(Bruges active circa 1517 – before 1550)
Portrait of a gentleman, probably François de Cenasme,
dated: 1546,
oil on panel, 54 x 45 cm, framed

Provenance:
Cenami/Cename collection, Bruges, Lucca, Venice, since the 16th century;
Count Cenami collection, Lucca, by descent until the end of the 19th century;
Trotti collection, Paris, 1911;
Marcel Nicolle collection, Paris, 1920;
Heilbuth collection, Denmark;
his sale, Lepke, Berlin, 10 December, 1925, lot 115;
Victor Spark collection, New York, 1925-1952 (with certificate M. J. Friedländer, 21 May, 1952);
with Arthur Ackermann & Son, London/ New York;
with Wildenstein & Co, New York, 1960;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 4 June 1987, lot 22;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 7 April 1988, lot 75;
Private collection Belgium, Roeselaere;
Private collection Luxembourg, since 2011

Exhibited:
Copenhagen, Museum of Fine Arts, The Heilbuth Collection, 1920, no. 50;
Brussels, Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Le Siècle de Bruegel, la Peinture en Belgique au XVIe siècle, 1963, no. 11

Literature:
M. J. Friedländer, Ambrosius Benson als Bildnismaler, in: Jahrbuch Königliche-Preussische Kunstsammlung, XXXI, 1910, pp. 139-48;
K. Madsen, Catalogue of the Heilbuth Collection, 1920;
K. Madsen, Annuaire du Musée de Copenhague, 1920;
A. Gold, Die Sammlung Heilbuth, in: Der Cicerone, 1921, pp. 89-93, illustrated. p. 93;
G. Marlier, Ambrosius Benson et la peinture à Bruges au temps de Charles-Quint, Damme 1957, pp. 258-259 and 321, no. 147, illustrated plate LXXVI;
M. J. Martens, Ambrosius Benson, in: Brugge en de Renaissance, Van Memling tot Pourbus, Bruges 1998, p. 143

Published by the late Georges Marlier as a portrayal exuding ‘presence and dignity’ and discussed more recently by Dominque Marechal ‘as a dated portrait that can be attributed to the more mature stage of [Ambrosius Benson’s] life’, the present work is a refined example of one of the Italo-Flemish master’s few portraits. Jan De Maere believes that the present work was likely executed with the assistance of the master’s son, Willem Benson (1524–1574). We are grateful to Jan de Maere for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.

The picture remained in the collection of the Cenami family, gallicised as Cesname, from the time of its creation until the late nineteenth century and presents most probably a family member. Jan de Maere believes it could depict François de Cenasme (circa 1515–1558), an officer who served under the noted commander Admiral Coligny (1519–1572) in the struggles between the French King Henri II and the Habsburg Emperor Charles V for control of Flanders and Italy. He was the only family member with that name present in Flanders after the Battles of Boullogne and Dunkirk in 1544-45, after which a Peace Treaty was concluded between Charles V and the French King Henry II. The sitters dress is redolent of the style of his liege Henri II, and the costly kid gloves are a symbol of fidelity, while the two rings with gems set within them speak of the source of the Cenamis’ wealth. Originaly from Lucca, the Cenami founded an important family trading house in Venice, with outposts in Paris and Bruges, importing jewels, silks and diamonds from the Levant and also acting as bankers. A great aunt of the suggested sitter, Giovanna Cename (d. 1454) married the Medici agent in Bruges, and was immortalised in Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait conserved in the National Gallery, London. The family collection was united in Lucca when the family relocated its activities to Lucca and Venice in the early seventeenth century and it remained there until the end of the nineteenth century.

Ambrosius Benson hailed from Northern Italy, moving to Bruges in 1515 where he joined the workshop of Gerard David. Arguably exceeding his master in invention and refinement, Benson notoriously won a court case against David in order recover a crate of his own drawings that David had confiscated for his own use. Becoming a master of the Bruges Guild of Saint Luke in 1519, he attained great success in the commercial and artistic entrepot, twice being commissioned to decorate the City Hall. His relatively chiaroscuro characteristics and his facility at painting nudes, both deriving from his Italian training, marked out Benson from his Flemish contemporaries. De Maere compares the present work with Portrait of a Man, dated 1544, in the Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, and another Portrait of a Man, dated to circa 1530, conserved in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (inv. no. 16.987), which shares a similar physiognomy of hands and fingernails with the current sitter. The late Benson scholar Georges Marlier noted ‘long and thin fingers in an archaic style’ as characteristic of Willem’s manner. Willem was a gifted pupil of his father, and was a noted part of Bruges artistic firmament, in 1570 he was banished, ‘uitlandts ende ghebannen’, for his rakish and dissolute lifestyle.