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拍品專文
This Virgin and Child with a parrot, rendered with extraordinary delicacy, is indebted to the central motif of Jan van Eyck’s resplendent masterpiece The Virgin and Child with Saints and Canon van der Paele (fig. 1; Bruges, Groeningemuseum), which was displayed in Bruges' St. Donatian’s Cathedral until its destruction in 1779. It is a beautiful example of the powerful influence that van Eyck exerted on the city in the early sixteenth-century, at a time when drawings, designs and ideas were borrowed and exchanged between artists. The success of the leading studios run by the likes of Gerard David, Adriaen Isenbrandt and Ambrosius Benson relied to some extent on their stock of these workshop patterns and models.
It was to Benson that this work has hitherto been attributed. Famed as a North Italian artist who went to study and work in Bruges, Benson established a successful workshop in the city that catered to a wide range of local and international patrons. It is in light of his prolific workshop that his artistic identity has been reassessed by scholars in recent years. While the present composition relates closely to Benson’s Madonna and Child of circa 1520-25 (Bruges, Groeningemuseum), it also betrays the influence of David’s Triptych of the Sedano Family (Paris, Musée du Louvre), which is unsurprising given the almost ubiquitous influence that David had on Bruges painting in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Indeed, such was Benson and David’s connection, that the two artists were involved in a legal dispute in 1519, in which David refused to relinquish two chests of drawings, patterns and unfinished paintings that Benson had left in his workshop, claiming it contained unfinished pattern drawings that in turn belonged to him. Despite this acrimonious litigation, David’s works clearly continued to be an important source for Benson’s workshop.
While the present Virgin and Child will have probably been based on a workshop drawing of van Eyck’s altarpiece, infrared reflectography reveals no specific evidence of mechanical transfer (Tager Stonor Richardson, April 2025, available upon request). Instead, a highly planned and systematic composition is visible, with liquid preliminary contour lines, such as in the Virgin’s left hand, where the artist deviated from van Eyck’s design, shifting the positions of the fingers. It demonstrates how pattern drawings and designs were circulated between workshops in the rich artistic environment of early sixteenth-century Bruges, often transferred from workshop to workshop as a means of developing compositions, maintaining quality and building a stock of visual tropes that could be adapted and reused. In their rendering of the parrot – a symbol of the Virgin’s innocence and freedom from original sin – the artist appears to have been less systematic, painting it with greater freedom across different iterations of the subject, evidently relishing in the accurate portrayal of its plumage and anatomy.
Several other small-scale variants of the composition exist, none of which match the high quality of this example. Such small panels depicting the Virgin and Child, typically intended for private devotion, catered to an increasing demand on the open market, often sold locally or in Antwerp, but also exported further afield to Italy and Spain. Works by van Eyck were particularly admired abroad and the later generations of Bruges painters are known to have adapted their styles to suit the taste of foreign clientele, thus perpetuating a legacy of artistic excellence.
A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE
In the spring of 1941, Van Beuningen was looking to raise a significant sum of money in cash and began negotiating a sale of a group of works from his collection to Hans Posse for the planned ‘Führermuseum’ in Linz. On 4 July 1941, he accepted Posse's offer of 1.5 million guilders for a group of eighteen pictures that included the Virgin and Child with Parrot and an eclectic range of other works by the likes of Goya, Tintoretto, Strozzi, Sellaio, Lucas van Leyden and Stephan Lochner. The most expensive were the French eighteenth century paintings by Watteau, Lancret and Pater. For a detailed account of the sale see A. Dekker, A Controversial Past – Museum Boijmans van Beuningen and the Second World War, Rotterdam, 2018, pp. 64-66.
All eighteen pictures were returned to the Netherlands by the Allies in 1945 and eventually bought back by Van Beuningen from the Dutch state in 1950. With the exception of this work, they are all today in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.
It was to Benson that this work has hitherto been attributed. Famed as a North Italian artist who went to study and work in Bruges, Benson established a successful workshop in the city that catered to a wide range of local and international patrons. It is in light of his prolific workshop that his artistic identity has been reassessed by scholars in recent years. While the present composition relates closely to Benson’s Madonna and Child of circa 1520-25 (Bruges, Groeningemuseum), it also betrays the influence of David’s Triptych of the Sedano Family (Paris, Musée du Louvre), which is unsurprising given the almost ubiquitous influence that David had on Bruges painting in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Indeed, such was Benson and David’s connection, that the two artists were involved in a legal dispute in 1519, in which David refused to relinquish two chests of drawings, patterns and unfinished paintings that Benson had left in his workshop, claiming it contained unfinished pattern drawings that in turn belonged to him. Despite this acrimonious litigation, David’s works clearly continued to be an important source for Benson’s workshop.
While the present Virgin and Child will have probably been based on a workshop drawing of van Eyck’s altarpiece, infrared reflectography reveals no specific evidence of mechanical transfer (Tager Stonor Richardson, April 2025, available upon request). Instead, a highly planned and systematic composition is visible, with liquid preliminary contour lines, such as in the Virgin’s left hand, where the artist deviated from van Eyck’s design, shifting the positions of the fingers. It demonstrates how pattern drawings and designs were circulated between workshops in the rich artistic environment of early sixteenth-century Bruges, often transferred from workshop to workshop as a means of developing compositions, maintaining quality and building a stock of visual tropes that could be adapted and reused. In their rendering of the parrot – a symbol of the Virgin’s innocence and freedom from original sin – the artist appears to have been less systematic, painting it with greater freedom across different iterations of the subject, evidently relishing in the accurate portrayal of its plumage and anatomy.
Several other small-scale variants of the composition exist, none of which match the high quality of this example. Such small panels depicting the Virgin and Child, typically intended for private devotion, catered to an increasing demand on the open market, often sold locally or in Antwerp, but also exported further afield to Italy and Spain. Works by van Eyck were particularly admired abroad and the later generations of Bruges painters are known to have adapted their styles to suit the taste of foreign clientele, thus perpetuating a legacy of artistic excellence.
A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE
In the spring of 1941, Van Beuningen was looking to raise a significant sum of money in cash and began negotiating a sale of a group of works from his collection to Hans Posse for the planned ‘Führermuseum’ in Linz. On 4 July 1941, he accepted Posse's offer of 1.5 million guilders for a group of eighteen pictures that included the Virgin and Child with Parrot and an eclectic range of other works by the likes of Goya, Tintoretto, Strozzi, Sellaio, Lucas van Leyden and Stephan Lochner. The most expensive were the French eighteenth century paintings by Watteau, Lancret and Pater. For a detailed account of the sale see A. Dekker, A Controversial Past – Museum Boijmans van Beuningen and the Second World War, Rotterdam, 2018, pp. 64-66.
All eighteen pictures were returned to the Netherlands by the Allies in 1945 and eventually bought back by Van Beuningen from the Dutch state in 1950. With the exception of this work, they are all today in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.