Lot 41: Portrait of a lady, half-length, in a black dress embroidered with pearls, with a scarlet and silver under skirt and sleeves, and a jewelled cross necklace

Pieter Pourbus (?Gouda 1523/4-1584 Bruges)
Portrait of a lady, half-length, in a black dress embroidered with pearls, with a scarlet and silver under skirt and sleeves, and a jewelled cross necklace
oil on panel
16¼ x 12¼ in. (41.3 x 31.2 cm.)

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR

Datable to circa 1558, this portrait is from the early maturity of Pieter Pourbus, the pre-eminent artist in late-sixteenth-century Bruges, and one of the key developers of portraiture in early Netherlandish art.

Nothing is known of Pourbus' training (it is Karel van Mander, who was a friend of his, who records his birthplace as Gouda), and one of the earliest records of him is his being entered as a master in the Bruges Painters' Guild in 1543. He married, by 1544-5, the daughter of Lanceloot Blondeel, and it is very possible that he worked with his father-in-law at some point: certainly his earliest known work, the Seven Joys of the Virgin (Doornijk, Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk) of circa 1545, displays the sort of highly ornamental mannerist architecture and adornment that are hallmarks of Blondeel's style (and was in the past given to the latter Master). His stature as the ablest artist of his generation seems to have been fairly quickly recognised, and can be inferred from his receiving the commission in 1549 for the decorations for the Joyous Entry into Bruges of the Emperor Charles V and his heir, the future Philip II.

Rather as it had with his father-in-law for the Joyous Entry of 1520, the importance and success of this commission propelled Pourbus to the forefront of the city's community, and he was to benefit for the rest of his life from the closeness of his ties with the city's governing magistrates in the form of civic commissions and broader political patronage. With Pourbus' success, however, came the need to cope with the demands of success and a consequent expansion of his workshop practice, such that Van Mander wrote of it that: 'Never have I seen such an efficient painter's shop as he had'. Workshop production is, of course, the general nature of most of early Flemish painting; however, in Pourbus' oeuvre, it does mean that much of his best work dates from his earlier maturity, the period of the present portrait.

That dating is supported by the sitter's dress, including particularly the close-fitting, small double-banked ruff. A similar example is found in the Portrait of Livina van der Beke, pendant to that of her husband, Pieter Dominick (both Antwerp, Private Collection; Pierre Pourbus: Peintre brugeois, 1984, Bruges, Memling Museum, no. 19, exh. cat. by P. Huvenne), both dated 1558. Dress is, of course, always a fluid judge of date, and one could note the relatively small development in fashion from the very similar dress of the central figure in the celebrated Allegory of True Love of circa 1547 in the Wallace Collection, London. However, the Dominick-Van der Beke portraits also share with this painting many stylistic similarities that support their contemporaneous dating: the simple, neutral tone of the background and the general placement of the sitter in the picture, the softer modelling of the flesh tones, the fluid execution of the lacework and the confident strokes of the underdrawing where it is visible. Interestingly, infra-red photography has also revealed a pentimento in the left fore-arm of the sitter.

We are grateful to Dr. Paul Huvenne for confirming the attribution and suggesting the dating of the picture, having viewed it in the original.