Lotto 168

168

Altre 2

Property from the Arizona State University Art Museum Sold to Benefit Acquisitions and Direct Collections Care

FOLLOWER OF AMBROSIUS BENSON

The Nativity

Details

FOLLOWER OF AMBROSIUS BENSON
The Nativity
oil on panel
42 x 27 ¾ in. (106.7 x 75 cm.)

Provenance

(Possibly) Ami Linker, Bilbao.
with Juan Lafora, Madrid, by 1929.
with Hugo Perls and Käthe Perls, Berlin, and in storage at De Gruyter, The Hague, not before 10 May 1940,
Confiscated by ‘Sammelverwaltung feindlicher Hausgeräte 'Heim Holland', The Hague, October 1941.
Anonymous sale; Frederick Muller & Co., Amsterdam, 24-27 March 1942, lot 36, as Follower of Hugo van der Goes (to M.J. Schretlen).
Restituted to Hugo Perls, New York by the Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit (SNK), The Hague, in February 1950.
with Shaeffer Galleries, New York.
Anonymous sale; Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 29 February 1956, lot 10, as Ambrosius Benson.
Lewis J. Ruskin (1903-1981) and his wife, Lenore Ruskin Heavenrich, née Ginsburg (1920-1993), Scottsdale, by whom gifted in 1958 to the Arizona State University Art Museum.

Literature

M.J. Friedländer, Die Altniederländische Malerei, XI, Berlin, 1933, p. 142, no. 242, as Ambrosius Benson.
G. Marlier, Ambrosius Benson et la Peinture a Bruges au Temps de Charles-Quint, Damme, 1957, pp. 123-125, no. 20, pl. XXII, as Ambrosius Benson.
'7 Art Masterpieces, valued at $250,000, Given to ASU' The Arizona Republic, 27 November 1958, p. 1, as Ambrosius Benson.
E. Johnson, 'College Museum Notes', College Art Journal, XVIII, no. 3, Spring 1959, p. 257, as Ambrosius Benson.
M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting: The Antwerp Mannerists, New York and Washington, 1974, p. 95, no. 242, pl. 164, as Ambrosius Benson.
J.-L. Pypaert, 'Early Netherlandish Painting XV ? Joseph van der Veken', Autour de la 'Madelene Renders': Un Aspect de l'Histoire des Colelctions, de la Restuaration et de la Contrefaçon en Belgique dans la Première Moité du XXe Siècle, p. 258, no. 204, illustrated, as Ambrosius Benson.

Sale room notice

For additional provenance information, please see Christies.com.

Conditions of sale

Offerto da

Taylor Alessio Associate Vice President, Associate Specialist Head of Part II

talessio@christies.com +1 212 636 2295

Descrizione dettagliata lotto

This panel was identified as a work by Ambrosius Benson by Max J. Friedländer in 1933, who described the painting as 'free after David' (loc. cit.). The composition is comparable to Gerard David’s Nativity, which forms the central panel of a triptych at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 49.7.20a–c). In both works, architectural ruins divide the composition: in the foreground, the Holy Family is watched over by angels, while shepherds observe from beyond. Benson revisited the nocturnal Nativity theme on several occasions; one such example, now in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (inv. no. 1948.297), features the figures of Mary and Joseph in reverse. The unknown painter of the present work could have known these compositions through drawings, which freely circulated in Flemish workshops.

Altri da Old Masters and 19th Century Paintings

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