Master of the Female Half-Lengths

With Dr. Paul Mersch, Paris;

Anonymous sale, Rudolph Lepke, Berlin, 22 February 1910, lot 25;

With Gemälde-Galerie Abels, Cologne, by March 1951;

Anonymous sale, Christie's, Monte Carlo, 7 December 1987, lot 21;

With Heinz Kisters, Kreuzlingen.

M.J. Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei, vol. XII, Leiden 1935, p. 172, cat. no. 61;

M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. XII, New York 1975, p. 96, cat. no. 61 (as 1601).

An anonymous painter of the first half of the sixteenth century, the Master of the Female Half-lengths, given his notname by Max Friedländer in the early twentieth century, devoted himself to the depiction of female figures, usually half-length, inspired by episodes from the Bible and antiquity. Mostly active in Antwerp and Mechelen from about 1525 to 1550, he also illustrated episodes from the life of Christ as well as aristocratic figures playing instruments or reading in wood-panelled interiors.

This Virgin with a halo is typical of the works in his corpus: a long, slender nose; pink, firmly closed lips; an oblong face; finely drawn eyebrows; and elegantly waved hair parted in the middle – these are all attributes of the Master’s Virgins, while the Child’s diaphanous tunic, long body and charming gesture are unmistakable. Standing out against a dark, neutral ground, he has a golden nimbus, emphasizing his divinity. An opalescent veil covers the Virgin’s shoulders and wraps around the Child, as though to illustrate her motherly love and grace.

This painting may be compared to the tondo by Adriaen Isenbrandt in the Machado de Castro National Museum in Coimbra (inv. no. 3351), which was widely copied and in which the Child has the same tender gesture. Such attitudes of enveloping intimacy were recurrent in early Flemish works of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A Virgin and Child similar to the present panel was sold at auction at Christie’s New York in April 2006.

The present panel is listed in the RKD databse – Netherlands Institute for Art History as number 30749.