(Brussels 1564–1638 Antwerp)
Portrait of a young man, bust-length,
oil on panel, tondo, diameter 12.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
art market, Paris;
with P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1952 (as Cornelis Ketel);
Private European collection;
sale, Sotheby’s, London, 26 April 2001, lot 245 (as Circle of Cornelis Ketel);
Private European collection;
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 15 October 2013, lot 503 (as Pieter Brueghel II);
where acquired by the present owner

The present painting is accompanied by a copy of a certificate by Klaus Ertz, dated 15 November 2013.

He wrote: ‛This portrait of a youth is rendered against a chatoyant backdrop of browns and yellows. Although the head of the young man is turned slightly to the left, he directly faces the beholder. His short, dark blonde hair is combed back so that his right forehead is exposed. He wears a light-coloured doublet buttoned at the front and a white collar. The young man gazes out at the beholder with a serious and reserved expression… All of the stylistic features typical of this artist can also be found in the present painting, including the painterly perfection and detailed brushwork… especially in the delicately rendered eyebrows and hair and the finely executed nose, mouth and the right ear. The mask-like face that can normally be observed in the art of Pieter Brueghel the Elder has given way here to a more individually moulded portrait that makes an extremely lively impression. In their description of human characters, neither the famous father, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, nor the son Pieter Brueghel the Younger, concentrated on the mimicking reproduction of a particular person, but on the adumbration of human traits in general. They were much more interested in the characterisation of human traits and in the elaboration of certain behaviours and their impact on physiognomy than in simply rendering the features of an individual sitter. The small panel in question therefore hardly seems to depict a particular man the artist may have known personally, but rather a general study of the head of a young man […]’

Ertz compared the present painting to four further head studies by the hand of Pieter Brueghel II:
1. Head of a lansquenet, Musée Fabre, Montpellier, painted after 1616 (see K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere, vol. II, Freren 2000, pp. 941, 962, no. E 1379);
2. Portrait of a peasant, private collection, Germany, painted after 1616 (see K. Ertz, ibid., 2000, pp. 938, 962, no. E 1380);
3. Portrait of a peasant, private collection, Switzerland, painted after 1616 (see K. Ertz, ibid., 2000, pp. 939, 962, no. E 1381);
4. Bust of a peasant in a dark cap, painted after 1616 (art market, Amsterdam, 2009)

Accordingly, Ertz dated the present painting to after 1616. He concluded: ‛The portrait of this young man stands out in the artist’s oeuvre for hitherto we have only known heads by his hand of elderly peasants. The picture is highly significant because it displays a further facet of this versatile artist […]’