Anthonie Palamedesz.

Anthonie Palamedesz., also Antonie Palamedesz, birth name Antonius Stevens[1] (1602 in Leith, Scotland[1] – 27 November 1673 in Amsterdam), was a Dutch portrait and genre painter.

Stevens and Marie Arsene (in Dutch, called Maeijken van Naerssen) and was baptized on 9 November 1602 in South Leith.

His father carved semi-precious stones such as jasper, porphyry, and agate into vases and practised other decorative arts.

[4] After Anthonie's youngest brother Palamedes was born, the family left Scotland and established themselves in Delft in the Dutch Republic where the boys grew up.

[2][3] When Anthonie and his brother Palamedes were registered with the Guild, they received the discounted entry fee reserved for residents of the city, which suggests that their father had lived in Delft before leaving for Scotland, possibly as a Protestant fugitive from the Spanish Inquisition in his native Flanders.

He was known for his merry company paintings showing elegant figures engaging in play, music and conversation and his guardroom scenes of military life, which were highly appreciated by his upper middle class patrons.

The principal exponents in this genre were Pieter Codde, Willem Duyster and Simon Kick in Amsterdam, Jacob Duck in Utrecht and Anthonie Palamedesz.

In the early phase of the genre, guardroom scenes showed resting soldiers seated, in conversation while they relax and tend to their uniforms, arguing over loot, carousing with prostitutes, playing cards, smoking a pipe or engaging in other morally questionable behaviour.

In a second phase, starting roughly around 1645, the behaviour of the soldiers became more refined, thus reflecting the growing civility in Dutch society.

In this later phase guardroom scenes were devoid of booty and other signs of war and showed middle-class people interacting with the soldiers.

achieves the elegance and monumentality seen in the schutterij (civic guard) group portraits so popular in 17th-century Dutch painting.

In other words, the apparently virile guard room scenes are in fact an embodiment of masculinity pacified, reflecting a broader process in 17th-century Dutch society of growing femininity and civility.

While some of his contemporaries included strong moral meanings in their merry companies, in particular by warning against the dangers of excess and erotic love, Palamedesz.

[8] In his portraits from the 1650s he shows he was aware of developments in portraiture such as the fashionable and sophisticated imagery of Amsterdam portraitists like Bartholomeus van der Helst.