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Lot Essay
The unusual, apparently unprecedented iconography of this central triptych panel combines the traditional depiction of the Virgin and Child enthroned, a gold-embroidered cloth of honour draped behind and angelic musicians in concert beyond, with allegorical depictions of two of the Four Cardinal Virtues: Temperance and Justice. These figures are identified by their traditional attributes. Temperance kneels before the Virgin and Christ, holding a vessel into which the divinely precocious Christ-Child squeezes the juice of a bunch of grapes; while Justice sheathes the sword of punishment, her scales lying at her feet. The iconography of the Four Cardinal Virtues personified had been established by the Middle Ages, for example in the sculpted reliefs of the tomb of Pope Clement II (1237; Bamberg Cathedral), where Justice is shown holding her famous, ubiquitous sword and scales, while Temperance is shown mingling wine and water between two vessels. In the present example Temperance holds only one vessel, the shape and rich ornamentation of which are clearly those of an ecclesiastical chalice receiving the mystical wine of Communion from the hand of Christ, making allusion to the Eucharist as the source or sustainer of the Virtue of Temperance. The depiction of philosophical personifications as players in such a sacra conversazione is extremely rare in the history of art, and speaks to an inventive sophistication on the part of the patron or the artist. A further conflation of hagiological and allegorical types is effected by the immediate resemblance of these Virtues to saints who are more commonly included in such depictions: Temperance, richly dressed with ornate golden clasps and a tasseled and embroidered cloth-of-gold shift can be easily mistaken for Saint Mary Magdalene, kneeling in supplication before the Virgin and Child, the chalice standing in for her attribute of the urn containing oil used to anoint the feet of Christ; while the way in which the scales are casually placed at the feet of Justice, easy to miss a first glance, leave her other attribute of a sword open to interpretation as that of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. This clever ambiguity is not accidental, as each saint also provides the perfect hagiographical example of the practice of the Virtue: Saint Mary Magdalene attained sainthood through the rejection of a dissolute life, pursuing ascetic self-abnegation in the practice of temperance; while according to the Golden Legend, Saint Catherine converted 50 pagan philosophers through the use of just reasoning, and repeatedly defied unjust attempts of execution through the intervention of God. These multiple readings must have appealed to the erudite patron, who may have known the philosophical discourse of the Four Cardinal Virtues, coined by Plato and applied to Christian teaching in the writings of Saints Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.
We are grateful to Jan van Helmont for identifying the arms of Jean Caulier l'ainé (1455/60-1531) and his second wife, Hélène Corbehem, making this a rare instance in which the identity of a commissioner of a work by the Flemish Primitives can be convincingly established. Jean Caulier the Elder was an important figure on the political of late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Flanders, a trusted ally of Margaret of Austria, Governor of the Hapsburg Netherlands, and of the Emperor Charles V. Caulier lived in Atrecht (modern-day Arras in France), in the part of Flanders then disputed between the Kings of France and the Hapsburg heirs to the Dukedom of Burgundy. A skilled diplomat, Caulier managed to negotiate his family's loyalties to both French and Hapsburg interests. Having entered the University of Louvain in 1473 (when he was between 8 and 13 years old), Caulier pursued a career which saw him considered as Hapsburg ambassador to Paris, a long period as president of the privy council of Charles V and finally as president of the independent Grand Council of Mechlen.
Well-educated and well-connected in courtly circles, Caulier may well have requested the sophisticated visual programme of this panel specifically. The wings of the triptych, now lost, may have included donor portraits of Caulier and his second wife, Hélène Corbehem, perhaps with the other Cardinal Virtues, Fortitude and Prudence.
The unusual iconography has been understood since at least 1912, when the panel appeared in the sale of the Dollfus collection, Paris, while a full attribution to Bernard van Orley is first recorded in 1936, when the picture was exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum. The stylistic links to Bernard van Orley are strong. The use of the Virtues in a religious context finds a rare reiteration in van Orley's Crucifixion of circa 1524 (Rotterdam, Boijmans-van Beuningen Museum), where the Cross is flanked by the heaven-born figures of Charity (one of the Three Theological Virtues of Saint Paul) and Justice, the pose of which (sheathing her sword) is an almost exact match for the figure of Justice in the present work, and the closest iconographic parallel. The profile face of Temperance is of a spirit similar to the Portrait of Isabella of Austria (Kraków, National Museum) variously attributed to van Orley or to the Master of the Legend of Saint Mary Magdalene. The kneeling figure of Temperance/Saint Mary Magdalene recalls the kneeling, profile figure in the large, beautiful panel of the Circumcision formerly in the Frizzoni and Lutomirski collections (Bergamo and Milan, respectively; more recently with the art trade), illustrated by M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, VIII: Jan Gossaert and Bernart van Orley Leiden and Brussels, 1972, no. 107, p. 105, pl. 103 (fig. 1). The rich detailing of the fabrics, architectural elements, the lavish carpet on the steps beneath the throne and particularly the virtuosic quality of the wrought gold - the clasps and jewels, sword-hilt and the chalice depicted with a sculpted relief surface - all speak to a proximity to van Orley, as do the facial types. An attribution to the Master of the Butterflies, a close contemporary follower of van Orley, has been suggested.
The later provenance of the panel is distinguished. Desmottes and Dollfus are the names of important collectors of Mediæval and Renaissance art in Belle Époque Paris, while Morris Joseloff, an immigrant from Russia to the United States and subsequently a grocery store millionaire, was an important New England art collector and patron in the early decades of the twentieth-century; Sir John Lavery's portrait of Mrs. Joseloff was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1933.
We are grateful to Jan van Helmont for identifying the arms of Jean Caulier l'ainé (1455/60-1531) and his second wife, Hélène Corbehem, making this a rare instance in which the identity of a commissioner of a work by the Flemish Primitives can be convincingly established. Jean Caulier the Elder was an important figure on the political of late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Flanders, a trusted ally of Margaret of Austria, Governor of the Hapsburg Netherlands, and of the Emperor Charles V. Caulier lived in Atrecht (modern-day Arras in France), in the part of Flanders then disputed between the Kings of France and the Hapsburg heirs to the Dukedom of Burgundy. A skilled diplomat, Caulier managed to negotiate his family's loyalties to both French and Hapsburg interests. Having entered the University of Louvain in 1473 (when he was between 8 and 13 years old), Caulier pursued a career which saw him considered as Hapsburg ambassador to Paris, a long period as president of the privy council of Charles V and finally as president of the independent Grand Council of Mechlen.
Well-educated and well-connected in courtly circles, Caulier may well have requested the sophisticated visual programme of this panel specifically. The wings of the triptych, now lost, may have included donor portraits of Caulier and his second wife, Hélène Corbehem, perhaps with the other Cardinal Virtues, Fortitude and Prudence.
The unusual iconography has been understood since at least 1912, when the panel appeared in the sale of the Dollfus collection, Paris, while a full attribution to Bernard van Orley is first recorded in 1936, when the picture was exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum. The stylistic links to Bernard van Orley are strong. The use of the Virtues in a religious context finds a rare reiteration in van Orley's Crucifixion of circa 1524 (Rotterdam, Boijmans-van Beuningen Museum), where the Cross is flanked by the heaven-born figures of Charity (one of the Three Theological Virtues of Saint Paul) and Justice, the pose of which (sheathing her sword) is an almost exact match for the figure of Justice in the present work, and the closest iconographic parallel. The profile face of Temperance is of a spirit similar to the Portrait of Isabella of Austria (Kraków, National Museum) variously attributed to van Orley or to the Master of the Legend of Saint Mary Magdalene. The kneeling figure of Temperance/Saint Mary Magdalene recalls the kneeling, profile figure in the large, beautiful panel of the Circumcision formerly in the Frizzoni and Lutomirski collections (Bergamo and Milan, respectively; more recently with the art trade), illustrated by M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, VIII: Jan Gossaert and Bernart van Orley Leiden and Brussels, 1972, no. 107, p. 105, pl. 103 (fig. 1). The rich detailing of the fabrics, architectural elements, the lavish carpet on the steps beneath the throne and particularly the virtuosic quality of the wrought gold - the clasps and jewels, sword-hilt and the chalice depicted with a sculpted relief surface - all speak to a proximity to van Orley, as do the facial types. An attribution to the Master of the Butterflies, a close contemporary follower of van Orley, has been suggested.
The later provenance of the panel is distinguished. Desmottes and Dollfus are the names of important collectors of Mediæval and Renaissance art in Belle Époque Paris, while Morris Joseloff, an immigrant from Russia to the United States and subsequently a grocery store millionaire, was an important New England art collector and patron in the early decades of the twentieth-century; Sir John Lavery's portrait of Mrs. Joseloff was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1933.