Lot Essay
The Master of the Magdalene Legend acquired his moniker from Max J. Friedländer, based on a series of dispersed altarpiece panels illustrating the life of the artist’s eponymous saint (see Early Netherlandish Painting, XII, New York, 1975, pp. 13-17). Friedländer proposed Pieter Conixloo and William Scrots as possible identifications for the unknown master, as both artists were active in the Burgundian court at Brussels, but these hypotheses have not found widespread support (ibid.). It is clear the unknown master had an active and productive workshop at court, producing many portraits of its members, including Mary, Duchess of Burgundy, and her children, Philip the Fair and Margaret of Austria. The present likeness must be posthumous, as the Master would not have arrived at court until the last years of her life.
Mary of Burgundy inherited the territories of her father, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, at the age of nineteen, and shortly after was compelled to sign the ‘Great Privilege’, formally recognizing her as her father’s rightful heir, while seceding some power to the provinces of Brabant, Flanders, Hainaut and Holland. In 1477 she married Archduke Maximilian of Austria (future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I). The marriage was of crucial strategic importance for the Netherlands and Europe as a whole, as it united the Habsburgs and the Valois-Burgundy dynasties and ultimately instigated a two-centuries long struggle between the French and Habsburg rulers, climaxing in the War of Spanish Succession. Following Mary’s untimely death in 1482, artists such as the Master of the Magdalene Legend continued to produce portraits of the duchess, not only because she was greatly admired, but also because as one of the founders of the Habsburg dynasty, her memory was essential for legitimizing the authority of Maximilian and their successors (see M.W. Ainsworth and J.P. Waterman, eds., German Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1350-1600, New York, 2013, p. 192).
The marks on the reverse of this panel are an extremely rare and important survival, providing valuable insight into the processing, supply and transportation of artists’ materials in the sixteenth century. Three slanting diagonal incisions, with three cross hatches running across the wood grain (fig. 1), have been identified as cargo or timber merchants’ marks, made after the tree was felled and the planks hewn, before it was shipped to its final destination. Typically, such marks would have been planed or sanded down when the wood was prepared by panel-makers, but here remarkably, they have remained intact.
We are grateful to Peter van den Brink for endorsing the attribution on the basis of firsthand inspection (September 2024).
Mary of Burgundy inherited the territories of her father, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, at the age of nineteen, and shortly after was compelled to sign the ‘Great Privilege’, formally recognizing her as her father’s rightful heir, while seceding some power to the provinces of Brabant, Flanders, Hainaut and Holland. In 1477 she married Archduke Maximilian of Austria (future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I). The marriage was of crucial strategic importance for the Netherlands and Europe as a whole, as it united the Habsburgs and the Valois-Burgundy dynasties and ultimately instigated a two-centuries long struggle between the French and Habsburg rulers, climaxing in the War of Spanish Succession. Following Mary’s untimely death in 1482, artists such as the Master of the Magdalene Legend continued to produce portraits of the duchess, not only because she was greatly admired, but also because as one of the founders of the Habsburg dynasty, her memory was essential for legitimizing the authority of Maximilian and their successors (see M.W. Ainsworth and J.P. Waterman, eds., German Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1350-1600, New York, 2013, p. 192).
The marks on the reverse of this panel are an extremely rare and important survival, providing valuable insight into the processing, supply and transportation of artists’ materials in the sixteenth century. Three slanting diagonal incisions, with three cross hatches running across the wood grain (fig. 1), have been identified as cargo or timber merchants’ marks, made after the tree was felled and the planks hewn, before it was shipped to its final destination. Typically, such marks would have been planed or sanded down when the wood was prepared by panel-makers, but here remarkably, they have remained intact.
We are grateful to Peter van den Brink for endorsing the attribution on the basis of firsthand inspection (September 2024).