Old Masters Day Sale, including portrait miniatures from the collection of the late Dr Erika Pohl-Ströher
Old Masters Day Sale, including portrait miniatures from the collection of the late Dr Erika Pohl-Ströher
Netherlandish or South German, circa 1520
Portrait of a man, half-length, wearing a red hat and gold brocade cloak, holding a dagger, a landscape beyond
Lot Closed
December 9, 02:12 PM GMT
Estimate
15,000 - 20,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Netherlandish or South German, circa 1520
Portrait of a man, half-length, wearing a red hat and gold brocade cloak, holding a dagger, a landscape beyond
oil on oak panel
unframed: 48.4 x 35 cm.; 19 x 13¾ in.
framed: 64.8 x 53.9 cm.; 25½ x 21¼ in.
This mysterious portrait would appear to have been executed by a Northern European artist, who had knowledge of, or had travelled to Southern Germany and possibly Italy. Although limewood was favoured as a support among southern German artists, and poplar by the Italians, artists including Dürer, Holbein and Hans Baldung are all known to have used oak panels while working in Southern Germany. The oak panel argues most strongly for a Netherlandish origin, however, and indeed the work was previously attributed to the circle of Jan van Scorel, a Dutch artist who worked in Italy between 1518 and 1524, and is known to have spent time in Rome, Venice and Nuremberg. The oval face and side-long glance that the man casts at the viewer is found in several portraits and indeed religious works by Scorel, such as the Mary Magdalene in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdaml.1
The combination of the man's garb is unusual. In most portraits from the early 16th century, sitters are depicted wearing either the skufia (the gold leather cap, as seen in Dürer's Portrait of Jakob Fugger, circa 1520; Staatsgalerie, Augsburg),2 or the red bonnet with fastening cords (seen in a number of portraits, such as the South Netherlandish Portrait of a man holding a carnation, circa 1510; Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen, The Hague),3 but rarely both together. Some examples of sitters wearing a hat over the cap appear in the œuvre of Conrad Faber von Creuznach, an artist from Frankfurt, but in these cases the hats are black and broad-brimmed; see, for example, the Portrait of a man, circa 1530, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.4 Incidentally, in this last portrait the sitter is depicted holding the pommel of a dagger in a similar way to the man in the present work. The gold brocade cloth is also a rare detail, as the man's plain doublet would usually either have been worn with a gown or by itself, rather than with a cloak thrown over one shoulder, as it is here.
1 https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-372