Object data
oil on panel
support: height 16.4 cm × width 14 cm
lijst: height 22.6 cm × width 19.8 cm
Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen (manner of)
Portrait of Charles V (1500-58), Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
c. 1530
Technical notes
The support is a single vertically grained oak panel, 0.3-0.6 cm thick. 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 extends to the edges of the panel. Infrared reflectography reveals no underdrawing. The face, bonnet and collar were left in reserve. The paint was applied smoothly. The face was painted wet in wet, with a red glaze for the lips.
Scientific examination and reports
- condition report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 19 April 2006
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 14 August 2006
Condition
Fair. Protrusion is visible through the paint. The background colour has discoloured from green to a brownish tone. There is minor discoloured retouching in the collar and the varnish has yellowed slightly.
Provenance
…; sale, Baron de Beehr (Berlin) and Gerrit Johan van Leeuwen (Arnhem), Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 14 November 1825, no. 45, as Hans Holbein (‘Het portret van Keizer Karel Vde [...]’), fl. 100, to Jeronimo de Vries (1776-1853), for the museum1
Object number: SK-A-164
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen (Beverwijk c. 1503 - Brussels 1559), manner of
According to his epitaph, Jan Vermeyen was born in Beverwijk, a village about 10 kilometres north of Haarlem. The will that he made on 24 September 1559 states that he was about 55 years old at the time (‘omtrent vive(n)vyftich jaere(n)’), so he must have been born around 1503.2 He was buried in the St Gorickkerk (Church of St Géry) in Brussels in 1559, which contained his epitaph and paintings by him (the church was demolished in 1799). Nothing is known about his first marriage, but it is assumed that his first wife died before he left for Spain in 1534. He probably married his second wife, Jida de Neve, in Brussels after his return to the Netherlands in 1540. Their son Hans Vermeyen (before 1559-1606) was a goldsmith who became a master in 1590 and was employed by Emperor Rudolf II.
Nothing is known about Vermeyen’s artistic training. The influence of both Jan Gossart and Jan van Scorel can be detected in his early works. Van Mander relates that Vermeyen and Jan van Scorel were friends and business partners. He was in the service of Margaret of Austria at the court in Mechelen between 1525 and her death in December 1530. In 1529 he received an annual stipend of 100 Flemish pounds. The works he painted for the regent were primarily portraits of her family and other relatives, and it was for this reason that he visited Augsburg in 1530. He did some work for Margaret’s successor, Mary of Hungary, the sister of Charles V, between 1530 and 1533, but he was probably not employed by her.
Vermeyen probably went to Spain in 1534 and stayed there until 1540. He accompanied Emperor Charles V on the military expedition to and conquest of Tunis in 1535, and in 1538 he is referred to as ‘painter to His Royal Majesty’. In 1536 and 1538 the council of Brabant granted him the exclusive rights to publish prints of those events. Between 1546 and 1550 he designed a set of twelve tapestries for Mary of Hungary depicting scenes from the Tunis expedition, of which ten cartoons still survive in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The tapestries were woven between 1551 and 1553 in Brussels by Willem Pannemaker. Payments for paintings in the Church of the Abbey of St Vaast in Arras are documented from 1548, and as late as 1561, two years after his death, to his widow. He owned land in the north of Holland jointly with Jan van Scorel, and in 1552 was involved in a project to dam the river Zype and polder the area.
None of the paintings by Vermeyen that Van Mander describes have survived. In 1872 Houdoy published a list of paintings, mostly portraits, which Vermeyen completed for Margaret of Austria in the period 1525-30 (the artist requested payment for the materials used in making them in 1533). The diptych of which two wings are described below could be reconstructed as a work by the artist on the basis of this list. The Holy Family, probably the right panel of that diptych, is the only signed painting from his hand (SK-C-1701; see the entry on SK-A-4069). The Micault Triptych with The Raising of Lazarus in Brussels (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts; illustrated in ENP XII, 1975, no. 388, pls. 202-04), is securely attributed to Vermeyen and can be dated between 1547 and 1549. He made about 20 etchings, some of them dated 1545 and 1546, including various oriental subjects, which are signed with his ligated monogram ‘IC’. Apart from the cartoons and etchings, a group of portraits and a few remarkable night scenes (such as SK-A-4820) can be attributed to him.
References
Van Mander 1604, fols. 224v-25r; Houdoy 1872; Steinbart 1931; Friedländer XII, 1935, pp. 157-64; Boon in Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, pp. 278-80; ENP XII, 1975, pp. 85-89; Horn 1989, I, pp. 5-40, II, pp. 339-411 (documents); Miedema III, 1996, pp. 132-40; Vermandere in Turner 1996, XXXII, pp. 271-72
(J.P. Filedt Kok)
Entry
Emperor Charles V is portrayed here in a three-quarter pose, turned slightly to the right against a dark green background. He wears a black bonnet, a white shirt ruffled at the neck, a black doublet, and a fur-lined gown with puffed sleeves, which came into fashion around 1530. The insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece hang around his neck on a simple silk ribbon. The shift to wearing the Golden Fleece pendant on a ribbon rather than on the more traditional gold collar of interlocking links was sanctioned by Charles V himself in 1517, as an acknowledgement of what seems already to have been existing practice.3 The emperor is shown with a moustache and short beard, which he first began to sport in his mid-20s. His hair, which he began wearing short in 1529, provides a date post quem for the portrait.4
Born in Ghent on 24 February 1500, Charles was nearing the height of his power around 1530, in which year he became the last emperor to be officially crowned by the pope. As Holy Roman Emperor, he ruled the Spanish and the Habsburg empires, as well as the Netherlands.5
Several surviving images of Charles bear a marked resemblance to this portrait. The most comparable version is a painting that recently surfaced on the London art market, which portrays the emperor in similar attire but also includes his hands and torso (fig. a).6 It seems likely that this version and the Rijksmuseum portrait are both based on a common model. Other examples also show the emperor in a three-quarter pose with a short beard, but vary significantly in costume and physiognomy, suggesting that they may not all follow the same prototype.7
The model for the present image is most probably a portrait painted by Jan Vermeyen between 1525 and 1530 while he was court painter to Charles’s aunt, Margaret of Austria. Vermeyen may have produced multiple portraits of Charles while in Margaret’s service, but he certainly made at least one sometime between 25 May and 22 October 1530, when he was in Augsburg at Margaret’s request in order to paint Charles and several other members of the royal family.8 Although neither the Augsburg portrait of Charles nor any other portrait of the emperor by Vermeyen is known to survive today, the extant copies are comparable to other portraits attributed to the artist. The simple background, three-quarter pose, strong contrast of light and dark, and dramatic gesturing of the sitter (evident in the copies related to the Amsterdam version) recur throughout Vermeyen’s oeuvre.
(M. Bass)
Literature
Glück 1933, p. 198; Glück 1937, p. 166, note 6; Ghent 1955, p. 132, no. 134; Van den Boogert in Utrecht-’s-Hertogenbosch 1993, p. 325, no. 223; Eichberger 2002, pp. 376-78
Collection catalogues
1827, p. 35, no. 136 (as Hans Holbein); 1843, p. 29, no. 130 (as Hans Holbein; ‘in good condition’); 1858, p. 65, no. 132; 1880, pp. 436-37, no. 518 (as Hans Holbein the Younger); 1887, p. 47, no. 373 (as French school); 1903, p. 4, no. 29 (as Portrait of Charles V, about 25 years old); 1934, p. 3, no. 29 (as Portrait of Philip II, about 25 years old); 1976, p. 573, no. A 164
Citation
M. Bass, 2010, 'manner of Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen, Portrait of Charles V (1500-58), Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, c. 1530', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6691
(accessed 22 November 2024 16:12:41).