Anna Maria Ehrenstrahl som målarkonstens genius

Abstract

Summary The Dutch portrait painter Martin Mijtens who settled in Stockholm in 1677 was through marriage related to the Swedish court painter David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl. His paintings come close to the Ehrenstrahl tradition—a formal court style. As a representative of the Dutch realism he is however more inclined to give his models individual rather than ideal features. A portrait representing Ehrenstrahls daughter, the portrait painter Anna Maria Ehrenstrahl, is a typical example of this mixture in style. The setting—a magnificant palace interior—is formal but the atmosphere and the face of the sitter are intimate. The main attraction of this portrait however is its allegorical content. Anna Maria is represented as Ars Pictoria—The Art of Painting—surrounded by her tools—easle, pallet and brushes. In Ripas Iconologia The Art of Painting is described as a beautiful woman. Different materials in her dress symbolize the variation in art, a chain at her neck its continuity and the mask its imitation of life. In Mijtens painting there are other symbols which seem to be new inventions. Anna Maria with one breast left bare is herself a personification of the artistic inspiration which always given nourishment to new motifis. The Finger at her lips can be seen as a parallell to Ripas image where the woman wears a muzzle. It means that she does not speak with words—Painting is silent Poetry. “Bilde Künstler rede nicht” as Goethe said. The Staues, Venus Medici and The Knife Sharpener represent the high and low motifs in art. The shadow, emerging at the canvas behind Anna Maria, is in my opinion the key image in interpreting the painting. By representing Ehrenstrahls daughter as Ars Pictoria Mijtens wanted to honour her as the first known woman painter in Sweden. The shadow underlines the fact that portrait painting according to tradition was founded by a woman. In a story, told by Plinius, Dibutades’ daughter tried to keep the memory of her beloveds face by drawing the contours of its shadow on a wall.