Portrait of a Man

Netherlands School

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing from the School of the Netherlands. The drawing is a portrait of a man with heavy eyelids, looking slightly downwards. He is wearing an elaborate headdress, with a large fabric band winding around the top of the head, which reaches down to his shoulders. The rest of the man's visible attire is plain in comparison. Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society: "No. 12 SCHOOL OF THE NETHERLANDS (Fifteenth Century) PORTRAIT OF A MAN British Museum, 1895-9-15-998. From the Malcolm Collection. Silver-point. 21.5 x 14.4 cm. (8 7/16 x 5 5/8 in.). This portrait, one of the most elaborate of the few original fifteenth-century Netherlandish drawings in existence, was first discussed in an article by M. Émile Galichon (of whose collection it then formed part) in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1867, published with a careful full-scale drawing by Rosotte. The name of Jan van Eyck has often been connected with it - an attribution that can hardly be seriously maintained if it is set beside the incomparable drawing of the Cardinal of S. Croce at Dresden. Michiels assigned it to Simon Marmion, and Professor Voll has more recently suggested Petrus Christus. But Christus generally appears at his best in portrait-heads, and the thin, weakly laboured delineation of the features is hardly worthy of him. The identification of the person represented with Philip the Good appears untenable - any resemblance with the recognized portraits of him is at most a superficial one. The date may probably be fixed within a few years of the middle of the century; the minutely drawn head-dress shows a curious and unusually intricate form of the chaperon. Gazette des Beaux-Arts, xxii (1867), p. 84: Karl Voll, Die Werke des Jan van Eyck, 1900, p. 123.] E. M."