Lot Essay
This fragment depicting the Flight into Egypt is one of several copies of a lost triptych by Jan de Beer. A similar copy, also a fragment, is at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. It was attributed to Jan de Cock until 1978, when Professor D. Ewing of Bary University suggested it was a copy of a lost original invented by de Beer and informed by the well-known Albrecht Dürer woodcut of the same subject, dated 1503/4 and published in 1511 (see D. Ewing, The Paintings and Drawings of Jan de Beer, PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1978). This fragment is after part of the right wing, as is the panel in the National gallery of Ireland. It will be included in the forthcoming monograph of the artist by Prof. Ewing.