Bruges School, first quarter of the 16th century (circle of Gerard David)

Probably Charles Hippolyte, Vicomte Vilain XIIII (1796-1873),

His son Adrien Stanislas Paul Ghislain, Vicomte Vilain XIIII (1861-1940),

His daughter Marie-Thérèse Ernestine Alphonsine Vilain XIIII (1894-1950),

Thence by descent to the present owners

S. Bergmans, La peinture ancienne, Brussels 1952, pl. XXXVI

Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie, De Van Eyck à Breughel, 1935, no. 188 (as Flemish School, circa 1480) ;

Brussels, Société Générale de Banque, Dessins du XV^e au XVIII^e siècle dans les collections privées de Belgique, 1983, no. 7 (as Bruges School, first half of the 16^th century);

Rotterdam, Kunsthal, European Master Drawings Unveiled, 2002, no. 6 (as Master of the Brandon Portraits)

Drawn with immense skill and refinement, the six studies of heads on the recto of this outstanding early Netherlandish drawing are clearly a product of the Bruges school, and strongly demonstrate the stylistic influence of the city’s greatest master of the late 15^th and early 16^th century, Gerard David (c.1455-1523). Figure drawings and portrait studies in the refined and unforgiving medium of silverpoint were a central element in the artistic practice of the Netherlandish artist’s studio during the decades either side of 1500. But whereas similar works made at the same time in Italy survive in some numbers, only very few Northern European silverpoint drawings are known. This sheet is therefore a rare example of a type and quality of drawing that is almost unknown outside the context of major museum collections.

Given the nature of workshop practice, firm attributions to the leading masters themselves are rare: for example, there is only one drawing that is generally accepted as being from the hand of Jan van Eyck (c. 1395-1441), and hardly more by Rogier van der Weyden (1399-1464) or Hugo van der Goes (c. 1440-1482). All the same, as was so beautifully elucidated in the two exhibitions held in Antwerp in 2002¹, and Washington and London in 2015², the stylistic traditions that can be associated with the workshops of these leading masters can still be identified, and their development and evolution traced.

In the case of Gerard David, there are some fifteen drawings that modern scholars accept as autograph works; these drawings, and David’s workshop practice, have been most recently and most thoroughly discussed by Maryan Ainsworth.³ Closest in style to the heads on the recto of the present drawing are six similarly composite sheets of head studies, sold from the Klinkosch Collection in Vienna in 1889, and now dispersed.⁴ Though previously attributed to Holbein, the sale catalogue suggested they might instead be by Rogier van der Weyden. The name of Gerard David was first proposed in 1908, and has since gained wide acceptance. The only dissenting voice was Max J. Friedländer, who recognised that the study of a man on the reverse of one of the sheets, now in the Louvre, was connected with a painted portrait of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and therefore dubbed the artist who made the whole set of drawings ‘The Master of the Brandon Portrait’.⁵ This naming has not, however, gained further acceptance, and recent scholars are unanimous in attributing the ex-Klinkosch Collection drawings to Gerard David. 

Though clearly originating from the same artistic milieu, the present sheet cannot be attributed to David himself, as the handling and the facial physiognomy of the figures are both subtly different. It does, though, share with two of the ex-Klinkosch sheets the fact that on the verso there is a rapid landscape sketch, and in the case of one of those drawings, in the Louvre, that sketch is also in pen and ink, rather than silverpoint.⁶

A distinctive trait in the art of Gerard David and his Bruges contemporaries is the way that stylistic elements deriving from the tradition of the great earlier Netherlandish masters, and Jan van Eyck in particular, are blended with a rather Italian fluidity and elegance of form and touch. This is very much the case in the present drawing, and the rapid landscape sketch on the verso is also very Italianate, calling to mind the drawings and prints of Titian and his circle. 

Though the attribution of this delightful and accomplished sheet remains under discussion, its quality and rarity do not.

When first published, in 1935, this drawing was in the collection of the Vicomte Vilain XIIII. The unusual name of the Vilain XIIII family - the only known example of a family name that incorporates Roman numerals - is recorded from the beginning of the 17th century, but probably originated even earlier. The collection was chiefly formed by Charles (known as 'Hippolyte') Vilan XIIII (1796-1873), largely in Italy between 1830 and 1840, when the Vicomte represented the Belgian crown at Turin, Parma, Lucca and at the court of the King of Naples. The collection was not, though, solely devoted to Italian art, including works from all European schools, acquired both at home and abroad. 83 drawings from the Vilain XIIII collection were sold at Sotheby's in London, on 11 June 1981. The present drawing has, however, passed directly from the historic Vilain XIIII collection to the present owners.

¹F. Koreny, Early Netherlandish Drawings from Jan van Eyck to Hieronymus Bosch, exh. cat., Antwerp, Rubenshuis, 2002

²S. Sell and H. Chapman (eds.), Drawing in Silver and Gold, Leonardo to Jasper Johns, exh. cat., Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, and London, British Museum, 2015

³M.W. Ainsworth, Gerard David. Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition, New York 1998, pp. 7-55, and especially p. 8

⁴Josef C. Ritter von Klinkosch Collection, sale, Vienna, 15 April 1889, lots 468-473

⁵Max J. Friedländer, ‘Ein vlämischer portraitmaler in England,’ Gentse bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis, 4, 1937, pp. 5-18

⁶See Ainsworth, op. cit., p. 33, fig. 40