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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Ludwig Meyer of the Archiv für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, for suggesting an attribution in the close circle of Joos van Cleve, noting that these wings must have flanked a central panel depicting The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and an angel. A complete version of such a triptych was at Fischer, Lucerne, 13 June 2007, lot 1014 (estimate 250,000-300,000 CHF). These wings may therefore belong to one of two other known versions of the central panel, both separated from their wings at an unknown date: one in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, on long-term loan to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kassel (fig. 1; Berlin inv. no. 643, oil on oak, 86 x 57 cm., in the Solly collection in 1821); and one at Wilton House (88.9 x 56.5 cm., at Wilton by 1730; see Sidney, 16th Earl of Pembroke, A catalogue of the Paintings & Drawings ... at Wilton House, Salisbury, Wiltshire, London and New York, 1968, p. 57, no. 153, pl. 35). Meyer believes the Berlin and Wilton pictures to be of equal quality, while the shared English provenance suggests that the Wilton picture may be more likely to have been the original mate to the present panels.
We are also grateful to Till-Holger Borchert for noting the strong German influence expressed in the panels, consistent with the powerful currents of cross-polination between Germany and the Low Countries in the early decades of the sixteenth century (recently explored in the landmark exhibition From Van Eyck to Dürer: The Flemish Primitives and the east, 1430-1530, Groeningemuseum, Bruegs, 29 October 2010-30 January 2011). The figure of Saint Mary Magdalene resembles the style of the Master of the Female Half-Lengths (in whose orbit the works were attributed in 1978), while her head also recalls the celebrated Portrait of a Venetian woman by Albrecht Dürer (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). The pose of Saint Catherine, on the other hand, recalls that of the grisaille Saint Elizabeth on the verso of one of the panels of the Heller-Altar by Grünewald, in Karlsruhe.
We are also grateful to Till-Holger Borchert for noting the strong German influence expressed in the panels, consistent with the powerful currents of cross-polination between Germany and the Low Countries in the early decades of the sixteenth century (recently explored in the landmark exhibition From Van Eyck to Dürer: The Flemish Primitives and the east, 1430-1530, Groeningemuseum, Bruegs, 29 October 2010-30 January 2011). The figure of Saint Mary Magdalene resembles the style of the Master of the Female Half-Lengths (in whose orbit the works were attributed in 1978), while her head also recalls the celebrated Portrait of a Venetian woman by Albrecht Dürer (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). The pose of Saint Catherine, on the other hand, recalls that of the grisaille Saint Elizabeth on the verso of one of the panels of the Heller-Altar by Grünewald, in Karlsruhe.