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Dutch narrative history painters also meet with Huygens’s warm approval. He judges them a match for any of the Italians (hugely in vogue with the royal courts of England, Spain and Italy). Pieter Paul Rubens is, in Huygens’s view, undoubtedly the greatest of them, but he also names Honthorst, Terbrugghen, van Dyck and Janssens. He singles out a Medusa by Rubens for special approval – it ‘combines charm and horror’, especially because it is hidden behind a curtain, which is drawn back to create ‘terror’.

But above all, he expresses the view that the future of Dutch fine art lies with the younger generation of painters, from among whom he singles out Lievens and Rembrandt. Rembrandt is, Huygens thinks, superior to Lievens in judgement and in the representation of lively emotional expression. Lievens, however, depicts ‘that which is magnificent and lofty’, ‘larger than life’. Rembrandt, by contrast, ‘loves to devote himself to a small painting and present an effect of concentration’, as in his Judas Returning the Pieces of Silver. What impresses Huygens about this painting is Rembrandt’s ability ‘to depict expression, appropriate gestures and movement, particularly in the central figure of Judas, whose face is full of horror, whose hair is in wild disorder and whose clothes are torn, his limbs twisted, his hands clenched bloodlessly tight’. The whole body of the kneeling Judas ‘seems ravaged and contorted by his hideous despair’.

From this remarkable fragment we discover those characteristically modern and Dutch features of contemporary painting which drew the eye and the approval of Sir Constantijn: concentration, precision and detail in depiction, and above all, the capacity to convey intensity of personality and feeling by way of the painted image.

We gain further insight into Huygens senior’s taste through the surviving portrait Lievens painted of him, some time around 1625, concerning which we also have Huygens’s own critical comments.11 As Huygens describes it, once having met him (and been praised by him), Lievens badly wanted to paint him, and having obtained permission, arrived only a couple of days later, saying that he had been unable to sleep because of his excitement at the prospect.12

Huygens later described the sombre Lievens portrait as one of his ‘dearest belongings’. In spite of what others have said about the painting, Lievens has, he says, painted him as he was at the time. He goes on:

Still, some deem it necessary to point out that my pensive stare overshadows the natural cheer of my mind. To them, I’d like to say that I have myself to blame for this, because at the time I was seriously involved in very grave family matters, and, as things are wont to go, the concern that I tried to hide inside was not completely left without its trace in the expression on my face.13

Lievens’s portrait is broodingly dark and melancholy. As far as critical appreciation goes, we have a number of helpful comments by Huygens himself upon it. Portraitists, he tells us in that early autobiography, strive to represent the inward soul of their sitter, not simply his outward appearance. Nor is this as difficult as it sounds. ‘After all,’ he writes, ‘the expression on our face offers a highly reliable indication of the status of our soul.’ ‘In case someone would want to argue against this’, he goes on, he himself has learned it ‘not so much by the lessons given to me by others, but through personal experience and great attention to the matter’.14

In his 1629–30 appreciation of Lievens’s and Rembrandt’s pre-eminence as Dutch artists, Huygens senior urged the two of them (they were sharing a studio at the time) to go to Italy to further improve their technique. In fact, the career paths of the two men parted at this point, and Lievens took another route to international recognition. Some time in 1631 or early 1632 Sir Constantijn Huygens seems to have introduced him to Anton van Dyck, who was visiting The Hague, and who sketched Huygens for inclusion in his print series known as the Iconographia