Attributed to GORTZIUS GELDORP (Louvain 1553 – 1619 Cologne)
Attributed to Gortzius Geldorp (Louvain 1553 – 1619 Cologne)
Christ and The Virgin Mary
Both oil on panel, circular, painted surface diameter 13.7 cm (5.4 inch), integral frame diameter 20 cm (7.9 inch)
Provenance
Private collection, The Netherlands
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Gortzius Geldorp was born in Louvain in Flanders in 1553 and was taught in Antwerp by Frans Francken I and Frans Pourbus I.1 He travelled to Palermo and presumably other cities in Italy during the late 1570s, and settled in Cologne in 1579, where he remained for the rest of his life, specialising in portraits and religious scenes. His sons Ferdinand, Georg and Melchior also became painters, taught by their father. Karel van Mander wrote about Geldorp in his Schilder-boeck of 1604, describing him as ‘Gualdorp Gortzius gheseyt (called) Geldrop’, and it is not quite certain if Gortzius was his first name.2
These two small tondos are remarkably well preserved. The original integral frames have two drilled holes connecting the top to the reverse of the frame, from which they would originally be hung by cord or ribbon, their original hanging technique. The same configuration is seen on the original frames for Geldorp’s portrait of A.A. Deutz van Assendelft, preserved in the Deutzenhofje in Amsterdam.3 This system was presumably favoured by Geldorp’s standard frame maker, who would have provided these panels with integral frames. Similar circular paintings with heads or portraits can be seen hanging on the mantle of an interior with a man weighing gold, painted by Cornelis de Man around 1670 (fig.).4
Paintings by Geldorp are preserved in the, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the landesmuseum in Bonn, the Szépmüvészeti Museum in Budapest, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main. Our tondo of the Virgin can for instance be compared to Geldorp’s painting Virgin Mary in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen (fig.).5
SOLD
1. For the artist, see I. Krueger, ‘Kölner Familien beim Tischgebet, annot 1602. Zu einem Gemälde von Geldorp Gortzius (und Melchior Geldorp?) und seiner Bildtradition’, in: W. Schäfke (ed.), Coellen eyn Croyn, Cologne 1999, pp. 79-100 and H. Vey, ‘ “Susanna und die Ältesten” von Geldorp Gortzius in Budapest’, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 48-49 (1988), pp. 187-213.
2. Karel van Mander, Het schilder-boeck (…), Alkmaar/Haarlem 1604, fol. 280v.
3. P.J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops, Prijst de Lijst, Amsterdam/The Hague 1984, p. 46, figs. 4a-b.
4. Oil on canvas, 81.6 x 67.6 cm, private collection; M. Lambrechtsen, Cornelis de Man (1621–1706), master thesis, Amsterdam 2005, pp. 116-18, no. 18, repr.
5. Oil on panel, 57.2 x 48.5 cm, inv. no. GK 988; Thomas Fusenig and Christine Vogt, Niederlande von 1550 bis 1800: Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum Aachen, Munich 2006, pp. 130-31, repr.
