Michael Sweerts Brussels 1618 – 1664 Goa

A Young Man Wearing a Turban Holding an Upturned Glass: The Fingernail Test (Allegory of Taste)

Provenance

Berne, Dr. Bruno Kaiser (1877–1941)

By inheritance, 1941, to a private collection, for two generations

By whom sold, London, Christie’s, 8 December 1995, lot 34, where acquired by

Monaco, collection Emanuel Wolfe (Manny) Davidson (1931-2024)

His estate sale, Paris, Sotheby’s, 5 November 2025, lot 48

Literature

W. Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2 vols., New York

2006, 1, pp. 269-270, under cat. no. 61, note 11

L. Shaw-Miller, ‘‘Beautiful Secrets’: Poetical Disclosure in the Work of Michael Sweerts’, in: M. McNeill Hale (ed.), Cambridge and the study of Netherlandish art : the Low Countries and the Fens, Turnhout 2016, pp. 124-137, pp. 128, 130, fig. 5