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DOI Artikel:Boon, Karel G.: Some observations concerning an Antwerp family portrait by the Monogrammist "B"
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18820#0091
K. G. Boon
SOME OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING AN ANTWERP
FAMILY PORTRAIT BY THE MONOGRAMMIST "B"
A picture in the Warsaw Museum representing several young ladies and two boys grouped
around a central motif of a woman with a crown who receives a baby from an attendant, apparen-
tly a representation of the daughter of the Pharao receiving the young Moses, has sińce long aroused
the perspicacity of various researchers who tricd to incorporate it into the context of a princely
milieu (fig. 1). The first to do so was the French historian Yitet who discovered the picture in
a French collection and published his findings in an article of the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1863
advancing the romantic theory that it represented Dianę de Poitiers giving the newly born Duc
d'Alenęon to a nurse. According to him the real mother of the baby, Catherine de Medicis, stands
discretely in the background; her other two boys, the later Franęois II and Charles IX are also
attending this ceremony with the fiancee of the elder son, Mary Stuart, who was educated at the
French court in these years. Salomon Reinach who endorsed Vitet's theory as late as 1920 tried
anew to demonstrate its validity by comparing the portrait drawings of the Clouet School with
the various alleged princes and princesses in the picture.1 He even identified the castle in the
background as Chenonceaux and concluded that the year 1556 would be the ultimate possible
date for the picture.
Since then this family portrait has always been associated with the French court though Rei-
nach already doubted the attribution of Vitet to Franęois Clouet, suggesting as its artist a Flemish
painter like Jan Massys or Lucas d'Heere, a position to which also Charles Sterling seems
to have adhered, who proposed a Flemish artist living in France.2 Only vcry recently, in 1970,
the Spanish art historian Jacobo Ollero, tried to bring the picture more outspokenly in a Flemish
ambiance by attributing it on stylistic grounds to the painter of an altarpiece with the Four Evan-
gelists, signed B.D. Rijckere 563 (1563?), in the San Marcos church in Madrid.3
1. Salomon Reinach, "Dianę de Poitiers et Gabriellc d'Estrecs", Gazette des Beaux Arls, LXII, 1920, p. 251.
2. Cf. Jan Białostocki and Michat Walicki, Europiiische Malerei in Polnischen Sammlungen 1300 — 1800, p. 500, nr 139 for a dis-
cussion of the former attributions.
3. Jacobo Ollero, "Dos Cuadros de B. van Rijckere van Rues", Archivo Espanol de Arie, XLIII, 1970, p. 351.
77
SOME OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING AN ANTWERP
FAMILY PORTRAIT BY THE MONOGRAMMIST "B"
A picture in the Warsaw Museum representing several young ladies and two boys grouped
around a central motif of a woman with a crown who receives a baby from an attendant, apparen-
tly a representation of the daughter of the Pharao receiving the young Moses, has sińce long aroused
the perspicacity of various researchers who tricd to incorporate it into the context of a princely
milieu (fig. 1). The first to do so was the French historian Yitet who discovered the picture in
a French collection and published his findings in an article of the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1863
advancing the romantic theory that it represented Dianę de Poitiers giving the newly born Duc
d'Alenęon to a nurse. According to him the real mother of the baby, Catherine de Medicis, stands
discretely in the background; her other two boys, the later Franęois II and Charles IX are also
attending this ceremony with the fiancee of the elder son, Mary Stuart, who was educated at the
French court in these years. Salomon Reinach who endorsed Vitet's theory as late as 1920 tried
anew to demonstrate its validity by comparing the portrait drawings of the Clouet School with
the various alleged princes and princesses in the picture.1 He even identified the castle in the
background as Chenonceaux and concluded that the year 1556 would be the ultimate possible
date for the picture.
Since then this family portrait has always been associated with the French court though Rei-
nach already doubted the attribution of Vitet to Franęois Clouet, suggesting as its artist a Flemish
painter like Jan Massys or Lucas d'Heere, a position to which also Charles Sterling seems
to have adhered, who proposed a Flemish artist living in France.2 Only vcry recently, in 1970,
the Spanish art historian Jacobo Ollero, tried to bring the picture more outspokenly in a Flemish
ambiance by attributing it on stylistic grounds to the painter of an altarpiece with the Four Evan-
gelists, signed B.D. Rijckere 563 (1563?), in the San Marcos church in Madrid.3
1. Salomon Reinach, "Dianę de Poitiers et Gabriellc d'Estrecs", Gazette des Beaux Arls, LXII, 1920, p. 251.
2. Cf. Jan Białostocki and Michat Walicki, Europiiische Malerei in Polnischen Sammlungen 1300 — 1800, p. 500, nr 139 for a dis-
cussion of the former attributions.
3. Jacobo Ollero, "Dos Cuadros de B. van Rijckere van Rues", Archivo Espanol de Arie, XLIII, 1970, p. 351.
77