Follower of Pieter Coecke van Aelst

The composition of the central panel derives from a painting by Coecke van Aelst in the National Museum, Warsaw (see G. Marlier, Pierre Coecke d’Alost, Brussels 1966, pp. 174-5, reproduced fig. 116). The wings however are variants of a design by the artist known, for example, through a triptych representing The Adoration of the Magi, flanked by the Annunciation and the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, now in the collection of Princeton University (reproduced in op. cit., p. 125, fig. 49). This painting, in turn, is inspired by a design by the artist’s father-in-law, Jan van Dornicke. The depiction in the present work of the Virgin and Angel Annunciate in the opposite sense from the Princeton picture implies that our painting may have been inspired by an engraving after Coecke van Aelst’s original design.