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Lot Essay
Formerly ascribed to The Master of 1518, the attribution for the present panel remains open. The figure types, the richly detailed foreground and the architectural setting are reminiscent of Van Orley's work (for instance, the Virgin and Child in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and indicative of an artist based in Brussels rather than Antwerp. However, the landscape background is indebted to the work of Joachim Patenir who established his reputation in Antwerp between 1515 and his death in 1524. The fantastic setting in which, most prominently, a winding road is seen ascending to a monastery on a rocky outcrop, relates closely to the landscape in Patenir's Virgin and Child in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
The nucleus of the collection of the Polish Lanckoronski family was formed by Count Karol's great-grandfather, Count Kazimierz Rzewuski, who on 7 October 1815 purchased a considerable part of the collection of Stanislaw August Poniatowski, last King of Poland (1732-1798). In the 1870s and early 1880s Count Lanckoronski added to this, acquiring in particular Italian Gothic and early Renaissance pictures. The collection, which was housed in his neo-baroque palace erected in Vienna between 1892 and 1894, was the second largest private art collection in that city, and included such works as Masaccio's Saint Andrew (Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum) and Uccello's Saint George and the Dragon (London, National Gallery).
In 1939 Antoni Lanckoronski, Count Karol's son, obtained permission to transport the collection to Poland. However, these plans were thwarted by the outbreak of the war, during which the collection was confiscated by the Gestapo. After the war, the restituted collection returned for a short time to Vienna; part of it - including the present picture - was subsequently sold, whilst most of the remainder were moved to Schloss Hohenems in Voralberg, only to be destroyed by a fire in 1946. The surviving part, comprising more than eighty Italian Old Masters, was gifted to Poland in 1994 by the descendants of Count Lanckoronski, where it is divided between the Wawel, Cracow, and the Royal Castle, Warsaw.
The nucleus of the collection of the Polish Lanckoronski family was formed by Count Karol's great-grandfather, Count Kazimierz Rzewuski, who on 7 October 1815 purchased a considerable part of the collection of Stanislaw August Poniatowski, last King of Poland (1732-1798). In the 1870s and early 1880s Count Lanckoronski added to this, acquiring in particular Italian Gothic and early Renaissance pictures. The collection, which was housed in his neo-baroque palace erected in Vienna between 1892 and 1894, was the second largest private art collection in that city, and included such works as Masaccio's Saint Andrew (Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum) and Uccello's Saint George and the Dragon (London, National Gallery).
In 1939 Antoni Lanckoronski, Count Karol's son, obtained permission to transport the collection to Poland. However, these plans were thwarted by the outbreak of the war, during which the collection was confiscated by the Gestapo. After the war, the restituted collection returned for a short time to Vienna; part of it - including the present picture - was subsequently sold, whilst most of the remainder were moved to Schloss Hohenems in Voralberg, only to be destroyed by a fire in 1946. The surviving part, comprising more than eighty Italian Old Masters, was gifted to Poland in 1994 by the descendants of Count Lanckoronski, where it is divided between the Wawel, Cracow, and the Royal Castle, Warsaw.