Attributed to Jacob van Utrecht (?Utrecht, c. 1480-after 1530 ?Lübeck)

Portrait of a young man, half-length, with a black hat behind a ledge holding a memento mori, a mountainous landscape with a port beyond

Details

Attributed to Jacob van Utrecht (?Utrecht, c. 1480-after 1530 ?Lübeck)
Portrait of a young man, half-length, with a black hat behind a ledge holding a memento mori, a mountainous landscape with a port beyond
inscribed 'L' (lower left) and with remnants of an inscription '(...) CERTIVS' (lower right, on the memento mori)
oil on panel, with additions in the upper corners.
29.1 x 23.4 cm.

Provenance

Samuel Rogers, London; His deceased sale; Christie's, London, 2 May 1856, lot 655, as Lucas van Leyden (£39 to Wells).
Collection Hollingworth Magniac (1786-1867), London and Colworth Park, Bedfordshire;
His deceased sale; Christie's, London, 2 July 1892, lot 33, as Lucas de Heere (£105 to Mainwaring);
Collection Massey-Mainwaring;
with Brown & Philips, London, 1907.
R.G. Behrens, London, by 1925.
Oswald Magniac; thence by descent to Mrs. F. A. Magniac;
Her deceased sale; Christie's, London, 25 March 1949, lot 152, as Master of the Holzhausen Family (£231 to Scharf);
with A.S. Drey, London, 1949;
Dr. Hans Wetzlar, Amsterdam, by 1952, as Jan Mostaert;
His sale; Sotheby's Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, 9 June 1977, lot 110, as Jan Mostaert, where bought back;
His sale; Sotheby's, London, 9 July 2008, lot 3, as attributed to Jan Mostaert, where acquired by the late father of the present owners.

Literature

M.J. Friedländer, Collection Dr. H. Wetzlar, Amsterdam, 1952, p. 17, no. 68, ill., as Jan Mostaert.
M. Jager, ''Een raadselachtige Mostaert'', in Tableau, no. 3, 1981, pp. 612-3.
M. Jager, Voorkeuren, een particuliere collectie, Amsterdam, 1985, p. 56, fig. 57.

Exhibited

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Drie eeuwen portretkunst, 1952, no. 40, as Lucas van Leyden.
Bolsward, Dienst voor Rijks Verspreide Kunstvoorwerpen, exhibition, 1954.
Laren, 1968-9, no. 14, fig. 5, as Jan Mostaert.
Amsterdam, Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Nederland Water/Land, 1972, no. 23, as Jan Mostaert.

Lot Essay

Traditionally attributed to Lucas van Leyden (Leiden 1494-1553) and to Jan Mostaert (Haarlem 1465/85-1552/3), this picture has more recently been attributed to Jacob van Utrecht. Only seven signed portraits by Jacob van Utrecht are known, whose narrow corpus, as established by Max. J. Friedländer in 1941, comprises of 37 works.
Van Utrecht is documented from 1519 to 1530 in the North German town of Lübeck, at the time the capital of the Hanseatic League, a federation of cities controlling trade across the Baltic and North Sea regions. The artist soon established himself as a leading painter in Lübeck, carrying out religious commissions for local churches and providing patricians with spirited portraits.

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