Abstract
Emotional responses of parents to children's death in early modern Europe were studied in thirty-three portraits of dead children and their families, commissioned by parents from aristocracy and bourgeoisie. They show the embodiment of emotions varying from sadness to resignation, and from hope to joy in various Christian denominations and concern deceased young girls and boys alike. As visual pendant of deathbed narratives, these portraits bring the viewer face to face with mourning parents and their dead children. Our conclusions go beyond the selected portraits because they represent only a fraction of the large number of such paintings then made.
Keywords
Introduction: History of Death and the Bond Between the Living and the Dead
Barbara Rosenwein, medievalist and a pioneer of the history of emotions, noted in the Renaissance a “melancholic turn” during which “people of every religious persuasion seem to have been obsessed with melancholy. They expressed it in literary and autobiographical accounts; they analyzed it in medical treatises and philosophical tracts”. They dealt with emotions such as “anger, fear, disgust, and sadness”, and this was no wonder in a world characterized by premature death as part of daily life. 1 Demographic history took a special interest in this devastating demographic pattern of early modern Europe 2 and it also became breeding ground for the cultural history of death, in France “la nouvelle histoire de la mort” 3 with pioneers such as Michel Vovelle, Pierre Chaunu, François Lebrun, Jacques Gélis, and Philippe Ariès. Indeed as Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall note, “French historians […] have led the way in this field”. 4
After the success of L’enfant et la vie familiale (1960) on the child, the family, and the school in early modern Europe 5 , Ariès, trained in demographic history 6 , turned to a new research topic, cultural history of death, like childhood and the family “a dark and fascinating area between nature and culture”. 7 Encouraged by his wife, an art historian, the iconography of funerary monuments of the death became an essential source for his project. 8 After visiting numerous cemeteries in France and beyond together with his wife and setting up an impressive data base 9 he wrote two pioneering books, Western Attitudes Toward Death (1974) based on four lectures at John Hopkins University 10 , and L’Homme devant la mort (1977) [The Hour of Our Death] about attitudes toward death across time and finished at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington DC. 11 He rejected his initial hypothesis that in the middle ages and early modern Europe people were generally indifferent to the dead body 12 and concluded that a collective religious mentality, focused on “resurrection in the glory and life of the age to come”, went together with an individual sentiment of “the death of oneself”. 13 On the history of death also important results outside France appeared 14 with recently comprehensive publications such as Dealing with the Dead, edited by Thea Tomaini and the ambitious six-volume A Cultural History of Death edited by Douglas Davies and including a volume on the Renaissance. 15
In the cultural history of death the “relationship between the living and the dead […] embedded in religious cultures” is an important subject. 16 In this article we focus on that relationship, more precisely on the emotional responses of parents to the death of a child in a society steeped in religion, especially when it comes to the subject of death. This focus takes us into the history of emotions, but the use of “emotion” as a category in a study of early modern Europe is not self-evident. “Emotion” was only used from the mid-eighteenth century onwards for feelings that had previously been indicated differently, especially with “passions” and “affects”. Not only were the words different, but also the underlying discourses. Passions and affects formed moral categories, studied within theology and later philosophy by among others Augustine and René Descartes, while the introduction of “emotion” went together with the scientification of the study of feelings in the nineteenth century with pioneers such as the biologist Charles Darwin and the psychologist William James. 17 Thomas Dixon, an expert on the history of these categories, therefore rejected the use of “emotion” as an anachronism for periods in which it was not used as a concept for feelings. 18 Still, there are also good reasons to use it in historical research as an overarching category for various states of the soul and of the mind, an approach defended by Julie Ellison. This means the use of “emotion” as an overarching category, “covering a wide variety of past and present uses of ‘passions,’ ‘sensibility,’ ‘sympathy,’ ‘sentiment,’ and ‘affection.’” 19 This approach of combining modern and contemporary categories is common use among many historians of emotions and will also be applied in this study into emotional responses of parents to their child's death.
In studying those emotional responses, we focused on embodied emotions. 20 We therefore were looking for a visual source in which both parents and children would appear, and composed a sample of thirty-three individual children's portraits and family portraits from several European regions with children depicted as dead or as if still alive. In section 4, we will go into the yield of this sample in more detail and analyze the individual portraits within the context of their geographic, social, religious, and gender characteristics, while taking into account the fact that emotions, in this period usually called passions and affects, are to a large extent morally and religiously based. But first let's take a look at contemporary theological doctrines on deceased children's salvation to better understand both the tension between and the ultimate merging of seemingly conflicting emotions which at first glance seem to be difficult to belong together, such as sadness, fear, hope, and joy, in parents’ emotional responses to the death of their child (section 2), and discuss some textual sources as pendants of the visual ones, like deathbed narratives and funeral sermons (section 3).
The Death of Young Children in Early Modern Europe’s Religious House
In early modern Europe infant and child mortality belonged to daily family life. While rates varied across time, place and social class, the aggregated figures show that “around one child in two failed to make it to the age of ten in early modern Europe.” 21 There has been much discussion about whether this would have caused habituation. According to historians such as Edward Shorter, Lawrence Stone and Elisabeth Badinter this resulted in a non-affectionate or even frozen relationship between parents and young children when still alive, and in a distant and almost indifferent reaction without showing affection or sadness when the child died. 22 In response to this view, historians such as Nicholas Orme, Barbara Hanawalt, Le Roy Ladurie, Linda Pollock, Ralph Houlbrooke, Steven Ozment, Robert Woods, and recently Claudia Jarzebowski, came to the opposite conclusion, based on personal documents, belles-lettres, funeral sermons, and deathbed narratives, namely that of sad parents who responded emotionally to their children's death. 23 Katie Barclay and Kimberley Reynolds concluded: “Whether parents loved their children is no longer the question”. 24 This was also manifested when a child died and parents, so Lianne McTavish, “experienced intensive grief” and were “tormented by thought of its spiritual death”, especially when the child had not yet been baptized and access to heaven remained blocked. 25 For the rest, Margaret King noted that poor children were more likely to be at risk of “less protection and affection from parents than among the wealthy” 26 , for the educational space, in particular the economic and demographic conditions that could obstruct the educational possibilities, were more disruptive for the poor than for the well-to-do. 27
Europe's Christian religious house became divided through the Reformation 28 , but almost all the emerging Christian denominations approached young children theologically differently than adults, such as in the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. This doctrine could cause much fear to “those who suspected or were convinced that they were irrevocably damned”. 29 But that young children were expected to go directly to heaven eased parental's pain of child's death. 30 On another topic, the theologically and socially explosive issue of baptism and what would happen with children who died unbaptized 31 , a child-oriented approach often resulted into “a fusion of the baptismal theology of the reformers with the psychological needs of bereaved parents.” 32 According to Church Father St Augustine (354–430) baptism was required for taking out original sin, which implicated that unbaptized children would be “doomed to eternal torments”. People, as Coster shows for early modern England, resisted this terrifying doctrine: “when Richard Baxter at Kidderminster in Worcestershire, in the early 1640 s, stated ‘that infants before regeneration had so much guilt and corruption as made them loathsome in the eyes of God’, he was verbally abused in the street by his parishioners.” 33 People also tried to have children baptized as soon as possible. That way the belief in original sin remained intact while parental “concern over the fate of newborn children” lessened. 34 This conflict between original sin and the fate of newborn children was also discussed during the Dutch Calvinistic Synod of Dordrecht (1618–1619). 35 The orthodox Gomarist wing of Dutch Calvinism, named after the Reverend Franciscus Gomarus (1563–1641), a professor of theology at the University of Leyden, defended a strict interpretation of predestination, but reassured parents by assuming election and salvation for young children, so making it for Calvinist parents easier to bear parental grief and even to have depict dead children as angels, a typically Roman Catholic custom. 36
Thus, the concept of a “good death” of the child was important for all Christians, justified in a theological frame but experienced emotionally in daily life. The dying child should come to terms with death and consider that “with peace or even joy”, for looking forward to being reunited in the hereafter with its previously deceased family members. Such a good death was “not beyond a child's capacity” and could be learned by special child literature. 37 Notwithstanding major theological differences between the Protestant and Catholic doctrines, the approach to this subject was basically the same. 38
When child's death was impending, parents were often tormented with conflicting emotions from grief to hope and joy, for they should never love any human being more than God and they therefore feared to love their child too much. 39 The Puritan lawyer Robert Woodford wrote in his diary that when his son John was sick again, if he and his wife “loved their son in an excessive or disorderly way, they would actually provoke God to take him from them”. 40 A solution of this conflict of emotions was transforming grief, a theologically “culpable” emotion according to Augustine for a token of resistance against God's Will, into hope that the child would enter the afterlife. 41 A mix of feelings also characterized parents in the case of a “good death” with transnational impact, the deathbed narrative of a Leyden girl, to be discussed in the next section.
Written Sources on Children’s Death: The Deathbed Narrative of a Leyden Girl
Fourteen-years-old Susanna Bickes died on September 1, 1664, during the Plague in Leyden, only some weeks after the death of her seven-years old brother Jacob. The accounts of their stories became “models of ‘well-dying’”. 42 The deathbed account from 1664 of Susanna Bickes, a document about her last 48 hours consists of “dialogues between Susanna and her parents”, probably edited by the visitor of the sick. 43 Susanna's Calvinistic parents fled from the German Palatinate during the outbreak of the Third Years War for religious reasons to Leyden and found a job in the booming textile industry. Those ordinary people turned their family into a little church with mother in charge of “the daily practice of family devotion” which included reading the Bible and singing the Psalms. This would contribute, so the preface's author, to Susanna's religious education and prevent her from being afraid of death, a major threat during the Plague in Leyden. 44 The deathbed account shows a strong emotional and affective parent-child relationship during children's impending death with words such as “my heart's dearest mother”, and frequent “weeping, kissing, and cuddling”. Susanna, severely weakened, “called out ‘Ah, my dear mother, ah, how I’m failing. Oh, oh, Lord, I’ll have to leave you’”. This made her mother so sad “that she could say nothing but ‘my dear daughter’”. When Jacob said he no longer needed support from a doctor, his father's answer was: “‘Ah, my little sweetheart, that hurts me so much’!”. 45 Responding to the children's impending death, the parents reacted by “concern, compassion and distress”. 46 Susanna tried to support them during their emotional transition, saying that after her death they should change sadness into joy that she would be in heaven. 47
The text's impact did not remain limited to the Dutch Calvinistic community. An English adaptation ended up in a two-volume English children's book that would become very popular, A Token for Children by the English minister James Janeway (1636–1674). 48 Recently, the case was discussed by Ryrie although without referring to its Dutch origin. 49 For Janeway this only Dutch text among English examples was attractive because the children seem to have received parental support “in the form of both spiritual encouragement and expression of affection”. 50 Janeway came to see a translation of the text by the Reverend Scottish James Simpson who fled to the Dutch Republic after the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. There he came across the text of the Bickes children and through his puritan network the translation came to the attention of Janeway who included an adaptation in his book. 51 Through the large orthodox Protestant network this adaptation became a great success both in England and Scotland, among German Pietists 52 , in the Dutch Republic, where the Calvinist minister Jacobus Koelman (1631–1695) included the case in a book based on A Token for Children 53 , and in New England, where it became one of the most popular children's books. 54 Coping with the among puritans theologically justified necessity for breaking the child's will, Janeway took a psychological path “to arouse the emotions”, in particular that of fear, of still healthy children. 55 He wrote: “‘children are dreadfully sunk in sin, firebrands of Hell in desperate need of saving faith [… and] are not too little to go to Hell’”. This was in Ryrie's words “bloodcurdling stuff” for young children to read 56 , and an ars moriendi to be learned by adults and children alike. 57
For the rest, in this article the significance of deathbed narratives lies in its value for emotional responses of parents at the imminent death of a child, and not for its impact on still healthy children. The narratives are part of a broader category aimed at balancing the conflicting emotions of parents at the death of their child, including Leichenpredigten, or funeral sermons, like those in sixteenth and seventeenth century Prussia, which show conflicting parental emotions in a love triangle between child, parent, and God. 58 Those textual sources can be considered “the pious alternative to the funerary portrait” 59 , to which we now turn.
Parent’s Emotional Responses Through the Visualization of Children’s Death
Visual Sources on Parent’s Emotional Responses to Children’s Death
With the exception of the portraiture of Christ on the cross and portraits of martyrs, in Europe 60 funeral portraits of individuals only appeared from the fifteenth century, with deathbed portraits as a genre originating in fifteenth century Flanders. 61 They were according to the Hungarian art historian Andor Pigler (1899–1992) in probably the first wide-ranging article on funeral portraiture in Europe (1957) inspired by fourteenth century French sculpture. 62 He composed a sample of portraits from Italy, Germany, France, the Northern and Southern Netherlands, England, Scandinavia, and Hungary 63 , and concluded that this was only a small part of a much larger number, based on written references to many paintings that were not left, as in the Netherlands. 64 Other art historians came to the same conclusion, among them the Dutch art historian Jan Baptist Bedaux for the Dutch Republic 65 , and Karin Sidén, a Swedish art historian. She shows that the custom to have such portraits made by Swedish parents did not go unnoticed by foreigners by quoting Charles Ogier, a French diplomat based in Stockholm, who noted in 1634 in his diary: “‘The Swedes love their children so much that even, if the children die in early infancy, they commission paintings of them, lying in cradles, decorated with ribbons, flowers and wreaths’.” 66 The British demographic historian Robert Woods also composed a sample of paintings, most from England but including also some Flemish ones. Although quoting Pigler, he disagreed with him by stating that “very few paintings of dead children were completed, and even fewer have survived”. This might be true for England, but not for Europe as a whole. 67
The genre was popular from aristocracy to lower bourgeoisie and among Catholics and Protestants alike 68 , it manifests the vanitas idea about earthly life 69 , and intends to preserve the memory of body and soul, or, in the above quoted words of Gordon and Marshall, to maintain the “relationship between the living and the dead”. 70 Children's deathbed paintings were part of a broader trend of the visualization of childhood with children increasingly put in the center of family portraits or portrayed individually. 71 Those children were mostly very young: parents were aware of the high risk of child's premature death, as in the Dutch Republic with almost half of seventeenth-century child portraits still preserved of children aged from zero to twelve months. 72 Parents also let portray their children when passed away, with child deathbed portraits the visual pendant of deathbed narratives. 73
Our sample consists of thirty-three portraits (thirty-two paintings, one drawing), most from identified artists, thirteen showing children laying on their deathbed and twenty children as if they are still alive, both with children alone and together with still living family members. 74 The portraits come from Sweden, England, Italy, German regions, and with a majority from the Northern Netherlands, due to the extraordinary art supply, including images on daily life which did meet a great demand from the broad bourgeoisie. 75 As with all paintings, many of those portraits once produced disappeared across time through devastating wars, natural disasters, because thrown away because of change of taste or no awareness of the value, or as private property not visible to others. Moreover, this type of art disappeared more often than average because of diminishing emotional meaning in subsequent generations. 76 What remains is only a part, created by chance, of a much larger but no longer existing or still hidden whole, that existed at the time for mentioned in various sources including lists of goods for the local tax collector, and it is not obvious that this would not also apply to our sample. 77 The portraits selected will be discussed chronologically, first deathbed portraits of children and then of children depicted as if they were still alive, with both groups alone and together with still living family members. We will find out what the portraits with its accompanying symbols have to say about emotional responses to child's death and what about the families’ religious and socio-economic background. 78 We start with two Swedish cases.
Children in Their Deathbed
In Epitaph for Gulovia Olai (1637; no. 1) by Set Knutsson (Revsund ….-Trondheim 1682), probably the brother of the girls’ father 79 , is written that Gulovia, born in a clerical family in Swedish Jämtland, in 1637 drowned at thirty months (Figure 1). 80 The girl, the foster daughter of the artist's brother, lays on her deathbed like a saint “in a white dress, with closed eyes and in a praying pose”, with in her hand wildflowers which refer to the transition from earthly to heavenly life (Psalm 103: 15–16). Her portrait shows, next to religious consolation and hope the child is already in heaven, that the child belongs to the Christian community and is “not alone, but part of loving families”. 81 In social background and gender, the girl differed strongly from Hannibal Gustav Wrangel (1641–43) on his deathbed (c. 1641–45; no. 2), son of the famous Swedish general Carl Gustav Wrangel (1613–1676) (Figure 2). Hannibal, born in 1641, died on January 8, 1643, in German Lüneberg, where the family was temporarily living because of father's leading role in the Swedish army during the Thirty Years War. In 1645 the body of the boy was brought to Sweden for the funeral nearby the family Skokloster Castle. The portrait was commissioned by the father who did have portrayed the family frequently, and made by a German painter in Lüneburg, before the body's arrival in Sweden in 1645/46. 82 Also this portrait contains Christian symbols and text referring to eternal life with the boy like Gulovia dressed in a white robe, lavishly executed and befitting the family's position, albeit not as a devout saint, but rather a war hero. The portrait, referring to parental hope of the boy's eternal life, provides an alternative life story for a boy who would never meet the parental ambitions hidden in the toddler's namesake Hannibal, commander of the Carthaginian army during the Second Punic War against Rome. 83 Both “memorials of the deceased” reflected “parental hopes, dreams and ambitions”. 84
Set Knutsson, Epitaph for Gulovia Olai (d. 1637), (1637) (Revsunds Church, Jämtland; photograph Michael Eriksson).
Unknown German painter, Hannibal Gustav Wrangel (1641–43) on his deathbed (c. 1643–45), oil on canvas, 78 × 92 cm (Skokloster: Skokloster Castle).
In the Dutch Republic more than thirty deathbed portraits are preserved, only a small part of the total production. 85 Most of the eight portraits discussed below show a peaceful sleeping child with symbols referring to parental sadness and grief together with hope the child will be in heaven. In Young Boy on his Deathbed (1645; no. 3) by the portrait painter Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613–1670) an “expiring but still smoking torch” symbolizing death lies on the knee of the seemingly sleeping boy. 86 He lies with ashen face and peacefully looking on his deathbed of straw so that his soul would not attach itself to it and so prevent the way to heaven. The anonymous parents could with this in its simplicity moving portrait maintain their emotional bond with the child. 87 This is also the case with the anonymous A Child of the Honigh Family on its deathbed (c.1650; no. 4) with again an expiring torch (Figure 3). 88 Other elements referring to child's death are the straw and the pale color of the child's face. This painting of a child from a wealthy family with refined clothing and bedding was “a cherished memento for the grieving parents.” 89
Anonymous, A Child of the Honigh Family on its deathbed (c.1650), oil on panel, 45.5 × 58 cm (The Hague: Mauritshuis).
Also A dead child (c. 1650; no. 5), a drawing by Govert Flinck (1615–1660), student of Rembrandt and celebrated painter in Amsterdam, points to parents, like those from Van der Helst's painting unidentified and from the lower middle-class, who wanted to preserve their child in their memory. Flinck made several drawings, a portrait type made with negligible costs, of the sleeping child, but this child is only apparently sleeping for lying on its deathbed and dressed in a white shirt with its eyes closed. 90 Unknown Child on its deathbed (1654; no. 6) by the Groningen painter Jan Jans de Stomme (c.1615–1657–58) evokes a memory without illusions or hope. The child from a wealthy unidentified Groningen family which remained Roman-Catholic after the Protestant Reformation, manifest by the monogram IHS, the first three letters of “Jesus” in Greek letters (jota, èta, sigma) and the palm twig, is depicted as a dead body instead of a seemingly sleeping child. 91
In contrast with this portrait, hope is visible in the next three. In Ferdinand Bol's (1616–1680) Joost van den Bempden on his Deathbed (1659; no. 7) the boy, only some months old, lies on a large white pillow and white sheet, dressed in a beautifully finished white shroud pointing to his rich descent from the Amsterdam patriciate (Figure 4). Around his head are multicolored flowers, in his hand, a wilted rosebud referring to death and perhaps also a remedy against evil spirits. His parents hope that the boy will soon be taken up into heaven. The dark smoldering torch on the bed referring to death and the view outside where night is approaching and the few remains of sunlight leave a sinister impression, contrasts with the white around the child and refers to the also existing sadness. 92
Ferdinand Bol, Joost van den Bempden on his Deathbed (1659), oil on canvas, 76 × 66 cm (Amsterdam: Collectie Six).
Girl on her Deathbed (c.1660; no. 8) by Juriaen Ovens (1623–1678), a Dutch-German portrait painter, shows the girl in an angelic representation. She almost flies in the air, caressed by angels: the situation the unknown parents hope she will stay in. 93 Deathbed portrait of a girl (1661; no. 9) by Jan Albertsz. Rotius (1624–1666), portrait painter of the Dutch harbor of Hoorn with a great demand for portraits shows an approximately ten-years-old girl. She lies peacefully, with her eyes and mouth closed in a white robe, a garland of flowers on her wavy hair and her hands crossed, on the turned-up sheet with a flower on the left hand. The curtains around the bed are half-drawn, and her back and shoulders rest against an upright pillow which edge is, like that of the sheet finely finished and trimmed with lace, pointing to the girl's well-to-do middle-class family background, the painter's clientele. The flowers point to a religious message for according to Pigler the girl is “represented like a bride”, referring to the Christian “idea of the heavenly marriage, the union of the soul with Christ”. 94 The gloomy atmosphere at first glance ultimately also contains hope. 95 The last individual selected deathbed portrait is the moving Girl from the Van Valkenburg Family on her Deathbed (1682; no. 10) by the Dutch painter Johannes Thopas (c.1620–after c.1682). It shows a seemingly peaceful sleeping approximately two-years-old girl, probably Catharina Margaretha van Valkenburg, born into a Haarlem patrician family. The canvas evokes, next to tenderness, parental sadness and grief rather than hope (Figure 5). 96
Johannes Thopas, Girl from the Van Valkenburg Family on her Deathbed (c.1682), oil on panel, 58 × 71.5 cm (The Hague: Mauritshuis/Van Valkenburg Foundation).
A mix of feelings is also visible in the next three deathbed portraits of Dutch and Swedish children put in family portraits together with still living family members. The early-sixteenth century Family portrait (c.1530, no. 11) by an unknown master from the circle of Jan van Scorel (1495–1562) shows grief and hope of parents from a wealthy, probably aristocratic but still unidentified family from Groningen (Figure 6). They stand with in between them their four still living children behind a table on which their fifth already deceased child is lying “on a beautiful golden yellow tablecloth.” The child's transparent clothes refer to a pure soul, and the mother still holds them on to at one end as if she cannot yet say goodbye. Father points with his right hand to an open book on the same table, probably the Bible and with his left hand to the dead child. The two youngest children look attentively, sad and clearly very affected to the body of the child while the two older ones look away. All mourn about the dead child which continues to be a family member and the Bible refers to hope that God's grace will make the child going to heaven. 97
Unknown master (from the circle of Jan van Scorel), Family portrait (c.1530), oil on panel, 129 × 166 cm (Groningen: Groninger Museum; photograph John Stoel.).
The anonymous Dordrecht Quadruplets (1621; no. 12) of the couple Jacobus Pietersz. Costerus and Cornelia Jans Coenraadsdochter belongs to a genre in the Dutch Republic of multiples, which shows the importance of letting your children portray as soon as possible. 98 The family lived in Dordrecht in a house mentioned De Drie Zeyldragers after the profession of Jacobus, a successful sailmaker. Of the four children Pieter, Jannette, Elisabeth and Maria, born in 52 hours, an extremely difficult delivery for the mother, Elisabeth soon died. She got a post-mortem portrait within the painting and lies with her eyes closed on an adult-sized deathbed, much too big for her, against a beautifully embroidered cushion with palm-branches and rosemary. This Catholic tradition was continued by many Dutch Calvinists too in line with the exception for young children to the doctrine of predestination. Another reference to religion is a text from Psalm 127:3: “Behold, children are a gift from the Lord, and the fruit of the body is a gift.” 99
The Swedish Henrik Marhein (1618–67) with sons and Margareta Gammal with daughters (1659; no. 13) was made 130 years later. Still, this family portrait by Johan Aureller the Elder (1626–1696) has perhaps even more references to religion, starting with the composition of two parts resembling the two panels of a religious triptych, common around 1500 (see below no. 17). 100 Henrik Marhein, born in German Hamburg, moving to Swedish Gävle around 1648 and soon part of the city's patriciate, is standing to the left together with his two sons. His wife Margareta stands on the right with her two daughters, a common gender configuration in family portraits. Again, this is not the whole family: in the background two deceased children are visible, lying in a cradle or coffin and surrounded with Christian symbols. Their eldest sister holds an apple in her hand, also a Christian symbol for referring to the Fall, while the youngest, sitting on the ground, holds a crucifix referring to death. Such portraits manifest “the ongoing emotional bond that parents had with their children after death”, in this case together with their surviving children. 101
Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of Bia de Medici (c. 1542), oil on panel, 63 × 48 cm (Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi; photo credit Gabinetto Fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi).
Dead Children as If They were Still Alive
Next to funeral death portraits also portraits emerged with children as if they were still alive, mostly together with still living family members, but sometimes alone, as with the Portrait of Bia de Medici (c.1542; no. 14) by Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572), court painter of Cosimo I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (Figure 7).
The mother of Bia, born before Cosimo's marriage with Eleonora of Toledo, was a Florentine noblewoman, but Bia, born out of wedlock, grew up together with the other, legitimate, children of Cosimo and Eleonora. The portrait was made in February 1542 after Bia's early death at the age of about five. Her father Cosimo was deeply saddened by her death and “had a plaster funeral mask cast of the child.” It is still a subject of discussion whether Bronzino used the mask or painted her “while she was alive”. The girl, portrayed as a princess, looks serious and somewhat somber, which could point to the funeral mask instead of an earlier made painting. The portrait shows the great emotional value of the girl for her father Cosimo, the commissioner of the portrait: the painting supported him to continue to cherish her memory. 102
Usually, however, dead children depicted as if they are still alive are not alone but together with family members still alive. An early example around 1500 is an altarpiece by a follower of Geertgen tot St. Jan (1465–1495), a painter from Haarlem. At first sight The glorification of Mary at the Assumption, with two founders (c.1500; no. 15) is exactly what the title promises (Figure 8). Accompanied by four angels and dressed in beautiful attire, Maria is taken up into heaven, where God, visible at the top, is surrounded by angels, some of whom with musical instruments. In stark contrast, depicted in very small proportion to Maria and the angels and dressed in dark and simple clothing, are the still unknown commissioners of the painting. They kneel in prayer with their hands folded at the foot of the glorification of Mary. A coat of arms is placed between the couple. The coat of arms seems to refer to an Amsterdam undoubtedly wealthy family: probably the couple is both founder of a church altar and commissioner of the painting.
Follower of Geertgen tot St. Jan (1465–1495), The glorification of Mary at the Assumption, with two founders (c.1500), oil on wood, 114.5 × 94.2 cm (Bonn: LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn; photograph: Jürgen Vogel).
During a restoration in the 1950s, a girl appeared on the right behind the mother. Her luminous nudity, according to the iconographic tradition referring to the purity and perfection of the soul, contrasts with the dark clothing of her parents and better suits the light colors surrounding Mary. The girl, kneeling in prayer like her parents and holding a small cross, is almost certainly the deceased daughter. The couple intended to have depicted also the girl in this religious painting as a member of the family whose soul has already ascended to heaven, like Maria. 103
From the same period are two paintings by Bernhard Strigel (c.1465–1528), Swiss portraitist and imperial court painter. In Epitaph for the Family Funk (c.1513; no. 16) father, mother, and twelve children, six boys and six girls, stand solemnly and devoutly with their hands raised in adoration (Figure 9). At the feet of the father and mother coats of arms represent the high position of the family, belonging to the patriciate of Bavarian Memmingen. The painting, commissioned for the Funk-chapel in Memmingen's Saint Martin's Church, is not called an epitaph for nothing: only four children are still alive, dressed in clothing appropriate for the social status of the family. The other eight, four boys and four girls and considerably smaller and younger, are dressed in bright white like little angels. They remain part of the family and the painting was intended as a memory of them. But it unexpected became also a memory for a mourning widow and the semi-orphans because father and husband Hans Funk the Younger (1465–1513), put in the most prominent place of the portrait, died shortly after commissioning it. 104
Bernhard Strigel, Epitaph for the Family Funk of Memmingen (c.1513), oil and tempera on wood (Schaffhausen: Museum zu Allerheiligen; Depositum der Peyer’schen Tobias Stimmer-Stiftung; photograph Jürg Fausch).
Also Strigel's Portrait of Konrad Rehlinger of Augsburg with his eight children (1517; no. 17) intends to hold on to the memory of the deceased family members. Konrad, one of the most prestigious patricians of Augsburg, is within a format reminiscent of the sacral triptych visible on the left panel, with his eight children still alive on the right one. In an opening in heaven, a reference to the hereafter, five deceased children are visible. Two years ago, the mother passed away too but she is not in the portrait as is the case with Hans Funk (no. 16). The painting is both a demonstration of the genealogy of the family Rehlinger and of the mourning and devotion of a widower and his still living children. 105 Portrait of Giovanni della Volta with his wife and children (1547; no. 18) by the Venetian painter Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1556), also from this period, shows a mourning family (Figure 10). With melancholic and sad faces, mother and her approximately eight-year-old daughter on the left side and father, a wealthy Venetian merchant, on the right look at the viewer. The fourth person present, just a baby and dressed in a transparent veil as symbol for a pure soul 106 , does not look melancholic but serious while trying to reach for cherries in his father's right hand. Meanwhile, the girl takes some cherries from a bowl on the table with her left hand and places with her right some of them in her mother's hand. The cherries connect the living and the dead and they refer as “the equivalent of a communion through wine” to the promise of resurrection, the only glimmer of hope in this portrait. 107
Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Giovanni della Volta with his wife and children (1547), oil on canvas, 104.5 × 138 cm (London: National Gallery).
The next portraits, most from the Northern Netherlands and two from England, are from the seventeenth century. Family Group as Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi (1635; no. 19) by the Utrecht painter Jan van Bijlert (1597/98–1671) was, as the title shows, inspired by Ancient Rome. Medical doctor Johan van Beverwyck (1594–1647) in Of the Excellence of the Female Sex stated “[t]hat love for children is innate in humans, but nevertheless much greater in women than in men”. 108 He considered Cornelia as “the personification of maternal love” and this personification was also used in this unidentified family portrait. In the version before the restoration in the 1960s, visible through a photograph, the sad-looking father points out to five children depicted as angels in the upper right corner. This makes the viewer aware of the emotional bond between father and dead children. But those angels were removed during that restoration. 109 Portrait of an unknown Amsterdam Family (1635; no. 20) by the Amsterdam portrait painter Huijgh Pietersz. Voskuijl (1591–1665) shows a mourning couple with their son and daughter, looking seriously, worried and saddened in an environment radiating prosperity. The father sits to the right of a table in the middle and holds a bunch of grapes in his right hand, meanwhile protectively wrapping his left arm around his son. He stands for him and holds the stem of a pear in his hand. To the right sits the mother with on her right side her daughter who holds a basket of fruit in her left hand, while reaching for some grapes in her father's hand. Grapes connect the family members like cherries in the portrait of the Della Volta family, but for another reason: father's bunch of grapes is connected by a branch of wine which starts with the mother and means her extension, a reference to Psalm 128:3. Parents and children suggest the viewer to direct the gaze to the painting on the wall: look, there's our other daughter. In the middle of the painting above the table, covered with fruit, hangs a portrait of a two-years-old girl. Both the configuration and the expressions of the people in the portrait are focused on this portrait within a portrait and this points to the memory of the dead child as a family member. 110
The same scene and message are visible in Jacob, Elisabeth and Cornelia, the three children of Sebastiaan Francken and Jacobmijna van Casteren in a landscape (1635; no. 21) by Jacob Gerretsz. Cuyp (1594–1652), father of the famous Dordrecht painter Albert Cuyp (1620–1691). The portrait got a prominent place in the wealthy family's house in Dordrecht (Figure 11). 111 The cloudy sky in the background symbolizes the sad scene with on the right the two older children Jacob and Elisabeth and on the left Cornelia. She, aged thirty-one months, is like her brother and sister dressed in “expensive, highly fashionable clothing”, but unlike them she holds flowers in her right hand and a ring “with a skull on her right hand” as symbol of memento mori. 112 Cornelia is almost certainly dead, for in another family portrait three years later by Pieter Codde (1599–1678), another third child is present. 113
Jacob Gerretsz. Cuyp (1594–1652), Jacob, Elisabeth and Cornelia, the three children of Sebastiaan Francken and Jacobmijna van Casteren, in a landscape (1635), oil on canvas, 130 × 198 cm (Rotterdam: Collection Museum Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; photography Studio Tromp).
At first sight the English portrait Sir Thomas Aston at the deathbed of his wife (1635; no. 22) by John Souch (1593–1645) deals not with a child's but a mother's deathbed. Visible are widower Sir Thomas, a politician, army officer, royalist and wealthy Manchester merchant, his three-years-old son Thomas, and a friend or perhaps the sister of the deceased Lady Magdalena. But “a black, empty cradle with a death's head on top” in the center refers to a baby who died just like his mother (Figure 12). 114
John Souch, Sir Thomas Aston at the deathbed of his wife (1635), oil on canvas, 103 × 215 cm (Manchester: Manchester Art Gallery; image courtesy of Manchester City Galleries).
We see the surviving family members mourning about mother and child in a black space, with the mourning of the family enforced by the skull and by inscriptions with Psalm texts among them: “‘The sorrows of death compassed me [Psalm 116] in the year of grief 30 September 1635, aged 35’”. The exception to all this dark and gloomy is Lady Magdalena herself, peacefully lying on her deathbed in a radiant white shroud against an equally white pillow. 115 The painting was a token of sadness and long-lasting memory of mother and child. 116
Portrait of a Family, Probably the Streatfeild Family (c.1645; no. 23) by William Dobson (1611–46) shows a wealthy and mourning gentry family of ironmasters consisting of Richard and Ann with their three children (Figure 13). 117
William Dobson, Portrait of a Family, Probably the Streatfeild Family (c.1640), oil on canvas, 106.7 × 124.5 cm (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection).
In the top right corner four skulls distract the father; on the left his daughter and youngest child tries in vain to get his gaze and to offer him three cherries. Behind her stands her eldest brother with his right arm protectively around his sister's shoulder, looking past the viewer. The painting's message becomes explicit when looking at the mother on the right side: while looking at the viewer she points to the face of her youngest son, who also looks at us while being held protectively by her. The boy is barely clothed, referring to a pure soul, with his skin's color pointing to his death, and with a slight smile on his face, possibly referring to his assumption into heaven. The three cherries refer to the three children and the four skulls to the impending death of the surviving family members. 118 While expressing the bond between the dead child and the family survivors, sadness and resignation rather than hope dominate.
Sadness and resignation characterize also the anonymous Family Group, probably the Family of Jan Gerritsz. Pan (1638; no. 24) with two children, aged two and three, standing together with their sad and serious-looking parents. They mourn about no less than nine died children, among them multiples, in the foreground lying in their deathbed. The two-year-old boy has a silver rattle in his hand, fastened to his waist by a silver chain, an indication for the high family status because of the father, a ship-owner from Enkhuizen. This rattle was a symbol of consolation and protection and through its connection to one of the deceased children an explicit representation of the bond between the living and the dead. 119
Allegorical portrait of Josina Copes and Her Children (c.1651; no. 25) by Theodoor van Thulden (1606–69), with the family crest depicted at the bottom right, was commissioned by Josina, married with Otto Coppes, a rich patrician from ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Figure 14). The portrait hung prominently in their imposing house. Mother, depicted together with her five children (the couple would eventually get fifteen), points to one of them, Emily. She is barely clothed which refers to her pure soul and floats in the air like an angel while pointing up with her left arm to the afterlife. The mother and her eldest daughter, Moralla, look seriously at the viewer; the eldest son Hendrik stands next Moralla. He looks attentively at his little brother Willem, who like his younger sister Agathe reminds us of life's fragility through symbols such as bubbles blown by Willem, leaning against a sarcophagus, and a tulip in Agathe's hands. This portrait in a room also accessible to guests is ultimately all about the memory of Emily. 120 Willem van den Kerckhoven and His Family (1652/1655; no. 26) by Johannes Mijtens (c.1614–1670) is also about a large and wealthy family, in this case from The Hague, with all fifteen children visible in a portrait characterized by parental pride and resignation about the five dead children, portrayed as angels, together with restrained joy on several of the surviving children's faces. 121
Theodoor van Thulden, Allegorical Portrait of Josina Copes and Her Children (1650–51), canvas, 195 × 253 cm ('s-Hertogenbosch: Noordbrabants Museum; photograph Peter Cox).
In Three Children from the Tjarda van Starckenborgh Family (1654; no. 27) by Jan Jansz. de Stomme (c.1615–1657–58) the parents of this rich and mighty Frisian family with no fewer than sixteen family crests are absent. The family pride of the parents, in having portrayed their children, and the restrained emotions of the three children are represented in an almost early sixteenth-century form. A girl and two boys look rather startled, gloomy and sad, for in the clouds a head is visible, probably referring to Lambert, a previously deceased boy. For the rest, also two of the three girls portrayed would die very young. 122 As with the portraits by Bernhard Strigel and John Souch (nos. 16, 17, and 22), also Govert van Slingelandt and his Family (1657; no. 28) by Johannes Mijtens (1614–70), court painter in The Hague, deals with mourning the death of a parent and a child. Govert, a member of the ruling elite and Pensionary of Dordrecht, is portrayed together with his two-year-old son Barthout to the left and to the right his wife Christina van Beveren with daughter Christina. His wife died shortly after the birth of Christina who died two months later. Symbols like flowers around the deceased child's head and the child blowing bubbles refer to vanitas and the temporality of life on earth. With the portrait's commission Govert wanted mother and child to remain in father's and son's memory by being daily face to face with them. 123
The Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg and his wife Louise of Orange and their children (1666; no. 29) by again Johannes Mijtens seems a genealogy, to be expected with this highest-ranking family in this sample, with parents from the princely families of the Prussian Hohenzollern and the Dutch Orange. In the center is Friedrich, the Elector of Brandenburg, expressly posing as a mighty prince with a fierce-looking face, surrounded by his wife and their sons Karl Emil, Friedrich—the only one surviving his parents—and Ludwig. But mother and sons look sad and that points to another intention of this portrait, a remembrance of three deceased children, Wilhelm, Heinrich and Amalia, up in the sky portrayed as angels. 124 Also high-ranking is Portrait of Albertina Agnes (1634–1696), Princess of Orange, and her three children (1668; no. 30) by Abraham van den Tempel (1622–72), portrait painter in Amsterdam and Leyden (Figure 15). Albertina had the portrait painted a few years after the death of her husband, the Frisian stadtholder Willem Frederik van Nassau-Dietz (1613–1664). Next to her sits her son Hendrik Casimir for whom she would remain regent until he became stadtholder, and next to him her eldest daughter Amalia with in her hand “a sprig of orange blossom” referring to the House of Orange to which the family belongs. 125 The third child, a toddler named Sophia, lovingly embraced by her mother and covered by a thin drapery, symbol for her pure soul, deceased one year before the painting was completed. 126 Also this regal portrait points to the future of the family genealogy with successor Casimir, but also shows the importance of Sophia to the family as a beloved child whose memory is kept alive.
Abraham van den Tempel, Albertina Agnes (1634-1696), Princess of Orange, and her three children (1668), oil on canvas, 140 × 192 cm (Leeuwarden: Fries Museum; in loan from the Collection Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, restored with the support of the Wassenbergh-Clarijs-Fontein Foundation, 2019).
The Children of Diderik van Leyden and Alida Paets (1679; no. (31) is an allegorical portrait by Daniel Mijtens II (1644–88), son of the court painter mentioned above, commissioned by the Protestant burgomaster of Leyden, Diderik van Leyden and his wife, Alida Paets. Inspired by Cesare Ripa's Iconologia, the most important manual for European painters, each child personifies a Virtue. 127 But it is something else too. A girl, Philippina, hangs like an angel in the air, with in her hand “a palm and laurel wreath” which symbolize also for those Protestant parents that young children, “chosen by God and […] especially blessed”, would go to the hereafter and remain a member of the family. 128
Something exceptional happens in Portrait of a couple with their two children as angels (s.a, s.l; no. 32), attributed to the already mentioned Juriaen Ovens (1623–1678). For a moment the anonymous couple's two deceased children, looking like angels with wings and with personified features, have descended from heaven to be united with their parents. One, probably a boy, is blowing bubbles as a sign of transience from earth to heaven while the mother is caressing the hair of the other, probably a girl. With this portrait the parents make it clear that their deceased children should remain part of the family. 129 Portrait of the Family of Cornelis Philip van Lidth de Jeude (1670–1734) and Christina Margaretha Wijnen (1679–1754) (1724; no. 33) by Willem van Kessel (before 1691–1727) shows a stately dressed family with the couple in the center, surrounded by their nine children. The couple, belonging to the governing elite of Nijmegen and surroundings, wants to demonstrate their high social position but also the bond between the living family members and a tenth child, floating in the air at the portrait's top center as an angel or putto with a burning torch, referring to death, most likely Christiaan Osewolt, who died young and whose memory must be cherished. 130
Conclusion
This article is about how to gain more insight into embodied emotional responses of parents to the death of a child in societies steeped in religion, especially when it comes to the subject of death. For that purpose, we selected as our main source thirty-three family and children's portraits. Before turning to the results of the interpretation of the portraits and to the value of this approach in comparison with textual sources, we will briefly discuss the background of the parents in our sample, that is, where they lived, which religion they adhered to, and to which social group they belonged, and determine how many dead girls and boys were visible in the thirty-three portraits.
The families in the paintings are from Sweden, England, Italy, German regions, and the Northern Netherlands. Not all families could be identified, but we know the religion and social group of most of them. 131 The portraits were commissioned by twenty-four Protestant and eight Roman-Catholic parents, an unsurprising ratio given the Protestant majority in most of Northern Europe. 132 The families did come from groups ranging from the aristocracy to the lower strata of the bourgeoisie, a social group which increased in numbers, wealth, and influence in the cities of the so-called European Megalopolis. 133 Commissioning a painting costs money and this fact is reflected in the families’ socio-economic position. Six families belonged to the aristocracy and most of them were families of princes. The majority, twenty-seven, belonged to the bourgeoisie, most of them wealthy and part of the patriciate and three families from the lower bourgeoisie. 134 This social distribution confirms the conclusions of art historians like Pigler, Bedaux, and Ekkart, and confirms that socio-economically lower groups couldn’t afford to have made a portrait of their dead child. For them only a funeral narrative was an option.
Sixty-four deceased children were visible in the portraits: in thirteen of them lying on their deathbed and in twenty as if they are still alive. Parents often wanted their deceased child explicitly portrayed as dead, for this was a religious expression of parental hope for their child's salvation. It was also common to have the child portrayed as apparently still alive as a reminder of the time when the child was still among them. Most portraits show one single dead child, but eight of them show more, sometimes up to nine. That there are on average almost twice as many dead children per painting is due to a small number of families with many deceased children, evidence of the dramatic demographic pattern of early modern Europe. 135 Fifteen of those sixty-four dead children are known by name 136 , and we could identify the gender of thirty-three children, nineteen girls, and fourteen boys, with thus thirty-one remaining unidentified. This rather big part is due to the large number of dead children in one single family with no information about children's sex. When assuming a fifty-fifty division between boys and girls of the thirty-one unidentified children, the total number of girls would be approximately thirty-four and of boys approximately thirty. But whatever the exact boy/girl ratio, it is obvious that those parents felt it was equally important to have a portrait made for deceased sons as for deceased daughters, an important indication that their emotional value to parents did not differ. 137
For indeed, the portraits were an emotional response to children's death. They served as a visual memory and enabled parents and still living children to continue their emotional bond with the dead. Emotions, visible or referred to by added symbols, varied from deep sadness and resignation to hope and joy. Their manifestation points to parents’ wish to make their emotions visible first for themselves but also for visitors to their home for the portraits often hung there in prominent places. Sadness was visible in parent's faces in almost all portraits, and resignation in many of them through symbols such as vanitas expressed by blowing bubbles and memento mori symbolized by skulls and expiring but still smoking torches, all referring to death's inevitability. 138 Sadness could be mitigated through hope and joy and those emotions were connected with the expectation that the child was in the hereafter. This faith-based emotion of hope was justified by most theologian doctrines, including the orthodox Protestant ones, which stated that young deceased children might expect salvation. Almost all portraits, of Roman Catholic and Protestant families alike, contain Christian symbols that refer to this hope, such as cherries and other fruit, a white dress for the deceased child, straw so that the soul could detach itself from the earthly, transparent clothes for the deceased child referring to a pure soul, children in praying position, children depicted as a saint, and children as angels. Also symbols like the crucifix and texts from the Bible like the Psalms, or paintings on a religious topic like Maria's Assumption including a portrait of mourning parents and their deceased child, underlined the Christian culture. 139
In most family portraits also still living children are present. 140 They look serious and sad and often play a role in mourning and remembering scenes, for example by giving and getting grapes and cherries, so referring to the hereafter and manifesting the union between all family members, or by a silver chain connecting a living child with a dead one, an explicit representation of the bond between the living and the dead. 141 This bringing together the living and the dead suggests different reasons for having these portraits made, and those reasons could occur simultaneously: the genealogy and continuity of elite families, the Christian tradition of “memorialization of the dead”, and sincere “expressions of mourning by parents”. 142
The visible emotional expression of the dead children themselves is a reference to and a mirror of parental emotions. It mostly refers to parental hope for the hereafter: the children look peacefully and are often portrayed like a saint or an angel, or also as if asleep. It also refers to a mix of parental emotions, as hope for the hereafter in the portrait of Hannibal (no. 2) together with parental expectations and ambitions as also in portraits of dead children depicted as still alive.
Deathbed portraits are the visual pendants of deathbed narratives and funeral sermons. When we compare them, three distinctions seem to stand out. The first distinction is the potentially missionary impact. Narratives like that of Susanna Bickes became when included in a popular reading book for children an encouragement to countless adults and children to live and to die like that exemplary living and dying girl. In many portraits, like that of Gulovia Olai, exemplary life was shown too, but then with an audience limited to the family and their narrow circle. For that audience, the portrait was very important and often hung at a prominent place in the house so that you would, as it were, encounter the deceased child repeatedly. The second distinction was financial and social, for having a portrait made of your children was only affordable for people with money, a reality reflected in the social composition of the families. Narratives, however, were affordable for a much greater part of the population. 143 The third distinction lies in the special value of portraits in visualizing the embodiment of emotions, something written narratives could only suggest to the reader.
We saw also two similarities. The main similarity between both sources applies to the parental emotional drive behind making them: religious expectations of the hereafter and children's emotional and affectionate value. 144 For the rest, this did not rule out that another drive could and would also play a role, namely showing the family genealogy. The fact that infancy was an extremely fragile stage did not prevent parents from cherishing this stage and from mourning when it ended. The emotions varying from sadness and fear to resignation, hope, and joy were equally present in portraits and texts, together with the determination to never forget the deceased child. A second similarity lies in the provenance of both sources from different countries and different Christian denominations.
Our sample represents only a fraction of the large number of paintings commissioned at the time by parents from aristocracy and bourgeoisie. It confirms Andor Pigler's conclusion that much more must have been produced but has not been preserved. 145 The exact size of this production remains unknown but must have been significant. This assessment of the ratio of the sample to the portraits’ population therefore means that our sample invites conclusions going beyond its thirty-three selected portraits.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful for the comments of the participants in the panel meeting at the ISCH 2024 Conference (Potsdam) on “Embodied Histories”, 6 September 2024, where I presented the first elements of this article. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of Journal of Family History for their valuable comments on the manuscript.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Dat Availability Statement
All data used are available by following the references in the footnotes.