Steven van Herwijck

Steven van Herwijck was a Netherlandish medallist and sculptor working in the mid-sixteenth century, and his portrait by Antonis Mor in 1564 represents one of the relatively rare occasions on which Mor painted a fellow artist rather than a courtly or aristocratic sitter. Van Herwijck produced portrait medals in the manner of Pisanello and Leone Leoni, and the decision to commission Mor to paint him created a deliberate parallel between the two arts of portraiture — the one in oil on panel, the other in cast metal — within a single relationship. The panel is now held in the collection of the Prince of Orange-Nassau, a connection that reflects the importance of Netherlandish court patronage for both the sitter and the artist.

The panel has the smooth, well-prepared surface characteristic of Mor's mid-1560s work. The handling of the face is notably free and confident, with warm flesh built over a grey-brown ground using fluid, assured strokes rather than the tight layering of royal commissions. A slight casualness in the costume treatment may reflect the different register of an artist-to-artist commission.