Jan Gossaert (Jean Gossart), 'A Young Princess (Dorothea of Denmark?)', about 1530-2

A Young Princess (Dorothea of Denmark?)

Jan Gossaert (Jean Gossart)

Not on display

About the work

Overview

A young girl, her clothes sewn with hundreds of pearls, gazes out at us. She seems to be playing with a golden object made of concentric rings. This is an armillary sphere, a celestial globe showing the movement of heavenly bodies. Its interlocking circles are echoed in the decoration of her clothes.

She holds the sphere upside down, which is not an accident: it may be a clue to her identity. The girl is probably Dorothea, daughter of Christian II, deposed King of Denmark, and she could be making a political point. She indicates a point approximately 55° north of the equator on the sphere’s outer ring. The latitude of Copenhagen is 56° north; she may be directing our attention to her father’s lost kingdom. Her sphere – and the world – might be upside down because of the political turmoil which drove her family out of Scandinavia.

In-depth

A young girl, her clothes sewn with hundreds of pearls, gazes out at us. She seems to be playing with a golden object made of concentric rings. This is an armillary sphere, a celestial globe showing the movement of the heavenly bodies. Its interlocking circles are echoed in the decoration of her clothes.

The girl seems to be about nine or ten years old. The richness of her dress shows that she was royalty, and the blue parts of the sleeves were originally purple – a royal colour. The shape of the sleeves and the curve of the neckline suggest a date of around 1530. The only young girls in the Low Countries who might have appeared in such splendid clothes at this date were Dorothea and Christina, daughters of Christian II, exiled King of Denmark. The family came to the Netherlands in 1523 when their father was deposed, and were cared for by Margaret of Austria. Gossart painted Dorothea with her siblings in 1526. In that picture (now in the Royal Collection, London) she has a high forehead, widely spaced eyes and frizzy hair – like the sitter here.

Dorothea indicates a point approximately 55° north of the equator on the outer ring of her sphere. The latitude of Copenhagen is 56° north; she may well be directing our attention to her father’s lost kingdom. Her sphere – and the world – might be upside down because of political turmoil which drove Christian and his family out of Scandinavia. These kind of visual puns and riddles were very popular in Renaissance painting.

Around the broad band in the middle of the sphere is a row of letters, with vowels and consonants grouped separately. This may be an anagram of the artist’s name, although some of its letters are missing and others are included which do not appear in it. Gossart plays spatial games, too: Dorothea’s bulky sleeves and cap overlap the fictive frame. The contrast between the flat green background and the three-dimensional modelling of her figure makes her seem to project outwards towards us, as though she has escaped the confines of the painting.

In 1535 Dorothea married the Count Palatine, Frederick II. Its possible that this painting was commissioned by Margaret of Austria, or one of the Habsburgs, for whom the artist often worked. Dorothea might have taken it with her to the Palatinate; a portrait of her attributed to Gossart was mentioned in an 1685 inventory of the castle of Heidelberg, hanging next to one of her husband. Heidelberg was sacked by the French in 1689, and the painting might have gone to France; French inscriptions on the back show it was in the country in about 1800.

Key facts

Details

Full title: A Young Princess (Dorothea of Denmark?)
Artist: Jan Gossaert (Jean Gossart)
Artist dates: active 1508; died 1532
Date made: about 1530-2
Medium and support: oil on wood
Dimensions: 38.2 × 29.1 cm
Acquisition credit: Bought, 1908
Inventory number: NG2211
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: John Rushout, 2nd Baron Northwick
Frame: 16th-century Italian Frame

Provenance

On the reverse are inscriptions in French written in an eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century hand: the portrait was evidently in France in about 1800. It was possibly in the collection of Major General Sir Burges Camac, who joined the army in 1800 and died in 1845. He seems to have been an enthusiastic collector of pictures and sold at Christie’s in London on 23 June 1838, lot 80, ‘J. de Maubeuge, Portrait of a Princess of Burgundy in a rich dress’. It was sold for £20 9s. 6d. to John Rushout (1770–1859), 2nd Baron Northwick. At the Northwick sale, by Phillips at Thirlestaine House, Cheltenham, lot 1456 on 18 August 1859, ‘HOLBEIN (SCHOOL) Portrait of a Lady’, was sold to Sir Edmund Anthony Harley Lechmere (1826–1894), Bart, who certainly owned NG 2211 in 1882. He lived at The Rhyd in Worcestershire. The portrait was among pictures sold by his son Sir Edmund Arthur Lechmere (1865–1937), Bart, at Christie’s on 27 April 1901 (75), when it was bought by Pottier. It passed to the Belgian critic Léon Gauchez (1825–1907), who used the pseudonym Paul Leroi and lived in Paris. After his death, his collection was sold at the Hôtel Drouot on 16 December 1907; NG 2211 was lot 29 and was bought by Agnew. It was purchased in 1908, from Agnew’s, at cost price, £2300, out of the Clarke Fund.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Lorne Campbell, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings: With French Paintings before 1600’, London 2014; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2008

Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian

The National Gallery (London)

15 October 2008 - 18 January 2009
2010

Jan Gossaert's Renaissance

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

6 October 2010 - 17 January 2011

The National Gallery (London)

23 February 2011 - 30 May 2011
2016

In Search of Utopia

M - Museum Leuven

19 October 2016 - 17 January 2017
2017

Pictures and Power. The Visual Politics of Christian II

Statens Museum for Kunst

15 June 2017 - 10 September 2017
2021

Renaissance Children: Art and Education at the Habsburg Court in Mechelen

Museum Hof van Busleyden

26 March 2021 - 25 July 2021
2023

Masterpieces from the National Gallery

Shanghai Art Museum East

17 January 2023 - 7 May 2023

National Museum of Korea

2 June 2023 - 9 October 2023

Hong Kong Palace Museum

22 November 2023 - 11 April 2024

Chimei Museum

2 May 2024 - 1 September 2024

Bibliography

1945

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: Early Netherlandish School, London 1945
1955

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: Early Netherlandish School, 2nd edn (revised), London 1955
1987

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Early Netherlandish School, 3rd edn, London 1987
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2014

L. Campbell, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings: With French Paintings before 1600, 2 vols, London 2014

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

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