In the year 1571, the Spanish noble Don Fernando Álvarez of Toledo, third Duke of Alba, commissioned the Antwerp sculptor Jacques Jonghelinck to produce three sculptures of him at three different sizes: a monumental, larger than life-size bronze statue installed at the citadel of Antwerp, a hand-held medal (one example of which is in the Frick’s collection), and this bronze bust, made in the manner of Italian prototypes. This combination of cultures is a reminder of the travel of artists, patrons, and works of art against the backdrop of Europe’s complex history. At the time, Antwerp and the Low Countries were under Spanish control, and the duke had been sent by the king of Spain, Philip II, as one of a succession of governor generals to exert power over the region.
With astounding detail, Jonghelinck conveys the subtleties of the duke’s armor, his beard, the Spanish-style ruff around his neck, and the weighty gold chain with the Order of the Golden Fleece suspended from his shoulders. He presents the duke as resolute and intimidating; in life, the duke was much worse, a religious tyrant so infamous for his cruelties and tortures that he became known as the “Butcher of Flanders.” King Philip II himself had to end the duke’s reign of terror and sent him back to Spain. The duke’s full-length statue was soon toppled, while this bust and presumably casts of the medal were retained in the collection of the Dukes of Alba. Both the toppled monument and this bust appear to have been made from cannons looted by Spanish troops and melted down. While this bust survives, it can probably be presumed that the toppled statue was eventually melted down again and—like so much bronze sculpture in the history of European art—cast again as weapons of war.
Don Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Third Duke of Alba
Jonghelinck was unfortunate in that one of his last major works of sculpture, a full-length, over-life-size bronze statue of the Duke of Alba, erected within the citadel of Antwerp in 1571, was destroyed only a few years later. But his subject happened to be the most hated man in the Netherlands: Don Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, third Duke of Alba (1507–82). Monuments to tyrants seldom survive for long.
Fanatically devoted to the Catholic Church and the Spanish throne, Alba commanded the Spanish armies, winning victories for his sovereigns, Charles V and Philip II, against the Turks and the Protestants. He was sent as viceroy to Naples and on various diplomatic missions, and in 1567 he was appointed governor-general of the Low Countries. There, his arrogance, tyranny, and merciless suppression of civil and religious opposition were so extreme that even his employers found his cruelty unacceptable. He was recalled to Madrid two years after Jonghelinck made the bronze statue of him, the portrait bust in The Frick Collection, and a portrait medal, a silver cast of which also belongs to the Collection.
Jonghelinck's inscribed, signed, and dated bust of Alba adheres to standards of restraint and decorum typical of the international court style, which was so pervasive in portrait painting and sculpture of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Like Adrian de Vries in his portrait of Emperor Rudolf II or Leone Leoni in his of Charles V, Jonghelinck renders details of the costume—the armor, ruff, and Order of the Golden Fleece—with scrupulous precision. In Jonghelinck's portrait, the stiffness and sharpness of these outward appearances seem a perfect match to the severe and forbidding aspect of the Duke, whose rigid posture, aristocratic mien, and fierce expression so unequivocally reveal the man's character.
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
Dukes of Alba, Madrid (till 1810). Maréchal Ney, Duc d’Elchingen, Château des Condreaux, near Châteaudun. After the execution of Ney (1815) the bust appears to have remained in the Château des Condreaux, and in 1825 it was sold with the house to Maréchal Vicomte de Reille. Vicomte Gustave de Reille, Paris. Baron Victor Reille, Paris. Duveen. Frick, 1916.
Source: Sculpture in The Frick Collection: German, Netherlandish, French and British. Volume IV. New York: The Frick Collection, 1970.
