Portrait of Heinrich Knoblauch
Portrait of Heinrich Knoblauch by Conrad Faber Von Kreuznach (c1490-1552/53) dated 1529
National Gallery of Ireland NGI.243
The painting listed as number ‘266 A Man with a Black Bonnet upon Wood a small 3 quarter size by Holbin’, in the Duke’s Great Closet in Kinneil House in 1704, can be identified as the portrait of Heinrich Knoblauch by Conrad Faber, dated 1529, which is now in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. This is painted on limewood and used to bear the number 266 on its reverse. (The label is preserved in the curatorial files.)
Conrad Faber was a German portrait painter who worked in Frankfurt-am-Main in the second quarter of the 16th century, and the Hamilton painting depicts a member of the ruling House of Limburg in Frankfurt, wearing a black bonnet and holding the hilt of a sword with both hands. As an inscription on the back indicates, it would originally have been complemented by a pendant portrait of Heinrich Knoblauch’s wife, Felicitas Ufstenner, another member of the House of Limburg, which is now lost.
For an illustration and more information about this work, see David Oldfield, German Paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland: A complete catalogue (Dublin, 1987), pp. 18-21.
Unfortunately, the paintings at Kinneil were renumbered when they were in Hamilton Palace later in the 18th century, and painting 266 in the 1759 and 1793 Hamilton Palace inventories has nothing to do with the portrait of Heinrich Knoblauch.
It is possible that the portrait of Knoblauch was one of the two works attributed to Holbein which were hanging in the ‘Dressing Room of the Bed Chamber’ on the first floor of the east wing of Hamilton Palace in 1759:
223 A Man’s head with a Black Cap by Hollbine
234 A small head with a Black Cap and two hands by Hollbinie (M4/48, p. 20)
Both paintings were still in the same room, the ‘State Dressing Closet’, in 1793, when they were listed as:
234 A small head with a black Cap and 2 hands [by] Holbein
323 [sic] A Man with a black Cap (M4/51, p. 13)
As number 234 is recorded as including representations of two hands, it would obviously be the better of the two possible ‘matches’.
Faber’s portrait does not seem to be listed in the (partial) 1811 Hamilton Palace inventory, but when Dr Samuel Heinrich Spiker, librarian to the King of Prussia, visited the palace in 1816 he noted the painting of ‘Henricus Knobelauch’ ‘in the last room of the right wing’ (Travels through England, Wales, and Scotland, in the year 1816 (London, 1820), I, pp. 248-49). This could be construed as being a reference to the Dressing Room in the east wing. Interestingly, Spiker knew that the monogram CVC on the back of the panel was the signature of the painter Conrad von Creuznach, who was finally identified as Conrad Faber (who was born in Creuznach) in 1909.
Faber’s portrait of Heinrich Knoblauch was included, as a work by Holbein, in the 1882 Hamilton Palace sale, as lot 54. It passed briefly into the collection of Christopher Beckett Denison and was acquired by the National Gallery of Ireland after his death (Beckett Denison sale, Christie’s, London, 13 June 1885, lot 916, still attributed to Holbein) for 72 guineas.
