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Unknown Artist, Sir John Townshend (c.1568–1603)
Photo courtesy of Tom St Aubyn (All rights reserved)
Details
- Country House
- Raynham Hall
- Title(s)
- Sir John Townshend (c.1568–1603)
- Date
- 1590
- Location
- The Music Room
- Medium and support
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- Overall height: 57 cm, Overall width: 45 cm
- Artist
- Unknown Artist
- Catalogue Number
- RN28
- Inscription
-
- Inscribed top left: ‘ÆTATIS SUÆ. 21./Ao 1590’; top right: ‘MAS ALTO PENSAMIENTO/ QUE FORTVNA’
Bibliography
Prince Frederick Duleep Singh, Portraits in Norfolk Houses, ed. Rev. Edmund Farrer, vol. 2, Norwich : Jarrold and Sons, 1928, vol. 2, p. 233, no. 46 (‘MAN’)
Description
It is difficult, but not impossible, to imagine this the same man, eight years younger, as depicted in the portrait of Sir John Townshend, RN15. This portrait, made in 1590, depicts a man in the twenty-first year of his life wearing a simple doublet and linen collar. Unusually, the top-right inscription is in Spanish, which is more or less unprecedented for British portraiture of this period and casts a little doubt on the identity of the sitter. An approximate translation would be ‘higher thoughts than fortune’.