Artist: Jan Jansz Mostaert
Date: 1525
Size: 64 x 50 cm
Technique: Oil On Panel
An elegantly clad woman is seen half-length against the backdrop of a mountainous landscape containing a vignette of the conversion of St Hubert. She is wearing a white linen cap with the lappets hanging down her back. (The folds are a little different from those in the underdrawing, and the cap itself is broader than the reserve left for it; see fig. a.) She has a white chemise with a straight, horizontal neckline into which a thin chain disappears. It was customary at the time to wear a crucifix or some other piece of jewellery under the clothing and close to the heart. Around her shoulders she has a transparent fabric, the ends of which are tucked into her bodice. Over her chemise she is wearing a red and gold kirtle, only the top and pleated sleeves of which are visible. On top of that she has a brown damask gown lined entirely with brown fur. The wide, funnel-shaped sleeves are turned back almost to her shoulders. These high sleeves and the headdress reaching to the chin became fashionable around 1520. The woman’s attire marks her out as a member of the well-to-do burgher class.14 It has proved impossible to identify the woman.15 Since she is wearing a gold ring set with a stone on the ring finger of her left hand, which she is holding with the fingers of her other hand, it is likely that this is a wedding portrait that was originally part of a diptych. Her husband would have been on the left wing, which has disappeared without trace. Van Mander writes that Jan Mostaert was ‘well thought of and loved by most of the nobility in the country, by the great as well as the minor’.16 This remark buttresses the attribution of several portraits of aristocrats to Mostaert, around ten of which can be ascribed to him with some degree of certainty. Most of them have a landscape background, often with small figures depicting subjects like Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl or the conversion of St Hubert. The only portrait diptych by Mostaert that survives complete is in the St Dimpnakerk in Geel, near Antwerp, and shows Hendrik van Merode and his wife Franziska van Brederode.17 It was probably made on the occasion of their marriage in 1525.18 The subject of the hunt and St Hubert’s conversion is also depicted in the background of the relatively large Portrait of a Young Man in the museum in Liverpool.19 At the beginning of the 16th century Haarlem had a confraternity of St Hubert, the patron saint of hunting, and many noblemen from the surrounding district of Kennemerland would undoubtedly have been members. Since membership was restricted to men, it is likely that the landscape with the hunt in the present woman’s portrait would have extended onto the lost left wing with the portrait of her husband. Several of the works attributed to Mostaert have similar mountainous landscapes in the background. Equally typical of his work are the kinds of background figure, which can also be seen in The Adoration of the Magi (SK-A-671). (Jan Piet Filedt Kok)
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