Increase Mather by John van Der Spriett
Nicole Corbo, Nicole Giella, and Quinn Treacy
In 1688, John Van der Spriet, a Dutch Golden Age painter, produced an oil-on-canvas portrait of Increase Mather. Mather went to England as an agent of the Massachusetts Colony, and while there commissioned a portrait of himself. Such a request was commonplace among New English aristocrats. Increase Mather is remembered as among the most influential figures in Puritan America. He was an educator, author, and puritan minister whose clerical work would go on to have a pronounced impact on American puritanism and the Bay State’s history. His writings were cited as an authoritative document during the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials. His portrait serves to remind those of the modern age of his unrivaled prominence in the Massachusetts colony.
The oil painting by John Van der Spriet created in 1688 is currently held by the Massachusetts Historical Society. The portrait is about six inches by four inches in size and is displayed in an oval frame atop a pedestal. Van der Spriet was described as a “foremost” pupil of David Loggan, an English baroque engraver, draughtsman, and painter. Van der Spiet inherited his position as the leading line-engraver for the print trade, though none of his engraved works survive today. The painted portrait depicts Increase Mather at the time of his quadrennial trip to England as a diplomatic emissary from Massachusetts. Mather, presumably, returned to Boston in 1962 bearing this portrait. It is very likely that the painting was passed into his son’s possession, and then into the possession of his grandson Samuel. The Puritans often regarded art as idolatrous and decadent, considering it to be a violation of the Second Commandment. They were typically not receptive to the fine arts, seeing them as lavish indulgences, earthly diversions from religious piety. However, Mather’s portrait, and others like it, were an exception, considered to be an important means of securing and remembering a person’s prestige and social stature for years to come.
Increase Mather was born in 1639 in Dorchester, the son of Richard Mather, a minister. At the age of twelve, he attended Harvard College, and would graduate with a bachelor’s degree five years later. His education would continue at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where he got his master’s degree in 1658. Mather would return to Harvard as its president in 1685, but only to resign six years later, deciding instead to focus on his ministerial duties.
Upon his graduation from Harvard, Mather would begin preaching at the Second Church in Boston, where his father had preached. During his time at Trinity College Dublin, he was a minister at several churches in Northern Ireland. Mather returned to the American continent in 1661 and was officially ordained at the Second Church. During this time, he had a son, Cotton Mather. He would return to England in the late 1680s to advocate on behalf of the Bay State colonists amid political turbulence.
This turbulence in question was a conflict between Mather and Edmund Andros, who was the governor of the Dominion of New England. The Dominion was the newly coronated King James II’s plan to consolidate the American colonies, revoking Massachusetts’s political sovereignty by repealing its Charter, abolishing town meetings, and diminishing Puritan influence in the colonies. Mather objected strongly to Andros’s leadership, especially with his anti-Puritan policies. and petitioned King James II to reinstate the old Massachusetts charter. Upon James II’s abdication of the throne, Massachusetts received a new charter and Andros was removed from his position. Mather personally selected William Phips to be instated as the new governor of Massachusetts.
Mather’s most significant deed in the course of Massachusetts history is perhaps his publication entitled An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences, in 1684, which he began while president of Harvard. In the book, Mather recounts various “preternatural” incidents and cases of witchcraft. This book would become incredibly influential in the Salem Witch Trials, promoting a sense of witchcraft paranoia among Salem’s villagers, and popularizing the use of “spectral evidence” in court. Mather’s work was cited as an evidential justification for the execution of those accused of witchcraft. Mather would never renounce his statements on the matter of witchcraft, despite their hand in the deaths of nineteen people. Mather died in 1723 and is interred at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in the North End.
John van de Spriet, though an obscure painter, has secured his legacy through the creation of Increase Mather’s portrait, the artwork’s creation being an emblem of his potent role in Massachusetts’s history.