Pieter Aertsen (1507/8-1575)

The Nativity

Details

Pieter Aertsen (1507/8-1575)
The Nativity
dated '1562'
oil on panel
55 x 42¾in. (139.7 x 108.5cm.)

Provenance

Robert Masters, Rector of All Saints' church, Landbeach, Cambridgeshire (1746-97) and bequeathed by him to that church in 1787.
Removed in 1868 to the Rectory, where it remained until 1976.
Deposited at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and subsequently the Fitzwilliam Museum until 1981.
Sold by order of the Diocesan Council; Sotheby's, London, 9 December 1981, lot 20 as Joachim Beuckelaer (£21,000).
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, London, 5 July 1989, lot 59 (£48,000=$78,000).

Literature

W. Keatinge Clay, A history of the Parish of Landbeach in the County of Cambridgeshire, 1861, p. 68.

Lot Essay

Although previously attributed to Beuckelaer, the present painting has been securely identified as an entirely characteristic work by Pieter Aertsen. A second version of slightly smaller size which is signed and dated 'ART LIGO 1561' and was previously in the Hans Wetzlar collection was published by Robert Genaille in 1954 (see R. Genaille, 'L'Oeuvre de Pieter Aertsen', Gazette des Beaux Arts, XLIV, November 1954, p. 286, no. A.40).

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