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拍品专文
This portrait of a military leader, in a richly decorated cuirass and firmly grasping a baton of command, has traditionally been identified as a portrait of the Duke of Alba, and attributed to Alonso Sánchez Coello (1531/2-1588). Already in 1823 the annotator of a copy of the Phillips Fonthill sale catalogue saw in it the hand of a Netherlandish artist, proposing an attribution to Michiel van Mierevelt, who indeed painted foreign dignitaries as well as Dutch sitters. More recently, Margaret Scott has proposed an attribution to Sánchez Coello's student Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, 'whose style is similar and who painted in the Flemish tradition' (see J. Chapel in William Beckford, op. cit., pp. 392 and 426n.11). The armour worn by the sitter is North Italian in style and is of the same period as the portrait itself. We are grateful to Jan van Helmont for noting that the B-shaped symbol which appears several times on the armour is a briquet, one of the emblems of the Order of the Golden Fleece, juxtoposed here with the saltire cross of Saint Andrew, patron saint of the order.
Beckford probably acquired the picture in 1820 from the London-based Italian dealer Urbino Pizzetta, from whom he had also purchased the Madonna and Child by Perugino now in the National Gallery, London. However, it is also known that Beckford had met the 13th duquesa de Alba, Goya's great patroness, in 1787, and it has been suggested that alternatively he may have acquired this picture directly from the Alba collection, as an Alba provenance may explain the subsequent misidentification of the sitter; or indeed that the portrait may have been amongst the works sold by the heirs of the 13th duquesa in 1808 and brought to England by the dealer William Buchanan in 1813 (Chapel, loc. cit., pp. 392 and 426). In this case, the work would stand as an eloquent monument to the historic development of a taste for Spanish art in Regency Britain, and the migration of Spanish masterpieces such as Velázquez's Rokeby Venus and Portrait of Philip IV (both London, National Gallery, the latter possibly also owned by Beckford) to British collections.
Beckford probably acquired the picture in 1820 from the London-based Italian dealer Urbino Pizzetta, from whom he had also purchased the Madonna and Child by Perugino now in the National Gallery, London. However, it is also known that Beckford had met the 13th duquesa de Alba, Goya's great patroness, in 1787, and it has been suggested that alternatively he may have acquired this picture directly from the Alba collection, as an Alba provenance may explain the subsequent misidentification of the sitter; or indeed that the portrait may have been amongst the works sold by the heirs of the 13th duquesa in 1808 and brought to England by the dealer William Buchanan in 1813 (Chapel, loc. cit., pp. 392 and 426). In this case, the work would stand as an eloquent monument to the historic development of a taste for Spanish art in Regency Britain, and the migration of Spanish masterpieces such as Velázquez's Rokeby Venus and Portrait of Philip IV (both London, National Gallery, the latter possibly also owned by Beckford) to British collections.