Pieter van der Plas, Portrait of a Man

This man is unnamed, but his clothes, his pilgrim’s staff and the tiny vision of Christ’s triumph over death seem to make it clear that he has been or is about to go on a pilgrimage. With large, expressive eyes, he focuses on a distant goal, the figure of Christ looking down as if watching over him. Christ, risen from the dead, strides forward from the tomb, still in the loincloth of his crucifixion, his dark hair, banner and red cloak flying out in a celestial wind.

The man’s long, tapering fingers rest on his heart to denote his devotion to God. No longer young, his long face has become fleshy, his nose bony and prominent. The fair hair of a strange little moustache is shaved in the centre, parting to reveal his sensitive mouth. His cleft chin is almost hidden by a straight, goatee beard that almost looks glued on. Both are at variance with the black, luxuriant hair waving down to his shoulders.

The little icon of Christ suggests that the man was a Catholic. Protestants, especially Puritans, were discouraged from looking at such images. The man is very plainly dressed, almost in plain Puritan costume, though Catholics were unrestricted in their choice of clothes – except when on a pilgrimage. A long journey on foot was a kind of recompense for one’s sins. So the costume of a Catholic pilgrim was always plain and unadorned. On his staff hangs a gourd for water, ordained as mandatory by a pope in the Middle Ages, now adhered to as a tradition.

Since the Middle Ages, pilgrims from Flanders had made the arduous Camino de Santiago (‘The Way of St James’) to Santiago de Compestela in Spain. Like pilgrims from elsewhere, they wore the scallop shell on their broad-brimmed hats. Hat and shell are both absent from the portrait, so presumably that wasn‘t the man’s destination. Rome may have been perhaps, or Canterbury or Walsingham in England, among many others.

When the painting was first seen in England it was considered to be a portrait of John Milton, but this has since been discounted. A 1797 print of the painting is still housed at the National Portrait Gallery under the title Called John Milton. Others have believed it to be a portrait of John Bunyan, author of A Pilgrim’s Progress – the likeness is closer, and several portraits of Bunyan have, in particular, the strange little beard and sensitive mouth. But there is no proof. Bunyan isn’t known to have been in Flanders, nor van der Plas in England.

As far as we know, the artist lived all his life in Flanders, the part of the Low Countries that remained Catholic after the Spanish rulers left. Only four of his signed works exist, so his life is something of a mystery, though he was master of the local guild of painters for some years. Although he has signed the picture, sadly he hasn't named his sitter. The man’s finger points down to an empty scroll, probably intended to show his name. Either it remained empty or the name has faded with time.