George Gower

Portrait of an Elizabethan Gentleman, Edmund Huddleston Dated 1562, oil on panel

Dated 1562

Figure with Cherubim in Wilderness Italian School, 17th century oil painting on wood panel framed 13 x 11 inches condition: overall for its age very good, though the work is most likely a preparatory...

Biblical Figures, Large Gathering around Christ? Dutch Old Master, early 17th century oil painting on wood panel, stuck on velvet backing board velvet board: 27 x 29 inches board: 25.5 x 26 inches provenance: private collection, France condition: good and sound condition, obvious old panel...

Portrait of Francisco de Reynoso y Baeza.   Secretary of Pope Pius V, abbot of Husillos and bishop of Córdoba. Francisci de Reynoso. Early 17th century. Small-format portrait from the late Renaissance period. Spanish school. Size: Cm 19 x Cm 13.5 Oil on wooden panel. On the back the fine tablet is strengthened (already in ancient times) by a sheet of parchment. About 1600-1610. As often in Mannerist / Late Renaissance portraits, the image of the character is accompanied by the writing that runs at the top, adding a celebratory, historicising touch to the effigy. Let's bring back the sentence here: DON FRANCISCO DE REINOSO. CAMARERO SECRETO IESCALCO PIO QUINTO OBISCOPO CORDOBA. 68 (? O 7?) (1534, Autillo de Campos, Spain - 1601, Córdoba) Francisco de Reynoso was a Spanish cleric, chief chamberlain, and secretary to Pope Pius V, abbot of Husillos, and bishop of Córdoba. He was the fourth of eleven children. His father was the seventh Lord of Autillo de Campos, and his mother was Juana de Baeza y de las Casas, daughter of Manuel de Baeza, a lawyer of the Royal Council and at the Court of Valladolid. Francisco de Reynoso was deeply devoted to the Virgin Mary and showed a strong inclination toward religion and piety from an early age. He studied Latin, arts, and theology at the University of Salamanca. In 1562, he traveled to Rome with his brothers Pedro and Luis. In January 1566, following the death of Pope Pius IV, Cardinal Antonio Michele Ghislieri was elected pope, becoming Pius V. From this period until Ghislieri's death in 1572, Francisco de Reynoso served as his chief chamberlain and secretary. After Pope Pius V died, Francisco de Reynoso returned to Spain and lived for several years in the city of Palencia, where his brother Manuel was a canon. He supported the Society of Jesus when it was established in Palencia, providing alms to the school's clergy and funding chairs of Letters and Theology at his own expense, as well as donating a significant number of books. During the brief outbreak of the Black Plague...

Provenance: with Leo Blumenreich and Julius Böhler, Munich, 1924 Dr. Frederic Goldstein Oppenheimer (1881-1963), San Antonio, Texas; by whom given to: Abraham M. Adler, New York, until 1985; thence by descent to the present owners While old inscriptions on the verso of this panel propose its author to be Hans Holbein and the sitter Sir John More—a lawyer, judge, and the father of Sir Thomas More—this fine portrait has long been recognized to be by a Flemish hand. Max Friedländer gave the painting to Bernard van Orley (1487/1491 – 1541) in 1924, but did not include it in the volume dedicated to the artist in his Early Netherlandish Paintings...

Provenance: Bradley Collection. Private Collection, Upperville, Virginia. Literature: Katlijne van der Stighelen and Hans Vlieghe, Rubens: Portraits of Unidentified and Newly Identified Sitters painted in Antwerp, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vol. 19, pt. 3, London and Turnhout, 2021, under cat. no. 189, p. 161, and fig. 75. This painting had previously been considered to be by an anonymous Tuscan painter of the sixteenth century in the orbit of Agnolo Bronzino. While the painting does in fact demonstrate a striking formal and compositional similarity to Bronzino’s portraits—compare the nearly identical pose of Bronzino’s Portrait of a Young Man in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Fig. 1)—its style is completely foreign to Italian works of the period. That it is painted on an oak panel is further indication of its non-Italian origin. This portrait can in fact be confidently attributed to the Antwerp artist Huybrecht Beuckelaer. Huybrecht, the brother of Joachim Beuckelaer, has only recently been identified as the author of a distinct body of work formerly grouped under the name of the “Monogrammist HB.” In recent studies by Kreidl, Wolters, and Bruyn his remarkable career has been delineated: from its beginnings with Joachim in the workshop of Pieter Aertsen; to his evident travels to Italy where, it has been suggested, he came into contact with Bronzino’s paintings; to his return to Antwerp, where he seems to have assisted Anthonis Mor in painting costume in portraits; to his independent work in Antwerp (where he entered the Guild of Saint Luke in 1579); and, later to his career in England where, known as “Master Hubberd,” he was patronized by the Earl of Leicester. Our painting was recently published by Dr. Katlijne van der Stighelen and Dr. Hans Vlieghe in a volume of the Corpus Rubenianum, in which they write that the painting “has a very Italian air about it and fits convincingly within [Beuckelaer’s] oeuvre.” Stighelen and Vlieghe compare the painting with Peter Paul Ruben’s early Portrait of a Man, Possibly an Architect or Geographer in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which the sitter holds a compass and wears a similarly styled doublet (Fig. 2). Huybrecht both outlived and travelled further afield than his brother Joachim, who made his career primarily in Antwerp. Whereas Joachim was the main artistic inheritor of their uncle and teacher, Pieter Aertson, working in similar style and format as a specialist in large-scale genre and still-life paintings, Huybrecht clearly specialized as a painter of portraits and was greatly influenced by the foreign artists and works he encountered on his travels. His peripatetic life and his distinctly individual hand undoubtedly contributed to the fact his career and artistic output have only recently been rediscovered and reconstructed. His periods abroad seem to have overlapped with the mature phase of his brother Joachim’s career, who enrolled in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke much earlier than his brother, establishing himself as an independent painter in 1560. Joachim’s activity was confined to the following decade and half, and his latest work dates from the last year of his life, 1574. Our portrait was likely produced in the late 1560s, a dating supported by the dendrochronological investigation performed by Dr. Peter Klein, which established that it is painted on an oak panel with an earliest felling date of 1558 and with a fabrication date of ca. 1566. This painting presents a portrait of an artist, almost certainly Huybrecht’s self-portrait. The young sitter is confidently posed in a striking patterned white doublet with a wide collar and an abundance of buttons. He stands with his right arm akimbo, his exaggerated hands both a trademark of Huybrecht and his brother Joachim’s art, as well as a possible reference to the “hand of the artist.” The figure peers out of the painting, interacting intimately and directly with the viewer, as we witness him posed in an interior, the tools and results of his craft visible nearby. He holds a square or ruler in his left hand, while a drawing compass...

Giacomo used to paint with his brother Giulio, identifying their works with the monogram «I I». The strong influence of his father, Francesco, is undeniable in all his works, althoug...

This striking devotional image, painted by a follower of Jan Gossaert, represents one of the most influential compositions of the Northern Renaissance: Christ on the Cold Stone, or C...

This finely executed oil painting, attributed to the circle of Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, captures the contemplative expression of an elderly man, his gaze lowered in quiet re...

We are pleased to offer a captivating portrait, most likely painted in the late 18th century, attributed to an artist within the circle of Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich. This oil ...

We are pleased to offer a captivating portrait, most likely painted in the late 18th century, attributed to an artist within the circle of Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich. This oil ...