Portrait of Cornelis Drebbel by Antoon van Dyck ?

Post date: 11-Dec-2012 10:53:29

Portrait of Cornelis Drebbel by Antoon van Dyck ? by Hubert van Onna

Did  Antoon paint this portrait of Cornelis Drebbel, while they both lived in London, around 1632-1633 ?

Current location: The Hermitage, St. Petersburg and listed as a Portrait of Mark-Antoine Lumagne.

Indications:

•  strong likeness with existing portraits of Drebbel,

•  the scarlet red background and table linen (around 1607, Drebbel developed an improved way to produce a high quality scarlet red dye)

Probably Van Dyck was familiar with Drebbel via Balthasar Gerbier, with whom Drebbel co-operated in the service of the Duke of Buckingham.

The Lumagne family originated from Grison/ Graubünden in Switzerland. The brothers Charles, Jean-André and Marc-Antoine founded a bank in Lyon. Jean-André became the banker in chargeof the Queen's -Marie de Medici- foreign affairs. 

source: www.archive.org 

Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great (Екатерина II Великая, 1729 – 1796) ruled Russia from 1762 until her death in 1796.

Between 1764 and 1781 Catherine acquired six major collections of painting, inclusive Sir Robert Walpole’s from England, who admired the art of portraiture of Anthony Van Dyck.

She paid for the 204 works 40,555 pounds sterling; the paintings arrived in Russia in the autumn of 1779.

source: Wikipedia and www.hermitagemuseum.org