Lot 2017 Dα

This portrait of a patrician is an important testimony to Joos van Winghe's Frankfurt period. Van Winghe was one of the most idiosyncratic and witty Netherlandish artists of the late sixteenth century (fig. 1). The work is dated and monogrammed 1594, coinciding with the artist's time in Frankfurt, where he remained from 1584 until his death in 1603.

Joos van Winghe was born in Brussels and, like many other Netherlandish artists of his time, went to Italy to complete his education and to work on decorative commissions in the country. Thus he is documented in artistic centres such as Rome and Parma, but we also know of his participation, for example, in the important decorative programme of the Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola. His connection to the Farnese family continued after his return to the Netherlands, where he became court painter to the governor Alessandro Farnese. The esteem in which the artist was held throughout Europe is evident in works such as the large-format history painting "Apelles and Campaspe", which he painted for Emperor Rudolph II (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. 1677). He moved to Frankfurt in around 1584 for religious reasons. There he devoted himself primarily to printmaking.