Tronie

Tronies embodied abstract notions such as transience, youth, and old age, but could also function as positive or negative examples of human qualities, such as wisdom, strength, piety, folly, or impulsiveness.

[5] In modern art-historical usage, the term tronie is typically restricted to figures not intended to depict an identifiable person, so it is a form of genre painting in a portrait format.

In 1564 or 1565 Joannes and Lucas van Doetecum are believed to have engraved 72 heads attributed to Pieter Brueghel the Elder that followed this paired arrangement.

For instance, the Flemish artist Jan van de Venne who was active in the first half of the 17th century painted a number of tronies juxtaposing different faces.

The rapid, expressive brushwork of these panels suggests that he painted some heads as independent creative studies, and as such they anticipate the tronies of the 17th century.

The emergence of the tronie as the result of a reduction of larger compositions was also evident in the work of Frans Hals, a Haarlem painter.

[2] Other Haarlem painters who painted tronies include Pieter de Grebber, Adriaen van Ostade and Franchoys Elaut.

His work gave a face to lower-class figures by infusing their images with recognizable and vividly expressed human emotions such as anger, joy, pain, and pleasure.

His Youth Making a Face (c. 1632/1635, National Gallery of Art) shows a young man with a satirical and mocking gesture which humanises him, however uninviting he may appear.

Brouwer's vigorous application of paint in this composition, with his characteristically short, unmodulated brushstrokes, increases the dramatic effect.

Examples are Lucas Franchoys the Younger's A man removing a plaster, the sense of touch and Joos van Craesbeeck's The Smoker which represents taste.