Lot 557 | Otto van Veen | Portrait of an 11-Year-Old Boy

VEEN, OTTO VAN
1556 Leiden - 1629 Brussels

attributed
Title: Portrait of an 11-Year-Old Boy.
Technique: Oil on wood.
Measurement: 43.5 x 32cm.
Notation: Dated at the top: Aetatis 11 / Ao 1611.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

Otto van Veen was a painter, draftsman, and humanist who worked mainly in Antwerp and Brussels between the 16th and 17th centuries. His artistic personality is often overshadowed by his most famous apprentice, Peter Paul Rubens, whose master he was from 1594/1595 to 1598. Nevertheless, van Veen is an artist who played a very important role in the transition between the two centuries, and it is thanks to his imprint as a learned painter and cultural man that Rubens became the universal painter he is still celebrated as today.
Otto van Veen's oeuvre consists of numerous altarpieces, paintings with mythological themes, allegories, and scenes of Roman battles, which he painted for the Archdukes Albert and Isabella of Habsburg, among others. In these works he was able to incorporate his deep and varied knowledge.
But he was also a skilled portraitist, of which the present portrait is an admirable example. Depicted is an 11-year-old boy who, just like Pope Clement IX and the painter Claude Lorrain, was born in 1600. Dressed in an elegant burgundy-purple doublet, his head is surrounded by a tightly folded ruff that isolates it from the rest and also serves as a catalyst for the viewer's gaze. The boy's gaze is caught by something the viewer cannot see, which is probably behind the painter depicting him. Thus, a moment of distraction is immortalized, in which the model - forgetting that he may be the scion of a noble family - rediscovers his humanity, which he shares with every other 11-year-old boy.

We thank Katlijne Van der Stighelen, Leuven, and Alessandro Nicola Malusà, Cambridge, for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph.