Corneille de LA HAYE, known as Corneille de LYON... Lot 13

Corneille de LA HAYE, known as Corneille de LYON and the Hague workshop, 1500 - Paris, 1575 Portrait of Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre (1518-1562) and father of King Henry IV of France. Oil and gold and silver highlights on oak panel An old handwritten label with the biography of Henry III on the reverse side (Uneven edges) Portrait of Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, oil on panel, by C. de Lyon and workshop 16.20 x 12 cm (6.38 x 4.72 in.) Provenance : Anonymous sale ; Monaco, Sotheby's, July 2, 1993, n° 9 (as oil on canvas) ; Acquired from Xavier Goyet, Marseille, in 1994, by the parents of the current owners; Private collection, Paris Comment: The entire work of Corneille de La Haye - the name he adopted when he settled in France, but is much better known as Corneille de Lyon - consists of very small portraits with coloured backgrounds. However, this corpus is far from being perfectly homogeneous. Not only does the artist's style evolve over time, but it also adapts to the clients who push the door of his studio. The almost frontal images of the notables and wealthy merchants, treated with a light hand and never copied, thus rub shoulders with those of the gentlemen and ladies of the court, of a more conventional and "clouetienne" setting and a more careful realization. These portraits of aristocrats and princes also have in common that they exist in several copies of very uneven quality and without it is always possible to isolate the one made directly from the nature of his replicas. It is to this group that our portrait belongs, of which at least seven other versions of varying size and artistic quality are known. The portrait shows a young man dressed in the fashion of the early 1540's. His rich court attire consists of a shirt with a pleated collar, a grey stippling, of which only the edge of the neckline is visible, a collar - the outer garment reaching up to the neck, hence