The Madonna and Child

Details

Joos van Cleve (?Cleves ?-1540/1 Antwerp)
The Madonna and Child
oil on panel
14 7/8 x 10 7/8 in. (37.8 x 27.6 cm.)

Provenance

Blumenreich, Berlin.
with Thomas Harris, London.
with Steinmayer, Lucerne
with Gallery Fischer, New York.
Felix Ziethen; sale, Helbing, Munich, 22 September 1934, lot 19.
with P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1934.
Private collection, Sweden.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 8 April 1981, lot 86.
Acquired by the father of the present owner.

Literature

L. Baldass, Joos van Cleve. Der Meister des Todes Mariä, Vienna, 1925, p. 8, no. 4, fig. 9.
M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, IX, Leiden and Brussels, 1972, p. 60, no. 51, pl. 65.
J.O. Hand, Joos van Cleve. The Early and Mature Paintings. Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1978, pp. 74-5, 195, no. 6, fig. 6.
J.O. Hand, Joos van Cleve, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 23-4, 176, no. 101, fig. 149.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Joos van Cleve produced two distinct, but interrelated representations of the Christ Child nursing at the Virgin's breast, one of which is based on a Robert Campin composition and the other, as in the present painting, deriving from Gerard David's pose of the Madonna and Child in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Madrid, Museo del Prado).

While both Friedländer and Baldass (loc. cit.) consider the painting autograph, Hand (op. cit., 2004, p. 176) thinks that the painting is workshop, although of good quality and dates it to the early 1520s.

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