Entry

This portrait bust of a man resurfaced on the London art market in 1980, after having circulated in anonymity for almost 150 years. Despite the presence of an old label erroneously describing the bust as a portrait of Giambologna (1529-1608), its identification as a self-portrait by the Nijmegen sculptor Johan Gregor van der Schardt (1530-c. 1581) could be determined thanks to its provenance in the famous collection of the Nuremberg merchant Paul Praun (1548-1616).⁸ Additional confirmation was obtained via a comparison with the painted portrait of the sculptor made by Nicolas de Neufchâtel (c. 1527-1584) in Nuremberg. ⁹ Since then, the bust has been recognized without disputation as one of this artist’s most important works and as a seminal piece in the overall development of sculptors’ self-portraits.¹⁰

Van der Schardt made the self-portrait in Nuremberg, where he resided from 1570 to circa 1581 working as a court sculptor for Emperor Maximilian II. For at least ten years prior to this time, he was active in various Italian cities, including Venice and Bologna (c. 1558-69), and before that Rome, Florence, and possibly Mantua.¹¹ His recruitment and subsequent hiring by the emperor is well documented in a number of letters written in the years 1569-70 by the imperial envoy Von Dornberg in Venice.¹² In Nuremberg, Van der Schardt collaborated on projects with various artists, including the goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer (1508-1585), with whom he produced a table fountain in the form of an imperial crown, measuring more than three metres high. Although commissioned by Emperor Maximilian, the fountain was ultimately completed during the reign of his successor, Rudolf II.¹³

Besides working for the Habsburg court, Van der Schardt portrayed various members of the urban elite, executed in naturalistically painted terracotta. At least ten of these polychromed portraits by his hand have been preserved, including both medallions and several autonomous busts.¹⁴ Examples of the latter category include portrait busts of the erudite art collector and merchant Willibald Imhoff (1519-1580) and his wife, Anna,¹⁵ that of the writing and mathematics teacher Johann Neudörfer Junior (1543-1581) (BK-C-1994-1),¹⁶ and a series of medallion portraits, including one of Imhoff, but also a medallion depicting the aforementioned Paul Praun, who ultimately emerged as a personal patron of the sculptor.¹⁷

Van der Schardt and Praun possibly first met in Bologna, where Praun worked as a silk merchant acting on the behalf of his family’s trading house until 1578.¹⁸ Van der Schardt’s Self-Portrait is mentioned together with approximately 180 models and completed works by the sculptor in the inventory of the Praunsche Kabinett compiled in 1616, the year of Praun’s death. This suggests Praun either received the bust from Van der Schardt – presented as a friendship gift bestowed on his patron – or that he possibly came into its possession at the time he acquired the remainder of the atelier inventory following the sculptor’s death. While later inventories (the first compiled in 1719, the second in 1797) lack entries allowing a precise identification, the bust again appears when listed during an 1832 sale of part of Praun’s collection.¹⁹

In the inventory of 1616, Van der Schardt’s Self-Portrait is listed as: ‘Ein kopf, Johann Gregori conterfect, eines schuchs hoch’ (A head, Johann Gregori [sic] portrait, one schuchs high). ²⁰ This measurement more or less corresponds with the present bust’s actual height, i.e. approximately half that of an average-size person.²¹ Consequently, the sculptor chose to portray himself on a scale in the tradition of small to very small busts: the three-dimensional equivalent of small painted portraits, miniatures and portrait medallions, or small portrait medallions modelled in wax, all of which played a role in the amicable exchange between persons portrayed and collectors. In this manner, such works also entered art collections.²² In spite of the small format, Van der Schardt presented himself in an extraordinarily self-aware and ambitious pose, without clothing or attributes and with the head turned emphatically to one side. He stares out, with an expression of melancholy. In its execution, the Self-Portrait reflects two different traditions: on one hand, an old-fashioned, essentially gothic portrait type derived from medieval religious culture and reliquaries; on the other hand, the bust’s unabashed nakedness refers to classical antiquity.²³

Up until the eighteenth century, sculptors’ self-portraits are a relatively uncommon phenomenon, in part stemming from the level of difficulty inherent to the genre. Van der Schardt’s autonomous Self-Portrait, by contrast, belongs to a sixteenth-century visual tradition,²⁴ while also being linked to a local Nuremberg interest.²⁵ A majority of these self-portraits, however, were conceived as part of a larger artwork and by no means as autonomous, freestanding pieces. Autonomous sculptors’ self-portraits first emerged in Italy around the mid-sixteenth century.²⁶ Van der Schardt was perhaps highly familiar with this development. Nevertheless, his Self-Portrait is first and foremost a reaction to Albrecht Dürer’s painted self-portraits made in the years 1493-1500, but even more so by his painted portrait of the German merchant Kleberger, acquired by Van der Schardt’s patron Willibald Imhoff precisely in the year 1572.²⁷ This exceptional cabinet piece shows a painted, naked bust that partly projects outwards from a circular niche. The scene’s illusory quality, which balances on the boundary between the pictorial versus the sculptural, indicates that, with this work, Dürer wished to make a clear statement regarding painting’s primacy within the context of the paragone debate.²⁸ A comparison with Van der Schardt’s Self-Portrait becomes immediately apparent in light of the classical nakedness shared by the two works.²⁹ Where Dürer bestowed a sculptural quality on his portrait – achieved through the manner in which he terminated the bust and its placement close to the niche’s front edge – Van der Schardt’s portrait, by contrast, moves precisely in the direction of the pictorial, accomplished through the true-to-life modelling and polychromy.³⁰

By depicting the head turned sharply to one side, Van der Schardt forced the viewer to ask how an artist might produce a self-portrait in three dimensions without looking directly into the mirror. Furthermore, by introducing this salient contrapposto he also alluded to a formal visual tradition that comprised an array of well-known figures with their heads averted, beginning with the Apollo Belvedere, followed by the statues of Brutus, David and Victoria by his famed role model Michelangelo, and finishing with the Sol-Apollo in Dürer’s engravings.³¹

Van der Schardt’s naked, confident and proud portrait with averted face may also have implicitly addressed the notion of the artist as the image of God – the optimus artifex or supreme artist, in whose image man models himself – and more particularly, as the image of Adam, the first and (prior to the Fall) perfect man.³² The church father St Ambrose described God’s creation of Adam as an artistic deed and an example of his double role as artifex and pictor, i.e. as a sculptor and painter. As such, his act of creation offers a striking parallel to the essence of Van der Schardt’s veristic portraiture.³³ In Nuremburg, this parallel between the artist and God already had a valid precedent: Dürer’s self-portrait of 1500, in which the artist portrayed himself as alter Christus in the visual tradition of the Vera Icon.³⁴

In this light, Van der Schardt’s Self-Portrait is above all a display of artistic superiority and self-awareness made within a few years of the sculptor’s arrival in one of Europe’s most important cultural centres and his appointment as imperial sculptor. To underscore this proud and ambitious self-representation, he moreover chose to portray himself with a staring, melancholic gaze, ideally expressing the quality of artistic genius.³⁵

Frits Scholten, 2023