The Rijksmuseum Research Library and Print Study Room are host to national and international researchers who are working with the collections. Today, Sandra Racek, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Rijksmuseum, is sharing some discoveries and observations around our collections.

By Sandra Racek

As an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Rijksmuseum I research artworks inspired by narratives – some mythological, some pastoral – that feature male figures dressed in female clothing. Seventeenth-century depictions of cross-dressing are not legion but deeply significant: in paintings and other artworks the theme of cross-dressing could signal concerns regarding gender, dress, and comportment, in addition to artistic concerns regarding truth in images or the versatility of artists. I am interested in the aspects of dress, gesture, and comportment that shaped pictorial narratives and how these features could direct the attention of viewers to consider the reliability of appearances in images and life in pleasurable, humorous, and intriguing ways for seventeenth-century viewers.

Among the most popular mythological narratives depicted in the nascent Dutch Republic is Vertumnus and Pomona from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which the god of seasons pursues the goddess of fruit and gardening, by putting on several different guises. For the last of these guises, Vertumnus takes the appearance of an old woman, an episode that was depicted repeatedly throughout the seventeenth century in a variety of media including paintings, prints, drawings and tapestries. I have been studying the Rijksmuseum’s collection and searching through the AdLib database to gather the many fascinating versions of this narrative.

One of the most significant examples in the collection is a 1613 painting by Hendrick Goltzius currently on long term loan to the Drents Museum in Assen (fig. 1).

I have also had the opportunity to examine several relevant works on paper from the Rijksprentenkabinet including prints after paintings, book illustrations, and playing cards (fig. 2-4).

All of these artworks were made at a time and a place where clothing was particularly scrutinized in artworks for giving appropriate expression to figures and narrative situations. To understand how seventeenth-century viewers were able to recognize Vertumnus in the guise of an old woman, I seek to reconstruct expectations for dress by studying costume prints, among other sources. The Rijksmuseum’s collection includes several relevant printed works such as Wenceslaus Hollar’s Ornatus Muliebris (fig. 5).

I am also interested in understanding how depictions of cross-dressing inspired by narratives could have incorporated themes from seventeenth-century humor, which extended to depictions of gender swapping. Numerous proverbs, plays, and artworks depicting the theme of “the world upside down” or “women on top,” include images in which women invert seventeenth-century expectations for gender relations by wearing or battling over men’s trousers (strijd om de broek, in Dutch). An excellent example from the Rijksprentenkabinet is an engraving by Cornelis van Kittensteyn after Adriaen van de Venne’s interpretation of the theme (fig. 6).

The Rijksmuseum Research Library is also an invaluable resource for understanding these images in the broader context of storytelling in the seventeenth century. For example, in the collection of rare books is a 1566 Dutch translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Metamorphosis, dat is de herscheppinge, beschreven door den vermaerden poëet Ovidius Naso) that would have been used by artists and contains among its woodblock illustrations by Virgil Solis one of the earliest known illustrations of Vertumnus and Pomona circulated in the Netherlands. One of the ways I am investigating why artists found this narrative so intriguing is by searching for examples from art theoretical literature that link Vertumnus’s guises with the ability of artists to seduce the eye of the beholder through their versatility.

Excavating the visual culture of narrative images that include male-female cross-dressing is a complex task that requires consulting with experts in different curatorial and academic fields in addition to looking across many different types of artworks and sources. I am therefore grateful to be at the Rijksmuseum where I can discuss my project and findings with curators of paintings, drawings, prints and costumes, as well as experts in literature, theater, and art history based in the Netherlands.