Half-Length Portrait of a Man
The ‘Half-Length Portrait of a Man’ by Anthonis Mor is an exceptional rarity from the artist’s Antwerp period. It was in the family collection of Samuel H. Kress until recently, and before that, one of the richest female philanthropists in Victorian England, Angela, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts.
Provenance
Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906), 1 Stratton Street, London
her sale, Christie’s, London, 4 May 1922, lot 106
with Frank T. Sabin, London
with Count Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi, Rome; sold to
Samuel H. Kress (1863–1955), New York, by 1929; his brother
Rush H. Kress (1877–1963), New York; by inheritance, his wife,
Mrs. Rush H. Kress (1911–2003), New York
thence by descent until 2024; acquired by
Private Collection, United States
Bibliography
Colin Eisler, Complete Catalogue of the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Paintings Excluding Italian, Oxford, 1977, p. 97, no. KX-I, reproduced fig. 82.
Essay
In 1547, Anthonis Mor van Dashorst, a painter born and trained in Utrecht, moved to Antwerp, where he registered as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke. He would go on to become one of the most celebrated portraitists of his time, producing likenesses of Europe’s most powerful figures. Mor’s career was marked by extensive travels and prestigious commissions, from the Habsburg courts to the nobility of Spain and Portugal, England, and the Netherlands. His death is recorded between late November 1576 and early May 1577, following decades of artistic success.[1]
Mor’s artistic upbringing was shaped by his father, a ‘verwer’ (dyer or painter), which immersed him in a world of color and pigments from an early age. His exceptional talent for drawing, according to Karel van Mander, led him to train under Jan van Scorel, who had studied in Italy and briefly served as the keeper of the Vatican collections.[2] Also according to van Mander, Mor remained in van Scorel’s workshop until moving to Antwerp. However, he likely traveled to Rome in the early 1540s, as evidenced by a court record describing an altercation between him and another Netherlandish painter near the Temple of Maximus.
Mor’s relocation to Antwerp in 1547, at nearly thirty, proved pivotal. Antwerp was then at its economic and artistic zenith, a hub of commerce and innovation. His talent quickly attracted the city’s and the country’s elite patrons, including Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, bishop of Arras and later cardinal of Mechelen, who commissioned his portrait around 1548–49 (fig. 1). This connection led to commissions from the Habsburg dynasty, solidifying Mor’s reputation across Europe. His portraits, distinguished by their penetrating realism and psychological depth, influenced court portraiture for decades to come.
Little is known about Mor’s painting before he portrayed Granvelle. The Two Cannons of 1544 (fig. 2), now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin but originally made for the Dom in Utrecht is a rare exception. While still largely indebted to van Scorel (e.g. his Five members of the Utrecht Jerusalem Brotherhood),[3] it shows some early signs of a larger interest in the matter of oil paint and the tactile, fleshy qualities it allowed for.
This Half-Length Portrait of a Man is an extremely rare portrait from Mor’s Antwerp period. The costume allows us to date this painting to ca. 1545–55 and places the sitter in Antwerp. This would make it contemporary with Mor’s Portrait of Cardinal Granvelle. This portrait also exemplifies a fundamental transformation in portraiture that took place in Antwerp around 1550. This shift moved portraiture away from the more sculptural, highly polished approach of earlier Netherlandish masters, such as van Scorel, toward a more painterly and naturalistic rendering of flesh and fabric. To fully appreciate that shift and Anthonis Mor’s pivotal contribution to it, one must compare his work to that of his slightly older contemporaries. For instance, Jan van Scorel’s Portrait of a Haarlem Citizen (fig. 3) and Maarten van Heemskerck’s Portrait of a Man (Possibly Hubert Pietersz, formerly thought to be Pieter Gerritsz Bicker) reflect the earlier Northern tradition, where flesh appears polished and almost plasticine-like, with light reflecting off the surface rather than being absorbed into the texture of the skin. This approach, rooted in the slight older example of Jan Gossaert, prioritized sculptural form and precise modeling over painterly attention to matter and texture.
By contrast, Mor’s portraits of around 1550 display a newfound emphasis on color modulation. The Half-Length Portrait of a Man is a striking example of this shift, characterized by the softening of contours, the lively interplay of light and shadow, and an increased sensitivity to the natural tones of flesh. The swift white impasti on the ear, for instance, illustrate his growing confidence in a looser, more expressive brushwork.
One of the key factors behind this transformation was the growing influence of Venetian painting, particularly the work of Titian. In the 1540s, Charles V, his sister Mary of Hungary (Governor of the Netherlands), and their court began taking a keen interest in Titian’s colorito—the Venetian emphasis on color, texture, and painterly execution. This fascination permeated the artistic circles of Antwerp, leading figures like Anthonis Mor first, and later Willem Key (fig. 4), and Frans Floris to rethink their approach to portraiture. Mor’s interest in Titian’s brushwork is well attested. Anthonis Mor, according to Van Mander, even copied Titian’s Danaë on behalf of King Philip II of Spain.
Mor’s exposure to Titian’s work was direct and transformative. In 1548, he accompanied Granvelle to the Reichstag in Augsburg, a political event that also served as a meeting ground for artistic exchange between Titian and some northern masters.[5] This experience profoundly impacted Mor’s technique. His portrait of Granvelle from this period already reflects a shift—while the hands remain sculpturally rendered, the face exhibits a more fluid, painterly quality, prefiguring the evolution seen in later works like the Half-Length Portrait of a Man.
However, beyond artistic influences, the rise of physiognomic and medical studies in the second quarter of the 16th century played a crucial role in shaping Mor’s approach to portraiture. Interest in the human body surged, with numerous treatises analyzing complexion and the balance of the four humors. In these writings, the term ‘verwe’—a Dutch word referring to both the qualities of flesh and paint—became central to discussions of physiognomy.
In the introduction to the 1554 Dutch edition of Johannes de Indagine’s Chiromantia, several pages are dedicated to the value of chiromancy, physiognomy, and natural astrology in the art of painting. The text references figures such as Apelles, Albrecht Dürer, and maybe not surprisingly Jan van Scorel, among others. Following a historical overview, the author argues that painting and physiognomy are interconnected in the same way that history and rhetoric are—one cannot exist without the other. Just as history relies on rhetoric to present convincing arguments, painting depends on physiognomy.
Later in the volume, De Indagine explains how Cicero and others used rhetoric to depict characters, particularly by analyzing their physical traits, thereby making historical narratives (understood here as istoria in Leon Battista Alberti’s terminology) more vivid. He continues by stating that sculptures and paintings, as forms of silent poetry, do not merely imitate appearances but reveal a person’s inner character. De Indagine concludes that before the advent of painted works, painters relied solely on traits and lines, as Pliny attests—an approach that the greatest painters later perfected with color. In short, physiognomy was seen as essential to painting, as it provided the ‘verwe’ (matter) and lines (form) necessary to capture an individual’s character.
For early modern viewers, the texture, color, and greasiness of skin were not merely artistic concerns but indicators of health, temperament, and character. Painters were explicitly encouraged to observe and replicate these nuances in their work. Thus, Mor’s painterly rendering of flesh was not just an aesthetic choice but a response to contemporary scientific discourse. Mor’s pioneering synthesis of Venetian colorito and Northern naturalism, in other words, laid the groundwork for a new era of portraiture in the Low Countries. His influence extended well into the 17th century, still shaping artists such as Cornelis van der Voort and others. His innovations in texture, color, and psychological depth would later be refined by Peter Paul Rubens and, ultimately, by Rembrandt, whose own painterly explorations of light and flesh echo Mor’s breakthroughs.
The Half-Length Portrait of a Man thus stands as a testament to this crucial moment of transformation in Netherlandish art—a work that embodies both the artistic currents of its time and the intellectual preoccupations that shaped it. Through Mor’s hand, the tradition of portraiture was redefined, bridging the meticulous precision of the early Netherlandish masters with the expressive, tactile ‘verve’ that would come to define Baroque painting. Until last year, Half-Length Portrait of a Man has remained in the family of the American magnate Samuel H. Kress. Another storied collection to which it has belonged is that of Angela, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts (fig. 5), one of the richest women and philanthropists in Victorian England.
Koenraad Jonckheere