Tuesday 5 May 2015

Flemish portrait, ca. 1600

At Quai des enchères in Macon, France, they sell a Flemish School (?), 17th century portrait of a man, estimated at only 500 to 600 Euro.

It is a very high quality portrait, not reaching Rubens or Van Dyck heights of course, but much better than the majority of portraits of that age. The collar and clothing are loosely painted and may have influenced the estimate negatively, but the head is very accurately and convincingly rendered, with beautiful attention to detail.

The style of clothing can be found in many portraits ranging from about 1575 to 1625, but the manner of painting in the face seems more modern than that used by late 16th century painters like Adriaen Key. It's not certain to be Flemish, it could be Dutch, but the guess of the auctioneer to locate it in Flanders seems the most likely. I was first going to try to attribute it, but when I look at the RKD, I notice that many good portraits there are anonymous as well, so it seems to be pretty hard to do this right. So no name, but it should be worth at least a 1,000 Euro even without sitter or painter known.

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