Tronie

Common card · No. 291935

A tronie (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈtroːni] ) is a type of work in Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that depicts an exaggerated facial expression or people in costume. These works were not intended as portraits or caricatures but as studies of expression, type, physiognomy or an interesting character such as an old man or woman, a young woman, the soldier, the shepherdess, the "Oriental", or a person of a particular race. The main goal of the artists who created tronies was to achieve a lifelike representation of the figures and to show off their illusionistic abilities through the free use of color, strong light contrasts, or a peculiar color scheme. Tronies conveyed different meanings and values to their viewers. 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. These works were very popular in Holland and Flanders...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Joos van Craesbeeck / Formerly attributed to Adriaen Brouwer, Public domain