Author page: Isigma

Fat Boy and Fat Cat

In XVII century, at Dutch Golden Age, when there were no glossy magazines with slim models, they thought that it’s not ugly to have a big belly. But some people believed that personal fat storage was correlated to money storage, and that obese people are not modest and they are thinkung too much about material matters.
Let us have a look at the Portrait of Gerard Andriesz. Bicker by Bartholomeus van der Helst that often serves as an example of a spoiled aristocrate image because of Gerard’s chic costume, his obesity and the smug look in his eyes. What the original version of the masterpiece reveal: