Jacob Ferdinand Voet
1639–1689 · Southern Netherlands · Baroque
The story
In 1670s Rome, if you were rich, titled and wanted to be seen, you sat for Jacob Ferdinand Voet. This Flemish painter from Antwerp had reached the city around 1663 and quickly became the portraitist the Roman aristocracy competed for, working for great houses like the Colonna and Odescalchi and for the papal court itself.
His gift was flattery with a light touch: gleaming silk, soft skin, a knowing half-smile. He turned out whole galleries of fashionable women, painted to the same seductive formula for patrons who liked to collect faces the way others collected medals. That charm undid him. In 1678 Pope Innocent XI, offended by the low necklines and bare shoulders Voet gave his sitters, had him ordered out of the city.
He carried the manner north, working in Florence, then Turin and finally Paris, where he died in 1689. One of those beauty series survives almost intact. The ovals he painted for Cardinal Flavio Chigi, a pope's nephew, still hang together at the Chigi palace in Ariccia, south of Rome.
