Art Institute of Chicago

Portrait of a Man

Corneille de Lyon (French, c. 1505-1575)LinkedCulture matchlcp-0dcc35533af5

Date: c. 1555
Medium: Oil on panel
Culture: France
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Institution: Art Institute of Chicago
Object ID: 79774

From the Art Institute of Chicago record

Dutch-born painter Corneille de Lyon employed a limited selection of colors to great effect in this small painting. The textured, green background accentuates the subject’s velvety black outfit, lace collar, pale skin, and bristly beard. Corneille specialized in this stylized type of small, finely painted precious portraiture, working primarily for the court and bourgeois elite of 16th-century Lyon, France, where he lived most of his life. The sitter’s exaggerated proportions direct the viewer’s attention to his head and thus to his quiet yet self-assured expression. His confident posture and expensive clothes, along with the exceptional reputation of his portraitist, speak to his high social status.

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Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Credit line: Gift of Everett D. Graff
Provenance: Paul Ganz, Basel, by 1932, until 1937 [lent by him to London 1932 and Paris 1937]; sold to E. and A. Silberman Galleries, Vienna and New York, probably in 1937 [a letter from Everett D. Graff to Louise Lutz, September 18, 1953, Art Institute Archives, refers to correspondance between Ganz and Silberman dated April 27, 1937]; sold to Everett D. Graff, Winnetka, presumably in 1939 [the letter cited above refers to a receipt from Silberman dated January 24, 1939, “covering the payment for this painting at that time”]; given to the Art Institute, 1953.