拍品专文
The Bute catalogue, presumably recording a certificate supplied when the picture was purchased, establishes that Friedländer proposed the attribution to the Master of the Mansi Magdalen, whose name piece is the Magdalen formerly in the Mansi collection at Lucca and now at Berlin (Friedländer, VII, no. 89, pl. 776), and observed that it greatly resembled the work of Quentin Massys. The picture is thus almost certainly identifiable with the ex-Douglas picture recorded by Friedländer (VII, Supplement, no. 181), which is recorded as of very similar measurements. The origin of the suggestion that the landscape is by Patenir cannot be ascertained.
The affectionate embrace between the Christ Child and the Virgin ultimately derives from a Byzantine Madonna type known as the Glykophilousa (chin-chucking), but the head of the Virgin is based on a much more recent prototype. This is the Virgin and Child by Quentin Massys in the Dahlem Museum in Berlin (L. Silver, The Paintings of Quinten Massys with Catalogue Raisonné, Oxford, 1984, pl. 63), a painting which also inspired an early Virgin and Child in the St. Jakobskerk in Antwerp by Massys' son, Jan (L. Buijnsters-Smets, Jan Massys, een Antwerps schilder uit de zestiende eeuw, Zwolle, 1995, cat. no. 4, pp. 156-7).
An extremely unusual feature of the present panel is the way the figure group is partially concealed by a prominent tree, clearly for symbolic reasons. The combination of a dead tree and a vine with a prominent bunch of grapes growing round it must allude to the hope of eternal life as as result of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, especially as represented by the wine of the eucharist.
The affectionate embrace between the Christ Child and the Virgin ultimately derives from a Byzantine Madonna type known as the Glykophilousa (chin-chucking), but the head of the Virgin is based on a much more recent prototype. This is the Virgin and Child by Quentin Massys in the Dahlem Museum in Berlin (L. Silver, The Paintings of Quinten Massys with Catalogue Raisonné, Oxford, 1984, pl. 63), a painting which also inspired an early Virgin and Child in the St. Jakobskerk in Antwerp by Massys' son, Jan (L. Buijnsters-Smets, Jan Massys, een Antwerps schilder uit de zestiende eeuw, Zwolle, 1995, cat. no. 4, pp. 156-7).
An extremely unusual feature of the present panel is the way the figure group is partially concealed by a prominent tree, clearly for symbolic reasons. The combination of a dead tree and a vine with a prominent bunch of grapes growing round it must allude to the hope of eternal life as as result of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, especially as represented by the wine of the eucharist.