Attributed to Jacopo de' Barbari
Republic of Venice · Renaissance, Northern Renaissance, Italian Renaissance
The story
Attributed to Jacopo de' Barbari is the heading for a portrait of Heinrich V, Duke of Mecklenburg, painted in 1507 and now in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The museum puts the Venetian painter's name on its label and keeps the qualifier beside it.
The case for him rests on an old inventory. In 1685 the keepers of Heidelberg Castle listed a small hinged double portrait of Duke Heinrich and his wife Ursula, dated 1507 and described as the work of Jacopo de' Barbari. That fits his travels. In those years he worked at German courts, among them Brandenburg, where Ursula's family ruled.
Scholars remain divided. Some accept the portrait as his. Others find its busy outlines unlike the plainer, frontal faces of the portraits that are securely his. Ursula's half of the pair has never been found.
