Art history has not given Adriaen Thomasz Key's legacy its proper due,
to say the least. After a short and successful artistic career in a
turbulent period, Adriaen Thomasz Key vanished from the stage for
centuries. Barring his art, he left few other traces behind and over
time even this came to be riddled with the most far-fetched
attributions. In the past, connoisseurs were often at a complete loss.
Adriaen Thomasz's pictures were ascribed to a host of painters from
numerous countries and periods. The names of Frans Pourbus the Elder and
Willem Key, for instance, were linked to several of Adriaen Thomasz's
panels. Other works had to endure attributions which had nothing in
common with the quality, let alone the art, of the master. Dozens of
inferior portraits were given to Adriaen Thomasz and many of his
altarpieces and devotional scenes were not recognised as such because he
was considered solely as a portraitist. Consequently, up until now the
image of Adriaen Thomasz's art has been clouded and inconsistent.
Adriaen Thomasz Key richly deserved his reputation as a portraitist.
Some ninety percent of his preserved oeuvre consists of likenesses of
the Antwerp and the Dutch elite. Adriaen Thomasz's skills as a
portraitist were and are generally acknowledged. With a finesse and
sobriety recalling that of Flemish Primitives such as Jan van Eyck and
Hans Memling, he recorded his sitters with ruthless objectivity. The
same sobriety and objectivity are to be found in his altarpieces and
devotional paintings, a less known facet of his art. Often incorrectly
ascribed as a lack of ingenuity or understanding of the Italian
Renaissance and typified as archaising, Key's history and devotional
paintings prove to be of a huge intellectual resourcefulness and
artistic talent. His art was a conscious, reformatory and humanistic
intellectual discourse with his famous predecessors and contemporaries.
The striving for photographic realism and sobrietyin the oeuvre of the
painter is tackled in this monograph, bearing in mind Adriaen Thomasz's
humanistic concerns with iconography. This richly illustrated monograph
brings to light, for the first time, the oeuvre of a painter, called the
most talented of his generation by David Freedberg. It consists of
portraits and altarpieces, devotional paintings and chiaroscuro prints.
The rediscovery of Adriaen Thomasz Key's art will be a eye opener to all
scholars interested in the Netherlandish Renaissance and will hopefully
induce new research into Adriaen Thomasz Key and his contemporaries.
