A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

1168. PORTRAIT OF A JESUIT.

Willem van der Vliet (Dutch: 1584-1642).

Works by this artist are rare and very little known. He belonged to Delft—a town as active in painting as in pottery. This picture is signed and dated 1631.

An admirable portrait. The Jesuit father, here depicted with so much quiet truth and skill, is a good representative of the great order which had at that time saved the Papacy. He is a student, but the crucifix is ever on his books. "The Jesuits appear," says Macaulay, "to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation." But he turns round from his book and looks with a smile of tender sadness on the spectator—he is ready to read your heart and to give you sympathy in return for confidences.