Van Leyden Husband & Wife Portraits Reunited for MNHA Temporary Exhibition

Luxembourg's National Museum of History and Art (Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art - MNHA) has announced that it is hosting a temporary exhibition dedicated to the reunited portraits of husband and wife Adriaen and Maria van Leyden on the occasion of Valentine's Day.

Separated by the vagaries of the art market for 150 years, the MNHA sought out the portrait of Maria van Leyden after the recent acquisition of that of her husband, Adriaen van Leyden, originally attributed to Nicolas Neufchâtel but now found to have been painted by Willem Key. 

In the museum's efforts to acquire a good portrait by Flemish Renaissance painter Nicolas Neufchâtel for its collections, Ruud Priem, MNHA curator in charge of fine arts, found a copy kept at Zypendaal Castle, near Arnhem in the Netherlands, which helped him to discover the true origin of the portrait of Adriaen Dircksz, Baron van Leyden (c. 1510/20 - 1562). This research first enabled Mr Priem to discover that initially the panel portrait of Adriaen had been composed in correlation with that of his wife, Maria Gerritsdr van Leyden, née van Loo (1524/25 - 1562) and by the same painter. As these portraits were accompanied by a family crest and data on provenance, the exact identification of this recent acquisition was possible.

The MNHA recalled that the commission of copies painted after original portraits was a common practice in the past among bourgeois families, wishing to perpetuate a gallery of portraits in memory of their ancestors. The Van Leyden couple were part of one of the most influential families in the north of the Netherlands. Adriaen van Leyden had an important social status, especially at the level of the municipality of Delft. A personal friend of the Emperor Charles V, who in 1543 became lord of all the Dutch provinces, Adriaen was elevated to the rank of baron of the Holy Roman Empire on 4 April 1548, for the sake of a strategic alliance. 

With Mr Priem finding constant reference to Willem Key, another Flemish Renaissance painter, as the executor of the two original portraits, he was able to definitively attribute to him the authorship of the recently acquired portrait of Adriaen van Leyden. According to the MNHA, the original confusion was based on the fact that the two painters, Key and Neufchâtel, were trained by the same master in Antwerp and that their style is very similar. With the discovery of the existence of a female correlate (the Maria van Leyden panel), research was refined, leading the MNHA curator to find this painting in a private collection. As for the portrait of the husband, only the central panel remains, the two side boards having probably been separated between 1938 and the years 1968. However, the major part remains intact and attests to the elegance of the female subject in her Spanish court dress.

The owner of this central panel has agreed to lend it to the MNHA for the duration of a symbolic temporary exhibition just in time for Valentine's Day. 

Throughout the month of February 2022, this temporary exhibition, located on the museum floor dedicated to Old Masters, will be open to the public midday on Tuesdays and on Thursday evenings as part of the "Renc'Art" programme.

In addition to regular visits, "Renc'Art" offers a chance to explore a particular work in more detail every month. Each week, the selected work is explained in one of the following four languages: French, German, English and Luxembourgish. Admission is free of charge.

The next "Renc'Art" visits of the Van Leyden portraits, in English, will take place at 12:00 on Tuesday 15 February and at 19:00 on Thursday 17 February 2022. Register via tel.: 479-330214 / 479-330414 or via email: servicedespublics@mnha.etat.lu.

Further details are available on the MNHA website at: https://www.mnha.lu/fr/agenda/rencart-willem-key.