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Lot Essay
This painting, produced in the workshop of Joos van Cleve, is a version of a popular (now lost) prototype painted by the master in circa 1520-25 (J.O. Hand, Joos van Cleve: The Complete Paintings, New Haven and London, 2004, p. 183). It depicts the Christ Child seated on a red cushion holding a bunch of grapes, one of which he raises to his mouth. Representations of Christ with grapes were, of course, entirely familiar for painters and patrons throughout the late Middle Ages. Referencing the Eucharist, vines and grapes were commonly used to represent a prefigurement of the Sacramental wine of the Last Supper. Depictions of Christ eating grapes, however, appear to have been more unusual in the Netherlands before van Cleve’s composition, though precedents in Italy extended back as far as Masaccio (as with his Madonna and Child of 1426, National Gallery, London) and in Germany had been popularised by painters like Lucas Cranach the Elder (Virgin with Child with a Bunch of Grapes, c. 1509-10, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid). By the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, artists were increasingly expanding the ways visual associations between grapes, Christ and the Eucharist could be expressed. Indeed, more and more complex iconographies emerged during the first decades of the sixteenth century. A series of tapestry weavings produced in the Southern Netherlands in circa 1500, for example, showed the Infant Christ crushing grapes, the juice flowing into a chalice. The devotional charge of van Cleve’s invention was not only reliant on its Eucharistic content. The flora and plants around the base of the picture too may be read as significant. At the lower right of the panel, for example, are two stems of lily-of-the-valley, commonly associated with humility, as well as being considered a sign of Christ's second coming. Likewise, the dandelion bud at the left can be read as a symbol of Christ’s Resurrection. In this way, the salvific implications of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection were conveyed through the picture, making these ideas explicit for the devout viewer.
The painting relates to another popular composition from van Cleve’s workshop, The Infants Christ and Saint John the Baptist Embracing. His several versions of this subject all derived from an Italian prototype, believed to be the painting attributed to Marco d’Oggiono (c. 1467-1524), a Milanese follower of Leonardo da Vinci, now in the Royal Collection. During van Cleve’s lifetime, this painting, or one identical to it, was in the famous collection of Margaret of Austria, Governor of the Netherlands (1480-1530), where it hung first in the library, and later the bedchamber, of her main residence at Mechelen. It is thought that rather than just seeing the painting, van Cleve may have in fact made a physical copy, using oiled paper or parchment (to make it transparent) placed over the prototype and traced with a pen. The drawing could then have been used as a cartoon in van Cleve’s workshop. Though this would have required a significant intrusion into Margaret’s collection, van Cleve was acquainted with the family, having painted portraits of her father Maximilian I, and thus may have been afforded privileged access to the collections. Van Cleve’s subsequent versions of Christ and the Baptist became one of the most popular products of his workshop, sought by numerous significant patrons.
The Italianate treatment of the Infant Christ in the present work must certainly have been informed by the sfumato treatment of the skin tone and rounded modelling of the body, so characteristic of Leonardo and his followers which van Cleve had been able observe in the Mechelen d’Oggiono. Italianate influences of this kind had rapidly developed in Netherlandish circles in the first decades of the sixteenth century. The arrival of Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child in Bruges in 1504 and Jan Gossaert’s journey to Rome in the retinue of Philip of Burgundy in 1508-9, saw the sudden influx of Italian designs and the growing taste for Italianate works of art. As such, van Cleve’s adaptation and use of these models was carefully judged to catering for such demands, and it is unsurprising that several workshop versions of the Infant Christ eating grapes are known. The painter and his workshop also produced other devotional images of the Christ Child, notably the Infant Christ standing on a Winged Orb (Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid), which once again took clear inspiration from Italy in the modelling of the figure and the strong contrapposto stance of the Child.
A note on the provenance:
The painting was acquired by Henry Lascelles, then Viscount Lascelles, later 6th Earl of Harewood in the early 1920s. Lascelles had inherited a large number of paintings from his great uncle Hubert George de Burgh-Canning, 2nd Marquess of Clanricarde (1832-1916) but his interests in collecting and buying Old Master paintings remained strong during the 1920s and early 1930s, when he purchased works by, amongst others, Teniers, Giovanni Bellini and El Greco. The present painting is recorded by Borenius (op.cit.) as hanging in the White Dressing Room at Harewood, alongside other small Dutch and Flemish cabinet paintings from the collection.
The painting relates to another popular composition from van Cleve’s workshop, The Infants Christ and Saint John the Baptist Embracing. His several versions of this subject all derived from an Italian prototype, believed to be the painting attributed to Marco d’Oggiono (c. 1467-1524), a Milanese follower of Leonardo da Vinci, now in the Royal Collection. During van Cleve’s lifetime, this painting, or one identical to it, was in the famous collection of Margaret of Austria, Governor of the Netherlands (1480-1530), where it hung first in the library, and later the bedchamber, of her main residence at Mechelen. It is thought that rather than just seeing the painting, van Cleve may have in fact made a physical copy, using oiled paper or parchment (to make it transparent) placed over the prototype and traced with a pen. The drawing could then have been used as a cartoon in van Cleve’s workshop. Though this would have required a significant intrusion into Margaret’s collection, van Cleve was acquainted with the family, having painted portraits of her father Maximilian I, and thus may have been afforded privileged access to the collections. Van Cleve’s subsequent versions of Christ and the Baptist became one of the most popular products of his workshop, sought by numerous significant patrons.
The Italianate treatment of the Infant Christ in the present work must certainly have been informed by the sfumato treatment of the skin tone and rounded modelling of the body, so characteristic of Leonardo and his followers which van Cleve had been able observe in the Mechelen d’Oggiono. Italianate influences of this kind had rapidly developed in Netherlandish circles in the first decades of the sixteenth century. The arrival of Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child in Bruges in 1504 and Jan Gossaert’s journey to Rome in the retinue of Philip of Burgundy in 1508-9, saw the sudden influx of Italian designs and the growing taste for Italianate works of art. As such, van Cleve’s adaptation and use of these models was carefully judged to catering for such demands, and it is unsurprising that several workshop versions of the Infant Christ eating grapes are known. The painter and his workshop also produced other devotional images of the Christ Child, notably the Infant Christ standing on a Winged Orb (Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid), which once again took clear inspiration from Italy in the modelling of the figure and the strong contrapposto stance of the Child.
A note on the provenance:
The painting was acquired by Henry Lascelles, then Viscount Lascelles, later 6th Earl of Harewood in the early 1920s. Lascelles had inherited a large number of paintings from his great uncle Hubert George de Burgh-Canning, 2nd Marquess of Clanricarde (1832-1916) but his interests in collecting and buying Old Master paintings remained strong during the 1920s and early 1930s, when he purchased works by, amongst others, Teniers, Giovanni Bellini and El Greco. The present painting is recorded by Borenius (op.cit.) as hanging in the White Dressing Room at Harewood, alongside other small Dutch and Flemish cabinet paintings from the collection.