Marcus geeraerts the younger biography examples

Gheeraerts was particularly influential in the development of English portrait painting, with notable works including portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and members of the English nobility. His artistic style and techniques contributed to the evolution of portraiture in England, bridging the gap between the late Tudor and early Stuart periods.

Gheeraerts's life and career in England remain significant in the context of Renaissance art, although specific details about his early life and training are largely unknown. Log in. Portrait of Margaret Layton of Rawdon d. The Laytons were an ancient and well-to-do family, and in pursuance of his father's will, Henry built a chapel at Rawdon.

Historical significance: Avril Hart and Sharon Fermor, entry no. Citation of part of this article by Sharon Fermor referring to the portrait [spelling of 'Laton' corrected to 'Layton' throughout]: "The portrait of Margaret Layton, purchased with the bodice, is an intriguing example of early seventeenth-century English portraiture, as well as a unique example of a sitter shown wearing an extant garment.

Comparison with the bodice shows that the artist has painted its distinguishing features with great care, undoubtedly reflecting the value that it held for the sitter. He has paid particular attention to its embroidery, reproducing in detail the individual motifs of birds, insects and flowers, while exercising a degree of artistic licence in terms of their specific arrangement.

The portrait has not yet been securely attributed to a known artist, although in some respects it shows similarities with portraits by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger c. Female portraits ascribed to Gheeraerts at Hampton Court and at Dulwich Picture Gallery [London] show sitters wearing similarly embroidered jackets and the handling of detail is close in each case, although one cannot rule out the possibility that this reveals the hand of a specialist painter of costume.

The facial type of Margaret Layton and the sketchy painting of the hair also occur in other Gheeraerts portraits. The relative informality of Margaret Layton and the lack of background detail are, however, uncharacteristic of the artist, although they may have been specified by the patron. The date of the portrait is unknown, but the style of the bodice suggests a date of between and The sitter's age at this time is also uncertain, but X-radiographs of the painting reveal that the artist produced two versions of the marcus geeraerts the younger biography examples.

Beneath the visible likeness is an older-looking, slightly heavier image of Margaret Layton's face. It would thus appear that the artist repainted her in a more youthful and idealised way, perhaps at her request, or that of her husband who was most likely to have commissioned and paid for the work. This alteration raises interesting questions, at present unanswerable, about the exact date of the painting and the occasion for which it was commissioned.

The size and plain setting of the work and the relative informality of the sitter's costume make it unlikely that it was designed to commemorate a great public occasion, although the painting is not without its own quiet grandeur. Certainly, the sitter is shown as a model of propriety, with her eyes slightly averted from the viewer.

The small open book in her hand is probably intended to suggest a missal, a device which portraitists often used to allude to the sitter's presumed piety. Illustrated Fig 2. Avril Hart and Sharon Fermor, entry no. For citation of part of this article by Sharon Fermor referring to the portrait, see "History". Explore the Collections contains over a million catalogue records, and over half a million images.

It is a working database that includes information compiled over the life of the museum. New too were capturing the character of individual sitters through close observation and the use of sombre colour and greyed flesh tones. He also introduced the full-length figure set out-out-of-doors in a naturalistic landscape for full-scale portraiture, a feature seen in portrait miniatures of the same era.

The need for assistants to complete the backgrounds and details of the new large canvas paintings, and the numbers of surviving copies and variants of Gheeraerts' works, suggest a studio or workshop staffed with assistants and apprentices. There are similarities of features between Gheeraert's portraits of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and miniatures of Essex by Gheeraerts' brother-in-law Isaac Oliver, and later between their portraits of Anne of Denmark, but it is unknown whether the two artists collaborated or shared patterns for portraits.

Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley, who retired as Queen's Champion in the autumn ofwas the architect of much of the chivalric pageantry at the court of Elizabeth I. Lee became Gheeraerts' patron aroundand Gheeraerts quickly became fashionable in court circles, [ 7 ] creating emblematic portraits associated with the elaborate costumed iconography of Lee's Accession Day tilts.

The queen likely sat to him for the Ditchley Portrait of her in[ 6 ] [ 7 ] which depicted her standing close to "Lee's Oxfordshire estate at Ditchley ", [ 11 ] and her favourite the Earl of Essex employed Gheeraerts from The royal accounts for —98 also include payments for decorative work by "Marcus Gerarde". The Ditchley Portrait seems to have always been at Lee's home in Oxfordshire, and was likely painted for or commemorates her two-day visit to Ditchley in In this image, the queen stands on a map of England, her feet on Oxfordshire.

The painting has been trimmed and the background poorly repainted, so that the inscription and sonnet are incomplete. Storms rage behind her while the sun shines before her, and she wears a jewel in the form of a celestial or armillary sphere close to her left ear. The new portrait aesthetic did not please the aging queen, and in the many versions of this painting made with the allegorical items removed, likely in Gheeraerts' workshop, Elizabeth's features are "softened" from the stark realism of her face in the original.

One of these was sent as a diplomatic gift to the Grand Duke of Tuscany and is now in the Palazzo Pitti. AroundGheeraerts painted a portrait of Lee's cousin Captain Thomas Lee standing in a landscape wearing Irish dress. The iconography of the portrait alludes to Captain Lee's service in Ireland. Essex whose mother Lettice Knollys, Countess of Leicester was related to Sir Henry Lee seems to have used Gheeraerts exclusively for large-scale portraits from the mids.

The first of these is the full-length portrait of Essex at Woburn Abbey, where he stands in a landscape with the burning Spanish city of Cadiz in the background. Many half-length and three-quarter-length portraits of Essex with plain backgrounds appear to be studio variants of sittings to Gheeraerts. Gheeraerts' success lay in his ability to subdue the marcus geeraerts the younger biography examples robustness of Flemish painting and fuse it with the melancholic, aristocratic, courtly fantasy of late Elizabethan England Elizabeth and Essex remain Gheeraerts' supreme works deserving to rank, along with some of Hilliard's portrait miniatures, as great masterpieces of early English painting.

Gheeraerts' popularity does not seem to have been tainted by the patronage of participants in the Essex Rebellion both Essex and Thomas Lee were executed for treason in Gheeraerts remained at the forefront of fashion in the years immediately following Elizabeth's death in James I's queen, Anne of Denmark, employed Gheerearts for large scale paintings and his brother-in-law Isaac Oliver for miniatures.

His portrait of Frances Howard, Countess of Hertford in rich attire framed by a draped silk curtain, with a fringed pelmet across the top of the canvas, is the first known instance of a portrait setting that would be used by Hilliard's former apprentice William Larkin in a series of full-length portraits between and Isaac Oliver died inand around the same time Gheeraerts' position at court began to decline as the result of competition from a new generation of immigrants.

Marcus geeraerts the younger biography examples

Sign in Register. Email address. Remember me uncheck on a public computer. First name. Finding Art UK useful? Support us to keep it free. Flemish-born portrait painter, active in England. He settled there in with his father Marcus the Elder c. Marcus the Younger was probably the leading society portraitist in London at the peak of his career his popularity declined after about Many other portraits have been attributed to him, but it is not easy to disentangle his work from that of some of his contemporaries.

Artworks by Marcus Gheeraerts the younger.