"Cardinal Howard" is Lord High Admiral Charles Howard

Van Ham, from Germany, sells on 31 January 2018 an "English Master, 17th/18th century" portrait of Cardinal Howard, estimated at 200 to 400 Euro.

The portrait shows someone with the Order of the Garter with the Great George (the image of George slaying the Dragon), which facilitates the identification of the sitter, as this is a very exclusive club.

Some searching, helped by the fact that the sitter indeed was a Howard, led me to Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham (1536-1624), the English commander at the time of the Armada, so a major figure in English history of the period. 

The painting for sale is a poor partial copy of a portrait by Daniel Mytens (the major portrait painter in England before the arrival of Anthony Van Dyck), from ca. 1620. It is now housed in the Greenwich Museum. Some colours have been changed, so perhaps it is based on an engraving, but it seems more likely to be a copy of the painting with some artistic license added. 

The value of the work is probably about the estimate, but having the correct identification may help attract the bidders: I would guess there are more marine history buffs wanting this, than people interested in a portrait of some Cardinal Howard.

Follow-up on one of my earliest posts: Aert Mytens now attributed to Francesco Furini instead

In January 2015, I made a lengthy post about a fine and cheap Aert Mytens painting for sale then at Bonham's for an estimated 2,000 to 2,700 Euro. I followed this two weeks later with another long and highly speculative post more firmly linking the painting to Mytens, and connecting it with a work by Caravaggio.

The work was then sold for £1,750, below estimate and way below my estimate.

I now by chance came across a listing at Priory Fine Art who sold the painting for £1,900 in April 2015. So, depending on the costs of selling through Ebay, they made a small profit (well, max. 10%, which isn't too bad of course) or a small loss; but again no spectacular price.

What caught my eye was that they attributed the painting to Francesco Furini. Furini (1600-1646) was a Baroque painter from Florence. This would date the painting some 50 years after Mytens. Some Furini works are indeed quite similar to this one in a number of aspects, e.g. the sculpted appearance of the figure, but in general the Furini works seem more modern, more Italian to me than the Mytens.

I found one work by Furini which is truly comparable, as it is a Magdalen as well and also (unusual for Furini) uses the same use of background as the Mytens. While Furini may well have been influenced by the Mytens (or more likely by Caravaggio), I don't think the two works here are by the same hand. The background and the way the body is treated (the musculature in the belly) show a markedly different approach. The folds in the cloth are also more angular in the Mytens compared to the Furini. Of course, perhaps the two works are by Furini but some years apart, but to me the attribution to Furini is not convncing and Mytens remains much more likely, certainly considering the other version of the work in the Royal Collection.

But it is clear that it is an interesting but hard to pinpoint work; which has been on the market too often recently to suddenly become really valuable.

"Dutch School around 1700" seems to be from the School of Mytens

Deutsch, Austrian auction house, sells on 31 May 2016 a "Dutch School, around 1700" portrait of a lady, estimated at 500 to 800 Euro.

It is a nice enough portrait for that price and reminds me of the works of some of the Mytens, especially Jan or Daniel Mytens the Elder (pictured: work by follower of Daniel, and portrait by Jan), and should probably be dated a little bit earlier than 1700.

The painting is far from good enough to be a real Mytens, but should still be worth more than the estimate and fetch at least 1,000 Euro. It could do with some cleaning to bring out the colour again though.

Was the Mytens "Magdalen" an inspiration for Caravaggio?

I discussed a panel by Aert Mytens (1541-1602) depicting the Magdalena in Extasy in my post here, but it interested me enough to continue my search for information. Connecting the dots and making some serious leaps, I came to a rather exciting though highly speculative conclusion.

As said in the earlier post, the painting shares the main figure with a "Death of Cleopatra" by Mytens in the British Royal Collection. This painting turns out to be a copy of a work by Rosso Fiorentino (1495-1540) from 1525, pictured above, and now displayed in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick, Germany.

And that one is based on the antique sculpture of the "Sleeping Ariadne" in the Uffizi.

In the book "The Age of Caravaggio", a publication from Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1985, this Rosso painting is said to be a major source for Caravaggio's "Magdalen in Extasy". This is discussed at page 313, but sadly I can't access the next page, 314, so I have to base my speculation on the part I have access to... The link between the Rosso work and Caravaggio is, according to the book, done through copies of the work. One is mentioned where the Cleopatra is transformed in a Magdalen by the addition of a cross in her hand; on the other hand, Mytens' copy of the Cleopatra is mentioned as well, and Mytens' interest in Caravaggesque lighting effects (or more precisely pre-Caravaggesque, as Mytens worked earlier).

The logical next step, that it wasn't Mytens copy of the Cleopatra but Mytens reworking of the painting in a Magdalena in Extasy, the very same subject of the Caravaggio, that was the inspiration for that work in topic and style (though thoroughly reworked and reinvented by Caravaggio), is not given in the book, perhaps because the author didn't know the work that was for sale here.

Obviously, it's speculation, but given what we know (or what more authoritative sources have written) about the possible influence of both Mytens and the Cleopatra painting on this work of Caravaggio, and the fact that the Mytens Magdalen is even closer to the Caravaggio, it doesn't seem such a huge leap to suggest that the painting that was for sale here (and was unsaleable before) was actually not just a Mytens, but one with serious importance in the history of art.

Even ignoring the Caravaggio angle, the Mytens painting seems to have been copied in a slightly changed version a lot as well, first by Jacques Bellangé, and then by many followers. In it, the Magdalena has  a quite ostentatious cross in her right hand, and her left elbow rests on a skull. The above is a version by a follower of Bellange sold at Christie's for 2,500 Euro. If the first painting is by Mytens, then it seems that his version, with the Magdalena angle, and the replacement of the angel to the left with the typical background one sees also in the final picture, is the basis of all these ones as well (as they all are more recent). More speculation, and none of it proves that the painting for sale is the original Mytens one and not indeed a later copy, but it is a painting and history that invites further study and consideration.

The sale is still two weeks away, and the estimate is $2,000 to $2,700...

Aert Mytens

Aert Mytens is a bit of a mystery. Not that many paintings by him are known, most of them apparently still in their original Italian churches. He lived from about 1541 to about 1602, the period between the last Early Netherlandish painters like Brueghel and the final great period of Flemish painting with Rubens, Van Dyck c.s. Following Jan Gossaert, the first great Flemish painter who focused mainly on Italy, Mytens studied and worked mostly in Italy. He was the first of a whole series of Mytenses who became famous painters.

But Aert Mytens rarely appears in auction, and when he does, he doesn't fetch a lot of money, despite the clear qualities of his work. I could find one work, a putto playing the lyre, that was attributed to him which sold in Vienna in 2007 for 12,000 Euro. And that's it...

And then the current painting. Now for sale at Bonham's (17 February) for only 2,000 to 2,700 Euro, and attributed to a "Follower of Aert Mytens", it (or a very, very similar one) was for sale in Venice in 2008, and in Genova in late 2013. Both were sold as "Aert Mytens", not Follower of or anything else, but I haven't been able to find the result these made. Looking closely at the Wannenes sale in Genova, I can see the exact same damage to the painting (small things, e.g. in the rocks to the left of her shoulder), so it clearly is the very same painting that is now, a year later, again for sale. No longer considered an original Mytens, the estimate is lowered. But looking at it closely, it is a very, very good picture, which looks original to me (based solely on what I can see online). Things like the rocks on the left, and the hand to the right of her head (with the beshadowed fingers) are very nicely done, and if not by Mytens then at least done by a very skilled painter. I don't think I have seen any 16th century Flemish painting of this quality and size for an estimate below $10,000, so this one, even if not by Mytens, is very cheap. Perhaps because Mytens isn't well-known enough, but then he probably needs a revival. For a museum like the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, which doesn't have an Aert Mytens yet (only a Jan Mytens), this may be their best chance to fill that gap for a bargain price.

ADDENDUM 26 January 2015.

I just noticed that the figure of the Magdalena in this painting, is a copy / reinterpretation of an Aert Mytens in the British Royal Collection, a "Death of Cleopatra". No idea where the picture is kept or can be seen, but it at least explains why the link with Mytens is so easily made for the painting now up for sale. Due to the condition of the Royal Collection copy, it is hard to compare the two. The Cleopatra seems more pictural, while the Magdalena is a bit more a drawing, but I don't see either as fundamentally better.
END OF ADDENDUM

The same sale also has a  Lady Godiva (top picture). Described as "Continental School, 19th century" and estimated at Euro 2,700 to 4,000, the auctioneers at Bonham's seem to be unaware that it is a very nice copy after Lerius (bottom picture). Obviously, the original (kept in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp) is vastly superior, but of the few copies I have seen at older auctions, this is by far the best. No idea if it is worth more than the estimate, but it was worth a better description at least.