Man in a Turban
17th century
Medium
Etching; third state
Dimensions
Sheet: 10 13/16 × 8 15/16 in. (27.5 × 22.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1963
Accession Number
63.631.2
Tags
Art Historical Context
Jan Lievens' *Man in a Turban* is a striking 17th-century etching that captures the Dutch Golden Age's fascination with expressive portraiture. Lievens (1607–1674), a close contemporary and collaborator of Rembrandt in Leiden, was renowned for his innovative prints and paintings that explored dramatic lighting and textured details. This work, in its third state—a refined version with added depth and burr from the etching process—showcases a turbaned figure, likely a tronie, or character study, evoking exoticism and human character through intense gaze and folds of fabric. Etching allowed Liev...
About the Artist
Jan Lievens · 1607–1674
Jan Lievens (1607–1674) was born in Leiden and showed exceptional artistic promise from an early age, beginning his training with the local painter Joris van Schooten before traveling to Amsterdam around 1617 to study for two years under Pieter Lastman—the same teacher who would later instruct Rembrandt van Rijn. Lievens and Rembrandt, near-contemporaries born in the same city, subsequently shared...