Portrait of the mathematician as a young man: Revisiting Trinity's Tayler picture

TL;DR

This paper investigates a 17th-century portrait linked to Trinity College, exploring its true subject and historical context, potentially revealing insights into Newton's early patronage and academic rise.

Contribution

It offers a new interpretation of the portrait's subject, challenging previous identifications and suggesting connections to Isaac Newton and his academic background.

Findings

The portrait may depict Isaac Newton, Francis Willughby, or Isaac Barrow.

It questions the identification of the sitter as Isaac Barrow.

If Newton, the portrait could illuminate Newton's early academic patronage.

Abstract

A 17th-century oil painting by an unknown artist, once owned by the Tayler family and now in the collection of Trinity College, Cambridge, is currently identified as a portrait of a young Isaac Barrow. The sitter is shown pointing to a proposition in Barrow's 1655 edition of Euclid's Elements, but the portrait bears little resemblance to other depictions of Barrow. Moreover, Barrow is unlikely to have posed with that book, which appeared in print eight months after he had left England on a four-year tour of the Continent. Plausible alternatives are that the portrait is of Francis Willughby or Isaac Newton, both of whom resembled the man pictured and may be characterized as disciples of Barrow. If the Tayler were Newton's portrait, it could shed light on the patronage that allowed him to rise from undergraduate servant ("subsizar") to Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in only five and half years.