Barthel Beham

Barthel Beham (1502 Nuremberg - Bologna 1540) - Portrait of a 32-year-old woman ("Dorothea Jörg"). Oil on limewood, parquetted. 1524. 52.8 x 35.8 cm. Inscribed at the top "DA.MAN.1.5.2.4.CALT. / DA.BAS.ICH.32. IAR.ALT". Framed. Holes 75. In this painting, the painter presents the bust of a middle-aged woman facing left against a greenish background with little painterly differentiation. She is wearing a beret as a headdress and a goller closed with a brooch over her brown dress - a damask shoulder collar with a pomegranate pattern covering the shirt. The portrait bears the inscription "DA. MAN. 15.2.4. CALT. DA. BAS. ICH. 32. IAR. OLD". In 1524, when the painting was painted according to the inscription, the sitter was 32 years old. A later inscription referred to the woman as Dorothea Jörg, but this designation can no longer be verified on the painting. She has placed her right, ringed hand on her left forearm, which not only gives the portrait a closed compositional effect, but also lends it a certain seriousness and severity, which is also expressed in the woman's face. Her incarnation is warm, with slightly rosy cheeks and a rather introverted gaze past the viewer towards an imaginary counterpart, which Kurt Löcher was able to identify on the basis of the corresponding inscription in a male portrait by Barthel Beham in the Picture Gallery in Prague (Prague, National Gallery, inv. no. O 720). The painter attached great importance to the clear definition of the profile, behind which the slightly shadowed half of her face recedes. The simple portrait testifies to a good, lively power of observation in an overall finely tuned color tone, which is, however, without any great intrinsic coloristic value. The painting's strengths lie above all in the drawing, how the precisely observed face and hands emerge from the ground. Known to art historians for almost a hundred years, Ludwig Baldass first attributed the portrait to a group of male portraits in 1930, which he had attributed to Leonhard Beck from Augsburg, even though Baldass noted that the portrait was "a little coarser" in expression than the other portraits. However, the localization to Augsburg is contradicted by the woman's fashionable appearance, as the beret and goller point to Nuremberg, where the hood was replaced by the fashionable beret around this time. The shape of the beret varied, but always remained the same in the type of flaps meeting above the crown and connected by a button and loop. It was widespread around 1525, as can be seen in Dürer's portrait of Veronika Formschneider from 1525 (London, British Museum, inv. no. 5218.50), and the Goller can also be found on various portraits of the time in Nuremberg. Max J. Friedländer and Ernst Buchner recognized the portrait as an early work by Barthel Beham, created in Nuremberg, in independent expert opinions that are no longer available today. Beham is best known for being one of the "three godless painters" in Nuremberg, together with his brother Sebald and Jörg Pencz, who had joined the radical wing of the Reformation before its introduction, for which they were banished from their hometown in 1525 for heresy. Barthel Beham returned after a short time, but only stayed for a short time before entering the service of Duke Wilhelm IV in Munich as court painter in 1527. As a painter, he belonged to the wider Dürer school, but there is no confirmed painting from his Nuremberg years. Kurt Löcher, the author of the catalog raisonné of Beham's paintings, has only included our portrait among the questionable attributions, but it is so close to certain paintings by Beham, such as the Portrait of a Young Man (formerly Bremen, Kunsthalle, inv. no. 169-1851), that its authorship can be considered established. Certain uncertainties, such as the somewhat formulaic layout, can be conceded to a beginner, who Beham, born in 1502, still was in 1524. Dr. Peter Prange We would like to thank Dr. Birgit Jooss, head of the project "Kunsthandlung Julius Böhler", Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, for information on the provenance. Literature: Ludwig Baldass: Studien zur Augsburger Porträtmalerei des 16. Jahrhunderts. Part II: Portraits by Leonhard Beck, in: Pantheon 6, 1930, p. 396, no. 8; Kurt Löcher: Nürnberger Bildnisse nach 1520, in: Kunstgeschichtliche Studien für Kurt Bauch zum 70. Geburtstag von seinen Schülern, Munich 1967, p. 122; Ders.: Ein Bildnis der Anna Dürer in der Sammlung Thyssen-Bornemisza, in: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 39, 1977, p. 88, fig. 5; Peter Strieder: Tafelmalerei in Nürnberg 1350-1550, Königstein im Taunus 1993, p. 281, no. 165, ill. (attributed to Barthel Beham); Kurt Löcher: Barthel Beham, in: Saur. Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon,