Circle of Juan de Flandes (active 1496-1519)

The Property of the late LADY BROMLEY DAVENPORT, Sold by Order of the Executors

Details

Circle of Juan de Flandes (active 1496-1519)

Portrait of Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Castile, bust length, wearing an embroidered dress and a pendant on a gold chain and holding a prayer book

on panel, arched top
8¼ x 5¼in. (21 x 13.3cm.) inset at a later date into a panel
measuring 9 5/8 x 7 3/8in. (24.5 x 18.8cm.) (see fig.1)

In a French frame of c.1840 made by P. Fontaine, Paris

Provenance

King Henry VIII, by whom presumably acquired through his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, the sitter's daughter (Inventory of pictures etc. in the collection of Henry VIII in the Palace of Westminster, 1542, 'Item oone little table with the picture of the Quene of Castile', see Shaw, loc. cit.)
By descent at the Palace of Westminster (i.e. Whitehall, to which it had been annexed in 1536) to his son, King Edward VI (Inventory of 1547 of pictures etc. in the collection of Edward VI at Greenwich, Westminster, Hampton Court, Oatlands, Nonesuch, The More, Richmond and Bedington, no.75 'Item a little table with the picture of the Quene of Castile', see Shaw, loc. cit.)
By inheritance to King Charles I, Privy Gallery, Whitehall (Inventory by Abraham van der Doort, 1639, f.41, no.51 'Item the 19th Being the Queene of Castilia in a goulden and ... habbitt with a black booke in her hand In a guilden Carved frame. 9 x 5½ ynchs', see Millar,
loc. cit.)

Literature

W. A. Shaw, Three Inventories of the Years 1542, 1547 and 1549-50 of Pictures in the Collections of Henry VIII and Edward VI, 1937, p.38 D. A[ngulo] I[ñiguez], El retrato de Isabel la Católica de la Colección Bromfield [sic] Davenport, Archivo Español de Arte y Arqueologia, XXVII, 1954, pp.260-1 and pl.IV
C. R. Post, A History of Spanish Painting, XII, 1958, Part II, pp.625 and 627 and fig.267
O. Millar, Abraham van der Doort's Catalogue of the Collections of Charles I, The Walpole Society, XXXVII, 1960, p.31, no.51
J. Trizna, Les Primitifs Flamands - Michel Sittow, 1976, p.106, no.50, as not by Michiel Sittow

Exhibited

Utrecht, Centraal Museum, and Louvain, Stadhuis, Paus Adrianus VI, 1959, no.226 and pl.42, as Michiel Sittow
Manchester City Art Gallery, Works of Art from Private Collections in the North West and North Wales, 21 Sept.-30 Oct. 1960, no.11

Lot Essay

One of only four surviving individual portraits of Isabella the Catholic generally regarded as having been executed during the sitter's lifetime. Of these the closest in design is the larger panel still in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. This shows the queen facing towards her left as, unlike the present picture, it has a pendant showing Ferdinand of Aragon. The pair has the same provenance as the present work; presumably also owned by the sitter and her daughter, Catherine of Aragon, it is similarly recorded in Henry VIII's inventory of 1542, Edward VI's of 1547 (see Shaw, op. cit., pp.42 and 46) and Charles I's of 1639 (see Millar, loc. cit., nos.49 and 50). The Windsor portrait of Isabella is of inferior quality to the present painting; the suggestion of E. A. de la Torre (in Arte Español, XX, 1953-5, pp.105-10) that it might be the work of Antonio Ynglés, an English painter who worked for the Catholic kings in 1489, is supported by Trizna (loc. cit., no.55). While it was described as Spanish by Allan Braham in the catalogue of the exhibition, El Greco to Goya. The Taste for Spanish Paintings in Britain and Ireland, National Gallery, London, 1981, pp.4-5, and fig.1, and was omitted by Dr. Lorne Campbell from his 1985 catalogue of The Early Flemish Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Elisa Bermejo has recently published it as an early work by the Master of the Magdalen Legend, whom she identifies as Barnaert van der Stockt (Retratos de Isabel la Católica, Reales Sitios, año XXVIII, no.110, 1991, pp.50 and 53). The other contemporary, individual portraits of the Queen are in the Palacio Real de El Pardo, Madrid, recently ascribed to Juan de Flandes (ibid., pp.53-5, illustrated in colour; F. Checa in the catalogue of the exhibition, Reyes y Mecenas. Los Reyes Católicas - Maximiliano I y los Inicios de la Casa de Austria en España, Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo, 12 March - 31 May 1992, p.545, illustrated in colour p.37) and in the Palacio Real, Madrid (Bermejo, op. cit., pp.53-4, illustrated in colour p.49; Checa, op. cit., pp.418-9, no.153, illustrated in colour, reversed).

The present picture may be dated c.1496 by comparison with the depiction of the sitter in Juan de Flandes' 'Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes' in the Palacio Real, Madrid, originally part of a polyptych known as the 'Oratory of the Catholic Queen' and datable c.1496 (see, for instance, Bermejo, op. cit., pp.52-3, illustrated in colour).

The present portrait and the Windsor pair would seem to have been among the first pictures to arrive in England from Spain (see Braham loc. cit.)

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