Lot 31: Hans Mielich (Munich 1516-1573)

Portrait of a gentleman, three-quarter-length, in a fur-trim black gown and black cap, a scroll of documents in his right hand, before a green curtain; Portrait of a lady, three-quarter-length, in a black gown over a white bodice trimmed with gold and black embroidery, before a green curtain
oil on panel
26 1/4 x 19 1/2 in. (66.6 x 49.5 cm.)
a pair (2)

K. Löcher, Hans Mielich 1516-1573, Munich and Berlin, 2002, pp. 46-8 and 211-2, nos. 11 and 12, illustrated pp. 126-7, pls. 14-5.

Acquired by Julius Priester, Vienna, 1938, or earlier.
Thence by inheritance to Camilla Priester, Mexico City.
Thence by inheritance to Lily Priester, Mexico City.
Thence by inheritance to Anny Salton, New York.
Thence by inheritance to Albin Salton, New York
Thence by inheritance to the present owner.

THE PROPERTY OF A LADY

The present portraits are two of only seven pictures by Hans Mielich to remain in private hands. In his recent monograph on the artist, Dr. Kurt Löcher, to whom we are very grateful for his assistance in cataloguing this lot, included only forty portraits by Mielich that he regards as fully autograph. He dates the present pair to 1540-1, shortly before Mielich's first visit to Rome when he was at the height of his powers as a portraitist. In style they are comparable both to the dated portraits of Andreas Ligsalz and Apollonia Ligsalz, née Ridler in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (Löcher, op. cit., nos. 5-6, figs. 6-7), and to portraits of an unknown couple in the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, dated 1540 (ibid., nos. 7-8, figs. 8-9). Both Portrait of a gentleman and Portrait of a lady show the sitters in half-length, the slightly turned head of the man looking at the viewer from an angle makes his portrait particularly vivacious when compared to the typically more formal poses of sitters of the period.

Hans Mielich was the leading painter and manuscript illuminator in Munich in the second and third quarters of the sixteenth century. Initially trained by his father Wolfgang Mielich, a local Munich artist, Hans entered the Regensburg workshop of Albrecht Altdorfer in 1536, where he remained for three years. Altdorfer's work had a profound influence on Mielich's art, especially on his use of color, of which the present portraits are good examples. After leaving his studio, Mielich established himself as one of the leading portraitists in Germany, surpassing both his mentor, Barthel Beham, and Hans Schöpfer I in his depictions of the Munich patrician class. Mielich is particularly noted for his depiction of texture, as with the fur- lined coat of the man and the embroidered linen of his wife's dress, and his attention to ornament, as exemplified by the sitters' rings.