Michael Sittow

Biography

For a long time nobody knew that Queen Isabella’s court painter, whom the documents call Master Michiel, and the Reval artist Michael Sittow were one and the same man. The first guess about who painted a diptych found near Burgos was made in 1914 by the art historian Max Friedländer. The Reval origin of Master Michiel was established in 1940 by the historian Paul Johansen.

Sittow himself left neither a signature nor a self-portrait.

He was born in Reval, then part of the Livonian Confederation. The year of his birth is uncertain: 1459 is given, but more often 1468 or 1469. His father, Clawes Sittow, was a wood-carver and painter; his origins are unknown, and German, Flemish and local roots have all been suggested. His mother, Margarethe Mölner, was the daughter of a wealthy merchant from Finland and spoke Swedish. Michael first studied in his father’s workshop and at the city school at the same time. From 1484 to 1488 he lived in Bruges, apparently as an apprentice to Memling. He did not join the local guild of masters, but he became an independent master between 1488 and 1492 and, it is thought, travelled in southern Europe: French and Italian traits are visible in his work.

From 1492 Sittow served at the court of Isabella of Castile in Toledo. At court he was called Melchior Alemán (“the German”); letters of Emperor Maximilian and Margaret of Austria also mention a Michel Flamenco (“the Fleming”), possibly the same man. His salary was the highest among the court painters: 50,000 maravedís a year, while Juan de Flandes, the second best paid, received 20,000. Together with Juan de Flandes he worked on a series of small panels on the lives of Christ and the Virgin for the queen. Formally Sittow remained in her service until her death in 1504, but he seems to have left Spain two years earlier and worked in Flanders for her son-in-law Philip the Handsome and for Margaret of Austria. The earlier suggestion that around 1503–1505 he went to London and painted Henry VII is no longer accepted; the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery in London is considered possibly a contemporary copy of an original by him.

In 1506 Philip died, and Sittow returned to Reval. His stepfather, the glass-maker Diderick van Katwijk, had seized his parents’ houses, as Sittow’s mother had died in 1501. The local court did not support his claim; he won his case before the higher court in Lübeck, but could register the houses in his name only after his stepfather’s death in 1518. In 1507 he joined the Guild of Saint Canute, the guild of Reval painters. The master who was famous in Europe was accepted only as a journeyman and had to paint a masterpiece to become a full master. He carried out local commissions and worked for the church in Siuntio in Finland. In 1508 he married.

In 1514 he was invited to Copenhagen to paint King Christian II; the portrait was part of the diplomacy surrounding the king’s betrothal to a niece of Margaret of Austria. The portrait of Christian is the only work by Sittow that can be dated with certainty, and the one in Copenhagen is probably a copy of a lost original, or a second version. In 1515 he was in Spain, pursuing debts owed by Isabella, and in the documents he is named as a painter of Margaret of Austria. He then worked for Ferdinand of Aragon and, from 1516, for Charles I, the future Emperor Charles V. When Charles abdicated, he took with him to the monastery of Yuste a wooden sculpture of the Virgin by Sittow and three paintings.

Sittow finally returned to Reval between 1516 and 1518. In 1518 he married Dorothie, the daughter of a merchant named Allunsze; their son died soon after birth. In 1523 Sittow became guildmaster of the Guild of Saint Canute. He died in Reval, according to current knowledge between 20 December 1525 and 20 January 1526; 21 December is also given. According to some accounts it was of the plague, according to others in unknown circumstances. He was probably buried near the Church of the Holy Spirit or close to St Nicholas’ Church (Niguliste).

About thirty works are attributed to him, but only a handful are documented. The portrait of Diego de Guevara (Washington) and the Virgin and Child from the same diptych, now in Berlin, are almost certainly by his hand. To my mind, these pieces show best what he learned from Memling: thin translucent layers of paint, restrained colour harmonies, close attention to texture. Sittow’s portraits are reserved and sometimes melancholy. Many paintings mentioned in the documents and almost all of his sculptures have not survived.