Praying hermit

Gerrit Dou's Praying Hermit, dated 1646 and painted on oak panel — the support Dou favoured throughout his career — belongs to the Leiden fijnschilder's extensive engagement with devotional figure subjects. The hermit or monk in prayer was a subject that allowed Dou to combine his characteristic technical ambition (the rendering of aged skin, rough cloth, candlelight or window light) with spiritual content that was commercially reliable in the Dutch Reformed context. Hermits and praying figures occupied an ambiguous position in Calvinist culture: nominally Catholic figures whose solitary devotion could nonetheless be reinterpreted as images of personal piety accessible across confessional lines. Dou's panel paintings achieved extraordinary prices in the seventeenth century — his work commanded more per centimetre than Rembrandt's — and the Bavarian State Painting Collections' acquisition reflects the long reach of his reputation.

Dou's fijnschilder technique — extremely fine brushwork on a carefully prepared panel with multiple transparent glazes — creates surfaces of almost enamel-like smoothness and detail. The hermit's aged face would receive his most careful attention: deeply lined skin, white beard and hair, the physical evidence of a long life of piety. The prayer book or rosary, rendered with miniaturist precision, demonstrates Dou's principle that every object in a composition deserves the same minute attention.