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Lot Essay
Little is known about the training of this artist, who lived in Antwerp. His name is misleading for he was not active in Frankfurt, but derives instead from Friedländer, who recognised the hand of the unidentified artist on the basis of two altarpieces that he painted for Frankfurt (M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, Leiden and Brussels, 2nd. edn., 1971, VII, p. 54ff.). Biographical information is given by an the portraits of the artist and his wife, dated 1496, it depicts him at the age of thirty-six with the arms of the Antwerp painters' guild and his young spouse at seventeen. Working until circa 1515, the artist was one of the leading rivals of Quentin Massys in Antwerp.
The style of this picture is similar to that of the Festival of the Archers in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (ibid., pl. 118) which shows men and women in similar costume gathered in a garden, some engaged in amorous embrace. The drapery and the features of the figures are comparable to the present picture as well as to those in the centrepiece of the altar of the Holy Family in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (ibid., pl. 107). Furthermore, the extensive mountenous landscape and the thickly-strewn, sprouting weeds and flowers in the foreground are characteristic of the artist's pictures.
The subject probably derives from a poem or epigram on love, rather than a narrative. It represents an allegory of love in which women entrap men with snares, symbolising their power over men. At the far left a fool appears to be encouraging a group of winged men - including a beggar and a nobleman, representing the entire spectrum of society - to fall in love. The wings allude to love, and to freedom. Two conversing winged men are clearly alerted to the dangers of love as they point to the scene at the centre of the painting, where a woman traps a flying man with her snare. The three couples to the right, in which the men are now wingless, are separated from the left by a narrow stream. They appear to be in a garden of love. The woman dominates in the embracing couple, which may be drawn from an early engraving by the Master of the Love Garden in which the sexes are reversed. The ensnared men of the other two couples seem completely tamed by their ladies. The theme of the Liebesgarten was a popular one, often appearing in a horizontal format, particularly on cassone panels. The Liebesgarten often included the fons amoris, or the Fountain of Love, embodied here in the stream, and this panel may originally have formed a spalliera from a cassone.
The subject of enamoured men falling prey to women was frequently treated in manuscripts of the period, for example Pierre Sala's Enigmes where two women catch flying hearts in a draw-net, which is accompanied by the text:
'Pleasant Mien and Courteous Manner
At the corner of the wood have hung their draw-net
Waiting for the more attractive hour
When an unsteady flying heart may pass that way.'
The style of this painting is influenced by late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century French manuscripts, which could have been at the artist's disposal. The costume of the man in flight is comparable, for example, with that worn by a figure in an illustration from the Missel d'Antoine de Roche (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 881, reproduced in F. Avril and N. Reynaud, Les Manuscrits à Peinture en France 1440-1520, 1993, pp. 397-8, no. 226).
We are grateful to Dr. Jean-Michel Massing for identifying the subject of this picture.
The style of this picture is similar to that of the Festival of the Archers in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (ibid., pl. 118) which shows men and women in similar costume gathered in a garden, some engaged in amorous embrace. The drapery and the features of the figures are comparable to the present picture as well as to those in the centrepiece of the altar of the Holy Family in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (ibid., pl. 107). Furthermore, the extensive mountenous landscape and the thickly-strewn, sprouting weeds and flowers in the foreground are characteristic of the artist's pictures.
The subject probably derives from a poem or epigram on love, rather than a narrative. It represents an allegory of love in which women entrap men with snares, symbolising their power over men. At the far left a fool appears to be encouraging a group of winged men - including a beggar and a nobleman, representing the entire spectrum of society - to fall in love. The wings allude to love, and to freedom. Two conversing winged men are clearly alerted to the dangers of love as they point to the scene at the centre of the painting, where a woman traps a flying man with her snare. The three couples to the right, in which the men are now wingless, are separated from the left by a narrow stream. They appear to be in a garden of love. The woman dominates in the embracing couple, which may be drawn from an early engraving by the Master of the Love Garden in which the sexes are reversed. The ensnared men of the other two couples seem completely tamed by their ladies. The theme of the Liebesgarten was a popular one, often appearing in a horizontal format, particularly on cassone panels. The Liebesgarten often included the fons amoris, or the Fountain of Love, embodied here in the stream, and this panel may originally have formed a spalliera from a cassone.
The subject of enamoured men falling prey to women was frequently treated in manuscripts of the period, for example Pierre Sala's Enigmes where two women catch flying hearts in a draw-net, which is accompanied by the text:
'Pleasant Mien and Courteous Manner
At the corner of the wood have hung their draw-net
Waiting for the more attractive hour
When an unsteady flying heart may pass that way.'
The style of this painting is influenced by late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century French manuscripts, which could have been at the artist's disposal. The costume of the man in flight is comparable, for example, with that worn by a figure in an illustration from the Missel d'Antoine de Roche (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 881, reproduced in F. Avril and N. Reynaud, Les Manuscrits à Peinture en France 1440-1520, 1993, pp. 397-8, no. 226).
We are grateful to Dr. Jean-Michel Massing for identifying the subject of this picture.