Bernard van Orley

Probably one of four panels from an altarpiece commissioned by Abbot Jacques Coëne for the Benedictine abbey of Marchiennes near Douai, France, circa 1515-19;
Probably Charles X (Charles Gustavus) of Sweden (1622-1660), Château de Ris Orangis;
Pineau collection, Paris;
By inheritance to his nephew, Jacques de Chefdebien, Paris;
Probably with F. Kleinberger & Co., Paris and New York;
Mortimer L. Schiff, New York;
His deceased sale (by order of John Mortimer Schiff), London, Christie's, 24 June 1938, lot 77, for 1,600 Guineas to Partridge;
With Frank Partridge, London and New York;
Possibly with Knoedler, New York, 1942, when exhibited by them;
LeRoy M. Backus, New York (died 1948);
With Schaeffer Galleries (who handled the sale of the above collection), New York, 1948;
Dr Hans Wetzlar (died 1970), Amsterdam, by whom bought in 1953, probably from the Schaeffer Galleries;
His widow, Maria Wetzlar, Amsterdam (died 1977);
Their sale (The collection of the Late Dr. Hans Wetzlar), Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 9 June 1977, lot 87, for 760,000 guilders to Hans Cramer;
With Hans M. Cramer, The Hague;
From whom bought by the present owner.

Brussels, Exposition Internationale et Universelle de Bruxelles, Cinq Siècles d'Art, 24 May - 19 October 1935, no. 104 (with companion panel);
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Flemish Primitives, 13 April - 9 May 1942 (with companion panel);
Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, De Madonna in de Kunst, 1954, no. 77 (lent by Dr. H. Wetzlar);
Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Kunstchatten uit Nederlandse verzamelingen, 1955, no. 24 (lent by Dr. H. Wetzlar);
Laren, Singer Museum, Zomer Tentoonstelling Kunstchatten. Twee Nederlandse collecties schilderijen Vijftiende tot en met Zeventiende Eeuw, 1959, no. 15 (lent by Dr. H. Wetzlar);
Laren, Singer Museum, Nederlandse Primitieven, 1 July - 10 September 1961, no. 100 (lent by Dr. H. Wetzlar).

M.J. Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei, vol. VIII, Berlin 1930, pp. 85-7, 168, no. 92, reproduced plate LXXX;
M.J. Friedländer, in F. Thieme & U. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildende Künstler..., vol. XXVI, 1932, p. 49;
G. de Tervarent, "Les sources littéraires de van Orley: Legende dorée et vie du bienheureux Martin", in Revue Belge d'Archeologie et d'Histoire de l'Art, vol. III, 1933, pp. 19-20;
P. Lambotte, Memorial de l'Exposition d'Art Ancien à Bruxelles, Brussels 1935, vol. I, pp. 50-1, no. 104, reproduced plate 46;
S. Hartveld, "Valentin van Orley", in The Burlington Magazine, LXIX, December 1936, pp. 264 and 269 (as Valentin van Orley);
M.J. Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei, vol. XIV, Berlin 1937, p. 112;
T. Borenius, "Die Auktion der Kunstsammlungen Mortimer L. Schiff'", in Pantheon, vol. XXII, 1938, p. 259, reproduced p. 264;
"Englischer Kunstmarkt: USA. Besitz auf Londoner Versteigerungen", in Weltkunst, XII, nos 24/25, 19 June 1938, p. 3;
J. Lauts, "The Schiff collection at auction: a Famous American collection in the London Saleroom", in Art News, 4 June 1938, p. 9;
G. de Tervarent, Les Enigmes de l'Art du Moyen-Age, 1941, p. 55;
Flemish Primitives. An exhibition organized by the Belgian Government through the Belgian Information Center, exhibition catalogue, New York, Knoedler Galleries, 1942, p. 77, reproduced;
H. Velge, in Société Royale d'Archeologie de Bruxelles, 1943, pp. 55, 97-100, reproduced plate VIII;
J. Lavalleye, Le Style de Barend van Orley, 1943;
L. Baldass, "Die Entwicklung des Bernart van Orley", in Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, vol. XIII, 1944, pp. 150-2;
"The Backus collection", in Schaeffer Galleries Bulletin, no. 6, November 1948 (unpaginated), no. 4, reproduced;
L. Reis-Santos, Masterpieces of Flemish Painting of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in Portugal, Lisbon 1962, pp. 99-100, under no. 59;
M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. VIII, Leyden 1972, p. 103, no. 92, reproduced plate 91;
J.G. van Gelder, "Scorel, Mor, Bellegambe und Orley in Marchiennes", in Oud Holland, 1973, pp. 170- 172, reproduced p. 168, fig. 13;
C. Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection.  European Schools excluding Italian, Oxford 1977, p. 81;
E. Haverkamp-Begemann, Wadsworth Atheneum Paintings.  Catalogue I, the Netherlands and the German-speaking Countries.  Fifteenth-Nineteenth Centuries, Hartford 1978, p. 170;
J.D. Farmer, Bernard van Orley of Brussels, dissertation, Princeton 1981, pp. 99-102, 119 (note 32), 338, no. 92a (ii), reproduced fig. 42;
J.O. Hand & M. Wolff, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Early Netherlandish Painting, Washington 1986, p. 222;
B.L. Dunbar, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. German and Netherlandish Paintings 1450-1600, Kansas City 2005, pp. 204-216, reproduced fig 15d and 15c (the reverse).

The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on an oak panel made up of three vertical planks, with a comparatively old cradle, but no trace of past movement or flaking. The right joint has a narrow line of retouching while that on the left appears to have remained stable and unmoved. There is one curious diagonal section at the top left corner, presumably stemming from the dismemberment of the altarpiece, with old retouching and one little loose piece of retouched filling across the joint. The base edge is also scuffed or rubbed with one little retouched knock or crack just below the hem of the brocaded cope. Some tiny retouching can be seen under ultra violet light, on the door behind the column to the right but otherwise there is no trace of intervention at all, apart from slight wear in the stained glass window. The extraordinary purity of the brushwork and depth of colour reflects this exceptional technique, and its natural maturity with scarcely any disturbance. The fine contours of the drapery and rich final glazes are immaculately intact virtually throughout. The small panel portrait of a praying Abbot inset into the cradling behind has a few small lost flakes and tiny old knocks but has not been worn or retouched. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This is one of four panels of similar size and consistent style that may have been painted by Van Orley for the same altarpiece, and if they were not, were certainly painted at around the same time - circa 1514-19 - for two very similar altarpieces and as part of a common commission, probably for Jacques Coëne, Abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Marchiennes, near Douai in Northern France.

All four panels have or had reverses incorporating a crozier and an intertwined banderolle bearing the legend FINIS CORONAT, and a fictive frame with a curved top.  The present panel had a companion depicting The Knighting of Saint Martin by the Emperor Constantine.  The two were separated in New York in 1953, when Hans Wetzlar bought the present panel, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City acquired the companion.¹  The reverse of the present panel retains only the legend FINIS CORONAT, but it formerly had a portrait of a donor bishop in the fictive frame (see fig. 1), whereas the reverse of the Kansas City panel has a Virgin and Child in its fictive frame.  If these are two wings of a diptych, or of an altarpiece, the orientation of the reverses suggest that this was the right wing and the Kansas City panel the left.  The four panels and their present or former reverses are here reproduced together in fig. 2.

The subject of Saint Martin clearly connects the present panel with the one in Kansas City.  The other two panels depict subjects from the life of Saint John the Baptist, and are currently located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  One is The Martyrdom of Saint John (sold in these Rooms, 9 July 2008, lot 7, now a promised gift to the Metropolitan Museum) and the other The Birth of Saint John (bequeathed to the Museum in 2001).  Both had very similar reverses to the Saint Martin panels, with, within the fictive frames; a tonsured donor (Martyrdom of Saint John); and Christ as the Man of Sorrows (Birth of Saint John).  Thus both sets of companion panels bore on their reverses donors paired with devotional images, much as a Netherlandish diptych of the time might do.

Friedländer thought that the four panels came from the same altarpiece, but Farmer thought they came from two separate altarpieces of similar dimensions.²  Maryan Ainsworth has kindly suggested that they were the wings of two altarpieces, of which the central part may have consisted of a sculptural group in wood.³  

Whether or not all the four panels came from the same altarpieces, the legend they all bear – Finis Coronat – is the motto of Jacques Coëne, whose coat-of-arms appears on the reverse of Van Orley's Christ among the Doctors in Washington.⁴  Coëne was born in Bruges in 1468/9 and he was Abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Marchiennes, near Douai in Northern France from 1501 until his death in 1542.  He was an active patron of the visual arts and commissioned several important works from Netherlandish painters during his long tenure as Abbot, including works by Jan van Scorel, Anthonis Mor and Jean Bellegambe.⁵  It thus seems plausible that he commissioned from Van Orley the altarpiece of which this panel is a part – or two altarpieces of which this is a part of one - perhaps because he had been well-pleased with the Washington picture, a small-scale work presumably intended for private devotion, which probably dates from slightly earlier, circa 1513.  As the founder of the first monasteries in Europe, and a a destroyer of pagan shrines, Saint Martin (c. 315-397), who was Bishop of Tours from about 370, would have been an obvious subject of veneration for Coëne, and it is surely of significance that Van Orley has here included the figure of a tonsured Benedictine monk, partly hidden behind the central pillar.  The scene in the right background recounts a little-known event in the life of the Saint, related by Jacobus de Voragine in The Golden Legend: he accepted a challenge to stand where a tree dedicated to devils that he had ordered to be felled would crush him in its fall, but as it strted to fall on him, he made the sign of the Cross and it swerved aside, almost crushing his challengers, who were all converted to the true faith.⁶   

It is not known when the panels left Marchiennes, or what happened to them afterwards.  The Saint Martin panels were thought to have been in the collection of Charles X (Charles Gustavus) of Sweden (1622-1660) at his Château Ris Orangis, but this cannot be proved.  Of the Saint John panels, nothing certain is known of them until they appeared with Kleinberger in New York in the last century.

Scholars have disagreed over the dating of this and related panels, though only within a limited span of years.  Friedländer dated the Martyrdom of Saint John panel circa 1513 in a certificate offered with it when it was sold in 1947, and we may assume that he would have assigned the other panels a similar date.  Farmer dates them circa 1517-18, Hand & Wolff circa 1518-19, while Van Gelder concluded that the Saint Martin panels were in situ in Marchiennes by 1515, and Dunbar dates them circa 1514.⁷

A tree-ring analysis conducted by the dendrochronologist Ian Tyers in 2008 showed that the centre and left-hand plank of the three that make up the Martyrdom of Saint John panel (boards B & C) come from the same tree, and that the last hardwood ring of the right-hand panel dates from 1484, indicating an earliest felling date of 1493, and a conjectural usage date of 1493 -1525. It is interesting to note that Peter Klein's dendrochronological report on the Kansas City Saint Martin panel which comprises four planks, gives a probably felling date between 1496 and 1502, and he concludes that 1504 is the earliest plausible date of use.   Since he is inclined to allow for more years of sapwood growth than Tyers, one may infer a similar likely date for both panels.

Dr. Tyers was able to examine the present Saint Martin adoring the Holy Family in April 2010.  Like the Martyrdom of Saint John panel, it comprises three planks of Baltic oak, aligned vertically.  He noticed that the left hand plank (C) was cut from the same tree as the two planks (B & C) of the Martyrdom of Saint John panel.  This makes it extremely likely that all four panels were used at around the same time, if not for a single altarpiece (as Dr. Tyers believes, given the unusual vertical alignment of the planks), then at least as part of a single commission.

A copy of Ian Tyers' report may be inspected upon request, and will be made available to the buyer.⁸

1.  See Dunbar, 2005, under literature, pp. 199-216, reproduced, where the four panels are discussed in depth.
2. See under literature: Friedländer, 1972; Farmer, 1981.
3.  By fax.
4.  Washington, National Gallery of Art, inv. 1952.5.47 (1126); see Hand & Wolff, 1986, pp. 218-223.
5.  Part of a polyptych by Scorel is in Douai, Musée de la Chartreuse, and the panel depicting the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins, has a portrait of Coëne on the reverse.  For a fuller account of Coëne's account, see Van Gelder, under literature, 1973, pp. 156-176
6.  See J. de Voragine, The Golden Legend, tr. W.G. Ryan, Princeton1993, vol. 2, p. 295.  Van Orley has supplanted the pine tree described by De Voragine with an oak, and also contrary to the account, has it falling fair and square on the Saint's pagan challengers.
7. See under literature: Farmer, 1981; Hand & Wolff, 1986; Van Gelder, 1973.
8. Dendrochronological Consultancy Ltd. Report 345, May 2010.