognomy or an interesting character such as an old man or woman, a young woman, the soldier, the shepherdess, the "Oriental", or a person of a particular race.[1][2]
The main goal of the artists who created tronies was to achieve a lifelike representation of the figures and to show off their illusionistic abilities through the free use of color, strong light contrasts, or a peculiar color scheme. Tronies conveyed different meanings and values to their viewers. Tronies embodied abstract notions such as transience, youth, and old age, but could also function as positive or negative examples of human qualities, such as wisdom, strength, piety, folly, or impulsiveness.[2] These works were very popular in Holland and Flanders and were produced as independent works for the free market.[3][4]
- ^ Walter Liedtke, Vermeer and the Delft School, New York, 2001, p. 138
- ^ a b Dagmar Hirschfelder, Tronie und Porträt in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin: Mann, 2008, p. 351-359
- ^ Dagmar Hirschfelder, Training Piece and Sales Product: on the Functions of the Tronie in Rembrandt's Workshop, in: M. Roscam Abbing (Hrsg.), Rembrandt 2006: Band I: Essays, Leiden, 2006, Spp. 112-131
- ^ Bernadette van Haute (2015) Black tronies in seventeenth-century Flemish art and the African presence, de arte, 50:91, 18-38