Capel family

Cornelius Janssen van Ceulen's Capel Family (1641) is one of the most important English Baroque group portraits of the mid-seventeenth century. The Capel family were prominent Royalist aristocrats — Arthur Capel was executed after the Civil War for his loyalty to Charles I — and this image of the family gathered together in confident domestic splendor was painted in the fraught years just before the outbreak of hostilities. Janssen, a Dutch-born painter who had worked in England since the early seventeenth century, brought Continental sophistication to English portraiture. The large-scale family portrait asserted aristocratic lineage and dynastic continuity at a moment when both were under political threat.

Janssen deploys the conventions of large-scale Baroque group portraiture — varied figure poses, rich costumes, architectural or landscape setting — with the compositional skill he had developed over decades of English practice. His palette is warm and rich, with careful attention to the varied textures of silk, lace, and velvet. Individual faces are characterized with observational precision.