Attributed to Francesco Primaticcio

The Collection of Charles Sterling, 1952;
With Wildenstein & Co., New York, 1980, from whom acquired by the present owner.

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, De Triomf van het Manierisme, 1 July – 16 October, 1955;
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Unbekannte Schonheit: Bedeutende Werke aus funf Jahrhunderten, 9 June – 31 July 1956;
New York, Wildenstein, The Painter as Historian, 15 November - 31 December 1962;
Paris, Galerie d'Art, L'Ecole de Fontainbleau, December 1963 - February 1964;
London, The National Gallery. Making and Meaning: Holbein's Ambassadors, 5 November 1997 – 1 February 1998;
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heroic Armour of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and His Contemporaries, 5 October 1998 – 31 January 1999.

Arts, 14-20 September 1955, reproduced p. 10;
Le Triomphe du maniérisme européen de Michel-Ange au Gréco, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam 1955, pp. 86-88, cat. No. 101, pl. 18, as by Primaticcio, attribution apparently due to Charles Sterling but his name does not appear in the exhibition catalogue;
M. Levey, The German School. National Gallery Catalogues, London 1959, pp. 48, 52;
S. Béguin, L'École de Fontainbleau, Paris 1960, pp. 54-55, as by Primaticcio and of Jean de Dinteville, both rejected in a private conversation with E.A.R. Brown 13 July 1994;
J. Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance, London 1963, pp. 251-252, fig. 276, as by Primaticcio and of Jean de Dinteville, datable to 1544;
A.P. de Mandiagues, 'L'École de Fontainbleau', in L'Oeil, no. 108, December 1963, p. 10, reproduced p. 11;
'La Passion de Fontainbleau', in Le Figaro Litteraire, December 19-25, 1963, p. 20;
'La Boga del Manierismo', in Goya, no. 61, July-August 1964, p. 41;
P. Barrocchi, 'Francesco Primaticcio', in Kindlers Malerei Lexikon, IV, Zurich, 1967, p. 819, reproduced, p. 817;
G. Kauffmann, Die Kunst des 16. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1970, pp. 189-90, no. 62, as by Primaticcio datable to 1544-45;
C. Ragghianti, 'Pertinenze francesi nel cinquecento', in Critica d'arte, 19, 1972, 122, p. 64, no. 14, as by Primaticcio and of Jean de Dinteville;
B. Walbe, Studien zur Entwicklung des allegorischen Porträts in Frankreich von seinen Anfängen bis zur Regierungszeit König Heinrichs II, Frankfurt 1974, pp. 102-3, 216, note 333, as by Primaticcio and of Jean de Dinteville, datable to 1544;
D. de Marly, 'The Establishment of Roman Dress in Seventeenth-Century Portraiture' in The Burlington Magazine, CXVII, 1975, p. 444, note 13, reproduced p. 442, fig. 11, as by Primaticcio;
S. Foister, Making and Meaning. Holbein's Ambassadors, exhibition catalogue, new York 1997, pp. 23, 106 as of Jean de Dinteville, attributed to Primaticcio and circa mid 1540's;
I. Wardropper, 'Le voyage italien de Primatice en 1550', in Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de l'art français, 1981, pp. 27-31, as attributed to Primaticcio and of Jean de Dinteville, datable to circa 1551-2;
I. Wardropper, Domenico del Barbiere, New York 1985, p. 99, as of Jean de Dinteville but possibly by Domenico del Barbiere;
H. Zerner, L'art de la Renaissance, en France. L'invention du classicisme, Paris 1996, pp. 134, 136, as not of Dinteville and possibly by Luca Penni;
S.W. Pyhrr and J.A. Godoy, Heroic Armour of the Italian Renaissance, New York 1998, as by Primaticcio and of Jean de Dinteville, datable circa 1550;
E.A.R. Brown, 'The Dinteville family and the allegory of Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh' in Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 34, 1999, Appendix pp. 87-89.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a fairly recent secure lining and stretcher. The original portrait has been set into a wider surround of finer canvas apparently quite long ago. The two textures have aged well together, and the additions seem to have been made in close context with the original so that there has not developed any great disparity between the tone and colour of the original and the bordering strips. The fact that there is a mature layer of varnish or varnishes has certainly helped, but this is not particularly dark. The border on the left is rather wider than on the other three sides, and there is an old horizontal tear about four inches long in the upper left corner. The original canvas does show some distant signs of scalloping along much of the edges suggesting that this was the initial size, but apart from a faint line all round, the joins seem finely melded. There was once evidently a fold across the middle, and this has had some retouching although no sign of serious damage, and there is also retouching all round the join with the border. Elsewhere in the main painting there is just some surface retouching to the background wall at upper left and along the tear nearby mentioned above. The overall condition is remarkably fine. There is exceptionally little damage, especially for such a large canvas, and it is clear that the painting has escaped radical intervention altogether, and has always been protected. The paint has aged with great translucency, and the surface is undisturbed. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This magnificent painting, in which a young man is shown in the guise of St George, seated before the slain dragon, is a masterpiece of sixteenth century portraiture. It has however had a somewhat complex critical history, in terms of the identity of both its author and sitter. Traditionally ascribed to Primaticcio, it has long been considered a portrait of Jean de Dinteville, one of the Ambassadors in Holbein's famous double portrait in the National Gallery, London.

Primaticcio is recorded as completing at least one portrait of Jean de Dinteville, and proposing at least one further, in a letter that he wrote to François II de Dinteville, bishop of Auxerre, on 11 March 1551 or 1552:¹ 

According to what he [the bishop] would write to the said lieutenant [Jean de Dinteville, bailli of Troyes], he would draw him [the bailli] for the cardinal of Guise and would colour it with his hand so that [the bishop] would find it less ugly than the first.

The artist was closely associated with the Dinteville family for almost a decade but the above letter is the sum of the evidence indicating the nature of the portrait commissions of Jean he completed for them.  Primaticcio stayed at the Dinteville family château, Polisy, in December 1544 although the reason for this visit is unknown; Brown suggests however that he was involved in the remodelling of the château.²

Charles Sterling is widely credited with first identifying both artist and sitter of the present portrait in 1955, the latter on the basis of the strong facial similarities he saw with the portrait of Jean de Dinteville in Holbein's Ambassadors.³  For stylistic reasons he attributed the portrait to Primaticcio and dated it 1544 when the artist is known to have been at Polisy.  This enticing theory was quickly taken up by other scholars working on the Fontainebleau school at the time and throughout the 1970s the attribution, the sitter's identity and the dating were widely accepted: Sylvie Béguin not only accepted the attribution and identity of sitter but further proposed the painting had hung at Polisy; John Pope-Hennessy thought likewise, dating it to 1544, as did Georg Kauffmann, Carlo Raghianti and Brigitte Walbe. Much later, in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition centred on The Ambassadors Susan Foister of the National Gallery accepted the identification of sitter, described the picture as 'attributed' to Primaticcio and dated it to the mid 1540s. The following year Pyhrr and Godoy, in the catalogue of the exhibition of the Negroli family armour, also attributed it to Primaticcio and proposed a dating circa 1550, a dating probably based on Ian Wardropper's connection of the painting with the above letter in 1981. Wardropper, who had previously endorsed attribution and identification in 1981, four years later tentatively attributed it instead to Domenico del Barbiere (who visited Polisy with Primaticcio in 1544), but maintained the identification of the sitter. Sylvie Béguin has more latterly likewise changed her view and, in a conversation with Brown in 1994, rejected both attribution and identification of the sitter, a view shared by Henri Zerner in 1996 who suggested an alternative attribution to Luca Penni (1501/4-1556).  Zerner had looked again at Holbein's Ambassadors, arguing that the sitter cannot be Jean de Dinteville because he lacks Jean's distinctive red beard, so prominent in Dinteville's two best-known portraits, the Ambassadors and allegorical family portrait in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, entitled Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh. 

The sitter, whoever he may be, is depicted as the victorious Saint George.  The vanquished dragon's head lies on the floor, a broken lance cast through its open mouth.  The lance as instrument of the dragon's demise is not only in accordance with the narrative of Saint George but also harks back to an earlier more chivalrous era in which battles were fought with lances, while hand to hand sword fighting was seen as a baser form of combat.  This chivalric metaphor is mixed with a more classical style of armour which appears to reference ancient Rome. In view of such a grand scale and subject it is easy to see why the Dinteville name has been long connected with this arresting portrait.

 

1. E.A.R. Brown, under Literature, p. 88. For the original text see Brown, p. 100, note 97.
2. Ibid., p. 88.
3. Le Triomphe du maniérisme européen de Michel-Ange au Gréco, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam 1955, pp. 86-88.