Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679), Poet

Philips Koninck is remembered above all for the sweeping panoramic landscapes that made him Rembrandt’s most formidable rival in that genre, but this portrait of Joost van den Vondel shows the other side of his practice. Vondel, the greatest poet of the Dutch Golden Age, was in his late seventies when Koninck painted him in 1665, the year the city of Amsterdam commissioned the poet’s monument in the Nieuwe Kerk. The portrait became the definitive image of the aging national poet, reproduced in countless editions of his work and still used as his standard likeness.