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Lot Essay
The present picture can be placed among the numerous triptychs depicting The Adoration of the Magi executed in Antwerp in the first decades of the sixteenth century in a style designated by Friedländer as Antwerp Mannerism. Like many others in the group, it has been attributed to Herri met de Bles, by comparison with an Adoration in the Alte Pinakothek, Münich, that bore a false 'Bles' signature. The anonymous author of the latter panel, now known by the sobriquet 'the Pseudo-Bles', was one of the central figures amongst the Antwerp Mannerists; the present painting, however, is by a separate, also as-yet unidentified hand.
More recently, an attribution to Jan de Beer was proposed for the present panel. The motif of the Holy Family placed before a retracted curtain attached to a Renaissance style column is also found in an Adoration attributed to Jan de Beer, last on the New York Market in 1997. In addition, a comparable curtain motif is found in the Barber Institute's Joseph and the Suitors and the Cluny Museum Adoration, both attributed to Jan de Beer. In the first of those two works, Caspar's scabbard is inscribed in a manner reminiscent of the present inscription on that worn by the soldier on the right. However the figures here are more solid and less accentuated than those generally associated with Jan de Beer, and the similarities are more an indication of the close associations shared by the Mannerists than of shared authorship.
Although the present artist therefore remains for the time being anonymous, Professor Dan Ewing and Dr. Peter van den Brink, to whom we are very grateful for their assistance, have pointed out that it may well be by the same hand as that responsible for a central panel of an Adoration triptych in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne (inv. no. 429; see fig. 1). Subsequently published by them in the catalogue of the recent exhibition on the Antwerp Mannerists (loc. cit.), they noted that the two are 'remarkably close in style and decorative principles'. They also identified the figure of Balthasar in the left wing as deriving directly, in 'his stance, his bowed forearm, cap, collar, angle of sceptre, even the gather of drapery under his right hand' from that in the drawing of the same subject, datable to 1513, by Adriaen van Overbeke in the Kupfertichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz (inv. no. 4625; see fig. 2).
More recently, an attribution to Jan de Beer was proposed for the present panel. The motif of the Holy Family placed before a retracted curtain attached to a Renaissance style column is also found in an Adoration attributed to Jan de Beer, last on the New York Market in 1997. In addition, a comparable curtain motif is found in the Barber Institute's Joseph and the Suitors and the Cluny Museum Adoration, both attributed to Jan de Beer. In the first of those two works, Caspar's scabbard is inscribed in a manner reminiscent of the present inscription on that worn by the soldier on the right. However the figures here are more solid and less accentuated than those generally associated with Jan de Beer, and the similarities are more an indication of the close associations shared by the Mannerists than of shared authorship.
Although the present artist therefore remains for the time being anonymous, Professor Dan Ewing and Dr. Peter van den Brink, to whom we are very grateful for their assistance, have pointed out that it may well be by the same hand as that responsible for a central panel of an Adoration triptych in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne (inv. no. 429; see fig. 1). Subsequently published by them in the catalogue of the recent exhibition on the Antwerp Mannerists (loc. cit.), they noted that the two are 'remarkably close in style and decorative principles'. They also identified the figure of Balthasar in the left wing as deriving directly, in 'his stance, his bowed forearm, cap, collar, angle of sceptre, even the gather of drapery under his right hand' from that in the drawing of the same subject, datable to 1513, by Adriaen van Overbeke in the Kupfertichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz (inv. no. 4625; see fig. 2).