Post by Erick Heideman

FACES OF 18TH-CENTURY ARMENIAN INHABITANTS OF AMSTERDAM (II) I'm going to add some confusion into the identification of the sitters on the five portraits I mentioned in my previous post (https://lnkd.in/ewXEgSg8). It's about the five only known painted portraits of 18th-century Armenian Amsterdammers. The one I showed last week is that of Johannes di Minas. The equally fancily dressed sitter on today’s portrait, dated 1754, seems to be the same person and is therefore likewise identified as Johannes di Minas. · Johannes di Minas was from Amasya in what is now northeastern Turkey. Between 1734 and 1768 he served the Armenian community in Amsterdam as priest of the still-existing Armenian Church on Krom Boomsloot. He is known to have translated works from Dutch into Armenian. Having died in 1768, he was buried in the reformed Old Church (Armenians had no burial place of their own in Amsterdam). But does the National Gallery of Armenia, that owns both portraits, correctly identify the sitter as Johannes di Minas? An article by Silvio de Rooy in the February 1967 issue of Ons Amsterdam sheds light on how the identification may have come about, and it seems it was based rather on educated guesses than on facts. Interestingly, on the website of the Amsterdam Cultuur-Historische Vereniging, the very same portrait that is shown here is stated to represent a certain ‘Godjemiants, son of Hohan Hakobjan’, holding a copy of the first printed Armenian Bible of 1666. The name Godjemiants is obviously a misspelling and obscures matters, though it clearly doesn't refer to Johannes di Minas. If only I could trace the original source for this identification, I might find the key to his true identity. If Godjemiants (or whatever his real name was) is really the sitter on this portrait, he is must be the sitter on the other one as well. That leaves us with two contradicting statements about who was the sitter on the two portraits: according to one source it was the priest Johannes di Minas and according to another source it was an as yet unknown Godjemiants. Next week: a second argument against identifying the sitter as Johannes di Minas. Photo credits: @National Gallery of Armenia. I owe the high-quality reproduction to Anna Maria Mattaar. #history #minorities #diaspora #diversity #portraits #painting #art #artresearch #fashionhistory #Bible #museums #churches #Amsterdam #Amsterdammers #Turkey #Ottoman #Yerevan #Armenia #Armenians © Erick Heideman