Five outstanding works from the Old Masters sales

The Musicians, Johannes van Bronchorst

Born and raised in Utrecht, Johannes van Bronchorst fell under the sway of the Dutch city’s Caravaggesque school: artists such as Gerrit van Honthorst and Hendrick ter Brugghen, who had spent time in Rome during the early 17th century and become markedly influenced by the art of Caravaggio and his immediate followers.

Not long after turning 20, Bronchorst himself felt the allure of the Eternal City, settling there between roughly 1648 and 1650. With its vivid chiaroscuro and naturalism of execution, his painting The Musicians is clearly indebted to the Italian master.

It depicts three figures preparing to play music: two older men, who are tuning their instruments, and a young female singer, who waits for them impatiently. A golden light enters the scene from an external source, illuminating the figures’ faces and hands, as well as the honey-coloured wood of the violin and theorbo.

The folds of the trio’s garments are plunged into velvety shadows, as is the background, imbuing the whole scene with a dark theatricality. It is notable, too, for realistic details such as the greying beard of the man on the left, the furrowed brow of the man on the right, and the meticulously carved forms of the instruments they’re playing.

Figure of a mourner, French, late 14th or early 15th century

The figure of the mourner (pleurant in French) is a characteristic motif in late medieval funerary sculpture. Such figures tend to be cloaked, small-scale and depicted in the act of weeping or grieving. Typically, they were placed around the sides of a tomb’s lower register, beneath the recumbent effigy — together forming what looked like a funeral procession.

Developed in north-western Europe, and most readily associated with the court of Burgundy, this typology appeared in the early 1300s and grew more elaborate over succeeding decades.

Executed in marble and carved in high relief, the mourner coming to auction probably dates from the second half of the 14th century or the start of the 15th. It has rounded features, a short, fleshy nose, a downturned mouth, and a hood that partially covers the eyes. It rests on a rounded base, from which its feet protrude slightly.

As is often the case, this pleurant has been detached from its original context, which is unknown.

Scène de l’Enfer, du Dante, Camille-Félix Bellanger

Dante Alighieri’s epic poem, The Divine Comedy, enjoyed particular popularity in France in the 19th century. Numerous French translations were made, and many artists took inspiration from its episodes, with well-known results including Auguste Rodin’s sculptural masterpiece The Gates of Hell and Eugène Delacroix’s painting The Barque of Dante.

Also part of this tradition is Camille-Félix Bellanger’s Scène de l’Enfer, du Dante, a painting that plunges the viewer into the seventh trench of the eighth circle of Hell. This is a dark abyss where thieves are punished, and we duly encounter a naked male figure lying on the ground, under attack from vicious snakes. On the right, faces emerge from the shadows, their features ravaged by terror and the agony of eternal punishment.

Born in Paris in 1853, Bellanger won the Prix de Rome in his early twenties, before exhibiting Scène de l’Enfer, du Dante at the Salon of 1879. Its sombre palette, stony background and pallid lighting lend this scene the suffocating atmosphere of the infernal depths.

Portrait of a man in armour, Brussels School, 17th century

This painting was once erroneously thought to be an imagined depiction of Frederick I of Hohenstaufen, also known as Frederick Barbarossa, who had been Holy Roman Emperor for much of the second half of the 12th century. Of greater significance, however, is the armour that the subject is wearing, elements of which were produced for the royal armoury of Philip the Handsome, ruler of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1482 to 1506.

These elements were subsequently preserved in Brussels, where Jan Brueghel the Elder had access to the royal armoury for artistic purposes. In The Sense of Touch (1618) — a painting he executed with Peter Paul Rubens, which today hangs in the Prado in Madrid — one can see, in the composition’s lower left, the same cuirass as that worn by the man in the picture coming to auction. It seems likely that the unnamed artist was a member of Brueghel’s circle and had access to his sketches.

The subject, whose identity is unknown, wears a type of armour specifically designed for ‘jousts of peace’, a form of tournament popular in Renaissance Europe.

Remarkably, in 2001, Christie’s sold a tournament vambrace for the left arm and a mitten gauntlet for the right hand, which are believed to be the precise items worn by the figure depicted here.

Saint John the Evangelist; The Living Cross; The Donor in Prayer, Brussels School, 1506

In this early-16th-century triptych, the iconographic programme of the ‘Living Cross’ unfolds. This is a eucharistic allegory from the late Middle Ages, which represents the distribution of divine justice.

Almost all surviving examples are wall paintings. Executed on panel, the work coming to auction is a notable exception, suggesting a private, rather than a public, devotional purpose.

The central section features a monumental cross rising before a vivid red cloth. Christ occupies it, crowned with thorns, his head slightly inclined.

Crucially, four hands emerge from the cross’s arms and shaft (it is in this sense that it is ‘living’). In traditional versions of the allegory, the upper hand opens the gates of Heaven, while the lower hand shatters the gates of Hell. Here, the latter has a similar, though subtly different function: it grabs the arm of one of the tormented bodies and demonic creatures that populate the bottom of the scene. This represents the defeat of the church’s enemies.

In a piece of devotional symmetry, each of the side panels shows a figure looking inwards at the main action: Saint John the Evangelist on the left; and the triptych’s commissioner, wearing a white robe and kneeling in prayer before an open book, on the right.

This work binds the spiritual destiny of its donor to the triumph of Christ; it is at once a theological programme and an act of private devotion.

Maîtres Anciens: Peintures — Sculptures and Maîtres Anciens: Peintures — Dessins — Sculptures — Orfèvrerie online are on view at Christie’s in Paris, 6-10 June 2026

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