Object data
oil on panel
support: height 33.5 cm × width 24 cm
Master of the Portraits of Princes
Portrait of Engelbert II (1451-1504), Count of Nassau, Lord of Breda, and regent of all the Netherlands in the name of Philip the Handsome
Southern Netherlands, ? Brussels, c. 1480 - c. 1490
Inscriptions
- date, top frame: 1487
- inscription, bottom of the frame: Engelbert Conte de Nassau
Technical notes
The support, with integral frame, is a single vertically grained oak plank. The frame is 1.1 cm thick, the support approximately 0.3 cm thick. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1461. The panel could have been ready for use by 1472, but a date in or after 1486 is more likely. The reverse of the inner panel (26.2 x 16.8 cm) has a white ground and was painted black. There are traces of nails along this portion of the reverse, indicating that a frame may once have been attached to the back as well. On the front, both the frame and the panel are grounded with a white ground, and were painted and varnished. Infrared reflectography reveals some thick liquid contour lines in the man’s right hand, there are no other traces of an underdrawing. The paint was applied thinly and smoothly. The figure was left in reserve, and the painting technique can be characterised as precise.
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG407, 11 May 2006
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 10 February 2008
- condition report: I. Verslype, RMA, 12 May 2006
- X-radiography: A. Wallert, RMA, no. 1807 (1-2), 27 March 2007
Condition
Fair. There is some retouching in the face (especially in the chin), which has become matte. The black cap has been overpainted and altered to give it a wider black brim. Significant overpainting and alterations have also occurred at Engelbert’s chest and along his right arm and left shoulder. Heavy cleaning, perhaps from a prior restoration campaign, has left some of the original paint on the chest abraded. The left side of Engelbert’s monogram on the inner frame has been worn away slightly. The outer border of the frame is completely overpainted with a chequered pattern of black and green, on which the inscription is painted. The varnish is thick, glossy and slightly discoloured.
Conservation
- L. Sozzani, 2007: complete restoration of painting
- H.H. Mertens, 1969
- H.H. Mertens, 1969
Original framing
The painting has an integral frame. The cross-section of the profile shows a tenia, a bevel, an ogee and a small bevel at the sight edge (fig. a). The sill has a wide bevel at the sight edge (fig. b). The ogee section of the profile is gilded, with painted violets on top of the gold. The right hand of the sitter, and the tail of the falcon are extended in trompe l’oeil over the gilding on the bevelled part of the sill. The gilding is also adorned with stippling and dividing lines. Painted on the tenia of the frame is a checkerboard with black and green rectangles, although recent research shows that there may be a marblising in light grey tones underneath. The reverse of the panel is surrounded by an unpainted border. This border has traces of protein glue, and is approximately the same width as the integral moulding on the front of the panel, indicating that originally a moulding was most likely attached to the back of the panel as well.
Provenance
...; ? estate inventory, palace of the Nassau family, Brussels, 1618, no. 31 (‘Le pourtraict de Messire Engelbert de Nassau, peint à huile, sur bois’);1 …; Hollingworth Magniac (1786-1867), Colworth House, Bedfordshire, known as the Colworth collection, 1862;2 his sale, 2 July 1892 sqq., no. 77, as unknown Flemish master, dated 1497, 120 gns, to the dealer Durlacher;3 …; collection Wickham Flower, Guildford and London, 1899;4 his deceased sale, et al., London (Christie’s), 17 December 1904, no. 46, 270 gns, to the dealer Dowdeswell;5 …; collection Berthold Richter, Berlin, 1906;6 ...; sale, Rudolf Peltzer (†) (Cologne) et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 26 May 1914 sqq., no. 329, as Anonymous, 15th century, fl. 7,000;7 …; collection Michiel Onnes van Nijenrode (1878-1972), Kasteel Nijenrode, Breukelen;8 his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 4 July 1933 sqq., no. 4, fl. 5,200, to the dealer J. Goudstikker, for the museum, as a gift from Dr Hans Wilhelm Christian Tietje (1895-?), Amsterdam, 19339
Object number: SK-A-3140
Credit line: Gift of H.W.C. Tietje, Amsterdam
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Master of the Portraits of Princes (active in Brussels c. 1480-90)
The Master of the Portraits of Princes received his name in 1926 from Friedländer, who ascribed the portrait of Engelbert II of Nassau in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-3140) and the left wing of the triptych ‘The miracles of Christ’ to the artist’s hand.10 Friedländer also suggested that the ‘Portrait of a young man from the Spanish Fonseca family’ in Rotterdam, and the ‘Portrait of Jean Bossaert’, formerly in Poznan (now in a private collection), might be by the same artist, a seeming specialist in depictions of ‘high-born personages’.11 While Friedländer situated the master in Brussels c. 1490, other scholars have suggested that he was already active around 1480.
Some subsequent writers have questioned Friedländer’s attributions to the Master of the Portraits of Princes. Tombu, following Hulin de Loo, gave the same works to the Master of the Legend of Mary Magdalen. Wescher, however, accepted the attributions and proposed adding three more portraits to the oeuvre, including the two images of Adolf of Cleves in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie.12 More recently, Périer-D’Ieteren has affirmed Friedländer’s original attributions on stylistic and technical grounds, and has emphasised the affinity between the artist’s portraits and Franco-Flemish miniature painting from the end of the 15th century. None of the attempts to associate the Master of the Portraits of Princes with known artistic personalities (such as Pieter and Jan van Coninxloo, Beernaert van der Stockt and Lieven van Laethem) has proven conclusive.
References
Friedländer IV, 1924, pp. 105-06; Tombu 1929b, pp. 280-91; Wescher 1941, pp. 272-77; Vollmer in Thieme/Becker XXXVII, 1950, p. 109; Bruges 1969, pp. 127-30; ENP IV, 1969, pp. 59, 98; Périer-D’Ieteren 1986, pp. 43-56; Périer-D’Ieteren 1990, pp. 2-19; Martens 1998b, pp. 34-35
(Marissa Bass)
Entry
This portrait shows Engelbert II of Nassau, the future regent of the Netherlands, at around the age of 35. He is portrayed at half length, wearing a black doublet over a red undergarment that is visible at the slit sleeve and through the black lacing at his chest. He is also wearing a small black cap with a brim and the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The edge of a white shirt, which Engelbert appears to be wearing under the red garment, is just visible at the collar. X-ray photography has revealed that there were originally slits in the jacket at his chest and shoulders, which exposed more of his white shirt. The X-rays also revealed that his hat originally fit somewhat closer to the head and had a smaller brim, which was held in place by two large stitches.13 Due to the overpainting, which still covered these areas when the final draft of this entry was being written, the particularities of the costume were still difficult to discern.14
On Engelbert’s gloved left hand perches a hooded hawk whose tail feathers extend over the lower edge of the frame. A thin red ribbon tied to the hawk’s left talon, is twisted around one of his fingers. With his right hand Engelbert clasps the frame’s lower edge. The delicate border of speckled gold and pansies on the frame recall the borders of contemporary Ghent-Bruges manuscript illuminations, and the monogram at the centre of the ledge – two Es symmetrically arranged within a shield – is a personal device commonly found on the pages of Engelbert’s illuminated manuscripts.15 The outer border is now painted with a chequered pattern of black and green, but technical investigation has revealed that this chequering overlies a layer of grey paint (which is covered with a varnish), which may have been marbled in imitation of stone.16 Engelbert’s name and title are inscribed along the frame’s lower edge on top of the black and green chequering and thus cannot be original, although the lettering is modelled on good 15th-century Gothic script.17 The restoration of the painting is still in progress and should eventually reveal more precise details concerning the original appearance both of Engelbert’s costume and of the surrounding frame.
Born on 17 May 1451, Engelbert was the eldest son of Jan IV of Nassau, Lord of Breda. In 1468 he married Cimburga van Baden (1450-1501), the niece of Maximilian I. In addition to inheriting the lordship of Breda after his father’s death, Engelbert served as bailiff of Brabant beginning in 1475, and as warden of Turnhout, Heusden, Geertruidenberg and Gouda. During Maximilian’s disputes with the Netherlandish territories in the 1480s, Engelbert stood by the Austrian ruler and was consequently appointed as his primary chamberlain. In 1496, Maximilian’s son, Philip the Handsome, appointed him regent of all the Netherlands. Engelbert died in Brussels on 31 May 1504.18
Not only is this painting one of the few portraits attributed to the Master of the Portraits of Princes, it is also one of the few of Engelbert himself. Only one other independent painted portrait of him has survived, and is today with the London Society of Antiquaries.19 The London image, which presents its sitter at a more advanced age, seems to imitate the Master of the Portraits of Princes’s composition, as it portrays Engelbert in a nearly identical pose, turned to the right and clasping the edge of the frame with his right hand (in his left hand, he holds a book rather than a hawk). Otherwise, there are no known contemporary copies after the Rijksmuseum portrait. The left wing of the Melbourne triptych ‘The miracles of Christ’,20 which is likewise attributed to the Master of the Portraits of Princes, may also include a portrayal of Engelbert in the left foreground, as staffage to the scene of ‘The marriage at Cana’. The costume and physiognomy of the figure in question bear a general resemblance to the Rijksmuseum portrait.21
The 1618 inventory of the Nassau palace in Brussels lists a portrait ‘de Messire Engelbert de Nassau, peint à huile, sur bois’ (of Lord Engelbert of Nassau, painted in oil on wood), but whether this is a reference to the present painting is uncertain.22 The Amsterdam portrait, however, did belong to the famous group of historical portraits in the Colworth collection until late in the 19th century, at which time it was (apocryphally) dated 1497.23 The portrait was given to the Rijksmuseum in 1933, after it had been bought at the sale of yet another important late-medieval art collection, that of Onnes at Kasteel Nijenrode.
Engelbert’s portrait in the Rijksmuseum has several features in common with the other independent portraits attributed to the master. Both the ‘Portrait of Jean Bossaert’24 and the ‘Portrait of a young man’ in Rotterdam25 are likewise small in scale and present their subject at half length turned to the right against a solid-coloured background (blue-green and red respectively).26 The Rotterdam portrait also has an original frame decorated with a speckled gold border and pansies, while the portrait of Bossaert, like Engelbert’s, shows the sitter resting his right hand on the frame’s edge. As for the two portraits of Adolf of Cleves in Berlin, both previously attributed to the master, only the painting of Adolf as a young man (at half length, facing right, and grasping the frame with his left hand) strongly resembles the portrait of Engelbert.27 Another portrait, of Lodewijk of Gruuthuse, which has been ascribed to the Master of the Portraits of Princes, is comparable to the Rijksmuseum image in composition and has a similar bright red background.28 The newest proposed addition to the oeuvre, a portrait of Philip the Handsome, also shows its sitter holding a hawk.29
MBa
Literature
Friedländer IV, 1926, p. 106; Tombu 1929b, p. 281; Wescher 1941, pp. 272-74; Moerman 1962, pp. 310-12; Bruges 1969, no. 60; ENP IV, 1969, pp. 59, 98; Périer-D’Ieteren 1986, pp. 48-52; Périer-D’Ieteren 1990, pp. 8, 9; De Win 1991, pp. 108-09; Huyskens 1992, pp. 47, 48; Van Schoute et al. 1994, pp. 232, 548-49; Wilson 1998, pp. 48, 50
Collection catalogues
1934, p. 3, no. 27a (as French school, 16th century, c. 1485/90); 1960, pp. 200-01, no. 1538 W1; 1976, p. 636, no. A 3140
Citation
M. Bass, 2010, 'Meester van de Vorstenportretten, Portrait of Engelbert II (1451-1504), Count of Nassau, Lord of Breda, and regent of all the Netherlands in the name of Philip the Handsome, Southern Netherlands, c. 1480 - c. 1490', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9538
(accessed 25 April 2024 09:05:34).