Portrait of the Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500-1558); and Portrait of his wife, Isabella of Portugal (1503-1539)

These portraits of Charles V (1500-1558) and his wife Isabella of Portugal (1503-1539) were probably painted in the early 1530s, shortly after Charles’ full coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. They are particularly fine examples of portrait types that originated in the workshop of Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen, court painter to Margaret of Austria, Charles’ aunt, and later to Mary of Hungary, Charles’s sister. While the prime originals of these types by Vermeyen have not survived, they are likely to have been painted between 25 May and 27 October 1530 when Charles visited his aunt Margaret of Austria in Augsburg. Isabella appears not to have accompanied her husband on this journey, remaining in Spain as Regent, which may explain her slightly more generalised likeness. Portraits of the sitters would have been in constant demand given their widespread and diversely governed territories. These are particularly fine examples and their dating to the 1530s is supported by dendrochronological analysis of the panels, which has established a felling date of circa 1520.

Charles V was arguably one of the most significant figures in early modern history. Heir to the great Burgundian territories of the fifteenth century, inherited through his paternal grandmother, Mary of Burgundy; to the Kingdom of Spain, through his father, Philip the Fair; and to the Holy Roman Empire, through his grandfather, Maximillian I of Hapsburg, he ruled over some of the most powerful and prosperous territories in Europe. Around his neck he wears the badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece, surmounted by the typical Burgundian flint and sparks, an emblem which had been adopted during the Armagnac Civil War (1407-1419). The hands and face of the sitter are modelled with a typically ‘Netherlandish’ attention to detail, with the hairs of the emperor’s beard individually picked out. Charles’ gesture resembles that commonly used in Netherlandish paintings of rhetoricians, and is perhaps employed here to emphasise Charles’s abilities as an orator and politician.

The portrait of Isabella of Portugal appears to have been based on a painting by Joos van Cleve of Charles V’s sister, Eleanor of Austria, Queen of France (and formerly Queen of Portugal, having been married to Isabella’s father, Manuel I), the prime version of which was painted in circa 1531, shortly after her marriage to François I of France (Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum). Both sitters are presented in Spanish-style dress, with wide-cut necklines. While Eleanor’s bodice is of gold brocade with silver-embroidered purple sleeves, Isabella wears a more sombre black dress. Black cloth was extremely expensive during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (given the amount of dye required to produce such a deep colour) and was thus a symbol of status. Isabella’s richly worked necklace is made of an enamelled black and white chain formed of small consecutive ‘C’ shapes, probably in reference to her husband’s name.