The Globetrotter’s Identity: Michel Sittow in the International Historiographies

Abstract

Michel Sittow was a disciple of Hans Memling and a follower of the fifteenth-century school of Bruges, who led the art of northern portraiture through the Renaissance. This painter from Reval (currently Tallinn) travelled around Europe, working for the most significant monarchs of that time: Isabella of Castile, Margaret of Austria, Charles V, Christian II Oldenburg and perhaps Henry VIII. Even though studied by multiple researchers from Europe and the US, his oeuvre is still giving rise to many questions for art historians. This study’s aim is to analyse the international historiography of Michel Sittow, starting with the first attributions of his artworks, and comparative studies of German historians who called the painter Michel Sittow and the Spanish school where he was known as Melchior Alemán. In 1940 Paul Johannsen published the document that indicates Michel Sittow’s stay in Spain. The post-war historiography was not interested in Sittow’s life, except in the work of the Latvian origin Belgian researcher Jazeps Trizna, who published the first monograph on his artworks in 1976. He was the first to unify both historiographical personalities the one of Michel Sittow, and the one of Miguel Alemán. Meanwhile in Estonian literature, Sittow’s story appeared as a romantic symbol of independence from the Soviet Union in Jaan Kross’s novel. In the last twenty years, with the development of the radiographic method of artwork analysis, researchers such as Else Kai Sass, Matthias Weniger, Chiyo Ishikawa, and Pilar Silva Maroto have revived many questions about Sittow’s career, style, and globetrotting around European courts. However, the first exhibition that reunited Michel’s artworks, held in 2018 in Washington and Tallinn marking the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Estonian independence, did not solve many of Sittow’s life secrets.