General The surviving works by Sweerts mostly date to the period of his residence in Rome. Due to the difficulty of attributing works to the artist who rarely signed his works, the number of canvases given to the artist vary from 40 to 100. Some of Sweerts' works were so popular in his time that contemporary copies were made, some by Sweerts himself, others by pupils or followers. It is not always easy to determine the level of Sweerts' involvement (if any) in the making of these copies. For instance, there exist at least four early copies, of varying quality, of his
Artist’s studio with a woman sewing (one copy at the Collection RAU - Fondation Unicef, Cologne). None of his paintings produced after he left Europe is known to survive. Sweerts reportedly painted compositions of Biblical subjects, several of which are mentioned in contemporary inventories. However, none of these are known to have survived. One of his religious paintings, a
Lamentation is known from the print, which Sweerts himself made after his own painting. The composition is unusual for the Virgin’s comforting gesture towards the inconsolable Mary Magdalene. Other genre paintings by of Sweerts depict low-life scenes mainly placed in the Roman Campagna or on Rome's streets in a style close to that of the Bamboccianti. An example is
A man delousing himself and a sleeping boy (c. 1650 - 1654,
Mauritshuis). Sweerts' compositions differ, however, from those of the other Bambocciante painters by his preference for antique sculpture and the noble appearance of his often monumental figures. Sweerts often used
chiaroscuro to create a dramatic and mysterious atmosphere. His personal style is clearly manifested in his
Seven Acts of Mercy series (ca. 1646-9), a series of 7 canvases which he painted in Rome as genre-style renderings of a religious theme. The canvases are now dispersed over various museums. The subject of the
Seven Acts of Mercy is based on the Gospel of Matthew, 25: 31-46. These verses announce the Last Judgment, the event during which Christ is said to judge man by his works. Sweerts depicted the good works in a contemporary Roman environment and incorporated topographical elements from the neighborhood in which he lived at the time. Sweerts shows in these scenes his preference for dark night skies and backgrounds, which dramatically light up the figures. These compositions represent the scenes in a frozen movement in a dreamlike setting almost like a film still. In this work Sweerts expresses his compassion and empathy with the suffering of his subjects and his support for the charitable acts performed for them. This work and another work such as the
Anthonij de Bordes and his valet (
National Gallery of Art) are examples of portraits that take the form of genre paintings. His subject matter is close to that of Dutch genre painters such as
Pieter de Hooch and Vermeer. His
Portrait of a young woman (c. 1660, Kremer Collection), which is likely a portrait of a simple maidservant, also shows Sweerts' interest in portraying common people. The painting has been compared to the
Girl with a Pearl Earring painted by Vermeer some five years later. The young girls in both compositions are depicted with a combination of realism and idealisation. There are important differences between the two works. Vermeer's composition is more compact, his light reflections are more subtle and Vermeer uses yellow and blue tones in a more daring manner. Vermeer further shows the young girl wearing an exotic turban and a pearl earring that appears too big to be real. Sweerts prefers to show the girl as a simple maidservant without frills. Sweerts painted a number of self-portraits and some of his portraits are regarded as being self-portraits. The earliest known
self-portrait of about 1648-50 (
Uffizi) shows the artist wearing a beret with a plunging feather giving him a distinctly 'bohemian' air. His
Self-portrait of 1656 (
Allen Memorial Art Museum) shows the artist in a confident pose. This self-portrait stands in a long-established line of self-portraits by Netherlandish artists, showing themselves with the tools of their craft. His elegant, aristocratic appearance also brings to mind the artist portraits in
Iconography of
Anthony van Dyck, published in Antwerp between 1636 and 1641. The emphasis is on showing the artist as a virtuoso who possesses an aristocratic posture, learning and esteem. Sweerts made a mirror image reproduction of this self-portrait in an etching bearing the inscription Michael Sweerts Eq. Pi. et fe. In another self-portrait, probably painted about 1655, the artist points to a skull as a
vanitas reminder. Another presumed self-portrait is the
Portrait of a young man (1656,
Hermitage), which shows a young man in a melancholy pose. It was previously believed that the sitter's mood was connected to his financial difficulties. The current view is that the painting is a
pensieroso (pensive) portrait, a motive going back to the fifteenth-century Neoplatonic concept that melancholy is the distinguishing feature of the creative character. The allegorical significance of the objects in the painting such as old books, empty purse, gold coins, and inkwell is consistent with this interpretation. The portrait also has a moralizing inscription,
RATIO QUIQUE REDDENDA (Every man must give an accounting). This allegorical strain is characteristic of Sweerts' art. Another allegorical composition is his
Mars Destroying the Arts (Private collection) in which Sweerts portrayed a soldier plundering a violin, paintings and sculpture. Sweerts' monumental
Plague in an Ancient City (ca. 1652-54,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art) is regarded as Sweerts' most ambitious work in terms not only of compositional complexity and technical achievement, but also of historical and archeological erudition. The composition depicts a haunting, dramatic vision of the ravages of the bubonic plague in a classical setting. It is clearly an attempt by the artist at proving his talent both in the depiction of a historical scene of epic proportions that encompasses a broad range of emotional and psychological states in imitation of the grand classicizing style of his older French contemporary and fellow-resident in Rome,
Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). Art historians have proposed various theories about what the composition depicts and its interpretation. Some see in it a generic depiction of the effects of the plague with no specific historical, moral or narrative meaning. The art scholar
Franco Mormando has recently argued that the
Plague in an Ancient City depicts a specific plague that according to Christian sources took place in Rome in 361–63 during the reign of
emperor Julian. Emperor Julian had sought a return to Roman paganism against the Christian faith. The plague during Julian's reign was regarded in Sweerts' time as a punishment for Julian's anti-Christian policies. In the composition Sweerts was likely commenting on the contemporary struggle of the Catholic Church against Protestantism. The historical, religious, artistic and archeological allusions of the composition would not have been evident to ordinary lay viewers but only to small group of the cultural elite who delighted in such painted puzzles.
Prints Sweerts etched a small number of plates, 21 in total. These were issued in small editions making his prints exceptionally rare. He engraved a series of 13 plates with a Latin title,
Diversae facies in usum iuvenum et aliorum ('Various faces for use by the young and others'), which served as drawing models for his academy students. For this reason a full set of the prints in the collection of the
Fitzwilliam Museum were squared up in pencil to facilitate copying. The set was published in Brussels in 1656, the same year that Sweerts established a drawing academy in the city.
Drawings Very few drawings have been attributed with certainty to Sweerts. A portrait in black chalk of
Jan van den Enden (c. 1651,
National Gallery of Art) is a very powerful portrait drawing of a young man. It is one of the first drawings attributed with any reasonable certainty to Sweerts. ==References==