Portrait of Pope Adrian VI (1459-1523)

Entry

The portrait shows Pope Adrian VI at half length with his head in profile to the left set within a painted oval frame. His personal coat of arms is to the left of his head, with the arms of Utrecht on the right. Over his alb he is wearing a richly decorated cope closed at the breast with a pectoral cross, and on his head he has the papal tiara.

Adrian VI was born in Utrecht in 1459 as Adriaen Florisz Boeyens.¹ He was elected pope in January 1522 but only held the office for a year, from 31 August 1522 until his death on 14 September 1523.

The many surviving portraits of Adrian, which may include this one, are copies after lost 16th-century originals.² It is known from a contemporary source that Jan van Scorel painted the pope from life on several occasions.³ Although his original portraits are no longer known, one or more of his prototypes may have served as the basis for the bulk of the later copies.⁴

The Rijksmuseum portrait appears to have been based on a commemorative medal (fig. a) in which the pope is depicted in a similar way.⁵ The name of the designer of the medal and the period in which it was made are unknown. Hensen and Hoogewerff assumed on the basis of a poem of 1646 by Barlaeus that it was struck posthumously in the 17th century for Adriaan Ploos van Amstel, a namesake and fellow citizen of the pope’s.⁶ Adriaan Ploos van Amstel was a canon of Utrecht Cathedral around 1605, prior of St Mary’s in 1636, and died in 1639. Hensen suspects that the design for the medal was inspired by a 16th-century model.⁷ This seems to be confirmed by Jan van Scorel’s Pope Cornelius wearing the tiara on the left wing of ‘The Lokhorst triptych’ of c. 1526. That figure has facial features very similar to those of Adrian VI as immortalised in the medal.⁸ It is as yet unclear to what extent the design of the medal was derived from a model by Jan van Scorel, or whether both portraits (the medal and the Rijksmuseum canvas) derive from another 16th-century model. Nothing further can be said about the dating of this later copy, which may be from the 17th century, since it could not be studied ‘in situ’.
ML