HANS BESSER
Portrait of Count Palatine Ludwig, later Elector Ludwig VI, aged ten
(Aachen c. 1505/10 – ? after 1558)
Oil on panel - 23 1/2 x 17 3/4 inches (59.5 x 45 cm)
Inscribed and dated: ‘LVDOVICVS . COM / PAL . RHENI . DVX / BAVARIÆANO . / DNI .1.5.4.9. / ÆTATIS . 10’
PROVENANCE -
By inheritance from a former European ruling family to the present owner.
LITERATURE -
G. Ladner, ‘Zur Porträtsammlung des Erzherzogs Ferdinand von Tirol’, Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Instituts für Geschichtsforschung, 49, 1935, p. 384, G 11, pl. VIIc.
S. Flamand Christensen, ‘Portraetter af den Danske prinsesse Dorothea, Pfalzgräfin bei Rhein’, Kunstmuseets Aarsskrift, 1937, p. 140.
H. Rott, Quellen und Forschungen zur südwestdeutschen und schweizerischen Kunstgeschichte im XV. und XVI. Jahrhundert, III, Der Oberrhein: Text, Stuttgart, 1938, pp. 18-20.
K. Löcher, ‘Hans Besser’ in the Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, 10, Munich/ Leipzig, 1995, pp. 208-9.
K. Löcher, ‘Hans Besser’ in The Dictionary of Art, ed. J. Turner, London, 1996, 3, p. 877.
K. Löcher, ‘Hans Besser – Der Meister der Pfalz- und Markgrafen’, Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, XLVII, 1996, pp. 84 and 100, note 52, fig. 11.
Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg: Die Gemälde des 16. Jahrhunderts, ed. K. Löcher, Osfildern-Ruit, 1997, pp. 69 and 70, note 8.
Although he is known to have also executed murals and to have been considered for an altarpiece commission, all of Hans Besser’s surviving paintings are portraits dated between 1538 and 1549. None is signed but the identification of him as the artist, based on comparison with two signed engravings, is universally accepted. Kurt Löcher, the author of by far the most substantial study of the artist’s work (op. cit.,Münchner Jahrbuch, 1996), has singled out for praise ‘the freshness and magic of youth’ conveyed by the portraits of three young German princes painted in 1549 (loc. cit., The Dictionary of Art, 1996). Two of these show Margrave Philibert of Baden-Baden (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg; Löcher, op. cit., Münchner Jahrbuch, 1996, fig. 9; Löcher, op. cit., 1997, pp. 68-70, illustrated) and Margrave Christoph II of Baden- zu Rodemachern (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, on loan to the Staatsgalerie, Neue Residenz, Bamberg; Löcher, op. cit., Münchner Jahrbuch, 1996, fig. 10). The third is the present, long untraced, painting, apparently the only work by the artist not in a German museum.
Due to a misunderstanding, Ladner, op. cit., followed by other writers, describe the painting as at Schloss Blankenburg, Sweden.