Portrait of Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, third Duke of Alva

This striking and carefully executed portrait of one of the most controversial figures in the history of the Southern Netherlands, nicknamed the Iron Duke, directly relates to a likeness of which the primary version, half-length, is still preserved in the sitter’s family, the collection of the Dukes of Alba in the Palacio de Liria, Madrid (Fundación Casa de Alba, inv. P.2). Traditionally considered a work by Titian (and still published as such by R. Ortiz Moyano in El legado Casa de Alba, exhib. cat., Madrid, Centro Cibeles de Cultura y Ciudadanía, 2012-2013, no. 5, ill.), Harold E. Wethey already discarded this attribution in favor of one to the Netherlandish portraitist Willem Key (The Paintings of Titian, II, The Portraits, London, 1971, no. X-3, fig. 249), recently fully supported by Koenraad Jonckheere (Willem Key (1516-1568). Portrait of a Humanist Painter. With an Appendix to the Œuvre of Adriaen Thomasz. Key, Turnhout, 2011, no. A42, ill.). An attribution to another protagonist of Netherlandish sixteenth-century portraiture, Anthonis Mor or Antonio Moro (1516/1521-1576/1577), has also been suggested (F. Checa in Treasures from the House of Alba. 500 Years of Art and Collecting, exhib. cat., Dallas, Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, and Nashville, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, 2015-2016, p. 30, ill. pp. 20, 31, p. 337, no. 10), but Mor’s portrait of the Duke shows him facing right and was made much earlier, in 1549, long before the Duke arrived in the Netherlands in 1567 and cruelly repressed the anti-Spanish rebellion following the Iconoclasm (versions of Mor’s portrait are preserved in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, inv. 1399, and the Hispanic Society of America, New York, inv. A 105; see Woodall, pp. 173-174, 177-178, 179, 180, fig. 59). Key’s likeness probably was the basis for a similar portrait by the Spanish master Alonso Sánchez Coello, also in the Alba collections, at the Palacio de Monterrey, Salamanca (M. Kusche, Retratos y retratores. Alonso Sánchez Coello y sus competidores: Sofonisba Anguissola, Jorge de la Rúa y Rolán Moys, Madrid, 2004, pp. 175-177, fig. 145).

In addition to the half-length portrait of Alba in Madrid, two bust-lengths exist, which seem to have been begun by Key but mostly finished by his son Adriaen Thomasz. Key (circa 1545-after 1589): one also part of the Alba collections (inv. P.3), the other in Museum Het Prinsenhof in Delft (inv. 57; see Jonckheere, nos. A43, A 44, ill.); other replicas of these, of varying quality, survive as well (photos in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague). Key’s portrait can be dated shortly before the artist’s death in 1568 on the authority of Karel van Mander, who in his biography of him recounts that Key died as a direct result of the haughty Alba sitting for him (Het schilder-boeck, Haarlem, 1604, fol. 232 verso, 233 recto; H. Miedema, ed., Karel van Mander. The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, Doornspijk, 1994, pp. 189-190). Born in 1507, the Duke must thus be around sixty years of age in the half-length and bust-length portraits by the Keys; he returned to Spain in 1573 and went on to live until 1582. While the present drawing, which closely corresponds to the face in the portraits, cannot directly be attributed to either of them, it is probable to have played a role in the production of versions of the likeness of Alba within their studio.