Portrait of Jean de Carondelet
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Object Label
Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen demonstrates his keen sense of observation by faithfully capturing his sitter, an influential Catholic cleric and statesman, at age sixty, paying equal attention to the topography of his face and the textures of the luxurious dark fur and fabric of his clothing. The artist animates Jean de Carondelet’s stern and blocky figure by enlivening the hands, one of which firmly grasps a pair of gray leather gloves, while the other contorts in an enigmatic gesture.
Caption
Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen (Dutch, 1500–1559). Portrait of Jean de Carondelet, ca. 1530. Oil on panel, 30 3/4 x 24 1/2 in. (78.1 x 62.2 cm) frame: 42 × 36 × 4 in. (106.7 × 91.4 × 10.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Horace O. Havemeyer, 47.76. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
Artist
Frequent Art Questions
Who is this?
Jean de Carondelet, was a Flemish cleric and statesman. Over the course of his life he commissioned multiple portraits of himself by popular Dutch artists like Vermeyen.How expensive were pigments in 1500s Europe relative to other goods (generally speaking)?
That's a great question, and I can say immediately it depended on the pigment! Certain blue pigments, for example, could be very costly.It could vary considerably based on where the pigment was coming from and where it was going to as well!Oh my gosh thanks! How expensive was it was to paint a portrait painting (after materials and canvas, etc)?It definitely depended on the size of the canvas or the art object.I found a fascinating resource that let me know that a typical Renaissance painting cost 5 cows, or 875 grams of silver (thats 26,750 loaves of rye bread in Brussels). These numbers are for 1550.That includes labor, so the material costs were less than five cows.This is INCREDIBLE! What resource did you use?I KNOW! The Metropolitan Museum of Art did an exhibition about the relative cost of artwork in the Renaissance!You can read about it on their website here: https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/2017/curating-relative-values-counting-cowsYou've been so helpful! Thank you so much!Tell me more.
Jean de Carondelet was a well-known and wealthy cleric and statesmen in his time, in 16th century Flanders. He commissioned several portraits by prominent Netherlandish painters like Vermeyen who was also the court painter of Austria-Hungary at the time.
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