Hans Schäufelein, the Elder (?Nuremberg c. 1482-1539/40 Nördlingen)
Hans Schäufelein, the Elder (?Nuremberg c. 1482-1539/40 Nördlingen)
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PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION
Hans Schäufelein, the Elder (?Nuremberg c. 1482-1539/40 Nördlingen)

Portrait of an old man, bust-length, in a black cloak and cap

Details
Hans Schäufelein, the Elder (?Nuremberg c. 1482-1539/40 Nördlingen)
Portrait of an old man, bust-length, in a black cloak and cap
oil on panel, shaped top, unframed
14 ¾ x 12 ¼ in. (37.5 x 31.2 cm.)
Provenance
Samuel Herman de Zoete (1810-1884), Pickhurst Mead, Hayes; his sale (†), Christie's, London, 8 May 1885, lot 244, as 'Holbein' (312 gns. to Mr. Kay).
with Colnaghi, London.
Anonymous sale [Property of a Lady]; Sotheby's, London, 4 April, 1984, lot 14, as 'Circle of Hans Holbein the Younger' (£10,780), when acquired by the present owner.
Literature
C. Metzger, Hans Schäufelin als Maler, Berlin, 2002, pp. 313-14, no. 26, illustrated, as 'Hans Schäufelin (?)'.

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Clementine Sinclair
Clementine Sinclair

Lot Essay

Clearly captivated by the old man’s wizened face, Schäufelein inscribed on this sitter a depth and profundity that read in each line and wrinkle the life that he once led.

Although nothing is known of Schäufelein’s birth or early training, he became a member of Albrecht Dürer’s workshop in Nuremberg in 1503 or 1504, in which he seems to have also held a responsible position during Dürer's second trip to Italy. The influence of this towering figure of the German Renaissance is clear in the meticulously individualised features of the present sitter’s face, reminiscent of the incisive realism with which Dürer painted his own father in 1490 (Uffizi Gallery, Florence; fig. 1). In his own artistic idiom, Schäufelein here combines such naturalism with the abstraction of the sitter’s calligraphic strands of hair, described in free curvilinear lines in both graphite and with a fine brush. Infrared reflectography has revealed the wealth of detail in the underdrawing of the hair and face, which the artist deliberately utilised to define the sitter’s features beneath delicate glazes of paint (fig. 2). The refined tonality of the original paint was only recently uncovered after a removal of the panel’s darkened varnish. Using the panel’s ground to embody the undulations and shadows of the sitter’s flesh tones, the artist applied warmer tones for the flush of the lips and cheeks, creating in his blue-green eyes a glow of lucent clarity by reflecting in them the luminating light from which the old man’s shadow is cast.

While the meticulous and masterful execution of this portrait has never been disputed, for at least a century its identification to Hans Schäufelein became lost. Since the nineteenth century, it was given to Hans Holbein the Younger and his circle, and in the late twentieth century, speculation arose among scholars as to whether it could be by an artist in the orbit of Dürer, whose drawings Schäufelein had sought to imitate so precisely that connoisseurs often mistook their draughtsmanship. The earliest connection to Schäufelein came from Kurt Löcher, who shared a black and white photograph of the work with Dr. Cristof Metzger in 1994, with the latter concurring with Löcher’s attribution and publishing the portrait as tentatively by Schäufelein in his 2002 monograph on the artist (op. cit.). It would not be until December 2019 that Dr. Metzger could examine the work first-hand, declaring it an exciting and unequivocal addition to Hans Schäufelein’s oeuvre, which he dated to circa 1512 and compared to the portrait in the Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg of the same period (see op. cit., pp. 312-13, no. 25). Dendrochronological analysis of the Baltic oak panel has supported this dating, revealing a felling date of after circa 1484, with a likely usage date of before circa 1516 (report by Ian Tyers, dated July 2018, available upon request).

By the date of this portrait, Schäufelein was in Augsburg where he was active as a painter and designer of woodcuts, painting in 1513 a large altarpiece with scenes of the Passion and the Apocalypse for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Auhausen. It would be his second time in the city, having possibly spent time there in the workshop of Hans Holbein the Elder after leaving Nuremberg in circa 1507.

In the minute lines of the old man’s stubble and dishevelled grey hair, Schäufelein describes the passing of time, within which the sitter may have worked as a scholar, lawyer or perhaps merchant, indicated by the relatively sombre nature of his dress. His voluminous over-gown of greyish-green is rendered with simplicity so as not to detract attention from his face, with the collar turned back as a revers (or lapel) to reveal the dark-fur lining and plain doublet. Such over-gowns had been widely adopted across Europe by the late fifteenth century and became an increasingly distinctive part of men’s fashion during the first half of the sixteenth century, with the fur lapels becoming progressively larger until around 1550, when the fashion was gradually dropped. The combination of the sitter’s large shearling hat worn over his cap is particularly rare and unusual, and was clearly a fashion for older gentleman, also appearing in a portrait by Marten van Heemskerck of Jacob Willemsz van Veen (1456–1535), the Artist's Father in 1532 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Schäufelein clearly felt its importance, rendering each curl of the wool with painstaking detail and originally painting it larger according to the infrared, before reducing it to probably give a more harmonious balance to the portrait.

We are grateful to Dr. Christof Metzger for confirming the attribution after first-hand inspection.

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