Hugo van der Goes

Isidor Kaiser (1890-1965), Berlin and Copenhagen,

thence by inheritance to the present owners

Though fragmentary and somewhat damaged, this elegantly rendered study of an angel is a very rare survival, as extremely few high quality Netherlandish drawings from the 15th century survive. The dating of the drawing to the period around 1470-80 is on stylistic grounds, and the watermark in the paper (an ox's head) supports this conclusion.¹

Extremely few Netherlandish drawings of this time can be firmly - or even reasonably firmly - attributed to a specific artist, but groups of stylistically related drawings can nonetheless be identified that must originate from the workshop or immediate orbit of each of the key painters. Here, we see some similarities with drawings from the orbit of Dirck Bouts, but the closest parallels are to be found in drawings associated with the name of the short-lived Ghent genius, Hugo van der Goes (circa 1430/40-1482). In the roundel drawing of Joseph and Asenath, in Oxford², made in the Van der Goes workshop around 1475, the facial types and the feathery, repeated hatching marks in the drapery - finer and lighter than in most of the surviving drawings of this period - are both rather similar to what we see in this enigmatic but very finely drawn study of an angel.   

1. The ox head watermark was in widespread use, especially in Germany but also in the Netherlands, from the 14th until the mid-16th century. Unfortunately, the watermark in this drawing is somewhat abraded, so it is hard to establish precisely which of the many ox head marks it is.   

2. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. 1863-142