Simon de Myle

Simon de Myle (also recorded as Simone de Myle, and catalogued in some image libraries under the inverted form "De Myle, Simon") was a painter active in the sixteenth century. The only fixed point in his biography is the inscription on his one signed panel, "Simone de Myle inventor et fecit 1570," which places him at work in that year. No source consulted gives a birth date, death date, or place for either event.

Auction house research has offered two conjectures about his origins, both explicitly presented as hypotheses rather than established fact. Sotheby's and Christie's both suggest he may have belonged to the Van der Mijl family (also spelled Myle, Meijl, or Meyle), associated with an estate near Dordrecht in the southern Netherlands. Separately, citing the art historian John Ehrmann, Christie's notes a stylistic kinship with the Fontainebleau mannerist Antoine Caron, raising the possibility that de Myle traveled to or worked in France. No school, workshop, guild record, or patron is documented for him, and nothing is known of his training.

Because he was demonstrably active in 1570, Simon de Myle is very unlikely to be a living artist today. He should be treated as a historical figure who is almost certainly long deceased, though no source consulted records his exact death date or place, and that information should be treated as unknown rather than assumed.

Given how little of de Myle's biography survives, critical commentary is confined almost entirely to auction house catalogue notes rather than independent art criticism. Christie's catalogue entry for Samson destroying the Philistine Temple describes it as "a rare work by the eccentric artist" and situates the panel stylistically alongside the signed Noah's Ark. Sotheby's catalogue entry for Noah's Ark calls the painting "the only known signed work by Simon Myle" and, at the time of its 2011 sale, "thus far the unique and exceptional testament to his talent." These are cataloguing judgments from the auction houses that have sold his work, not statements from independent critics or scholars, and no signed, verbatim critical assessment in a major outlet could be confirmed.

Simon de Myle's market consists of two documented saleroom appearances. Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat, an oil panel signed and dated 1570, was offered at Sotheby's in Paris in the sale "Tableaux anciens et du XIXe siecle," lot 30, on 23 June 2011. Sotheby's describes the painting as the artist's only known signed work. The realized price for that sale is not disclosed in any publicly accessible source and should not be treated as confirmed.

A second painting, Samson destroying the Philistine Temple, attributed to de Myle on stylistic grounds by Christie's, was offered at Christie's in New York. The database MutualArt describes this as the artist's first work to be offered at auction, in 2025, which appears to reflect that database's own coverage rather than the full market history, since the Noah's Ark sale at Sotheby's predates it by more than a decade. Beyond these two appearances, no further auction history for Simon de Myle is documented.

Simon de Myle's market is about as thin as it gets: two documented saleroom appearances, one signed work, and one attribution built on stylistic comparison rather than a signature. There is no catalogue raisonne, no confirmed museum holding, and no verifiable realized price even for his best documented sale. Nationality, birth and death dates, and family origin are all conjectural or entirely unknown. Any acquisition decision involving a work attributed to Simon de Myle should rest on direct connoisseurship and technical examination rather than on market history, since the market history itself is too small and too incompletely disclosed to serve as a reliable guide.