Workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aelst Aalst 1502 - 1550 Brussels

bidding is closed

Description

Pieter Coecke van Aelst the Elder
A Triptych: central panel: The Adoration of the Magileft wing: Melchior and a Kneeling Donorright wing: St Joseph with a Kneeling Donoroutside left wing: Saint Ambroseoutside right wing: Saint Augustine
dated on the right wing, centre right: 1528
oil on oak panel

Provenance

Francis Kerril Amherst (1858-1879), Bishop of Northampton;
Monsignor Joseph Canon Burke JCL (1854-1923).

Literature

G. Grössinger, North-European Panel Painitngs, London 1992, p. 151, cat. no. 39, reproduced figs. 138, 140 and 141.

Catalogue Note

The composition of this work almost certainly reflects an original design by Pieter Coecke van Aelst, whose Antwerp workshop produced many versions and variants of his works. All three panels that make up the present triptych are repeated in a triptych in the Lazaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid (see G. Marlier, Pierre Coeck D'Alost, Brussels 1966, p. 155. fig. 87). Marlier attributed the Madrid triptych to Pieter Coecke van Aelst's father-in-law Jan van Dornicke, but the present work is by a different hand. In the Madrid version, the Virgin wears a veil and Caspar is actually holding the child's arm. The composition recurs yet again, and perhaps closer still to the present work, in a triptych in Cadiz, Collection Vda. Cervera, and again in Namur, Hôtel Sainte-Croix (Marlier, op. cit., p. 155, figs. 88 and 89). The portraits of the donors on the outer wings are by another hand and are omitted from both the Madrid and Cadiz versions.

There are numerous further variants of the compositon in which, for example, the child adopts a different posture and the background landscape differs (see, for example, the triptych given by Marlier to the Master of the Utrecht Adoration in Utrecht, Musée Archiépiscopal (ibid., p. 147, fig. 77)), but in which the composition in general of all three panels is derivative. None, however, derive more closely than those mentioned above. That there are so many variants of one composition is not surprising given the size and work rate of Coecke van Aelst's workshop; his Last Supper, for example, popularized by Goltzius' engraving after it, is today known in 41 versions.