Double Portrait

Michael Sweerts, the Flemish painter of Roman low-life and genre scenes, painted this double bust portrait of two young men about 1660–62, in the last years before he abandoned painting for missionary work in the East. The austere composition — two heads set closely against a plain dark ground, the nearer companion turned in profile toward his friend — shows the sculptural severity and the cool, silvery tonality that distinguish his portraits from the more flamboyant Roman baroque of his contemporaries. It is one of the rare certain portraits from his late career, and it looks forward to the quiet naturalism of the Dutch genre painters of the following generation. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.