Habsburg Court Painter, circa 1600 Lot n° 38

Portrait of Philip II of Spain (1527–1598), full-length, wearing armour and the Order of the Golden Fleece, with inventory number ‘406’ and inscribed lower left: Philippe 2 Reÿ de Spañia, oil on canvas, 201 x 121 cm, framed Provenance: Collection of the Marqués de Leganés 1637, inv. no. 406; Collection of the Marqués de Leganés 1642, inv. no. 406; Collection of the Marqués de Leganés 1655, Palacio de San Bernardo, inv. no. 406; by descent to the Collection of the XI Conde de Altamira, Ventura de Osorio, Palacio de San Bernardo, 1726 (inventory compiled when the Palacio de San Bernardo was leased to the Imperial Ambassador Count Koenigsegg: ‘Pieza de las Vaiettas […] Ottro Rettratto de Phelipe 2º de vara d ancho y dos y media de alto, nº 406’); probably among the paintings confiscated by Bonaparte in 1812 (see literature); probably returned to the Conde de Altamira, 1814; sale, Mr. Stanley, London, 1 June 1827, lot 61 (‘Philip the Second in rich Armour. From the Altamira Gallery’); Collection of Sir Samuel Meyrick (1783–1848); purchased from the Meyrick collection in 1872 (according to an inscription on the reverse); art market, England; where acquired by the present owner Literature: J. L. López Navío, La gran colección de pinturas del Marqués de Leganés, Analecta Calasanctiana, no. 8, 1962, p. 288; M. Díaz Padrón, Pintura Flamenca en España, diss. ms., Madrid 1976, p. 1196; J. J. Pérez Preciado, El Marqués de Leganés y las artes, diss. ms., Madrid 2008–2010, vol. I, pp. 303-304, vol. II, pp. 281-282, 582, note 2085 and p. 728 (as Salomon Noveliers) We are grateful to Gloria Martinez Leiva for her help in cataloguing the present painting. In 1628, Peter Paul Rubens, in a letter to his regular correspondent Pierre Dupuy in Paris, commented on a Spanish courtier from Brussels, who was visiting the French capital. Dupuy had just met that courtier, who accompanied the famous General Ambrogio Spinola, his father-in-law. The young man, the Marques de Leganés, Rubens wrote, ‘is one of the greatest connoisseurs of our age’. Rubens at that time had been familiar with Leganés for at least three years, and his assessment demonstrates the importance of the Marques as a collector even to his contemporaries (see M. Crawford Volk, New light on a seventeenth-century collector: The Marquis of Leganée, in: The Art Bulletin, vol. 62, no. 2, June 1980, pp. 256-268, p. 256, N.1). The near princely Leganés collection numbered more than 1300 paintings upon the death of the first Marquis in 1655. He was an insatiable art collector. While his collection included works by Spanish painters such as Velásquez, Juan van der Hamen and Ribera, and many major works by Italian artists like Titian, it was particularly noteworthy for the large number of paintings by Flemish contemporaries like Rubens and Van Dyck and also earlier works by artists like Quentin Massys (see M. Crawford Volk, Ibid., 1980, p. 256: ‘Such a vast assemblage was not entirely unheard of in the 17th century, but its serious rivals were few’). Diego Mexía Felípez de Guzmán, later Grandee of Spain and Marques de Leganés (see fig. 1) was one of the most important political and military figures of early seventeenth century Habsburg rule. He had been a page at the court of Archduke Albrecht VII in Brussels in his youth and had led various successful military campaigns in the Netherlands in his service, before returning to Spain following Albrecht’s death in 1621. He moved in the highest political and artistic circles, both in Madrid and in the Spanish Netherlands. His marriage to Polissena, the immensely rich daughter of Ambrogio Spinola in 1627, not only manifested his social position by the union with one of Genoa’s oldest families, but also enabled him to collect and invest on a large scale. His elevation to the Marquessate that same year afforded him his entry into the ranks of the higher nobility. He would be created Grandee of Spain in 1634. Amongst many other acquisitions he made whilst on various diplomatic and military missions in the Spanish Netherlands during his residence in Brussels from 1630–35, Leganés commissioned an impressive series of full-length portraits of rulers of the House of Habsburg from the royal household in Brussels. The series was intended to decorate Leganés palace in Madrid, the Palacio de San Bernardo, which was considered in 1722 by the French traveller Saint Simon, to be ‘una de las casas más magníficas de Madrid y la mejor amueblada’ (see Saint Simon, Cuadro de la Corte de España en 1722, Madrid 1933, p. 66). It was to demonstrate his allegiance to the House of Habsburg, to whose patronage Leganés owed so much. The series depicted the monarchs and their consorts, beginning with Philip I ‘The Handsome’ of Spain, and ending with the emperor ruling at the time of the commission, Ferdinand III (the serie