(Wesel 1493–1555 Cologne)
Portrait of a young man with a carnation,
inscribed at lower right (on the balustrade): DUM SPIRO SPERO
oil on panel, 37.5 x 26.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of the tobacco merchant Jakob Johann Nepomuk Lyversberg (1761–1834), Cologne;
Collection Maria Elisabeth Baumeister, née Lyversberg, Cologne;
Collection Richard von Kaufmann (1849–1908), Berlin;
the latter’s sale, Cassirer & Helbing, Berlin, 4 December 1917, lot 136;
Collection Rudolf Busch (1876–1956), Mainz;
Dr. Hans A. Wetzlar (1894–1970), Amsterdam;
Galerie Edel, Cologne (1986);
Private collection, Cologne;
Private collection, Austria

Exhibited:
Cologne, Internationale Kunstausstellung Köln, Aus der Schatzkammer des Kunsthandels, 1986

Literature:
H. Westhoff-Krummacher, Barthel Bruyn der Ältere als Bildnismaler, in: Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien, 35, Munich and Berlin, 1965, pp. 174/75, cat. no. 105, ill.;
Aus der Schatzkammer des Kunsthandels, Munich, 1986, p. 42, ill.;
Lust und Verlust II, Corpus-Band zu Kölner Gemäldesammlungen 1800–1860, H. Kier and F. G. Zehnder (ed.), Cologne, 1998, p. 231, ill.

The present portrait of an unidentified young man, executed around 1536 by the hand of the portraitist Bartholomäus Bruyn I, comes from one of the most prominent collections in Cologne in the early 19th century. Jakob Johann Nepomuk Lyversberg was a wealthy tobacco and wine merchant and between 1800 and 1803 he was a member of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and functioned as its agent in the sale of secularised church estates. This office enabled him to compile a substantial collection of paintings of Dutch and Cologne art which was discussed by Friedrich Schlegel in the periodical Europa as early as 1805. In 1816, the collectors Lyversberg, Wallraf, and Fochem exhibited their German paintings at the Cologne Jesuit College in honour of the Prussian crown prince. That same year, the city’s purchase of the collection failed in spite of a favourable offer made by Lyversberg. After Lyversberg’s death, his four daughters wished to sell the entire collection at an auction scheduled for 16 August 1837 but as there was not much interest in the paintings and it was expected that they would only sell for low prices, the heiresses withdrew all of the works and divided them up amongst themselves. The Young Man with a Carnation later entered the Berlin collection of the economist and privy councillor Richard von Kaufmann, which was by no less important than that of Lyversberg.