CIRCLE OF FRANS POURBUS, THE YOUNGER (ANTWERP 1569-1622 PARIS)

CIRCLE OF FRANS POURBUS, THE YOUNGER (ANTWERP 1569-1622 PARIS)
Portrait of a Knight of Malta, possibly Guillaume Richardot (1579-1638), Comte de Gamarages
oil on canvas
62.6 x 48.6 cm. (24 5/8 x 19 1/8 in.)
overall framed: 87 x 72 cm. (34 1/4 x 28 1/4 in.)


Togther with Pietro D'Achiardi's Catalogue of The Messinger Collection, Rome, 1910.

Provenance
Baron Otto Eugen Messinger (b. Worms 1875)
Sale; Bonhams, Knightsbridge, London, 2 November 2016, Lot 128.
Private Collection, UK.

Literature
P. D'Achiardi, La Collection Messinger, Rome, 1910, pp. 175-176, no. 88, illustrated pl. XL, as Frans Pourbus the Younger

Baron Otto Messinger was a passionate collector of Old Master paintings, who delighted in antiquarian objects, Italian furniture, Venetian fabrics, musical instruments, and arms and armour. He was also a significant patron of the Italian artist Antonio Mancini (1852-1930) of whom John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) famously pronounced to be the greatest living painter. Mancini’s portrait of Baron Messinger, painted in 1909, is today in Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome.

When part of the Messinger Collection, at the Palazzo Massimo, Rome, the present work was considered to be by Frans Porbus the Younger (op. cit., no. 88), an attribution suggested by the Italian art critic, art historian, connoisseur and museum director, Pietro D’Achiardi (1879-1940) at the beginning of the 20^th Century. D’Achiardi compares the present work to Peter Paul Rubens’s portrait of Gaspard Schoppius (1604-5) in the Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, which was once thought to be by Pourbus. Frans Pourbus the Younger was in Mantua from 1600-1609, working for Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua (1562-1612), at the same time as Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).

It has been proposed that portraits of both Schoppius (see D. Jaffe, Rubens and the Italian Renaissance, in exhibition catalogue, 1992, Canberra, Australian National Gallery and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, p. 144, cat. No. 41) and Richardot also appear in Rubens’s earliest known self-portrait, The Artist with Friends in Mantua of 1602-5 (Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne), where one of the two figures on the far left, may be a portrait of Guillaume Richardot (see S. Suda and K. Nichel (eds), Early Rubens, in exhibition catalogue, Prestel, Munich, London and New York, 2019, Art Gallery of Ontario and the Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco, p. 122).

Guillaume Richardot was the son of Jean Grusset, also known as Richardot (1540 – 1609), Chairman of the Secret Council in Brussels and Secretary to the Archduke Albert (1559-1621) of the Habsburg Netherlands. Philip Rubens (1574-1611), Peter Paul’s older brother, having distinguished himself in his studies, was appointed as Secretary to Jean Richardot and private tutor to Richardot’s sons, Guillaume and Antoine.

When Guillaume Richardot travelled to Italy in 1601, possibly with Antoine, his younger brother, he was accompanied by Philip Rubens, who wanted to continue his law studies in Rome.

Philip acting as guide and tutor during the journey to Rome, may explain why the Richardot brothers are included in the Mantua ‘Self-portrait with Friends’. However, at present, there is no consensus among scholars as to the identities of some of the sitters in the Mantua group portrait or that Richardot was a knight of Malta.

Born into a family of artists, Frans Porbus the Younger was the grandson of Pierre Pourbus (1523-1584) and the son of Frans Pourbus the Elder (1545-1581). He worked for the court of the Spanish Regents of the Netherlands in Brussels, and in 1600 became court painter to the Duke of Mantua. He also worked in Innsbruck, Naples and Turin, and in 1609 became painter to Marie de’ Medici at the French court in Paris. Pourbus’s portraits evoke the splendor and magnificence of the leading courts of 17^th Century Europe.

A version of the present work, attributed to Francesco Bassano, with no certain early provenance, is now in the Civic Museum, Bassano del Grappa (inv. 219).