Albrecht Altdorfer, attributed to - Portrait of a Cleric holding a Book - image-1
Albrecht Altdorfer, attributed to - Portrait of a Cleric holding a Book - image-2
Albrecht Altdorfer, attributed to - Portrait of a Cleric holding a Book - image-1Albrecht Altdorfer, attributed to - Portrait of a Cleric holding a Book - image-2

Lot 2020 Nα

Albrecht Altdorfer, attributed to - Portrait of a Cleric holding a Book

Auction 1097 - overview Cologne
18.11.2017, 11:00 - Old Master Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture
Estimate: 40.000 € - 50.000 €
Result: 49.600 € (incl. premium)

Albrecht Altdorfer, attributed to

Portrait of a Cleric holding a Book

Oil on panel. 34.7 x 26 cm.
Inscribed: 1520/I.H..

To the reverse a coat-of-arms with a white diagonal and a beaver on a field of green beneath the sitter’s initials “IH” and the date 1520. Although the arms are similar to those of Vilsbiburg in Bavaria, they are more likely to be a family coat-of-arms.
Both Alfred Stange and Franz Winzinger have recognised this work to be an authentic piece by Albrecht Altdorfer. The work was formerly attributed to Hans (Johannes) Holbein the Elder, presumably because of the initials “IH” to the reverse that more probably refer to the sitter. Alfred Stange was also the first to bring this piece into connection with the donor portrait of Provost Peter Maurer in the predella of Altdorfer’s Altar of Saint Florian (Winzinger, op. cit., no. 23/24). Stange also noticed that both clerics are depicted as representatives of the “Vita Contemplativa”: “The calm, reserved manner in which they are portrayed, one could almost say that both faces are connected by their thoughtful and distant character.” The so-called mozetta – a brown fur-trimmed cloak – the white pleated cope, the small biretta, and the large opened prayer book bound in gilt and brown leather are all characteristic attributes of a canon for a choral service.

Provenance

Conte Enrico Luling Buschetti, Treviso. - Dr. Cohn, Florence. - Private collection, England. - Otto Wertheimer, Paris, purchased in 1963.- Henceforth in Swiss family ownership.

Literature

B. Berenson: Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Venetian School, I, London 19547, p. 10 (as Jacopo de´ Barbari). - C. L. Ragghianti: Il collezionista, Rome 1963, p. 77, illus. 126 (attributed to Hieronimus Hopfer). - A. Stange: Das Bildnis im Werke Albrecht Altdorfers, Pantheon 25, 1967, p. 91 ff., illus. p. 93 and 95 (as Altdorfer). - F. Winzinger: Albrecht Altdorfer, Die Gemälde, Munich 1975, no. 42, illus. 42 and A52 (as Altdorfer). - A. Dülberg: Privatportäts. Geschichte und Ikonographie einer Gattung im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1990, no. 24, illus. 4767.

Exhibitions

Basel, Kunstmuseum, Die Malerfamilie Holbein in Basel, June - September 1960.