Name: CIRCLE OF SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS (Siegen 1577-1640 Antwerp)
Brand: Portrait of Isabel de Borbón (1602-1644), Queen of Spain, full length, in a black over-gown brocaded and embellished with gold
Price: 260000.00 USD
Availability: SoldOut

CIRCLE OF SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS (Siegen 1577-1640 Antwerp)
Portrait of Isabel de Borbón (1602-1644), Queen of Spain, full length, in a black over-gown brocaded and embellished with gold
inscribed '. La R^a. Doña Ysauel de. Borbon.' (lower left), and inscribed with the inventory number of Diego Mexía Felípez de Guzmán '414' (lower left) and an unidentified inventory number '† 353.4 †' (lower center)
oil on canvas, unframed
77¹⁄₄ x 46¹⁄₈ in. (196.4 x 117.2 cm.)

Diego Mexía Felípez de Guzmán (c.1580-1655), Viscount de Butarque and 1st Marques de Leganés, by 1647.
José de Madrazo (1781-1859), Madrid, by 1856.
José de Salamanca y Mayol (1811-1883), 1st Marqués de Salamanca and 1st Conde de los Llanos; his sale, Charles Pillet, Paris, 3-6 June 1867, lot 202, as School of Rubens.
with Theron J. Blakeslee (1853-1914), New York; his deceased sale, American Art Galleries, New York, 7-8 April 1904, lot 109, as Claudio Coello, Portrait of Marie Louise of Orleans, for $1,900 to the following,
Francis Lathrop (1849-1909), New York, and by whom possibly gifted to,
The Hispanic Society of America.

Catálogo de la Galería de Cuadros del Excmo. Sn. D. José de Madrazo, Madrid, 1856, p. 142, no. 588, as Rubens and Workshop.
'Paintings Sold at Auction', American Art Annual, V, 1905-1906, p. 57, as Claudio Coello.
V. von Loga, 'Los cuadros de la Hispanic Society of America', Museum, III, no. 4, Barcelona, 1913, p. 125, as begun by Rubens.
Hispanic Society of America, List of Paintings, New York, 1925, no. A106, as Attributed to Rubens, with the note 'The head only of this portrait is considered to be by Rubens; the rest is by another hand'.
E. du Gué Trapier, Catalogue of Paintings (16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries) in the collection of the Hispanic Society of America, New York, 1929, pp. 64-66, no. A106, as Artist Unknown, noting the differences in treatment of the sitter's head and dress.
Hispanic Society of America, Portraits of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries by Unknown Artists in the Collection of the Hispanic Society of America, New York, 1930, no. A106, as an unknown artist working in 'the time of Velázquez'.
R. Gilder, 'Lope de Vega. Super-Man of the Theatre', Theatre arts monthly, XIX, no. 9, September 1935, reproduced p. 670, without comment on the attribution.
A.L. Mayer, Velazquez, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Pictures and Drawings, London, 1936, p. 113, no. 480, as 'more closely connected with Rubens than with Velazquez'.
J. Lopez Navio, La gran colección de pinturas del Marqués de Leganés, Madrid, 1962, p. 288, no. 414, described as 'la Renya Doña Ysabel'.
J. López-Rey, Velázquez. A catalogue raisonné of his oeuvre, London, 1963, p. 241, no. 354, as 'somewhat closer to Rubens's than to Velázquez's manner'.
M. Díaz Padrón, Pintura Flamenca en España, Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1976, pp. 1197, 1261, and 1267, identifying the artist in the Marques de Leganés inventory as Peter Noveliers (active 1587-1616).
F. Huemer, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIX.I, Portraits, Brussels and London, 1977, pp. 159-160, no. 34, copy 6, fig. 106, as a copy.
M. Crawford Volk, 'Of Connoisseurs and Kings: Velázquez’s Philip IV at Fenway Court', Fenway Court 1985, Boston, 1985, pp. 30-31, fig. 14, as After Rubens.
M.A. Codding, 'A Legacy of Spanish Art for America: Archer M. Huntington and the Hispanic Society of America', Manet/Velázquez. The French Taste for Spanish Painting, G. Tinterow and G. Lacambre, eds., exhibition catalogue, Madrid, 2003, p. 309, as among the earliest acquisitions for the museum, when it was called Attributed to Claudio Coello.
J.J. Pérez Preciado, El Marques de Leganés y las Artes, Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2010, I, p. 728-729, II, p. 310, no. 414, illustrated, as a copy after Rubens, possibly by Salomon Noveliers (active 1613-1660).
A.D. Newman, Painting Flanders Abroad: Flemish Art and Artists in Seventeenth-Century Madrid, Leiden, 2022, p. 55, fig. 22, as After Rubens.

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Lot Essay

This portrait is is first recorded the eminent seventeenth-century collection of Diego Mexía Felípez de Guzmán, 1st Marques de Leganés, which encompassed over 1,000 works, a large proportion of which were from the Low Countries, where he had served for more than two decades at the court of Archduke Albert of Austria. His collection of Northern works included paintings by Paul de Vos, Clara Peeters, Jan Breughel the Elder, Gaspar de Crayer and, of course, Peter Paul Rubens. De Guzmán's holdings included a number of copies after Rubens, including the present portrait, for which the prime is now lost. In the nineteenth century the portrait was owned by José de Madrazo, the Neoclassical painter and Curator of the Museo del Prado, and subsequently by the railroad and banking magnate, José de Salamanca y Mayol, 1st Marquess of Salamanca.

When this work first appeared on the art market in 1904, it was attributed to the Spanish-Portuguese painter Claudio Coello (circa 1642-1693). After entering the museum's collection, Valerian von Loga proposed that the painting was begun by Rubens himself, but was completed by another hand (loc. cit.). The difference in quality of the carefully modeled face and hands compared to the rather stiffly painted clothing supports this theory. Little over a decade later, when the Hispanic Society published a list of paintings in its collection, only the head was considered to be by the master's hand (1925, loc. cit.). Since 1925, however, the painting has generally been considered to be one of the numerous copies after Rubens's lost composition. In his unpublished 1976 dissertation, Matías Díaz Padrón (loc. cit.) cited the Marques de Leganés's inventory and tentatively proposed an attribution to Peter Noveliers (active 1587-1616). More recently, José Juan Pérez Preciado (loc. cit.) proposed that the present painting belonged to a series of portraits depicting Habsburg royalty, bearing the inventory numbers 402-424, likely executed by Peter's son, Salomon Noveliers (active 1613-1660). Pérez Preciado identified a number of portraits from the series which include a number of full-length portraits that entered the collection of the Duke of Wellington: a portrait of Mary I, Queen of England and Spain (Apsley House, London), a portrait of Philip IV, King of Spain and Portugal (Stratfield Saye House, Hampshire), and a portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (Apsley House, London).