Young Italian gallery owners sell important Flemish painting to Groeningemuseum in Bruges

Important result for Turin-based Caretto & Occhinegro Gallery at the prestigious TEFAF fair in Maastricht: the gallery, run by Massimiliano Caretto and Francesco Occhinegro, both under 40, has in fact announced the acquisition by the Groeningemuseum in Bruges of the painting Portrait of a Man in Armor, attributed to Flemish painter Gillis Claeissens (Bruges, 1526, 1605). The work was officially unveiled during the online edition of Tefat 2021, and the acquisition was already finalized during the first days of the exhibition.

Claeissens (Claeis, Claeys, Claesz or Claeissins) is a rare and enigmatic painter of the Bruges School of the second half of the 16th century was born in Bruges in 1526. He was the second son of Pieter I Claeissens, a history and portrait painter, and grandson of the painter Alard Claeissens. Belonging to the so-called “Claeissens dynasty,” Gillis has enjoyed critical rediscovery only in very recent times, as the attributional events related to him have long suffered from stylistic proximity to Pieter Porbous, to whom traditional critics have long attributed works now clearly by another hand. In fact, thanks to in-depth archival research, as well as several international exhibition events (including the important exhibition held precisely in Bruges in 2018 and dedicated to the theme), this painter has begun to enjoy the proper art-historical attention: emblematic is the affair related to the pair of portraits preserved in Stockholm with the attribution to “a Franco-Flemish artist active around 1560” and recently assigned to Gillis Claeissens, thanks also to the presence of the monogram GC Fec.

The portrait acquired by the important Belgian museum is a small panel, 32 by 25 centimeters, in perfect condition and from an important Swiss private collection, depicting a gentleman in brown armor. Balancing the stylistic influences of Corneille de Lyon, coeval English portraiture, and the piscological investigation of the character introduced at the European level by Titian’s portraiture, the work is an important addition to the painter’s meager catalog, to which this painting contributes a significant presence at a museum. Although it has not been possible at present to identify the personage, it is likely that the young man was of some distinction (and certainly of ample economic means) since the armor has a number of extremely expensive features: made of black-painted steel, jointed in brass, and finely crafted to create combinations of floral ornaments and geometric patterns. This “quillwork,” in addition to being decorative, also had a reinforcing function and was typical of the armor of Landshut, a famous Bavarian armory center made fashionable by Philip II of Spain. In his wake, much of the Spanish nobility rushed to procure a model as an affirmation of their own importance, also in accordance with the ever-present laws of fashion, which at the time influenced men’s choices in no small measure, so much so that much high-end armor can be considered on a par with the luxury suits and men’s jewelry of the time. The connection to Spain may also be consistent with the context of Bruges, since the territory was under Spanish rule at the time. Of particular fascination is the helmet in the foreground, with its shiny white highlights and comparable to some of the best examples of royal armor preserved to this day.

If one compares the Stockholm portraits with the other portraits now assigned to Claeissens, one reads in the work’s file, “a peculiar style will immediately emerge: works on a smaller scale than is customary, with a representation of the characters at more than half-length, in a solemn style, somewhere between the sobriety of Pieter Pourbus’s features and the ambition that characterized the English lords painted by Flemish artists active in European courts, such as Steven van der Meulen. The delicacy of the execution, the hands with elongated fingers outlined in brown, the rendering of the warm complexion executed in short brushstrokes that match the curves of the face, the subtle and transparent shadows, the watchful gaze with the eyes slightly dilated to never let the viewer get lost in contemplating details of the costume-all of this allows one to fully understand the figure of a portrait painter who was anything but secondary. And only the considerably reduced format of the present work (as of all the paintings attributed to him) highlights the difference between the art of this artist and Frans Pourbus the Younger, who arrived at the court of the Archdukes in Brussels when Gillis was still working there.” The problematic nature of their restrained size, combined with their multifaceted character, poised between different canons, “constituted a rebus of no easy resolution, and the aforementioned Corneille de Lyon, with his peculiar and evocative way of immortalizing French nobility, magnetized around him not a little of Gillis Claeissens’ Brugesian production, which although without a shadow of a doubt shows some formal and tasteful debt to the great painter of the Dauphin of France.” The portrait acquired by the Groeningemuseum can be ideally associated with the portrait of Henry II of France made in 1536 by De Lyon, which constitutes a sure stylistic reference for the realization of the armor conceived as an element of immediate visual impact, for the slant of the face in contrast to the position of the ear, and for that general tone of evocative officialdom that gives 16th-century portraits so much appeal. However, the intensity of the gaze in Claeissens’ painting suggests a later realization, that is, when, to the chancery purposes, went the investigation of the psychological intensity and the relative character motions of the person depicted, interests, these, that come directly from the Italian portraiture of Titian and his retinue.

“It is with profound happiness,” comment Massimiliano Caretto and Francesco Occhinegro, “that we can officially announce the sale of one of our works to what is traditionally considered ’The Uffizi of the North,’ the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, the Flemish art museum par excellence. Today, museum acquisitions are made very cautious by the comprehensiveness of public collections, looking for missing pieces for the reconstruction of a specific school or author in particular. Such is the case with portraiture in Bruges in the second half of the 16th century, which a tenacious work of ’connoisseurship,’ now more than ever required even of us gallerists, is gradually rediscovering. The fact that we have collaborated with such an important institution until the successful conclusion of the negotiation, all the more so as Italians who are specialists in Flemish Art, confirms to us once again what path to pursue today in the field of Old Masters.”

Young Italian gallery owners sell important Flemish painting to Groeningemuseum in Bruges

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