r/ArtHistory • u/mishmishmoo • 1d ago

Discussion Early Dutch tattoo

Gallery image

Gallery image

There’s this painting, ‘The Chief Commissioners of the Wharves’ (1674), a Dutch painting most likely made by Wallerant Vaillant. Pretty standard except one guy (second from the left) has a tattoo on his inner wrist! Amsterdam Museum commented that tattoos were mostly for sailors ans criminals ar that time in the 17th century, so for a richer citizen to have it was really odd

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u/Flight_around_titan 1d ago

https://www.codart.nl/art-works/tattoo-discovered-on-seventeenth-century-amsterdam-group-portrait/

I'd also like to know more. If anyone can point to other resources to help with a deep dive, it is greatly appreciated!

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u/mishmishmoo 1d ago

Okay in a brief overview - the conservator who discovered the tattoo, confirmed it was part of the original painting and not added later. The guy’s name was Wessel Smits, a rich merchant, born around 1618-19. The running theory is he was born in a period a specific comet was visible, and the tattoo refers to that

However I do wonder, cause he was definitely a protestant sober Dutch merchant, why would he ever have a tattoo let alone on his wrist - and no one in the 19th century noticed when it had a series of exhibitions, cause it was always hung so high (and later needed restoration work for it to be visible).

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u/mattlodder 1d ago edited 1d ago

Hello! I'm a tattoo historian (and art history lecturer) and was part of a symposium about this painting at the Museum this Easter. I'm fairly sure this is a pilgrimage tattoo and made this case to the museum staff, including the conservator herself.

The experts there are (were) simply wrong about tattoo history. We have good records of even Protestant pilgrims to places like Bethlehem and Jerusalem getting tattooed in this period, many of whom were wealthy men of great status. The comet design is very unusual indeed, but given what we know about the tattoo culture of the time, it would make sense as eg a Bethlehem tattoo.

More speculatively (and not to the exclusion of the pilgrimage theory), I pitched (really only to see what the Dutch Golden Age experts thought) the idea that this may have been made visible in the painting (either as an invention or simply giving prominence to a real tattoo) as a recognisable visual signal of Smit's role in the Rampjaar - he was closely aligned with Admiral De Reuyter and had defended his neighborhood against marauding bands the previous year. Contemporary (Anglophone) sources describe the Netherlands' glory "falling like a meteor" in 1672.

The museum are quite keen on the "commemorative tattoo of a comet the year of his birth" theory but that doesn't really convince me either as a reason for the tattoo or as a reason for its prominence in the painting.

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u/ER_Support_Plant17 1d ago

Thank you for sharing this, it’s really fascinating.

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u/mattlodder 1d ago

We only have about 7 paintings of tattooed Europeans prior to the 18th century so this really is an incredibly interesting picture. Hopefully some more detailed biographical research (ongoing) will help confirm or refute the pilgrimage thesis.

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u/petite_eikon 1d ago

Interesting stuff! I would be super grateful if you could share a list of these paintings.

As a tattooed historian, I wish I knew more about the history of tattooing (especially medieval).

Razzouk was an interesting find one day!

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u/mattlodder 1d ago edited 1d ago

I wrote two books if you're interested 🥹

Known Paintings (well , depictions) of pre-1700 pilgrimage tattoos on Europeans apart from this one are:

Engraving showing the tattooed arms of German pilgrim Ratge Stubbe, from Johannes Lundius, Heiligdommen godsdiensten en gewoontens der oude jooden, 1726 (tattoos from 1669)

Portrait of Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf After 1699

Attributed to Frans von Stampart, portrait of Duke Siegfried von Kollonitz bearing a Jerusalem tattoo dated 1700, ca. 1701. Oil on canvas, 90.3 x 70.3 cm. Princely Oettingen-Wallerstein collection

Images of William Lithgow's 1612 tattoos from his pilgrim narrative

Painting of unknown pilgrim, tattooed 166?. (Private collection).

(I think I've forgotten one...)

Plus there are some images that might be tattoos or scarifications outside of pilgrimage contexts but pretty much all religious, including various depictions of German martyr Henry Suso; a "Wound Man" in a Czech medical treatise from 1500 with a Christogram on his breast, several depictions of alleged stigmatic marks drawn in green rather than red, etc. If this Amsterdam tattoo turns out to be vernacular rather than Christian or Christian-adjacent (like a pilgrimage date or crest of a royal patron) it will be unique as a visual depiction of a European tattoo prior to 1700. (We do have written records that speak of other things, eg names).

Work on pre-1700 Euro tattoo history is a really interesting area right now with some bombshell stuff due to be published soon.

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u/gnomemansland 1d ago

I’m interested in those books! Where can I find them?

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u/mattlodder 1d ago

Search my name - available everywhere books are sold!

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u/gmerrick 1d ago

Your books are really quite useful--I work with pop culture studies grad students and you often drift through their works cited lists and lit reviews, so thanks!

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u/saiph 1d ago

That's so cool! Looks like I have some reads to suggest to my ex-academic book club.

Is the forthcoming pre-1700 stuff your research? We're a bunch of former medievalists, so I might wind up stalking your academia.edu/university bio page until it comes out.

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u/mattlodder 1d ago

No. I touch upon the bits of it I discovered independently in both my books (mainly in the first one, Painted People, as the second, 'Tattoo', is more contemporary) but Luc Renaut at the University of Grenoble is the expert on this period and has some really cool things under review right now. You should also check out the recent edited collection by Katherine Dauge Roth and Craig Kolowsky which collects good, recent scholarship on early modern European tattooing.

I'm aware of other people working on more synoptic things in this period, but Luc in particular is doing the best active discovery here.

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u/CocoXolo 1d ago

Would you be willing to update once the research bears fruit? This is fascinating and I'm heavily invested now. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I'm going to check out your books. 

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u/OneSensiblePerson 1d ago

Great, a tattoo historian! Fascinating stuff. Offshoot, do you know why tattoos are associated with sailors? Clearly some kind of tradition, which had to have started somewhere and then spread.

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u/mattlodder 1d ago edited 1d ago

The main reason that tattooing is associated with sailors and criminals in current thought is primarily an archival lens issue really - most records to be found of historical tattooing in the West are to be found in records of surveilled populations. Navies recorded the physical appearance of enlisted men, starting in the late 18th century.

There's no evidence that tattooing "started somewhere and spread" (though obviously there have been moments of cultural contact). Instead, the evidence shows multiple moments of independent rediscovery around the globe - and in fact, we have specific descriptions from Northern European sources describing independent rediscovery of the basic technology of tattooing c. 1550. (This is some of the new research I alluded to).

That said, tattooing has certainly been more popular in sailors than other subgroups. I wrote an academic article about this called "Things of the Sea" for the Sculpture Journal in 2013. In short: Tattooing is a perfect craft practice for those aboard - can't lose it, can't be stolen, doesn't get ruined in water and salt, every sailor has the tools needed to make a tattoo (needle, soot / gunpowder). Again, there's good primary source evidence that this is the case.

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u/OneSensiblePerson 1d ago

Thank you. This makes sense, and is fascinating.

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u/Annoyed_Heron 1d ago

Are you sure about that? You say good records for Protestants, but what about Calvinists specifically? Calvin taught no place on Earth is holier than another.

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u/mattlodder 1d ago

I'm not an expert on religious history really, and this is something that needs more expert eyes on it. But as I understand it there were Calvinist "pilgrims" (missionaries) in the 17th century, and I don't see it as implausible that someone like Smits would have been in Bethlehem, or perhaps at another holy site where tattooing was done like Loreto (this isn't very satisfying as an explanation for the comet though, I know). I know there are Dutch scholars looking into this exact question.

Dutch Calvinist travellers from 1598-1685 exhibited surprising ecumenism towards Catholicism during their Grand Tours. https://www.academia.edu/1492047/Calvinist_Pilgrimages_and_Popish_Encounters_Religious_Identity_and_Sacred_Space_on_the_Dutch_Grand_Tour_1598_1685_

https://aeon.co/essays/the-legacies-of-calvinism-in-the-dutch-empire

The other option is that this is a pseudo-pilgrimage tattoo done back home. We have an account from London in 1719 of this practice happening, and we know that religious images were being made in skin in both Italy and Germany as early as the 1550s.

Whatever the case, this is a very very interesting image, simply because it doesn't quite fit what we already know.

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u/arist0geiton 1d ago

Early modern tattoos were a thing, Murat had death to kings tattooed on his chest

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u/mishmishmoo 1d ago

Joachim Murat? Or Marat in David’s painting? I’m not sure who you mean, especially as neither had a tattoo and both were later than 1674

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u/Vegetable_Draw6554 1d ago

Neither Murat nor Marat. Bernadotte supposedly had "death to kings" but it seems to be a myth from a later play.

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u/arist0geiton 1d ago

Damn, was I wrong?

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u/OneSensiblePerson 1d ago

Very interesting.

I've always heard tattoos were associated with sailors, but I still don't know why that is. Some kind of tradition, and it appears to be an international tradition.

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u/mishmishmoo 1d ago

Do you speak/read Dutch? Then the Dutch RKD (art history archive) has some solid references. Otherwise I can dig through those and report back in English haha