Lucas Gassel

Alexis, Prince Orloff, Paris;
His deceased sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 29–30 April 1920, lot 45 (as attributed to Joachim Patinir), for 4,000 Francs to Spears, England;
Baron Scheyven;
Galerie De Jonckheere, Brussels and Paris, 1990;
Anonymous sale, Paris, Jean-Claude Renard, 20 February 2008 (as Herri met de Bles);
Where acquired by the present owner.

The following condition report is provided by Hamish Dewar who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Structural Condition The artist's panel is uncradled with one horizontal join approximately 14 cm above the lower horizontal edge. The panel join is visible in raking light but is secure and stable. The panel is very slightly bowed on the upper edge. Paint Surface The paint surface has a rather uneven varnish layer and revarnishing would be beneficial to ensure a more even surface coating. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows extensive retouchings in the sky which cover a significant proportion of the clouds. These retouchings appear quite excessive and I am sure could be reduced with more careful inpainting. There is also a horizontal line of retouching along the panel join mentioned above. It is difficult to assess the extent of retouching in the landscape and the details of the foreground due to the opaque varnish layers but the retouchings in these areas would appear considerably less extensive than in the sky. There may be other retouchings beneath old opaque varnish layers which are not identifiable under ultra-violet light. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in reasonably good and stable condition, although the extensive retouchings in the sky should be noted.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The dominant figure who strongly influenced landscape painting in the Southern Netherlands in the sixteenth century until the advent of Pieter Bruegel the Elder was Joachim Patinir, to whom this and many other early landscapes were once given. His vertiginous rocky outcrops, probably initially inspired by rock formations along the River Meuse near his native Dinant, recur in most of the works by his followers, including Herri met de Bles, Lucas Gassel, Cornelis Massys and The Master of the Half-Lengths.

More recently this wonderfully imaginative picture was until thought to be the work of Herri met de Bles, and signed by him with the owl (on the mountain to the right). While it appears that the artist may upon occasion have signed with an owl, corresponding to his Italian nickname Civetta (Tawny Owl), by no means all the owls that appear in early Flemish landscapes are signatures of Herri Met de Bles (see also lot 1). Moreover, this picture differs somewhat in handling from those of Herri, and the staffage is completely different.

The distinctive handling of the dense clumps of trees, the fantastic distant architecture and the stocky principal figures are all strongly characteristic of Lucas Gassel, and argue for a dating in the 1540s. According to Van Mander, Gassel was a Brussels painter, but there is much evidence to suggest that he trained in Antwerp.¹ The construction of the landscape is complex, revealing an interest in geological formations and the colour and stratification of rocks in remarkable detail and innate naturalism.² The artist has given his imagination full rein, both in the natural features and the extravagant architecture of the distant city of Jerusalem, and the more distant fortifications and the roof tops of towns seen on the horizon. In the foreground, apes, symbols of the devil, disport themselves. 

The conflation of the three Temptations of Christ in the desert is unusual but there are contemporary examples in Netherlandish painting, notably by Jakob Cornelisz. of Amsterdam in the Suermondt Museum in Aachen.³ The artist has represented two of those temptations in this composition; in the centre the devil, dressed in a monk's habit, tempts Jesus to break his fast by turning stones into bread. The second scene, actually the last of the three told in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, is depicted atop the mountain in the distance; the devil offers Christ all the kingdoms and glory should he bow down before him.

We are grateful to Professor Walter Gibson for confirming the attribution to Gassel on the basis of a jpeg.⁴

The background view of Jerusalem may be derived from the woodcut in the Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam of Bernhard von Breydenbach of 1486. 

1.  Gassel seems to have painted the landscape setting for Joos van Cleve's St John on Patmos in Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Art Gallery; see W.S. Gibson, "Mirror of Earth."  The World Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting, Princeton 1989, pp. 17-18, reproduced plate 2.2.

2.  Interest in geology permeates Gassel's oeuvre.  He even painted a mining scene with no other apparent subject in a work dated 1544 in Brussels, Musée des Beaus-Arts; see Gibson, op. cit., p. 18, reproduced plate 2.7.

3. See G. Schiller, Iconographie of Christian Art, vol. I, 1971, p. 145, plate 404.

4.  Per email, 30th May 2015.