The Virgin and Child

This previously unrecorded panel is a version of a picture given to Abraham Bloemaert in the Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo, both of which relate to a drawing, datable to circa 1610-15, but later reworked, in Darmstadt (see G. Bergsträsser, Niederlandische Zeichnungen 16. Jahrhundert, Darmstadt, 1979, p. 17, no. 6, see fig. 1). As Marcel Roethlisberger has observed after inspection of the Tokyo panel, the signature is almost certainly unreliable and the picture is compromised by 'a radical, misguided restoration' (M. Roethlisberger, Abraham Bloemart and his Sons, Doornspijk, 1993, I, pp. 216-7, no. 278, II, fig. 411). Nevertheless, on the evidence of the Darmstadt drawing and the absence of any other version, he accepted the Tokyo painting as autograph, a conclusion that has now been brought into question by the appearance of the present panel. Although Professor Roethlisberger, to whom we are grateful, notes that it is impossible to judge this picture conclusively until it is cleaned, he has written that (on the basis of a transparency) 'My impression is very favourable, and I wouldn't be astonished if it looked far better once it will have been cleaned. If then yours is Bloemaert's original, it would relegate the other version to second place and might give credence to the curious signature as a piece repeated by Hendrick Bloemaert' (private correspondence, 20 January 2005). He suggests a date of circa 1620, pointing to stylistic affinities with several representations of the Virgin in treatments of Adoration of the Shepherds between 1615 and and 1623. The closest connection seems to be with the Adoration in St. Gertrudis, Utrecht (loc. cit., fig. 416).