This charming portrait depicts a child dressed in ''picturesque'' or ''Roman'' dress and gesturing toward a gentleman leading a horse. At the end of the century there was a fashion for showing sitters in a semi-fancy dress, begun in England by van Dyck in the 1630s. During the seventeenth century an increasing concern was expressed by writer on art about the most suitable forms of costume to be worn in portraiture. It was felt that the rapid changes of fashion made contemporary dress unsuitable. However attractive a portrait might appear with a sitter wearing the height of fashion, within a decade the clothes would be out of date and that would make the picture itself seem dated. It was thought therefore that some form of unchanging attire had to be created to overcome this issue. As a result, two forms of unchanging dress were created.Firstly, there was the pastoral mode which evolved mainly in the Netherlands in the 1620’s and lasted for about 50 years. This arcadian dress ...