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Lot Essay
Lots 188 and 189 have previously been assumed to depict a married couple and have been associated with the Cologne painter Gotthardt de Wedig (1583-1641). This hypothesis can safely be discounted, as they vary substantially in their execution and are clearly by two different hands. Additionally, the date on the present (female) portrait, 1652, post-dates de Wedig's death.
We are grateful to Prof. Dr. Rudi Ekkart and Claire van den Donk-Schweigman for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry, and for proposing an attribution for the female portrait to Johann Spilberg II, who trained with Govaert Flinck in Amsterdam and subsequently worked in Düsseldorf and Cologne. They propose that the male portrait is an old copy, possibly after a lost example by de Wedig, which would originally have been painted in or around 1630.
We are grateful to Emerald Dickson and Evrard van Zuylen at Webaldic for their research into the sitters' coats of arms, which confirm that, although they are highly unlikely to have been a married couple, they are indeed both members of the Cologne branch of the De Bruyn van Blankenforst family, who were German with Dutch origins. Around 1652 to which the female portrait is dated, Johann Spilberg II was in fact working a relatively short distance away from Cologne.
More portraits of the family survive, such as the 1613 likenesses of Adriaan de Bruyn van Blankenforst and his wife Gertrud van Cronenberg by Gortzius Geldorp (Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest) and that of their five-year-old son Johann Gottlob de Bruyn van Blankenforst from 1620, painted by an anonymous Cologne artist (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne).
We are grateful to Prof. Dr. Rudi Ekkart and Claire van den Donk-Schweigman for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry, and for proposing an attribution for the female portrait to Johann Spilberg II, who trained with Govaert Flinck in Amsterdam and subsequently worked in Düsseldorf and Cologne. They propose that the male portrait is an old copy, possibly after a lost example by de Wedig, which would originally have been painted in or around 1630.
We are grateful to Emerald Dickson and Evrard van Zuylen at Webaldic for their research into the sitters' coats of arms, which confirm that, although they are highly unlikely to have been a married couple, they are indeed both members of the Cologne branch of the De Bruyn van Blankenforst family, who were German with Dutch origins. Around 1652 to which the female portrait is dated, Johann Spilberg II was in fact working a relatively short distance away from Cologne.
More portraits of the family survive, such as the 1613 likenesses of Adriaan de Bruyn van Blankenforst and his wife Gertrud van Cronenberg by Gortzius Geldorp (Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest) and that of their five-year-old son Johann Gottlob de Bruyn van Blankenforst from 1620, painted by an anonymous Cologne artist (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne).