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Lot Essay
This is one of a small group of versions of the composition, including those in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, and the Narodowe Muzeum, Warsaw. The question of the composition's authorship has been extensively discussed, but the widest opinion connects it with the body of paintings currently grouped under the umbrella name of the Master of the Female Half-Lengths. That oeuvre is now perceived to be in large part the product of a workshop, specializing particularly in small-scale panels of aristocratic young ladies in half-length and devotional scenes. The workshop also produced a group of landscapes that clearly show the influence of Joachim Patinir, with whose work they were for a long time confused.
The place and period of the Master's activity have been widely disputed: suggestions have ranged from Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent and Mechelen to the French court, with dates from the early- to the late-sixteenth century. Friedländer and Koch both placed the workshop in Antwerp and Mechelen in the 1520s and 1530s, owing to the closeness of the landscapes to those of Joachim Patinir and the similarity of the female types to those of Barent van Orley. Koch believed that the artist may have been trained in Patinir's shop in Antwerp in circa 1520. This proposal has since been accepted by a number of writers, who have tried to identify the Master's hand in the background landscapes of paintings by Antwerp artists such as Quinten Metsys. At least one instance is known where the Master painted the landscape background for Jan Gossaert, in a Madonna and Child in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, which is dated 1532, representing the latest secure date for the group.
Georges Marlier in his 1966 monograph on the artist Pieter Coecke van Aelst noted the similarity of the facial type of the lady in the present picture to that in a Coecke-like Virgin and Child based on a Gossaert prototype. This had been attributed by Friedlänader to Paul van Aelst, the stepson of Pieter Coecke and son of his second wife, Mayken Verhulst (see G. Marlier, op. cit., fig. 186), on the basis that the Coecke/Gossaert stylistic link fitted with Van Mander's assertion that Paul painted copies of Gossaert's work. On that basis, he challenged the attribution to the Master of the Female Half-Lengths, albeit without actually proposing Paul as the author. Given the further understanding of the Master's workshop nature, and that workshop's known collaboration with Gossaert, Friedänder's hypothesis seems slightly tenuous; a more tantalising theory might be that Paul Coecke is in fact one of the artist's known under the Half-Lengths umbrella. Either way, given the very evident links between this composition and the Master's oeuvre, it seems unnecessary to challenge the traditional attribution of this composition, and pace Marlier the present lot is here catalogued as a Half-Lengths work.
The place and period of the Master's activity have been widely disputed: suggestions have ranged from Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent and Mechelen to the French court, with dates from the early- to the late-sixteenth century. Friedländer and Koch both placed the workshop in Antwerp and Mechelen in the 1520s and 1530s, owing to the closeness of the landscapes to those of Joachim Patinir and the similarity of the female types to those of Barent van Orley. Koch believed that the artist may have been trained in Patinir's shop in Antwerp in circa 1520. This proposal has since been accepted by a number of writers, who have tried to identify the Master's hand in the background landscapes of paintings by Antwerp artists such as Quinten Metsys. At least one instance is known where the Master painted the landscape background for Jan Gossaert, in a Madonna and Child in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, which is dated 1532, representing the latest secure date for the group.
Georges Marlier in his 1966 monograph on the artist Pieter Coecke van Aelst noted the similarity of the facial type of the lady in the present picture to that in a Coecke-like Virgin and Child based on a Gossaert prototype. This had been attributed by Friedlänader to Paul van Aelst, the stepson of Pieter Coecke and son of his second wife, Mayken Verhulst (see G. Marlier, op. cit., fig. 186), on the basis that the Coecke/Gossaert stylistic link fitted with Van Mander's assertion that Paul painted copies of Gossaert's work. On that basis, he challenged the attribution to the Master of the Female Half-Lengths, albeit without actually proposing Paul as the author. Given the further understanding of the Master's workshop nature, and that workshop's known collaboration with Gossaert, Friedänder's hypothesis seems slightly tenuous; a more tantalising theory might be that Paul Coecke is in fact one of the artist's known under the Half-Lengths umbrella. Either way, given the very evident links between this composition and the Master's oeuvre, it seems unnecessary to challenge the traditional attribution of this composition, and pace Marlier the present lot is here catalogued as a Half-Lengths work.