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拍品专文
This moving devotional image is a fine example of the work issuing from the workshop of Albrecht Bouts at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Bouts specialised in small devotional works of this type, which proved very popular with his Catholic contemporaries as an aid to private prayer. Although devotional images of Christ were common in Flemish painting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the image of the sorrowing Christ seems to have been a speciality of Albrecht Bouts. It combines the image of Christ as Salvator Mundi, or Saviour of the World with his right hand raised in blessing, with a depiction relating to the Passion, or suffering of Christ, showing the Saviour crowned with thorns, weeping for Man's sins, with his left hand raised to show the stigmata, the marks of the nails that attached him to the cross. Albrecht Bouts's father, Dieric Bouts the Elder (c. 1415-1475) depicted Christ both as Salvator Mundi (Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam) and as Christ Crowned with Thorns (National Gallery, London) but Albrecht's depictions of Christ as the Man of Sorrows differ significantly in their uncompromising frontal depiction of Christ, as seen here, forcing the viewer to meet Christ's agonized gaze, and thus meditate all the more profoundly upon his sacrifice and message.
There is evidence along the right edge of the panel that this particular picture was originally hinged and attached to another matching panel to form a diptych that could be folded up to protect the pictures when not in use or when travelling. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Christian Church emphasized the physical and spiritual suffering of Christ, and his mother Mary's empathetic reaction which good Christians were encouraged to follow. It thus became common in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for images of the suffering Christ to be twinned with a matching image of Mary. One such example, by a follower of Bouts, is in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen, and it is likely that the present picture also once had a matching panel depicting the Virgin, although this has not as yet been traced.
Owing to the lack of information known about Bouts and his workshop practices and the number of versions of devotional images produced in his style during his long lifetime, it is extremely difficult to date and to assign works with certainty to the hand of Albrecht Bouts himself. A dendrochronological examination of the present panel undertaken in 2001, however, confirmed that the tree from which the present panel was taken was felled between 1496 and 1502, which suggests that the picture itself was painted during Bouts's maturity, sometime after 1500 (C. Périer-D'Ietren, op. cit., p. 40). In preparation and handling the painting is typical of a Flemish work of this period and the fine technique is highly reminiscent of Bouts's own hand. It is not quite as fine, however, as the triptych of Christ Crowned with Thorns, flanked by Two Angels in the New York Historical Society, which is generally accepted to be a fully autograph work by Bouts himself. Interestingly, a tracing of the head of Christ from the latter work when placed over the head of Christ in the present picture, demonstrates that both paintings were executed on exactly the same scale, although they differ in detail in the expression and position of the head and hands. It has been suggested, therefore, that the head of Christ in the present work may have been closely based on the picture in the New York Historical Society, by an artist working alongside Bouts in his studio. This might explain the strange line that has become visible with age in the mouth of the head of Christ, which may be a guide line to enable the artist to anchor his composition with the mouth on the same level as the head of Christ, as seen in the New York picture, and possibly with the aid of a tracing to follow that picture's scale.
We would like to thank Dr. Valentine Hendericks for confirming the attribution to the Workshop of Albrecht Bouts. The picture is to be included in her monograph on Albrecht Bouts, which will be published later this year.
There is evidence along the right edge of the panel that this particular picture was originally hinged and attached to another matching panel to form a diptych that could be folded up to protect the pictures when not in use or when travelling. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Christian Church emphasized the physical and spiritual suffering of Christ, and his mother Mary's empathetic reaction which good Christians were encouraged to follow. It thus became common in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for images of the suffering Christ to be twinned with a matching image of Mary. One such example, by a follower of Bouts, is in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen, and it is likely that the present picture also once had a matching panel depicting the Virgin, although this has not as yet been traced.
Owing to the lack of information known about Bouts and his workshop practices and the number of versions of devotional images produced in his style during his long lifetime, it is extremely difficult to date and to assign works with certainty to the hand of Albrecht Bouts himself. A dendrochronological examination of the present panel undertaken in 2001, however, confirmed that the tree from which the present panel was taken was felled between 1496 and 1502, which suggests that the picture itself was painted during Bouts's maturity, sometime after 1500 (C. Périer-D'Ietren, op. cit., p. 40). In preparation and handling the painting is typical of a Flemish work of this period and the fine technique is highly reminiscent of Bouts's own hand. It is not quite as fine, however, as the triptych of Christ Crowned with Thorns, flanked by Two Angels in the New York Historical Society, which is generally accepted to be a fully autograph work by Bouts himself. Interestingly, a tracing of the head of Christ from the latter work when placed over the head of Christ in the present picture, demonstrates that both paintings were executed on exactly the same scale, although they differ in detail in the expression and position of the head and hands. It has been suggested, therefore, that the head of Christ in the present work may have been closely based on the picture in the New York Historical Society, by an artist working alongside Bouts in his studio. This might explain the strange line that has become visible with age in the mouth of the head of Christ, which may be a guide line to enable the artist to anchor his composition with the mouth on the same level as the head of Christ, as seen in the New York picture, and possibly with the aid of a tracing to follow that picture's scale.
We would like to thank Dr. Valentine Hendericks for confirming the attribution to the Workshop of Albrecht Bouts. The picture is to be included in her monograph on Albrecht Bouts, which will be published later this year.