Portrait of Petrus Egidius de Morrion at the age of 116 Jan Lievens

Lievens – a friend, workshop associate and rival of Rembrandt – painted this portrait of an elderly member of the Morrion family during his time in Antwerp. The model – if we are to believe the inscription on the painted label – was in his 116th year: this exceptional longevity alone would have merited immortalising him in a portrait. Lievens’s painting captures the old man’s headstrong, wily character with forceful realism. The artist had already produced studies of the faces of elderly men (“tronies”) during his early period in Leiden, but the lustrous manner in which he painted this likeness clearly shows the Rubenesque influence that was dominant in Antwerp. Another distinctive feature of Flemish art is the painted baroque cartouche that frames the portrait, which never appeared again in Lievens’s later works.