A painter now only known by the initials “I.S.” produced a small but significant body of work in seventeenth-century Northern Europe. For the first time, an international research and exhibition project has now shed more light on this mysterious artist, who has long been linked to the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669). Renowned specialist in the history of dress, Dr. Marieke de Winkel discusses what clues can be found about the artist’s possible identity when carefully observing the clothing depicted in I.S.’s work.
Professor Dr. Marieke de Winkel is the Ottema-Kingma Foundation Professor for the History of Textiles and Dress at Radboud University, Nijmegen. Her influential first book, Fashion and Fancy. Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt’s Paintings, was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2006. She also co-authored A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. V (2010) and Rembrandt: the Complete Paintings (2019).
Image credit: Monogrammist I. S. (Active 1633–1658), Two Scholars in a High Room, 1640, oil on panel 40.6 x 33.0 cm. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Gift of Isabel Bader, 2021 (64-004.08)
This program is supported by the Bader Legacy Fund and presented in partnership with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, in recognition of Bader Day at Queen’s University.