Circle of Michiel Coxie (1499-1592)

Details

Circle of Michiel Coxie (1499-1592)

The Penitent Magdalen

oil on panel
24 3/8 x 19¼in. (62 x 48.8cm.)

Provenance

with Galerie Hess, Düsseldorf.
Meurer collection, Wiesbaden.
Mr. and Mrs. Eugene L. Garbaty, by whom given in 1952 to
The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford.

Literature

Wadsworth Atheneum Annual Report, 1952, p. 33.
Wadsworth Atheneum, Wadsworth Atheneum Paintings, Catalogue I. The Netherlands and German-Speaking Countries. 15th to 19th Centuries, 1978, p. 189, no. 144, pl. 15 as Southern-Netherlandish Anonymous.

Lot Essay

Several versions of this painting exist, including paintings which sold as works by Frans Floris (sale Friedrich Prachter, Frankfurt, April 30, 1894, lot 40,), the Master of the Prodigal Son (sale Lempertz, Cologne, June 3, 1930, lot 62, with the Magdalen appearing in a landscape); and unattributed, in the Helbing Collection, Stockholm, 1936. There also is a drawing of the same subject and design in the Louvre (see F. Lugt, Musée du Louvre Inventaire général des dessins des écoles du nord. Maîtres des anciens Pays-Bas avant 1550, 1970, no. 314, pl. 78 as "Flemish, ca. 1500"). The Wadsworth Atheneum catalogued the painting in 1928 (op.cit.) simply as 'Southern Netherlandish Anonymous,' but reported Carl van de Velde's plausible suggestion that the painting may be a variant of a lost prototype by Michiel Coxie.