Follower of Jan Gossaert, called Mabuse

Private Collection, Paris, by whom sold to Galerie Pardo, Paris;
Galerie Pardo, Paris, by whom sold to Wildenstein and Co., London, 1953 (as Jan Gossaert);
With Wildenstein and Co., London, until 1969 when sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, California;
J. Paul Getty Museum, California, no. 69.PB.10.

London, Wildenstein and Co., Highly Important Paintings by Rembrandt, Boucher... and Others, June 17 - August 1, 1959, no. 21 (as Jan Gossaert);
London, Wildenstein and Co., Religious Themes in Paintings from the 14th Century Onwards, March 16 - May 5, 1962, no. 30 (as Mabuse);
Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition, 1969 (as Jan Gossaert).

Review of the 1962 Wildenstein Exhibition, in Burlington Magazine, vol. CIV, no. 709, April 1962, reproduced p. 175, fig. 44 (as Mabuse);
Phoenix Art Museum Bulletin, December 1969;
B.B. Fredericksen, Catalogue of the Paintings in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu 1972, p. 48, no. 49, reproduced;
D. Jaffé, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu 1997, p. 43, reproduced (as Flemish, Antwerp School, 16th Century).

Only after its acquisition by the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1969 was any doubt cast on the attribution of this painting to Jan Gossaert. It had been exhibited twice in London and once in Phoenix as by Gossaert (see Exhibited) and, after it was purchased by Wildenstein and Co. in 1953, Max J. Friedlander wrote of it as a work "of outstanding quality... by Jan Gossaert" (reverse of photograph in the Getty Museum archive). Most recently it has been published by David Jaffé as an anonymous Antwerp master (see Literature). Since 1969 an attribution to Jan Vermeyen has been considered by several scholars but this remains without foundation.

The recent confusion over the attribution may stem from the apparent stylistic nonconformity of the two figures; while the Virgin fits only loosely with Gossaert's known oeuvre, the child is wholly Gossaert-like, with his vigorous movement, complex contraposto and the sculptural modelling of his monumental body. He may be closely compared with the child in Gossaert's 1531 work in The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, no. 1972.47¹. Both are probably inspired ultimately by Albrecht Durer's Christ child in his panel of 1512 in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. 848². Others have suggested Raphael's depiction of the young Christ in his Bridgewater Madonna as inspiration.

1. see The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. LXI, Cleveland 1974, pp. 287-289;
2. see Die Gemäldegalerie des Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien, Vienna 1991, plate 565.