Michael Sittow (Netherlandish, c.1468-1525)
Catherine of Aragon and Baby Henry as Madonna and Child, circa 1515-17
Gemäldegalerie, Bezirk Mitte von Berlin
Excerpts from Margaret of Austria's portrait collection: female patronage in the light of dynastic ambitions and artistic quality, by Dagmar Eichberger, published in Renaissance Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2, Women Patrons of Renaissance Art, 1300–1600, June 1996.
Tudor Week 2022 | Day 1 — Favourite Portrait(s) of Tudor family members - group or single sitters. [1/2]
— artworks based on the paintings:
— Katherine of Aragon by Michael Sittow
— Queen Mary Tudor of England by Anthonis Mor
— Anne of Cleves by Hans Holbein the Younger
— Katherine Parr by unknown artist
I have said it is probably impossible to remove discoloured varnish from painting of Catherine of Aragon as Virgin Mary- Maria mit dem Kind by Michael Sittow, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, but this is not discoloured, it’s just dark:
In close up it is obvious-these are golden locks.
Here bit of red paint unfortutely hids beauty of some of those golden locks(it’s probably due to water damage)
Not even hint of being more to red than to golden.
I have recently checked their webpage again and to my surprise another window popped up and the painting as I never seen it before. For first time showing true colours.
Here is comparison-on left version prior, on right current:
And you might prefer the previous version which is on left. Because it seems to be in better condition. And that is exactly the problem. The painting was in horrible state prior to conservation. It must have taken great skill for it to be saved!
And the correctly done conservation should not hide most of the damage which occured. That’s what reproductions are for!
From this new version that aside from major cracks, it seems that the painting suffered water damage, which blured paint at places and the layer of paint is very thin. Much thinner than it is owe to be, and that is why most of skin is greyish. I am tbh surprised we don’t see undersketch(perhaps Sittow didn’t do one and painted without it). Those very light brown marks in the skin-that is paint missing. And there is a lot of it!
It’s not the case that same damage is not in rest of the paiting, but that it is just most obvious in skin, because we tend to focus on the face.
This the painting in its true form. It shows its history, good and bad.
But then what about the versions circulating online? Are they photoshoped?
Not necessarly. I was under opinion it was due to discoloured varnish-but now comparing the two version it seems varnish was removed prior...hence imo the previous version’s more reddish hue is due to wrong colour of light chosen for the photoshoot. It was too yellow and distorted colours.
Not by much. But enough. Sadly this occasionally happens even in professional institutions. Too yellow light, too bright light, not bright enough light.
It takes great skill to photograph it properly without distorting the colours(and kudos to proffesionals who can do it!)
It’s also possible that worse condition of the painting makes it light sensitive and thus photographers have limited options of what kind of light they can use.
So while this will seem to many as not bright enough, but it is better because colours are correct.
However if you wish to get close to original form, one has to add brightness artificially. Just brightness, nothing else. I tried it.
Unfortunately, due to red fabric around her, if you see entire painting, you might consider those hair much redder than when you see the hair with much less of this red fabric. It’s optical ilusion.(At least it seems this way to me.)
But much better in closeup. Truly golden hair, but also seeing it you understand why her hair was described as red-gold. Because it is reddish gold.
There is redness to it too, but it is certainly more golden than red.
Thus this portrait also shows her with golden hair, to reddish hues. 3/3 portraits by Sittow show almost exact same hue of hair. It was just not best photo of this paintings which made us believe the hues were very different.
Good Queen Catherine truly looked as golden haired Madona.
Ferdinand II (1452–1516), also called Ferdinand the Catholic, was King of Aragon and Sardinia from 1479, King of Sicily from 1469, King of Naples (as Ferdinand III) from 1504 and King of Navarre (as Ferdinand I) from 1512 until his death in 1516. He was King of Castile and León (as Ferdinand V) from 1475 to 1504, alongside his wife Queen Isabella I.
