Blind Man's Buff

1635 · Staatliche Slösser und Gärten, Jagdschloss Grunewald, Berlin

genre

In the 1620s and 1630s, Dutch aristocrats furthered a new vogue for particular kinds of history and portrait painting, of 'pastoral' scenes involving the loves of shepherds and shepherdesses in lush, idealized landscapes. In 1635, four painters made a series of pastoral paintings for the Stadhouder's court, chronicling the popular story of Amarillis and Mirtillo. In a scene contributed by van der Lisse (one of the numerous followers of Cornelis Poelenburgh), maidens play blind man's buff with the blindfolded shepherd Mirtillo.

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About the Artist

Dirck van der Lisse

1607 – 1669

Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was a pupil of Cornelis van Poelenburgh c. 1630. In 1635 the Stadholder, Prince Frederik Hendrik of Orange Nassau, commissioned him, along with van Poelenburgh, Abraham Bloemaert and Herman Saftleven, to paint a cycle of scenes based on Giovanni Battista Guarini's Il pastor fido for the restored hunting castle at Honselaarsdijk. In 1639 van der Lisse moved to The Hague, where he was a founder-member of the painters' confraternity Pictura in 1656; he became Burgomaster of the city in 1660.

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