Lot 22. Anthonis Mor (Utrecht 1516/20 - 1576 (?) Antwerp), Portrait of Jacopo da Trezzo (c. 1514–1589), oil on panel, 58.3 x 42.5 cm.; 23 x 16¾ in. Estimate Estimate: 300,000 - 500,000 GBP. Lot sold 1,935,000 GBP. © Sotheby's. 

Note: Painted with consummate skill, this informal portrait marks the encounter between two men, both highly sought after by Philip II of Spain for their talents in their respective fields: one as a portraitist and the other as a sculptor and medallist. Anthonis Mor played a vital role in the history of European portraiture, particularly for his depiction of the Habsburg family and their court, while Jacopo da Trezzo (c. 1514–1589) was one of the most successful and highly skilled medal makers of his day. This frank portrait is far removed from the formal state portraiture ordinarily practiced by Mor, yet it stands as a rare and important instance of his work in an altogether different register, which sacrificing none of his tremendous skill, bears witness to the relationship between the two men. In the words of Luke Syson, the two artists clearly knew one another well.¹ The understated elegance of this portrait and characteristic economy of means distinguishes it as one of Mor’s most arresting productions.

As is often the case with Mor’s portraits, the sitter is positioned against a plain background. Here the artist has adopted the bust-length format – relatively unusual in his portraiture – which may reflect the informal relationship between painter and sitter, rather than a desire to economize on scale, or the convenience of a work of more readily transportable dimensions. A hint of grey in the sitter’s dark brown hair and the slight creases around the eyes suggest a man of middle age. He wears a wide-collared gown over a black doublet, with a white shirt underneath – the starkest element within a composition that is otherwise a subtle interplay of dark tonalities and textures. The dark brown velvetiness of the collar contrasts with the grey cloth of the gown; the background, lighter around the head, accentuates the darker brushwork of the hair and beard. Mor's way of delineating individual hairs of different tones over brown underpainting, while retaining a sense of volume, reflects his impressive descriptive precision. The structure of the face is subtly modelled and careful attention to detail is evident in features such as the mole above the moustache and the highlights on the nose. However, the portrait’s most compelling feature are the sitter’s penetrating eyes, which are rendered with great subtlety. The depth of the gaze is conveyed by a rich mix of browns and greys for the irises, while the blackness of the pupils’ irregular circles is given depth by two white highlights of differing brightness – more muted in the shadowed left eye – to bring the sitter to life.

In the first known published reference to the portrait of 1910, Henri Hymans records on the reverse of the panel an Italian inscription in a sixteenth-century hand identifying the sitter. The inscription, no longer visible since the panel was cradled at some point after that date, named the portrait’s subject as ‘the immortal Giacomo Trezzo’ and its author as Anthonis Mor.² Described by Hymans as a splendid bust-length portrait, the work was then in the collection of His Excellency Alphonse de Stuers (1841–1919), a diplomat, whose early career took him to the United States, where he married; he later returned to Europe, serving as Ambassador of the Netherlands to Spain between 1881 and 1885 and then Ambassador to France until his death in 1919. The rest of the inscription was partly effaced but according to the then owner, the capital letters of the painter’s name could be made out; the words were reported to read: ‘Antonio Moro’. The use of Italian not only accords with the nationality of the sitter and presumed first owner of the painting but also with the picture's early provenance: between 1634 and 1877 the portrait belonged to the principi Dal Pozzo della Cisterna in Turin.³

Best known for his work as a medallist, Giovan Giacomo Nizola (or Nizzola) is more commonly referred to as Jacopo da Trezzo after his family’s place of origin north-east of Milan. A celebrated medallist, sculptor, gem-engraver and jeweller, he was sufficiently famous by 1550 to warrant inclusion in the first edition of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives.⁴ Jacopo da Trezzo spent much of his early career in Milan, engaged in a wide range of activities that included gem-engraving and the manufacture of objects in precious and semi-precious stones. He counted Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici among his patrons and in the early 1550s executed portrait medals for the Gonzaga, among others. Not long after, he entered the service of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–1558) and his son Philip of Spain (1527–1598), a major step in his career that would take him first to England and later to Spain. His portrait medals of Philip and his second wife Mary Tudor, Queen of England (1516–1558), dated 1554–55, bear allegories of the utmost refinement on the reverse and are justly famous.

Mor was appointed to Philip’s personal service just a few days before Jacopo da Trezzo, an indication of the esteem in which both men were held. In the field of portraiture Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517–1586), Bishop of Arras and later Cardinal, statesman and art collector, rated Mor as second only to Titian.⁵ Mor’s portrait of Granvelle, which is dated 1549, is at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, while his earliest signed picture, dated 1544, is a double portrait of the canons Cornelis van Horn and Anthonis Taets van Amerongen, now at the Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen, Berlin.⁶ Registered as a master in the Antwerp guild of Saint Luke by 1547, Mor spent the following decade busy at the Habsburg court, travelling to Spain and Portugal in 1550–52; then in Brussels by November 1553, when he describes himself as painter to His Imperial Majesty; and in England the following year to paint Mary Tudor’s portrait, now at the Museo del Prado, Madrid (fig. 1).⁷ Indeed it was during his stay in London that the formal appointment of Jacopo da Trezzo as escultor to Philip of Spain took place under the same terms as the royal order commanding Anthonis Mor to his salaried position as court painter. On 20 December 1554, in London, Philip signed a royal order for Mor to enter his service at a salary of three hundred escudos per annum; the same for Jacopo da Trezzo on New Year's day 1555.⁸ Not long before, Jacopo da Trezzo had written from London to Granvelle, Mor’s early patron in Brussels, with a gift of his silver medal of Queen Mary, a particularly fitting present since Granvelle had played a key role in the negotiation of her marriage to the future Philip II of Spain.

fig. 1. Anthonis Mor (Utrecht 1516/20 - 1576 (?) Antwerp), Portrait of Mary Tudor, Queen of England, 1554. Oil on panel, 109 x 84 cm. ©Museo Nacional del Prado

Although Hymans states that Mor painted Jacopo da Trezzo’s portrait when both men were in Spain, his claim is unsubstantiated, for although Mor moved back to Spain with Philip’s court in 1559, two years later in 1561 he was back in the Netherlands and it was not until the following year, 1562, that Jacopo is recorded as residing in Madrid in the service of Philip II. Based there for the rest of his life – where he was more commonly known as Jacometrezo – he was engaged on a wide range of tasks, from gem-engraving to working with gold and other precious materials, as well as larger-scale projects for the crown. Mor, meanwhile, resisted requests to return to Philip’s court in Spain and in 1564 moved to Antwerp, continuing still to frequent his hometown of Utrecht until 1567.⁹ A more likely hypothesis for the dating of this portrait is that Jacopo da Trezzo sat to Mor at some point between 1555 and 1559, when both men were in Brussels in Philip’s service. During that time Mor painted many of the leading figures at court until his departure from the Low Countries in 1559. Among his many undertakings in Philip’s employment Jacopo worked for the Bureau des finances as an engraver of dies for jetons; carved artefacts in rock crystal; engraved the great seal and counterseal of Philip, in use from 1557; and perhaps his most astonishing feat that earned him much fame: he incised a diamond with the arms of Philip’s father, Charles V.

A small number of bust-length portraits by Mor relate in style of presentation to this work. The almost austere mode of representation of the sitter against a grey-brown background, as well as the fluid technique and restrained colour palette bear a striking similarity to Mor’s Portrait of a Man at the National Gallery, London.¹⁰ For the latter, a date in the early 1560s, shortly after Mor’s return from Spain, has been suggested by Lorne Campbell. Two other comparable works painted with similar economy of means are Mor’s portrait of the surgeon Jacob de Moor, dated 1576, now at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht;¹¹ and an undated male portrait of similar dimensions, formerly in the Portuguese royal collection and now at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.¹² The range of dates indicates the difficulties inherent in establishing a firm dating for the Portrait of Jacopo da Trezzo – the only painted likeness of him known today – but comparison with the only other surviving portrait of Jacopo, a medal by Antonio Abondio of 1572, is of some help. Inscribed ‘IACOBVS NIZOLLA DE TRIZZIA MDLXXII’, the medal shows him in profile, older in years but with the same deep-set eyes, high forehead and pronounced beard (fig. 2).¹³ On this basis it seems plausible to suggest that Mor’s portrait of Jacopo dates from some years earlier, most likely when they were both in Brussels during the second half of the 1550s. Joanna Woodall, writing about the portrait in 1989 (see Literature), considers it most similar to Mor's portrait of Jean Lecocq (Joannes Gallus) dated 1559 (Staatliche Museen Kassel; fig. 3) and argues for a date in the later 1550s, or perhaps very early 1560s. 

fig. 2. Antonio Abondio, Jacopa da Trezzo, 1572. Medal. D. 70 mm. © 2019 Trustees of the British Museum

fig. 3. Anthonis Mor (Utrecht 1516/20 - 1576 (?) Antwerp), Portrait of Jean Lecocq (Joannes Gallus), 1559. Oil on oak panel, 85.5 x 59 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Kassel. Photo Arno Hensmanns.

Two other portraits of Jacopo, now lost, are recorded: one that belonged to Philip II, depicting the celebrated sculptor beside the tabernacle he executed for the high altar of the basilica of San Lorenzo at the Escorial, near Madrid; the other, by Bernardino Campi, cited by his biographer Alessandro Lamo, who writing in 1584 described Jacopo as ‘huomo singolare in far medaglie, & in lavorare di bassi rilievi, che per lo molto Suo valore grandemente è caro al Rè Catholico’ (‘a singular man for making medals and working in bas relief, who for his great worth is very dear to His Catholic Majesty’).¹⁴

Note on provenance: 

Amedeo Dal Pozzo (1579–1644) was descended from an illustrious Piedmontese family. Like his forebears who held high office in government and civic affairs, Amedeo chose to serve the court of Savoy, after abandoning a successful military career begun early in life. His cousin was the learned scholar and celebrated collector Cassiano Dal Pozzo (1588–1657), upon whom he relied on several occasions to help him purchase paintings in Rome. In 1638 Amedeo travelled to the Eternal City as ambassador of Christine of France, Duchess consort of Savoy, and there he frequented Cardinal Barberini and others in Cassiano’s circle. Amedeo’s collections grew firstly from property that came to him from his father, who died in 1582 when Amedeo was still in infancy, and then from his uncle Carlo Antonio Dal Pozzo, Bishop of Pisa (d. 1607), and expanded also thanks to the collection he inherited from his first marriage to Giulia Belli, after the death of his father-in-law Domenico Belli, Grand Chancellor to the Duke of Savoy; but his picture gallery grew principally as a result of his own acquisitions that began in earnest during the first years of the seventeenth century. By the time of Amedeo’s death, his collection, which had originated with a relatively small nucleus of some 150 inherited works, amounted to almost six hundred items, as recorded in his Inventarium mortis of 1644.¹⁵ Among the highlights in the Dal Pozzo collection were four works by Nicolas Poussin, which included his celebrated pair of paintings now divided between the National Gallery, London, and the National Gallery of New South Wales, Melbourne: The Adoration of the Golden Calf (fig. 4) and The Crossing of the Red Sea, painted for Amedeo and recorded at the Palazzo Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, Turin, in the running inventory of his possessions begun in 1634.¹⁶ Organized according to a rigorous system prescribed by Amedeo, the collection was ordered according to various categories, which included works by Old Masters, among them Perugino, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Titian and Veronese; modern masters, such as Procaccini, Valentin de Boulogne, Guercino Poussin, Pietro da Cortona and Romanelli; and portraits by excellent old and modern masters, the category in which Mor’s Portrait of Jacopo da Trezzo was grouped. Described as ‘a most excellent work’, it was displayed in a gilt frame and valued at 70 ducatoni. Less highly prized categories included groups of works by lesser artists, still lifes of flowers, fruit and animals and landscapes. As well as featuring numerous works by Dutch and Flemish painters, the collection signaled a partiality for Lombard and Piedmontese masters, a reflection of the Dal Pozzo family’s own origins, while the mix of old and modern accorded with contemporary taste. Amedeo’s son Francesco (d. 1667) inherited and safeguarded the picture gallery, which remained largely intact until the late nineteenth century, with the notable exception of the sale by Giacomo Maurizio Dal Pozzo (d. 1696) of the pair of Poussins in around 1680 to a painter acting on behalf of King Louis XIV. The death of Princess Maria Vittoria, princess of La Cisterna, wife of Prince Amedeo of Savoy, Duke of Aosta, second son of King Vittorio Emanuele II, and Queen consort of Spain (1847–1876), led eventually to the dispersal of the collection.

fig. 4. Nicolas Poussin, The Adoration of the Golden Calf, 1633-34. Oil on canvas, 153,4 x 211,8 cm. The National Gallery, London