Lot 3: Attributed to Jan Jansz. Mostaert , Haarlem circa 1474 - 1555/6 Portrait of a young man, behind a ledge, with a landscape beyond, in a black hat, holding a memento mori oil on oak panel, the upper corners scalloped

oil on oak panel, the upper corners scalloped

measurements note 28.3 by 23.5 cm.; 11 1/8 by 9 1/4 in.

Wetzlar cat., 1952, pp. 5, 17, no. 68, reproduced, as Jan Mostaert;
M. Jager, "Een raadselachtige Mostaert", in Tableau, no. 3, 1981, pp. 612-3;
Voorkeuren, 1985, p. 56, reproduced p. 57.

Samuel Rogers, London;
His deceased sale, London, Christie's, 28 April – 20 May 1856, as Lucas van Leyden;
Hollingworth Magniac (1786-1867), London and Colworth Park, Bedfordshire;
His deceased sale, London, Christie's, 2 July 1892, lot 33 (as part of the Colworth Collection), as Lucas de Heere, for £105 to Mainwaring;
Massey-Mainwaring collection;
With Brown & Philips, London, 1907;
R.G. Behrens, London, circa 1925;
Oswald Magniac;
Thence by descent to Mrs. F.A. Magniac;
Her deceased sale, London, Christie's, 25 March 1949, lot 152, as 'Master of the Holzhausen Family', for £231 to Scharf;
With A.S. Drey, London, 1949;
Dr. Hans Wetzlar, Amsterdam, by 1952, as by Jan Mostaert;
Wetzlar sale, 1977, lot 110, as Jan Mostaert, when bought back.

MEMENTO MORI
Long attributed to Lucas van Leyden, and bearing his monogram on the ledge, this picture was identified as by Jan Mostaert (Haarlem circa 1474 - 1555/6) by Professor Max J. Friedländer, whose certifcate dated 1949 was offered with the picture in the Wetzlar sale in 1977. Characteristic of Mostaert's portraits is the pose of the sitter turned partly away from the viewer, the ledge before him, and the distant landscape seen below and beyond him.

An alternative attribution to Jacob van Utrecht (?Utrecht c. 1480-?Lübeck after 1530) recorded at the RKD in The Hague also deserves serious consideration. In particular the background, with vertiginous rocks to the left and a harbour city with ships and a distant sea to the right is very similar indeed in form and handling to van Utrecht's portrait of a bearded old man, signed and dated 1523, which was in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin until destroyed in 1945.

Whether by Mostaert or Van Utrecht, this portrait can be dated to the mid-1520s on grounds of style and the costume of the sitter.

This portrait makes its Vanitas meaning clear. The sitter holds a depiction of a skull inscribed: Nil certius (nothing is certain); and on the parapet rests a sprig of Violet, which is an emblem of humility.