Portrait of a Man, c. 1530/1540

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 41-A

Medium

oil on panel

Dimensions

overall: 34.6 x 23.8 cm (13 5/8 x 9 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Adolph Caspar Miller

Accession Number

1953.3.5

Artists / Makers

Bartholomaeus Bruyn the Elder (painter) German, 1493 - 1555

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Provenance

Adolph Caspar Miller [d. 1953], Washington D.C., by 1936;[1] bequest 1953 to NGA.

[1] Cited as owned by Miller in Charles L Kuhn. A Catalogue of German Paintings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in American Collections. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1936), 27, no. 22.

Associated Names

Miller, Adolph Caspar

Exhibition History

1969: Inaugural Exhibition: European Paintings, The Art Museum, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, 1969-1970, no cat.

Technical Summary

The support is a single-member oak panel with vertical grain. A dendrochronological examination conducted by Peter Klein in 1987 suggested a felling date of 1490 +4/-2 and indicated that the wood came from the Baltic/Polish region. The panel has been thinned to 4 cm, and a heavy cradle attached to the reverse. Examination with infrared reflectography discloses a fine, sketchy underdrawing in the face; the precisely painted contour of the face extends farther to the left than the underdrawn edge. There was also a change in the hat. The face has a porcelainlike surface, while the background is textured with visible brushstrokes. The painting is in somewhat poor condition. By preventing movement of the panel, the cradle has caused some new checking, at the upper and lower left. There is an old repaired check at the upper right, extending downward parallel to the right edge. A small piece of the lower right corner is crushed and loose. There is a curved loss in the upper left corner. There appears to be heavy abrasion in the background, the hair, and the hat, as well as extensive glazed overpaint in the costume. The overpaint over the crackle and abrasion in the background has darkened and has become muddy, as has the overpaint in the hair and costume.

Bibliography

1936: Kuhn, Charles L. A Catalogue of German Paintings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in American Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1936: 27, no. 22, pl. 7.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 21, as by Barthel Bruyn, the Elder.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 14, repro., as by Barthel Bruyn, the Elder.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 50, repro. 51.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 70, repro.

1993: Hand, John Oliver, with the assistance of Sally E. Mansfield. German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1993: 23-24, repro. 25.

1995: Löcher, Kurt. Review of German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries, by John Oliver Hand with the assistance of Sally E. Mansfield. Kunstchronik 48 no. 1 (January 1995): 14.