Portrait of a Bearded Man in White
Medium
Oil on wood
Dimensions
Overall 8 1/2 x 6 in. (21.6 x 15.2 cm), including added strip of 1/2 in. (1.3 cm) at bottom
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of George D. Pratt, 1935
Accession Number
1978.301.7
Tags
Art Historical Context
Welcome to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's European Paintings collection, where you'll find *Portrait of a Bearded Man in White* by Corneille de Lyon. This intimate oil-on-wood panel, measuring just 8½ x 6 inches (with a later-added strip at the bottom), exemplifies the artist's mastery of small-scale portraiture in 16th-century France. Active in Lyon around the 1530s–1570s, Corneille de Lyon was a Flemish-born painter renowned for capturing the French nobility and rising bourgeoisie with remarkable realism and psychological depth. De Lyon's style blends Northern Renaissance precision—think ...
About the Artist
Corneille de Lyon · 1533–1575
Corneille de Lyon, born around 1500 in The Hague in the Netherlands, emerged as one of the premier portraitists of the French Renaissance after settling in Lyon by 1533. A Netherlandish artist who became naturalized as a French citizen in 1547, he quickly rose in prominence, serving as official painter to the Dauphin (later Henry II) from around 1540 and continuing under Henry II and Charles IX as...