Man with a Turban

‘In Man with a Turban, however, it’s the glowing, celestial form of the turban that hits the highest note. Thick strokes of lead pigment conceal almost imperceptible traces of a mauve floral patterning; skeins of light blue, eau de nil and Naples yellow hide in their folds darker greys and browns. The whole is a tightly knotted compound of tonality and luminosity. The strokes of pigment seem themselves to bind the turban tight: they are painted with such confidence that it would be pointless ever to try to paint a turban again. With a final flourish, Lievens appears to spin the brush in his fingers and leave a set of perfectly judged lines in the wet paint of the old man’s beard, like sparks dropping from the pulsating mass above.‘

One can hardly capture the visceral reaction to seeing Jan Lievens’s 1629 tronie, Man with a Turban, better than such an eloquent passage by John-Paul Stonard, published in the current issue of the @londonreviewofbooks . We know this picture well as it was discovered in a private French collection with an old varnish a few years ago and the beautifully preserved paint surface—textured with impasto and curling lines incised with the end of a brush—emerged with a light cleaning.

The painting is now shown in public for the first time at the @nationalgalleryofireland , lent by a private collector who acquired it from us. If you plan to pass through Dublin before next Sunday the 26th, see it hanging in their special exhibition, ‘Turning Heads: Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer.’

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John-Paul Stonard, ‘On Jan Lievens’, London Review of Books, Vol. 46, No. 10, 23 May 2024.