Hollar’s portrait of an African boy in doublet

In 1645, after his escape from the Parliamentary forces that had captured him as part of the Royalist regiment and his return to Antwerp, Hollar published a number of portraits, the most remarkable of which show three diasporic African people. The present image shows an African boy in profile, wearing a soft white collar with a pattern of pointed rays, over a white doublet fastened in the front with six buttons. Unfortunately almost all the subjects of Hollar’s portraits remain anonymous, but this boy is wearing clothes typical of a servant in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century.