Portrait of Philipp Nicolai

The engraving shows the portrait of the main pastor of St. Catharine’s, who was also an important poet and musician, at the age of 49. It is a half-length portrait turned to the right. Nicolai’s gaze seems rigorous and austere. Between his eyebrows there are slightly brooding wrinkles. He wears his hair cut short. His beard is divided into two beard tips, which protrude beyond the stiff collar of his ruff. He wears a garment with a narrow button placket and above it a coat with puff sleeves and wide fur trimming. In his left hand he holds a thick book with two book buckles. The oval portrait is surrounded by an elaborate ornamental frame. At the bottom there is cartouche with strapwork and scrolls containing a poem in praise of the deceased priest by Georg Dedeken (1564-1628).

The cartouche is taken from Hans Vredeman de Vries’s series Deorum Dearumque of 1573. See Hollstein et al. 1949-2010, vol. 47-48 (1997), vol. 2, no. 372 (text: P. Fuhring).

Two angels sit on this cartouche, supporting the oval frame of the portrait. They hold a sword and a palm frond in their hands. In the upper spandrels Moses and John the Baptist are depicted. With this program and with the accompanying inscriptions, the portrait proves to be an epitaph for Philipp Nicolai, who was strictly Lutheran. In his sermons he repeatedly polemicized against the Calvinists and he authored several controversial writings against Petrus Plancius (1552-1622). The cartouche with scrolls resembles the inscription cartouche on the Allegory of Death and the rich man in the St. Jacob’s Church.