Lot 1110 Dα

This fine quality portrait of an anonymous young woman in a black and red dress and white bonnet can be attributed to the wider circle of the Flemish painter Willem Key (ca. 1515 - 1568). A very similar portrait, in which the sitter is even shown wearing the same necklace and bonnet, is kept in the Museum Rockoxhuis in Antwerp. Max Friedländer ascribed the work, which was previously owned by the Wildenstein art dealership in New York, to Willem Key. Koenraad Jonckheere considers both paintings - the present work and that in the museum Rockoxhuis - to be by the same hand. However, he rejects the attribution to Key and instead writes: "The painting belongs to a group of portraits which in my opinion were created around 1530 in connection with Joos van Cleve and the very young Willem Key. These paintings have been attributed to various hands over the years, but I cannot connect them to one specific artist, although I believe this painting to be from the same hand as that in the Rockoxhuis" (from the German).
The attire and posture of the sitter, as well as the finely painted features, are however also comparable to Frans Pourbus the Elder's "Portrait of a Lady in a Bonnet" in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden.