Georg Strauch

1613 - 1675

An elegant Couple wearing the Patrician Costume of Nuremberg

Medium:

Gouache on Vellum heightened with Gold

Category:

Portrait

Dimensions:

17(h) x 11(w) cms

Framed Dimensions:

30(h) x 23(w) cms

Signed:

G. Strauch. Pinxit Anno 1662. M Iúni

Paired with:

Essay:

This pair of pictures of a young man and woman, rather than being portraits, instead appear to derive from the tradition of costume illustration. This was a genre which Strauch is known to have participated in as in the 1640s he created a print series with Peter Trischel called '12 Engravings of Men and Women in Fashionable Dress'. In our pictures the man and woman appear to represent the pinnacle of patrician society fashion in Nuremberg.

The man wears his hair long and his dress is covered in ribbons. He stands elegantly with his feet at the appropriate angles to present himself in polite society. His hand rests on his hip and holds a hat festooned with more ribbons. The woman holds a tulip, a rose, and cornflowers in one hand, and in the other a pair of gloves which trail elaborate ribbons which would cover the wrist almost up to the elbow. Her black satin sleeves are slashed revealing fine white material beneath.

Perhaps most intriguing accoutrement is the woman's gold spangled headdress - a flinderhaube. The flinderhaube can be seen in changing shapes and sizes in German portraits from the late 15th century to the 17th century and was particularly popular around Swabia and Nuremberg. In 1657 a Nuremberg sumptuary law explicitly stated that a flinderhaube could only be worn by women of the patrician upper class. Another flinderhaube, though of a slightly different shape, is seen in an oil painting by Strauch in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg (inventory no. Gm1454).

The base of these headdresses comprised a knotted linen and silk cap over which protruded a bulbous mesh frame covered in silk. From the silk gold-plated copper 'flinders' were loosely hung. These flinders jangled as the wearer moved and reflected light in every direction. A 17th century German poem describes a wearer's thoughts on her headdress: “The sunshine of gold shines around my forehead: I am beautiful, so should I not be the sun of the earth?”

Provenance:

Private collection, Germany.

Paired artwork