Category: Renaissance

Mystery portrait identified as Mary Boleyn

Museums, Renaissance

A painting in the Royal Collection previously known only as Portrait of a Woman has been identified as a portrait of Mary Boleyn, older sister of Anne Boleyn and mistress of her future husband Henry VIII. The identification was made thanks to researchers with the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project (JVDPPP), a multidisciplinary study based in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels of oak panel paintings by 17th century masters Jacques Jordaens and Sir Anthony Van Dyck. The portrait is in the style of Flemish artist Remigius van Leemput, so not one of the two artists on the project’s masthead, but Leemput worked in Van Dyck’s studio and he specialized in making copies of the master’s paintings, especially his portraits of the British aristocracy. Not all of the originals have survived, so  van Leemput’s work is of particular interest to the researchers both for comparative purposes and to get as close to lost originals as possible.

The JVDPPP examined it and another 13 portraits of women, collectively known as the Beauties, by van Leemput that are in the Royal Collection. The other 13 are contemporary portraits, however, aristocratic 17th century women garbed and coiffed in styles of their time. The unnamed woman in Portrait of a Woman is the only one in 16th century clothing and hairstyle.

They examined it in September of 2019. Dendrochronological analysis on the oak support found that it was cut from the same Baltic tree around 1629 as the only other portrait of the 14 whose sitter was previously unknown. Archival research revealed a key clue tying the two portraits together: photographs of two paintings in private collections with inscriptions identifying the 16th century woman as Mary Boleyn and the 17th century one as Lady Herbert, ie, Margaret Smith, wife of Thomas Carey who was Mary Boleyn’s great-grandson. A few years after her portrait was painted, her husband died and she married Sir Edward Herbert.

Sir Oliver Millar, then Surveyor of H. M. The Queen’s Pictures, wrote in his 1963 book The Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen that in the 19th century the painting was believed to be one of several copies of a Hans Holbein portrait of Anne Boleyn. By 1861 it was listed in the catalogue as a “portrait of a lady” and the sitter has been anonymous for nearly 160 years until this discovery.

Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, told the Sunday Telegraph: “It’s absolutely fascinating. We don’t have the resources to apply technical examination like dendrochronology to the whole collection, which is 7,000 paintings, so it’s wonderful to collaborate with the JVDPPP to help us in that way. One of the things that I’m endlessly trying to do is to group the paintings properly to sort out their history and their relationship to each other.

“When a stray is reunited with the family, there’s joy in heaven. It disproportionately increases the value and understanding of the whole group.”

Describing the paintings as “absolutely beautiful”, he said that the set could now be reunited.

Justin Davies, a British art historian and JVDPPP co-founder, said of the research: “It’s been a voyage of discovery. The results were remarkable and unexpected. Six of the 14 panels had been made from the same oak tree. The tree had started growing in south-west Germany before 1393 and was cut down between 1651 and 1671. In itself, this result constitutes a world record – six panel paintings from the same tree had not been recorded before.”

He added: “The remaining eight pictures are four pairs of two in terms of their trees of origin. “

The newly-identified Mary Boleyn portrait now hangs in the bedchamber of Mary, Queen of Scots, at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.

Cromwell’s cut-and-paste in the Great Bible

Renaissance

Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s favorite and chief minister until he met a sharp end, played an outsized role in the English Reformation’s violent severing of relations with the Catholic Church. He led the charge on the Dissolution of the Monasteries, ordered destruction of all artwork, church decoration, relics and books he deemed idolatrous/superstitious/popish (Oxford’s entire library was destroyed) and chaired the synod that established Church of England doctrine. The Great Bible of 1539, the first authorized edition of the Bible in English, was commissioned by Cromwell who then ordered its distribution. On September 5th, 1538, the crown, ie, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Thomas Cromwell, issued an injunction that every parish in England and Wales buy a copy of the Bible in English and set it up “in sum convenient place” so that all parishioners could read it. The first printed copies of the first national Bible, known as the Great Bible due to its large size, went on sale in April of 1539.

Two presentation copies were printed, one for King Henry VIII and one for Thomas Cromwell. These were luxury editions, with parchment pages instead of paper and the illustrations, black-and-white woodcuts in the standard copies, elaborately hand-painted to look like illuminations. Henry’s copy is in the British Library. The Cromwell copy is now in the Old Library of St John’s College, Cambridge.

The frontispiece of the Great Bible was not what you would call subtle about its propagandistic purpose. The dominant figure, larger than everyone else and enthroned above the title is Henry. Jesus is crammed uncomfortably into a small cloud-lined gap above him. He doesn’t even have space to raise his head so it sort of flops on his shoulder. Just below to his right is a much smaller Henry VIII, his imperial crown on the ground, kneeling in the presence of God. Banderoles contain biblical passages from Isaiah and Acts of the Apostles that heavy-handedly replace King David with Henry as the man God has chosen to fulfill his will. Kneeling Henry replies in his banderole with a quote from Psalm 118, speaking as David.

Archbishops, their mitres on the ground, and courtiers, hats in hand, flank the grand enthroned Henry on both sides as if they were apostles or angels to his Christ. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury on Henry’s left and Thomas Cromwell on his right receive the Verbum Dei (Word of God) directly from the king. In the second tier, they, now wearing their chapeaux, pass the Bible to (hatless) parish priests and nobility. They (hats on) then deliver it to the grateful masses at the bottom who cheer “Vivat Rex” and “God Save the Kynge.”

The message is clear: Henry is second only to God in spiritual authority and it is he, through his personal gift, who transmits the word of God to his people. The Byzantine hierarchies and Latin texts of Roman Catholicism hold no sway in Henry’s England. His people can read the Word for themselves.

Cromwell’s high station would soon come crashing down. He backed the wrong horse after the death of Jane Seymour and Henry was disgusted with Cromwell’s choice of Anne of the Cleves for wife #4. He had to go through with the wedding so as not to piss off the Germans, but their marriage was never consummated and was annulled July 9th, 1540. Thomas Cromwell was executed for heresy and treason on July 28th, 1540. His heraldic insignia, originally in a roundel at his feet, were excised from all editions of the Great Bible printed after July 1540.

The frontispiece for Henry’s lavish presentation copy went beyond the mere excision. Both iterations of Cromwell — him receiving the Bible from Henry and then passing it to the lay nobility — were painted over entirely by a grey-haired gent, possibly his successor as Lord Privy Seal John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, and the empty roundel that had held Cromwell’s coat of arms filled in with a floral accent.

Now researchers have discovered that there were alterations made to Cromwell’s copy too. Queen Mary University of London historian Dr. Eyal Poleg and Dr. Paola Ricciardi of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum turned an x-ray spectrometer a high-powered digital microscope to the title page. They discovered the face of Cromwell distributing the Bible was covered with someone else’s visage painted onto vellum and pasted on top of the original.

Dr Poleg believes the change was made to shore up Cromwell’s position with Henry who still had doubts about the move towards Protestantism. He said: “In the original title page, Cromwell is associating himself with the person distributing Bibles. This was a very dangerous position to be in because Henry was not fully supportive of the new Bible. Cromwell realised this so he tweaked the images to place himself receiving a Bible from Henry. He would have employed an artist to add in a portrait of himself receiving the Bible from Henry.

“It’s been done so professionally that a microscope and a good light source are needed to see it. It’s painted on a separate piece of vellum and then glued on. This makes it the last known portrait of Cromwell before his execution. Cromwell is often seen as a reformer who moved the country very ardently in the direction of Anglicanism and here he is shown as someone who understands politics very well, and actually tries to position himself in the right location. He was very much aware of Henry’s hesitation regarding the Bible and he’s very good at playing the political game. This adds to our growing understanding of Cromwell and the uncertain course of English Reformation.”

Researchers also spotted another change likely intended to curry favor with the king. Cromwell had a miniature portrait of Jane Seymour, the queen who had finally given Henry his male heir and died from it, pasted over one of the commoners, a woman with three children at her feet.

Dr Poleg said: “The page was manipulated to present Henry with an image of Jane Seymour. Cromwell was using Jane to persuade the King of the value of the Bible. When the Bible was produced, Jane had recently died, so she was still Henry’s beloved Queen. And because she had given birth to their son Edward, putting her in a scene with children makes a lot of sense.”

Remains of Aztec palace, Cortés’ home found under 18th c. building

Modern(ish), Renaissance

Remains from the palace of Mexica emperor Axayácatl and the house Hernán Cortés had built on its ruins have been unearthed under a historic building in downtown Mexico City. National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) archaeologists dug under the floors of the northern half of the Nacional Monte de Piedad, a non-profit pawnshop established in 1775 to provide interest-free loans for the poor, between September 2017 and August 2018 in advance of foundation work to strengthen the historic structure. They discovered pre-Hispanic basalt slab floors dating to the reign of Axayácatl (1469-1481) and the remains of  Cortés’ residence in Tenochtitlan from the earliest days of the conquest ca. 1521.

The INAH team dug 12 test pits and unearthed the remains of a stone wall, plus flooring and column remains from the early Viceregal building. Archaeologists then excavated a neighboring room and discovered walls made of basalt and vesicular lava stones built on a basalt slab floor. These were built by order of Cortés after the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521.  Underneath that floor was another one paved with basalt slabs, this one from Axayácatl’s palace. It was likely an outdoor space within the palace precinct.

By the time the Spanish arrived at Tenochtitlan in late 1519, Moctezuma II, son of Axayácatl, no longer lived in his father’s palace. It was known as the “Old Houses,” while Moctezuma resided in the “New Houses.”  He was gracious enough to allow Cortés and his men to live in his father’s palace. Big mistake, needless to say. Within months the palace was a military barracks and Cortés imprisoned a series of Aztec rulers, starting with none other than the guy who had rolled out the red carpet for them, Moctezuma II. He was still there when he was killed in the revolt after the Tóxcatl massacre.

After the fall of Tenochtitlan, Cortés ordered the destruction of the city’s royal and religious buildings, and he was more than thorough about it. The city’s survivors were forced to demolish their buildings to the foundation. Almost no walls higher than three feet were left standing, and the rubble was reused to construct nice new digs for the conquerors.

The evidence is embedded in the walls of Cortés’ house.

As an example of this, embedded in the façade of the southeast interior corner of the colonial room, two pre-Hispanic dressed stones carved with sculptures in high relief were found. They depicted a feathered serpent (Quetzalcóatl) and a headdress of feathers, and must have belonged to a panel of the Palace of Axayácatl. Also, another Mexica sculpture with the glyph that symbolizes the tianquiztli or market was recovered, in its place as part of a shaft.

Nacional Monte de Piedad officials are looking into how to preserve the discoveries as a layer cake of Mexico City’s history and make them accessible to the public.

Jakob and Elisabeth reunited after 150 years

Museums, Renaissance

The Mauritshuis museum has acquired the portrait of Jakob Omphalius, reuniting him with his fiancée Elisabeth Bellinghausen 150 years after the diptych celebrating their union was granted an unwanted divorce.

The oil-on-panel double portrait was painted by Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder (1493-1555) in 1538/9. Bruyn was the leading portait painter for the elite of Cologne, founder of a the first school of portraiture in the city. His realistic style was inspired by artists like Hans Holbein the Younger, and like Holbein, he was meticulous in capturing the details of their luxurious clothing and jewelry. He specialized in diptychs of engaged and married couples. Even though portraits formed the bulk of his output, Bartholomäus Bruyn did not sign them. He signed his religious art only, and attributions of his portraiture spring from stylistic comparisons with the signed pieces.

As is typical of his couple diptychs, the couple in the Mauritshuis are painted against a plan blue background. The groom looks right, the bride left off the frame, towards each other, and a marble ledge or counter begins in the man’s portrait and ends in the female one. This couple was engaged, not yet married, as attested to by the sprig of bittersweet, symbolizing a fiancee in the visual vernacular of Cologne portraiture.

The portrait of Elisabeth Bellinghausen was donated to the Rijksmuseum in 1912. At that time, only the author of the painting was known, not the identity of the sitter. In 1951, the portrait went on display at the Mauritshuis on long-term loan from the Rijksmuseum. Mauritshuis curators identified her as one of the daughters of University of Cologne law professor Peter Bellinghausen by the coat of arms on the back of the panel, but he had four daughters and there was no hint of which one this young lady might be.

The breakthrough came in 2004 when curator Ariane van Suchtelen discovered an old black-and-white photo of a portrait of a man that matched this one at the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) and an 1896 auction catalogue listing both portraits for sale. They were unidentified and misattributed to Jan Gossaert. The catalogue had handwritten notes by art historian  Hofstede de Groot which included sketches of the coats of arms on the back of the portraits. Curators were able to trace the coat of arms and discover the identity of the man: Jakob Omphalius, a prominent lawyer and law lecturer at the University of Cologne. He was married to Peter Bellinghausen’s daughter Elisabeth and together they would go on to have 13 children.

The happy couple were now recognized as such and known by their proper names, but the whereabouts of Jokab’s portrait were unknown since it had lost been documented at auction in 1955. In May 2019, a “portrait of an unknown man” was sold at a small Paris auction to a Geneva art gallery. The curator of a German museum saw it was the long-lost Jakob portrait and alerted the Rijksmuseum which alerted the Mauritshuis. With the financial support of the national lottery, foundations and a private donor, the Mauritshuis was able to purchase the portrait of Jakob Omphalius and reunite him with his bride.

New frames for the portraits of Jakob Omphalius and Elisabeth Bellinghausen have been made, based on another example by Bruyn. As a result, the portraits once again look like a diptych as they were originally intended (the original frames had been largely lost).

The portrait of Elisabeth has previously undergone extensive conservation treatment at the Mauritshuis. The ‘diptych’ will be displayed in the museum until 4 October, after which time the portrait of Jakob will also undergo extensive treatment in the museum’s conservation studio. The paintings, which now both form part of the Dutch national art collection, will then once again be on view as a diptych in the Mauritshuis.

15th c. wood panel painting conserved

Multimedia, Museums, Renaissance

The Detroit Institute of Art holds in its collection a small egg tempera on panel work by 15th century Venetian painter Antonio Vivarini. It’s a scene from the life of Saint Monica, long-suffering mother of Saint Augstine, in which she coverts her pagan husband Patricius on his deathbed. This was not originally a stand-alone panel painting. It was part of the predella (small action scenes in the footer of an altarpiece whose main panels feature large-scale individual figures) of a polyptych which is no longer extant. It was cut out of the frame leaving the bottom of panel is therefore wider than the top.

The original altarpiece is believed to have been in the Church of Santo Stefano in Venice. The church was extensively rebuilt in the early 15th century at a time when the cult of Saint Monica reached its zenith in popularity. When construction was completed around 1440, there was a chapel with an altar dedicated to St Monica in the left aisle. Francesco Sansovino, writing in 1581, noted that the altarpiece in the chapel had been painted by Giovanni and Antonio Vivarini (phrased as brothers, but Giovanni d’Alemagna was actually Antonio’s German brother-in-law). In the 17th century, art historian Carlo Ridolfi described Vivarini and his brother-in-law’s art in the chapel as a statue of Saint Monica standing surrounded by “picciole historiette” (wee historylets) depicting scenes from her life.

The chapel was moved to the right aisle in the 18th century but the altarpiece did not move with it. The new chapel got new art, and the old was given away to an Augustinian lay community who cut it up and sold it piecemeal. Art historians in the 20th century have traced the scattered components, identifying five panels of the lost altarpiece in museums around the world: The Marriage of St Monica is in Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia; The Birth of Saint Augustine is now in the Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Saint Monica at Prayer with Saint Augustine as a Child is in the Museum Amedeo Lia in La Spezia; Saint Monica Converts her Dying Husband is in the Detroit Institute of Art; Saint Ambrose Baptizes Saint Augustine in the Presence of Saint Monica is in the Accademia Carrara,  Bergamo.

The panel at the DIA is not on public view. (Well, technically nothing is right now, as the museum is closed. It reopens on July 10th.) Its condition is too delicate for display and requires conservation to keep the wood from splitting more and the prevent continuing paint loss. The DIA has posted a fascinating video about the panel conservation, the first episode of the museum’s new Conservator’s Corner series on its YouTube channel. It covers the recent history of conservation and the latest treatment and is a satisfyingly comprehensive glimpse into how the conservatorial sausage is made.