Portrait of Margret Halseber of Basel, also known as 'The Lady with the two beards', bust-length

This highly unusual and wonderfully preserved portrait depicts Margret Halseber (Halscher), as testified through an inscription on an autograph replica (formerly Aachen, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, stolen in 1972), about whom nothing is known. She may have had hirsutism, a condition caused by an imbalance in hormones, namely testosterone, that results in the growth of coarse hair on the face, chest and back. This unusual medical condition must have been a source of curiosity – and perhaps ridicule – in the early modern era. Some eighty years later, in 1631, Jusepe de Ribera would paint a woman with the same condition in his well-known Magdalena Ventura with her husband and son (fig. 1; Toledo, Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli, on long-term loan to the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid).

A label on the reverse of the present panel identifies the sitter as being a resident of Basel and the artist as Hans Holbein the Younger. While this was previously taken as evidence that the present painting was probably the panel attributed to Holbein that featured in both the 1819 sale of the Chevalier François Xavier de Burtin and that of the Van Huerne collection in 1844, in each of which it was said that the panel in question lacked the inscription that appears on the ex-Aachen example (see, for example, the entry to the 2008 Sotheby’s sale, op. cit.), it can now be shown for the first time that the present panel was definitively not the version in the collection of de Burtin. The second volume of his Traité des connaissances nécessaires aux amateurs de tableaux (Brussels, 1808) mentions how ‘Margret Halseber’s name is spelled out in full’ (‘le nom de Margret Halseber se lit en toutes lettres’) in the painting in his collection (p. 217), referring to the inscription on the Aachen picture, which must therefore have instead been the one in his possession.

For much of the twentieth century, the painting was frequently attributed to Antonis Mor, though in 1931 Louis Dimier correctly gave the composition to Willem Key on account of contemporary documentary evidence relating to one of the versions in the collection of Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517-1586) in Besançon (op. cit.). There, the panel is described as the work of one ‘Guillaume Chayez,’ whom Dimier correctly identified as Willem Key. As Koenraad Jonckheere has surmised, the present painting was probably the version in Granvelle’s collection as the inventory fails to make mention of the inscription that appears on the ex-Aachen version (op. cit., pp. 133-134). Granvelle apparently maintained a particular fascination with portraits of distinctive individuals. In addition to commissioning this portrait from Key, he ordered from Mor a portrait of a person with dwarfism in his household (Paris, Musée du Louvre). That Granvelle was equally familiar with Key is confirmed by his having sat for a portrait by the artist (see Jonckheere, op. cit., no. A41).

Despite the uncharacteristically vivacious, virtuoso and carefree execution of this painting within Key’s oeuvre, from a technical point of view, Jonckheere has stressed how ‘several features fit in seamlessly with Willem Key’s manner of painting’ (op. cit., p. 134). These include the rapid, summary underdrawing in black chalk, visible in places where the paint has been fairly thinly applied; its comparatively coarse finish (especially when compared with paintings by Mor); and the ochre-pink tonality of the woman’s flesh tones, which can likewise be found in other portraits by Key.

While the ex-Aachen example has not resurfaced since its theft and consequently has not benefited from technical examination, several factors point to the present painting being the prime version of this composition. While the two versions correspond in almost every detail, the treatment of the beard in the two paintings is different and it appears the Aachen portrait lacks the underdrawing so evident in our example.

In addition to the second version formerly in Aachen, this portrait is known through a copy in the collection of the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (see Jonckheere, op. cit., no. E3).