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'Princess Emilia of Saxony', by Hans Krell (about 1530) Liverpool museums
Summary
This small wooden panel is possibly an engagement portrait of Princess Emilia of Saxony (1516 - 1591). In 1532, at the age of sixteen, she married Georg Hohenzollern, the second son of the Margave of Ansbach-Brandenburg. Saxony was a powerful German dukedom which traditionally appointed one of the seven Electors of the Holy Roman Emperor. Ansbach, although a smaller state, was growing in importance through successful alliances and advantageous marriages. Georg (1484 - 543), in addition to being a Hohenzollern was related to the Hapsburg family through one grandmother. He was also related to Emilia through his other grandmother, Anne of Saxony. The marriage was presumably beneficial to both families. The picture may have been painted some years before Emilia’s marriage. It was not uncommon at this time for both royalty and the aristocracy to betroth their children to potential allies whilst they were still very young. The actual marriage would take place when children reached maturity. The portrait becomes therefore almost a legal record of the betrothal. Husband and wife portraits were often painted in pairs. It is possible that there was a matching picture of Georg that is now lost. However in such pairs of portraits it is usual for the wife to face to left or right as though looking towards her spouse. Emilia’s very direct frontal gaze suggests that this was a single commission and not one of a pair. In the unromantic, calculating brokering of dynastic advantage that surrounded the union of Emilia and Georg, is it possible that her beloved kept the picture whilst he awaited her growth to maturity? There are several symbolic indications in the portrait of Princess Emilia's engagement and of her impending absorption into her future husband’s family. On her bodice there are a pair of clasped hands, indicative of love. It has also been suggested that it is possibly the badge or insignia of a religious fraternity or brotherhood to which her future husband Georg belonged. One of her necklaces is made of a series of rings that also include clasped hands. Another necklace includes enamel badges of the coat of arms of her husband interspersed with gold decorated bunches of wheat or corn that are suggestive of the hoped-for fertile outcome of the marriage. On her hat there are other metal - possibly silver - badges with her initials and those of her husband's title. Princess Emilia is very fashionably dressed in this portrait. Her dress is made of rich brocade. Her high forehead - shaved to accentuate its prominence - was also fashionable. Her hat has a circle of very expensive black ostrich feathers. Stylistically the portrait is very reminiscent of the portraits of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) who was court painter to the Elector of Saxony from 1505. Cranach’s distinctive large-headed, high-foreheaded, narrow-shouldered smiling women became almost the standard type of female portraiture in parts of Germany and Austria during the first half of the 16th century. The style was carried on by Lucas’s two sons who also worked for various German courts. It is worth looking at the mythological painting by Cranach entitled ‘The Nymph of the Fountain’ which can be seen hanging on the opposite wall to this picture. The face of the nymph is similarly proportioned to that of Princess Emilia. A triple portrait by Lucas Cranach of Emilia, aged 19 and her sisters Sidonia and Sibylla was painted in 1535 and is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. In the Vienna portrait Emilia wears a similar large ‘figure of eight’ type of necklace to that in the Walker's picture. Hans Krell (1490-1565), to whom this picture is attributed, was never as famous as his great contemporary Cranach. During his lifetime, however, he too enjoyed considerable patronage in both Bohemia and Germany. His ability to adapt his style to the dominant fashions in portraiture may have been advantageous. In 1537 Emilia gave birth to Georg Friedrich Hohenzollern, who succeeded as Margave of Ansbach upon the death of his father in 1544 and also became Duke of Prussia in 1577. With his death in 1603 this older branch of the Hohenzollern family died out. The branch of the family that then came to prominence were subsequently rulers of Prussia and ultimately Kaisers of Germany. The Walker’s picture, like several others from this period in the gallery, was originally owned by the Liverpool philanthropist, banker and scholar William Roscoe. Roscoe bought it in 1812 from a dealer for seven guineas, at which time it was entitled ‘A portrait of The Artist’s Wife’ by Lucas Cranach.[1]
↑ liverpoolmuseums.org.uk
The term "Northern Renaissance" refers to the art development of c.1430-1580 in the Netherlands Low Countries and Germany. The Low Countries, particularly Flanders with cities Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges, were, along with Florence, the most economically advanced region in Europe. As in Florence, urban culture peaked here. The common understanding of the Renaissance places the birth of the Renaissance in Florence, Italy. Rennaisance's ideas migrated to Germany from Italy because of the travels of Albrecht Dϋrer. Northern artists such as Jan van Eyck remained attached to Medieval traditions. In their paintings, Low Countries painters attempted to reproduce space, color, volume, and light as naturalistically as possible. They achieved the perfection of oil paint in the almost impossible representation of things and objects. Rather than draw upon Classical Greek and Roman aesthetics like their Italian counterparts, Northern European Renaissance artists retained a Gothic sensibility of woodblock printing and illuminated manuscripts which clearly distinguished Northern Rennaisance art from Italian. Unlike Italian artists, northern painters were not interested in rediscovering the spirit of ancient Greece. Instead, they sought to exploit the full potential of oil paint, and capture nature exactly as they found it. Unlike their Italian counterparts, who embraced a mathematically calculated linear perspective and constructed a picture from within, Dutch artists used an empirical perspective with precise observation and knowledge of the consistency of light and things. They painted as they saw and came very close to the effect of central perspective. Long before Leonardo, they invented aerial and color perspectives. More, as with real-world human vision, their far-away shapes lose contours, and the intensity of the colors fades to a bluish hue. Robert Campin (c.1378-1444), was noted for works like the Seilern Triptych (1410) and the Merode Altarpiece (1425); Jan van Eyck (1390-1441) was noted for the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) and The Arnolfini Marriage (1434); Jan Eyck's pupil Petrus Christus (c.1410-75), best known for his Portrait of a Young Girl (1470, Gemaldegalerie, Berlin); Roger Van der Weyden (1400-64) noted for his extraordinary realism as in his masterpiece Descent From the Cross (Deposition) (1435), for the Church of Notre Dame du Dehors (now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid); Dieric Bouts (1420-75) for his devotional pictures; Hugo Van Der Goes (1440-82) famous for The Portinari Altarpiece (1475) which influenced the Early Renaissance in Florence; Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) noted for The Garden of Earthly Delights (1510-15) and other moralizing works; Joachim Patenier (1485-1524) the pioneer landscape painter; and Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-1569) known for landscape narratives such as The Tower of Babel (1563).
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