Object data
oil on panel
support: height 64.3 cm × width 49.5 cm
painted surface: height 62.8 cm × width 48 cm
Jan Jansz Mostaert
Portrait of a Woman
Haarlem, c. 1520
Technical notes
The support consists of two vertically grained oak planks (28.8 and 20.7 cm), and was planed down to 0.4 cm and cradled. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1498. The panel could have been ready for use by 1509, but a date in or after 1523 is more likely. The white ground is visible at the edges of the panel, and was applied in the original frame. All the sides have an unpainted edge of 0.5-0.8 cm. The barbe is well preserved at the top, bottom and left sides (painted surface: 62.8 x 48 cm). The white ground seems to have a priming on top, the horizontal parallel ridges of which are visible. Infrared reflectography revealed a few lines of underdrawing, probably in a dry medium, in the fingers and the woman’s cap, the folds of which do not correspond with the painted form (fig. a). The figure was reserved. Lead-tin yellow seems to have been used on top of a reddish underpaint to imitate gold jewellery. The fur coat was painted in quite a refined technique that involved scratching with a sharp tool in the brown paint.
Scientific examination and reports
- X-radiography: RMA, nos. 556-57, 7 January 1952
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 14 May 2004
- condition report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 8 November 2004
- infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG479, 11 June 2007
Condition
Fair. There are old worm holes in the original panel. The painting is rather abraded, and there are discoloured areas of retouching in the flesh tones. The red glaze in the cap is faded. The surface varnish is discoloured, and there are traces of an older varnish.
Conservation
- conservator unknown, 1952: cleaned
Provenance
...; collection Prince Sternberg;1 .…; the dealer F. Kleinberger, New York, 1921;2 ...; sale, Mortimer Loeb Schiff (1877-1931, New York), London (Christie's), 24 June 1938, no. 76, to the dealer Rosenberg;3…; the dealer D. Katz, Dieren, 1938;4…; collection LeRoy M. Backus (?- June 1948), Seattle;5 …; the dealer Schaeffer, New York, 1948;6 from whom, fl. 61,497, to the museum, 1952
Object number: SK-A-3843
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jan Jansz Mostaert (Haarlem c. 1474 - Haarlem 1552/53)
Jan Jansz Mostaert was born in Haarlem around 1474 to the mill owner Jan Jansz Mostaert and his wife Alijt Dircxdr. He married Angnyese (Agnes) Martijnsdr, the widow of Claes Claesz Suycker, shortly before 8 June 1498. She died before July 1532. They came from fairly well-to-do families, and owned several houses in Haarlem. Jan Mostaert is documented in Haarlem almost every year from 1498 to 1516 and from 1526 to 1552. He died there between April 1552 and April 1553.
According to Van Mander, Mostaert trained with the Haarlem painter Jacob Jansz (who may have been the Master of the Brunswick Diptych). He was already being mentioned as a painter (‘scilder’) in 1498, and in 1502 he is recorded as a member of the local Guild of St Luke, of which he was dean in 1507 and 1543-44. Some pupils (‘leer-junck’) of his are recorded in the guild registers of 1502-07.
There are documented commissions for the wings of a tabernacle altarpiece in the St Bavokerk in Haarlem (1500-05), for the wings of an altarpiece in St Elizabeth’s Hospital (1550), and for the high altarpiece in the church in Hoorn (1549-50). None of those works has survived.
Although Jan Mostaert was appointed a ‘painctre aux honneurs’ in March 1518 by Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), regent of the Netherlands, and presented her with a painting of Philibert de Savoie in January 1521,7 there is no evidence that he was her court painter, so there is no reason to trust Van Mander’s statement that he worked at Margaret’s court in Mechelen for 18 years.
Van Mander also says that Mostaert was the portrait painter of the Dutch nobility, but unfortunately none of the paintings he describes can be securely identified with extant works. The Portrait of Abel van den Coulster in Brussels8 is similar to Van Mander’s description of a self-portrait by Mostaert.
As regards history paintings, the Christ Shown to the People in Moscow,9 which corresponds closely to another painting described by Van Mander, provides a yardstick for the attributions of a few memorial triptychs: the Alckemade Altarpiece with the Last Judgement for the Van Noortwijck family, which can be dated c. 1514, now in Bonn,10 the Altarpiece of the Deposition (the so-called Triptych of Oultremont) in Brussels, commissioned by Albrecht Adriaensz van Adrichem (c. 1470-1555), of c. 1520-25,11 and the pair of shutters of c. 1522-26 (also in Brussels) ordered by the same donor and his third wife.12 The Scene from the Conquest of America, described by Van Mander as unfinished and in the possession of Mostaert’s grandson Nicolaas Suycker, provides a reference point for his later work.13 The reconstruction of Mostaert’s oeuvre begun by Glück in 1896 (prior to which these paintings had been attributed to the Master of the Triptych of Oultremont) and continued by Friedländer, currently numbers some 30 to 40 paintings, including several devotional pieces and about 10 portraits. Friedländer’s attribution of The Tree of Jesse (SK-A-3901) to the young Jan Mostaert, which was adopted by Boon and others, remained controversial in the 20th century. Here it is reattributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans.
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 229r-v; Glück 1896; Steinbart in Thieme/Becker XXV, 1931, pp. 189-91; Friedländer X, 1932, pp. 9-32; Thierry de Bye Dólleman 1962; Thierry de Bye Dólleman 1963; Van der Klooster 1964; Duverger 1971; ENP X, 1973, pp. 11-23; Miedema III, 1996, pp. 190-204; Snijder in Turner 1996, XXII, pp. 199-201; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 249-53
(Jan Piet Filedt Kok)
Entry
An elegantly clad woman is seen half-length against the backdrop of a mountainous landscape containing a vignette of the conversion of St Hubert. She is wearing a white linen cap with the lappets hanging down her back. (The folds are a little different from those in the underdrawing, and the cap itself is broader than the reserve left for it; see fig. a.) She has a white chemise with a straight, horizontal neckline into which a thin chain disappears. It was customary at the time to wear a crucifix or some other piece of jewellery under the clothing and close to the heart. Around her shoulders she has a transparent fabric, the ends of which are tucked into her bodice. Over her chemise she is wearing a red and gold kirtle, only the top and pleated sleeves of which are visible. On top of that she has a brown damask gown lined entirely with brown fur. The wide, funnel-shaped sleeves are turned back almost to her shoulders. These high sleeves and the headdress reaching to the chin became fashionable around 1520. The woman’s attire marks her out as a member of the well-to-do burgher class.14
It has proved impossible to identify the woman.15 Since she is wearing a gold ring set with a stone on the ring finger of her left hand, which she is holding with the fingers of her other hand, it is likely that this is a wedding portrait that was originally part of a diptych. Her husband would have been on the left wing, which has disappeared without trace.
Van Mander writes that Jan Mostaert was ‘well thought of and loved by most of the nobility in the country, by the great as well as the minor’.16 This remark buttresses the attribution of several portraits of aristocrats to Mostaert, around ten of which can be ascribed to him with some degree of certainty. Most of them have a landscape background, often with small figures depicting subjects like Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl or the conversion of St Hubert. The only portrait diptych by Mostaert that survives complete is in the St Dimpnakerk in Geel, near Antwerp, and shows Hendrik van Merode and his wife Franziska van Brederode.17 It was probably made on the occasion of their marriage in 1525.18 The subject of the hunt and St Hubert’s conversion is also depicted in the background of the relatively large Portrait of a Young Man in the museum in Liverpool.19
At the beginning of the 16th century Haarlem had a confraternity of St Hubert, the patron saint of hunting, and many noblemen from the surrounding district of Kennemerland would undoubtedly have been members. Since membership was restricted to men, it is likely that the landscape with the hunt in the present woman’s portrait would have extended onto the lost left wing with the portrait of her husband. Several of the works attributed to Mostaert have similar mountainous landscapes in the background. Equally typical of his work are the kinds of background figure, which can also be seen in The Adoration of the Magi (SK-A-671).
(Jan Piet Filedt Kok)
Literature
Friedländer X, 1932, p. 124, no. 42; Hoogewerff II, 1937, pp. 489, 495; Amsterdam 1952, pp. 53-54, no. 108a; Amsterdam 1958, p. 89, no. 86; Winkler 1959, p. 198; Van Luttervelt 1962, pp. 77-82; ENP X, 1973, p. 73, no. 42; Kloek in Van Os 'et al'. 2000, p. 84, no. 20; Filedt Kok/De Winkel 2005, pp. 396-97
Collection catalogues
1956, p. 147, no. 1674 A1 (as c. 1520-25); 1960, p. 217, no. 1674 A1; 1976, p. 400, no. A 3843
Citation
J.P. Filedt Kok, 2010, 'Jan Jansz Mostaert, Portrait of a Woman, Haarlem, c. 1520', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4656
(accessed 20 September 2024 00:19:18).