North Netherlandish School, circa 1520

Kirkeland Jamieson collection, England, 1830;
With Frank T. Sabin, London, 1928;
With D. Katz, Dieren, 1939.

Stuttgart, Meisterwerke aus Baden-Wurttenbergischen Privatbesitz, 1958-59, no. 126;
Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Sammlung Heinz Kisters: altdeutsche und altniederländische Gemälde, 25 June - 15 September 1963, no. 82

K. Arndt, in Kunstchronik, 1958, p. 354.
Y. Hackenbroch, Enseignes. Renaissance Hat Jewels, Florence 1996, pp. 237-39, reproduced fig. 234.

The original is slightly less pink in the flesh and red tones than it appears in the catalogue illustration. The support consists of two vertical panels, joined and cradled to the reverse. The paint surface appears to be in good condition under a dirty old yellowed varnish, although slightly abraded in the darks of his robes. Scattered minor old discoloured retouchings are visible to the naked eye in these areas, along the panel join and the sitter's left cheek. This work is confirmed under UV light which also reveals some more substantial work in the face and scattered minor retouchings in the left hand, along the outline of the sitter's shoulders and in the blue background. Offered in a carved gilt wood frame with some losses, see catalogue illustration.
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The curious gesture made by the sitter with his right hand is echoed in a painting by Jan Mostaert in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.¹  Indeed, the present work was for a long time attributed to Mostaert by most relevant scholars, including Edward Plietzsch and Max J. Friedländer, copies of whose certificates accompany this lot (dated 1957 and 1958 respectively); Gustav Glück, who concurred with the attribution to Mostaert, dated the portrait to circa 1510 on the basis of a comparison with Mostaert's Portrait of Joost van Bronckhorst in the Petit Palais, Paris, which he dated to that year.²  Quite apart from the stylistic similarities of the two portraits, both sitters wear hats that are remarkably alike, perched nonchalantly at an angle on their heads. Another such hat is worn by Jan van Wassanaer who sat to Mostaert in circa 1520,³ and if the wearing of this style of hat was, as is supposed, a fleeting fashion, it would seem appropriate to apply a similar date of execution to the present work.

The emblem of the sunflower in bloom on the hat of the present sitter has unfortunately not helped to identify him but, as Yvonne Hackenbroch hypothesised in her 1996 publication (see Literature), it may well have a religious significance and perhaps denotes the sitter's turning to God.

1.  M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting..., vol. X, Leyden/Brussels 1973, p. 72, no. 32, reproduced plate 21.
2.  Friedländer, op. cit., p. 71, no. 76, reproduced plate 18.
3.  Ibid., pp. 71-72, no. 29, reproduced plate 19. The portrait can be dated to after 1516 on account of Wassenaer wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece, which he received in 1516. That Wassenaer was dead by 1523 provides a neat terminus ante quem for its execution.