Colijn de Coter Active, chiefly in Brussels, circa 1480 - 1525

The Marquesa de Foz, Palacio Foz sale, Lisbon, da Cunha, 3 May 1901, lot 525 (with pendant);
Luis Navas, Madrid;
José Lázaro, Madrid, until 1935;
With Dr. Hans Wendland, Paris, June 1935 (as by Massys);
With Theodor Fischer, Lucerne by September 1936, when separated from pendant, and until at least November 1937;
Probably acquired shortly thereafter by the family of the present owners.

E. Pelinck, "Cornelis Engelbrechtsz., de herkomst van zijn kunst", in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, vol. II, 1948-49, p. 48 (as by Engelbrechtsz.);
M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. IV, Leiden and Brussels 1969, p. 87, supplement no. 133, reproduced plate 112 (as by de Coter);
E. Bermejo Martinez, La Pintura de los Primitivos Flamencos en España, Madrid 1980, p. 191, nos.1 and 2, figs. 172-3 (as by de Coter);
C. Périer-D'Ieteren, Colyn de Coter et la technique picturale des peintres flamands du XVe siècle, Brussels 1985, p. 155, reproduced fig. 285 (under "oeuvres d'attribution plausible").

This panel originally formed a diptych with a panel depicting the Mater Dolorosa, but the two were separated when in the possession of the dealer Theodor Fischer in Lucerne between 1936 and 1937. This panel was acquired after November 1937 by the family of the present owners, by which time the Mater Dolorosa, sold the previous year to a Parisian collector by the name of Sickles, had entered the collection of Bruno John Wasserman in Buenos Aires; it was more recently offered in New York, Christie's, 18 May 1995, lot 135. The attribution to Colijn de Coter was first proposed by Friedländer, who first saw them with the Paris dealer Hans Wendland in 1935 (see Provenance), at which time the panels were attributed to Quentin Massys. Friedländer suggested a date of execution of circa 1480. All later scholars have agreed with this attribution except Pelinck, who advanced an alternative attribution to Cornelis Engelbrechtsz. and a much later dating of 1509-11. Most recently Catherine Périer-D'Ieteren, who had previously only known the diptych from photographs (see Literature below) has confirmed the attribution following first-hand examination of the Mater Dolorosa in 1994, and confirmed a possible dating of around 1500-1505.

Despite his importance to the development of painting in Brussels and beyond, little is as yet known about De Coter's life. He is no doubt the "Colyn van Brusele" listed in the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp in 1493, and is recorded again in the accounts of the Confraternity of Saint Eligius in Brussels, for whom he undertook to paint a tabernacle in 1509-10 and which he finished the following year. His extant work is grouped around three signed paintings: a Saint Luke painting the Virgin (Parish Church of Vieure, Cosne d'Allier), the altarpiece of The Trinity (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and a Virgin crowned by angels (German private collection). His style incorporated elements drawn from many sources, but chiefly the examples of Rogier van der Weyden and the Master of Flemalle. The present panel employs his characteristic use of decorative effects, such as the highly expressive use of details in the face and crown of thorns, and the brilliant brocade fabric of the curtain, a recurring element in many of his works.

The early history of the diptych has been much confused. An alternative or supplementary early Spanish provenance given for these panels provided by the auctioneer Theodor Fischer and cited by Périer-D'Ieteren (op. cit., p. 155) is unsupported, as is the suggestion at the time of the New York sale in 1995 that two versions of the diptych existed. The more probable provenance suggested here has been kindly provided by Suzanne Laemers from the Friedländer archive in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorisches Documentatie in The Hague.