File:Man with a rosary by Michel Sittow (16 c., priv. coll).jpg

The Portrait of a Man with a Rosary is a typical and particularly fine example of portrait painting in the Low Countries in the first half of the sixteenth century. While slowly incorporating influences of contemporary Italian and German painting during the early decades of the sixteenth century, Flemish artists like Quentin Metsys, Joos van Cleve or Jan Gossaert simultaneously looked back at normative portrait conventions in the Netherlands that had originally been established by Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden in the 1430s. After the turn of the century, the neutral background of early portraiture once again became popular, even when, in previous decades, painters such as Petrus Christus, Dieric Bouts and Hans Memling had increasingly represented their clients in front of lavish interiors or idyllic landscapes. The revival of the monochrome background in Netherlandish portraiture in the years after 1500 coincided with an increased demand for portrait representations – of religious and secular character – that was no longer restricted to the aristocracy but also included the upper bourgeoisie in the Netherlandish cities. One of the earliest surviving examples made at the turn of the century is Gerard David’s Portrait of a Goldsmith (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) : Slightly smaller than the Portrait of a Man with a Rosary, David’s sitter casts a simple shadow on a plain monochrome background. Like David’s Vienna Goldsmith, the Portrait of a Man with a Rosary still adheres largely to the portrait conventions that were established by Van Eyck. It lacks the elaborate and refined cast shadows that are characteristic features of later portraits by Joos van Cleve and Jan Gossaert and therefore was most likely produced at the beginning of the evolution outlined above, at about 1520, rather than towards its end around the middle of the century. The panel with its arched top depicts an unknown man whose advanced age is witnessed by graying curls of thin hair as well as meticulous wrinkles that cover his entire face and become strikingly visible around his neck. The anonymous sitter of the panel is represented as a half-length bust in front of a dark green background, his face depicted in customary three-quarter-profile with his head therefore slightly turned towards the left. The old man, who holds the beads of a rosary in both hands and seems to be praying, appears to be situated behind an imaginary parapet that seems to coincide with the frame of the picture. The portrait displays both of the sitter’s hands, suggesting that they would rest on the imaginary parapet, with several fingers reaching beyond the pictorial plane into the reality of the beholder. This illusionistic motive, a trompe-l’oeil that was originally introduced at the time of Van Eyck, had become a standard feature of Netherlandish portraiture in the sixteenth century. In order to satisfy the expectations of his clients, even an artist of such standing as Albrecht Dürer had to re-introduce the motif of hands into the painted portraits he produced during his Netherlandish journey in 1520/21. The unknown man is dressed according to the Netherlandish fashion of the early sixteenth century. He wears a white shirt beneath a black doublet that is lined with fur on the neck. A purple robe with a majestic fur collar made from lynx is worn on top of the doublet. Its dark violet color was built up by the painter by applying thin layers of pale grey, transparent red lakes and blue , suggesting that it was supposedly made from velvet. The man’s head is covered with black hat with folded up brim that was customary headgear in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, each of these fashionable elements is quite commonly found among representations of the upper bourgeoisie in the Netherlands from the second to the fourth decades of the sixteenth century and they do not provide criteria for the portrait’s date. The absence of any clear definition of the space surrounding the sitter of the Portrait of a Man with a Rosary is an interesting aspect that is shared with several likenesses made during the second and third decades of the sixteenth century by Joos van Cleve or Jan Gossaert . Other than a shadow at the edge that is visible next to the left shoulder – suggesting that the likeness would be illuminated from the right – the portrait’s composition carefully omits any further reference to the pictorial space in favour of an indefinite, timeless appearance of the sitter. Instead, the portrait focuses on his face and hands the flesh-tones of which form an ostentatious contrast to the muted colouring of the sitter’s apparel and background. As the unknown sitter holds the beads of a rosary of paternoster in his hands, it can safely be assumed that the portrait originally had a devotional function. Most likely, it was the right wing of a diptych for private devotion and was united with a depiction of the Virgin and Child on the left. While the rosary is often depicted in early sixteenth century portrait-diptychs by, for example, Joos van Cleve and Barthel Bruyn of Cologne, it would have been impossible and against the heraldic decorum to position the man in such a context on the lesser, the right wing of the diptych. The Portrait of a Man with a Rosary was painted on a single board of wood, presumably oak. The original wooden support – still visible in the x-rays – has been thinned and was backed with a modern wooden support at an unknown moment in the late nineteenth or during the twentieth century. There are a number of old splits in the panel, which are presumably the reason why it was thinned and backed; there are losses to the painting and ground associated with these splits. Despite these damages, the portrait appears to be in a good condition with the sitter’s face having survived without significant losses. Probably referring to a detailed portrait drawing, the painter first delineated the shape of the portrait, presumably with outlines. No specific underdrawing has been detected by digital infrared photography and there are no indications of hatching, but some underdrawn contours can be seen below the painted contours with the naked eye. The painter first delineated the shape of the portrait before he painted the greenish background that is built up over two stages of opaque black and grey paint with translucent upper layers in green. On the right edge of the sitter’s hair, it becomes obvious that the painter had left a reserve for the figure while applying the background, as the chalk ground is still visible below the calligraphically shaped locks of the sitter’s grey hair that have been fluently painted with a rapid brush. Small pentimenti, visible with the naked eye and in the x-radiograph, can be observed in the positioning of the rosary beads, and in the left hand proper. The upper outline of this hand has been altered. One of the characteristic yet somewhat misleading features of the Portrait of a Man with a Rosary is, however, the extremely thin application of the paint, particularly obvious in the flesh tones. Several of the thin glazes of original paint have become almost completely transparent and reveal the underlying streaks of an imprimatura that has been applied vertically with a broad brush. Although at first inspection this seems to imply that the painted surface was cleaned too strongly in the past, the portrait isn’t really abraded. (For further information, please see the condition report by Katherine Ara.) The transparent appearance is, on the contrary, the result of a well-known chemical reaction of lead-white in oil-binders known as saponification or lead-soap formation that – over a longer period of time ¬– resulted in a decreasing opacity of lead-pigments. Below the eyebrows, on the cheek, below the nose and around the mouth one looks almost on yellowish chalk ground. The pinkish-white zones that can be observed below the eyes and, for example, at the right of the bridge of the nose are remnants of original paint that were applied more thickly, whereas the zones of shadow around the chin and neck were created with a greyish underpaint that now is visible below the transparent upper glazes. The painter applied either washes or touches of thicker paint, with detailed highlights of the hair, around the eyes and at the edge of the white shirt. The painting technique betrays a secure, quick and confident painter with ample experience in portraiture and great painterly skills. While certain analogies of style and decorum would seem to place the painter of the Portrait of a Man with a Rosary in close proximity to either Joos van Cleve or Jan Gossaert, the panel cannot be attributed to either of them. The most striking similarities in terms of style and technique, however, link it to the presumed portrait of Diego de Guevara, attributed to the Baltic painter Michel Sittow, now at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. The Washington portrait, made around 1517, was originally the right wing of a devotional diptych, the left wing of which, representing the Virgin and Child, is preserved in Berlin. The Portrait of Diego de Guevara is one of the great masterpieces of Early Netherlandish portraiture executed at the beginning of the sixteenth century and serves as foundation for the reconstruction of the small oeuvre of portraits that can reasonably be attributed to the artist from Estonia. It has to be remembered that Sittow, presumably working for one of the most distinguished art collectors of his time, was exceptionally ambitious and eager to satisfy the discerning demands of his patron when painting his portrait, while the Portrait of a Man with a Rosary was, arguably, a more standard commission. While there can be no doubt that this portrait does not quite reach the ambition and quality of the Portrait of Diego de Guevara, it is impossible to deny the peculiar analogies that link both paintings in terms of style and technique. This becomes clear when it comes to specific details such as the shading of the fingers, which are similarly modelled with semicircular strokes; the subtle placement of highlights on the bridge of the nose; and the application of highlights in paint around the eye-lids. Even though the masterfully efficient depiction of the fur-trimmed collar, painted wet in wet, is a spectacularly ostentatious display of the painter’s skills in the Washington portrait, yet isn’t equalled in the more controlled and behaved rendering of the same detail in the Portrait of a Man with a Rosary; more importantly, a minor detail such as the way that the brush extends the faint white paint onto the darkish background is identical in both portraits. Even though the Portrait of Diego de Guevara displays a much thicker application of painted flesh that, at first sight, doesn’t correspond with the transparent glazes of the portrait of the old man, a close comparison between both portraits reveals that the modelling of both faces follows an identical pattern and treats the same features in quite the same way. Other than the very close links to the Portrait of Diego de Guevara there are further elements of comparison with the two other male portraits that are generally accepted as autograph works by Michel Sittow: the early Portrait of a Man from the collection of the Mauritshuis, Den Haag, is comparable in the rendering of the white shirt, whereas the Portrait of Christian II of Denmark (Kopenhaven, Statens Museum, dated 1513) shares a similar way of displaying hands that are weak in direct comparison to the Washington portrait. Following the chronology of Michel Sittow’s portraits suggested by Matthias Weniger, it is clear that the hitherto unpublished Portrait of a Man with a Rosary must date, because of reasons of decreased thickness of paint layers, from the end of Sittow’s career, around 1520, when the painter had long since left the Netherlands and had returned to his hometown of Reval (Tallinn), today in Estonia. Sittow was born in the Hanseatic Port around 1468 and began his four-year apprenticeship in Bruges in 1484, presumably with Hans Memling. In 1492 he entered the services of Isabella the Catholic where he was recognized as a portrait painter. Together with Juan de Flandes and Felipe Moros, he painted the so-called Oratorio of Isabella the Catholic. After the death of Queen Isabella in 1504, he went to the Netherlands where he found work with Philipp the Fair in 1505/06 before he returned to Reval where he married in 1509. In 1514, he was called back to the Netherlands where he was commissioned to paint the portrait of King Christian II of Denmark and stayed in the service of Margerethe of Austria until 1518, when he returned to Tallinn again. Here he remarried and remained in Estonia until he died in 1525/26. It is in this last period of his life, from which literally no records survive regarding Sittow’s professional activities, that the unpublished Portrait of a Man with a Rosary was most likely created. As a member of the Hanseatic League, Reval had close relations with the trading ports of Bruges and Antwerp and its merchants were presumably well aware of the fashionable attire worn in the Netherlands. Despite the lack of comparative works that can be attributed to the artist in the last decade of his career, it seems plausible to attribute the unpublished Portrait of a Man with a Rosary to Michel Sittow and to date it towards the last years of his life, i.e. around 1520.