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Description: | A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing from the Netherlandish or German School. The drawing is in red chalk and is a portrait of a woman, looking slightly to the side. Her hair is plaited neatly beneath a cap, and she is wearing a plain bodice which fastens at the front.
Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society:
"No. 13
NETHERLANDISH OR GERMAN SCHOOL, ABOUT 1525, UNDER ITALIAN INFLUENCE (Jan van Scorel?)
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN
British Museum, 1895-9-15-995. From the Malcolm Collection (J. C. R. 539).
Red chalk. 28.7 x 19.6 cm. (11 1/4 x 7 3/4 in.).
This drawing was described at 'attributed to Holbein' in the Malcolm catalogue, but no students of Holbein have accepted it as having anything to do either with Holbein or his school. Personally I feel at the moment unable to go beyond the general title I have given above, but the attribution added in brackets has striking support in having been independently suggested by three authorities, of whom I may name Sir Sidney Colvin and Sir Claude Phillips. Other connoisseurs have inclined to ascribe the drawing to some Florentine follower of Andrea del Sarto (in the neighbourhood of Bronzino, Bugiardini, or Pontormo). While admitting the superficial points of resemblance to the following of Andrea del Sarto, I do not feel that it has any of the freedom of touch shown by the Italian artists, and it is seldom that one meets this close-fitting bodice, characteristic of Northern artists about 1525, in Italian works. A counterpart of the plaiting of the hair in Northern works of the period may be noted in Holbein's St. Ursula of 1522 at Karlsruhe. The paper unfortunately shows no watermark, so that there is no external evidence to be adduced as to nationality beyond the manner of the drawing.
Apart from comparison with paintings attributed to Scorel (b. 1495, d. 1562), the main tendencies of this artist's work, his studies in Italy some time between 1520-5, but a comparative freedom from the more mannered Italianisms characteristic of Barend van Orley and Merten van Heemskerck, afford a proper setting for the attribution.
Several of his most important pictures were recently exhibited at Utrecht, and special reference might be made to an article by Dr. Walter Cohen in the Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, Neue Folge, xxv (1913), p. 25. Two of the portraits there reproduced, the Agatha van Schoonhoven (Doria Gallery, Rome) and a Portrait of a Geometrician (formerly attributed to Holbein: in a private collection at Treves), as also the groups of the Members of the Utrecht Jerusalem Brotherhood, show much in common with the spirit of the Malcolm drawing. But at present the criticism of Van Scorel's work has hardly reached sufficiently secure points of agreement. For example, Dr. Cohen refuses to accept the portraits of P. Bicker and his wife (Collection of Baron Schimmelpeninck, Haus de Poll, near Voorst), which have generally been attributed to the master. He regards them as by the same hand as the Family Group in Cassel, another picture generally known as Scorel, which shows something of Pieter Aertsen's anticipation of the feeling of Jordaens. He even tentatively suggests the name of Scorel's pupil Marten van Heemskerck in connexion with the Cassel picture and the Bicker portraits, while admitting at the same time the over-boldness of the suggestion.
So we would leave the present drawing, and its attribution to Scorel, with the conviction that, if the mark has not been hit, the suggestion may at least point to a final solution of a problem that has baffled many critics.
A. M. H."
Technique: REPRODUCTION
Reproduction by the Vasari Society of a drawing from the Netherlandish or German School, Portrait of a Young Woman (1933.406). | Source: | Manchester City Galleries | Identifier: | mcag.emu.ecatalogue.105276 | Go to resource |
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