Oil on copper
6 ⅛ x 4 ¼ ins. (15.5 x 11 cm.)
Provenance
With Alfred Brod Gallery, London, c.1955;
Private collection, England
This exquisite work on copper is an early and rare example of David Bailly’s small scale portraiture, datable to the second decade of the seventeenth century, following his return to Leiden in 1613 after his sojourn in Germany and Italy.
Bailly was influenced by the trend towards more informal portraiture, which began to become prevalent in Holland around the beginning of the 1600s. This is exemplified in the present painting by the expressive eyes, the hint of a smile, and the colourful attire of the sitter.
While the refined handling and delicate colouring are typical of the master, works on this scale by the artist are more commonly known in pen and ink, where again he typically favoured the trompe l’oeil oval format. The present painting may be compared with Bailly’s portrait of François Gysels at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, (pen and ink on velum, 17.3 x 14.3 cm), which in addition to the small oval format and meticulous technique, also portrays the sitter in comparably decorated doublet with floral motifs.
It has been observed that Bailly was continuing the tradition of miniature portrait drawings and engravings that Hendrick Goltzius and Jacques de Gheyn II had established at the end of the 1500s, and indeed Bailly also adopted De Gheyn's technique of hatched and stippled modelling, visible both in his drawings, and also in the present painting. The influence of early Rubens is also detectable, and the present painting may be compared with that master’s ‘Portrait of a Man’ (his earliest known work) at the Metropolitan Museum (on copper, 8 ½ x 5 ¾ ins, dated 1597).
We are grateful to Marjorie Wieseman of the National Gallery, London, for suggesting the attribution to David Bailly upon first hand inspection of the painting, and to Dr Dominique Surh of the Leiden Gallery for pointing out the physiognomic similarity with Bailly’s ‘Self Portrait’ in the Rijksmuseum (i).
The work of David Bailly is represented in numerous museums, including the J Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the Louvre (Paris), the Metropolitan Museum (New York), and the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam).
BIOGRAPHY OF DAVID BAILLY
The son of a Flemish calligrapher and fencing master, David Bailly was first apprenticed to a local painter in Leiden and then to a portrait painter in Amsterdam. He worked for a short time as a journeyman in Hamburg before traveling to Venice and Rome at the age of twenty-five. On his return voyage, Bailly is believed to have worked for a number of German princes. Once back in the Netherlands in 1613, he established himself as a painter of vanitas still lifes and portraits. He executed many small-scale drawings of fellow artists and students and professors at the University of Leiden.
In his painted portraits, Bailly depicted attractive and expressive subjects, often in lively domestic settings. His vanitas paintings included the usual symbols of the transience and impermanence of human life, such as skulls, flowers, and burning or extinguished candles. He also included portraits of himself in these paintings, thus illustrating the ephemeral nature of his own artistic accomplishments.
(i) Dr Surh suggested that the likeness could indicate that the sitter in our painting was a relative of the artist, or alternatively that, as Leonardo da Vinci observed, “ogni dipintore dipigne se” (every painter paints himself).