Double portrait of a married couple, half-length

This recent rediscovery is one of only two known paintings given to Gabriel Zehender, the other of which is in the collection of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid (fig. 1). Little is known of Zehender’s life or artistic activities. He has often been associated with a series of prints – two of which bear the monogram ‘gz’ – published in Basel, Strasburg and Hagenau between 1517 and 1521, as well as various drawn portraits and religious subjects, some of which have been connected with the work of Hans Baldung Grien and Matthias Grünewald (see, for example, the Virgin and Child standing before the Crucified Christ in the British Museum, inv. no. 1880,0214.345). Zehender is documented in Basel between about 1527 and 1535, having been admitted to the painter’s guild there in 1529. He is said to have come from Grossmausdorf, possibly the village now known as Myszewo in Pomerania.

This painting and the example in Madrid share much in common. In both instances, the artist has employed a portrait type that situates the couple close together but subordinates the woman’s portrait to the man’s, perhaps to signify his status. The type can be found in a number of other works from the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, including that of a couple by the Ulm-based artist Hans Schüchlin dated 1479 in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich (inv. no. MA 2791), Israhel van Meckenem’s engraved self-portrait with his wife Ida and Jan Gossaert’s Portrait of an elderly couple of circa 1520 in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG1689). Somewhat unconventionally for double-portraits of this period, Zehender has in both cases positioned his male sitter to his wife’s left (sinister) side as opposed to the more customary placement in the position of honor to her right (dexter).

Similarly, both known double-portraits by Zehender employ a vigorous handling of paint and set their protagonists against a brightly coloured background with the sitters’ ages inscribed at left and right and the artist’s monogram and date – 1525 in both instances – at upper centre. The stylistic elements and slightly caricature-like rendering of the figures in these portraits recall similar contemporaneous paintings by Baldung (see, for example, his Portrait of Hans Jacob Freiherr zu Morsperg und Beffert of 1525 in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart), who may also have influenced the subtle tension between the couples who appear in this rare master’s works.