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拍品专文
Comparatively little is known of the life of Adriaen Thomasz. Key. He was almost assuredly born in Antwerp and studied with the renowned painter Willem Key, who was long erroneously believed to be Adriaen’s uncle and whose workshop Adriaen took over in 1568 following the elder artist’s death. It was in this year that Adriaen assumed the alias or trade name ‘Key’ (he had previously been known simply as Adriaen Thomasz.) and became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. By 1584, only a few years before his death, he was sufficiently affluent to pay among the highest taxes of any artist in Antwerp. A committed Calvinist in a largely Catholic city, Adriaen must have navigated the pitfalls inherent to his confessional sensibilities, securing the patronage of the city’s leading merchants and noblemen, including members of the De Smidt family, perhaps the richest family in Antwerp at the time, as well as both the Catholic Duke of Alva (1568) and his Calvinist antagonist, William the Silent (1579).
Despite his evident artist success and the quality of his works, Adriaen fell into obscurity in the years immediately after his death. Karel van Mander, for example, waxed eloquent about the works of his master in his Schilder-Boeck (1604) but was curiously silent on Adriaen. It was only in the middle of the nineteenth century that his distinct artistic personality was recognized, with Christiaan Kramm going so far as to declare in the third volume of his De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters, van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd (1859) that ‘his work by far surpasses that of his uncle Willem Key…such that many considered it the work of Antonis Mor’ (translated in K. Jonckheere, Adriaen Thomasz. Key (c. 1545-c. 1589): Portrait of a Calvinist Painter, Turnhout, 2007, p. 15). The emergent consensus as to Adriaen’s prodigious artistic abilities induced subsequent generations of scholars to ascribe a surprising number of works to his name, an issue that was only recently untangled by Koenraad Jonckheere in his catalogue raisonné on the artist (2007).
This charming portrait of a fifteen-year-old girl is an exceptional example of the type of portraiture that made the artist so fashionable in his time. Key has lavished her with an almost obsessive attention to physical detail – in particular the meticulous rendering of individual strands of hair, the pin which holds the bonnet in place, the delicate folds of the ruff and the reflections of her almost porcelain-like eyes – and introduces a strong sense of relief in her flesh tones to model her distinct physiognomy.
A poor copy of this painting, or perhaps a lost half-length version, showing the sitter with jewelry sold Casa d’Aste Babuino, Rome, 9 April 2019, lot 52 with an attribution to Frans Pourbus.
We are grateful to Dr. Koenraad Jonckheere and Lien Vandenberghe for independently endorsing the attribution following firsthand inspection. The painting will be included in their forthcoming addendum to the catalogues raisonné of Willem and Adriaen Thomasz. Key.
Despite his evident artist success and the quality of his works, Adriaen fell into obscurity in the years immediately after his death. Karel van Mander, for example, waxed eloquent about the works of his master in his Schilder-Boeck (1604) but was curiously silent on Adriaen. It was only in the middle of the nineteenth century that his distinct artistic personality was recognized, with Christiaan Kramm going so far as to declare in the third volume of his De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters, van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd (1859) that ‘his work by far surpasses that of his uncle Willem Key…such that many considered it the work of Antonis Mor’ (translated in K. Jonckheere, Adriaen Thomasz. Key (c. 1545-c. 1589): Portrait of a Calvinist Painter, Turnhout, 2007, p. 15). The emergent consensus as to Adriaen’s prodigious artistic abilities induced subsequent generations of scholars to ascribe a surprising number of works to his name, an issue that was only recently untangled by Koenraad Jonckheere in his catalogue raisonné on the artist (2007).
This charming portrait of a fifteen-year-old girl is an exceptional example of the type of portraiture that made the artist so fashionable in his time. Key has lavished her with an almost obsessive attention to physical detail – in particular the meticulous rendering of individual strands of hair, the pin which holds the bonnet in place, the delicate folds of the ruff and the reflections of her almost porcelain-like eyes – and introduces a strong sense of relief in her flesh tones to model her distinct physiognomy.
A poor copy of this painting, or perhaps a lost half-length version, showing the sitter with jewelry sold Casa d’Aste Babuino, Rome, 9 April 2019, lot 52 with an attribution to Frans Pourbus.
We are grateful to Dr. Koenraad Jonckheere and Lien Vandenberghe for independently endorsing the attribution following firsthand inspection. The painting will be included in their forthcoming addendum to the catalogues raisonné of Willem and Adriaen Thomasz. Key.