Lucas Cranach the Elder

With Dr. Curt Benedict, Paris (by November 1937);
With Paul Cassirer, Amsterdam (by February 1939), Bears Cassirer Gallery label on the reverse, with the handwriting of Dr. Lütjens, Director of the gallery;
With Walter Andreas Hofer, Berlin (acquired from the above in February 1939);
Sold by Hofer for Reichsmarks 24,000 to Konrad Kaletsch, Berlin, intended as a belated (12^th January 1939) birthday gift from his uncle Dr. Friedrich Flick  to Hermann Goering;
Probably Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering;
With Walter Andreas Hofer, Munich (by 1955 and probably by 1952);
Sold in 1955 to Professor Robert Ellscheid, Cologne-Marienburg;
Thence by descent to the present owner, his grandson.

 

Frankfurt, Städel, Cranach, 23 November 2007 - 17 February 2008, no. 17.

J. Wittmann, "Die Bedeutung des Marienbildes im Schaffen Cranachs", in I. Sandner (ed.), Unsichtbare Meisterzeichnungen auf dem Malgrund – Cranach und seine Zeitgenossen.  Catalogue of the Exhibition and Record of the Symposium at the Wartburg in Eisenach, Regensburg 1998, pp. 170-1;
B. Brinkmann, in B. Brinkman (ed.), Cranach, exhibition catalogue, Frankfurt 2007, p. 146, no. 17, reproduced in colour facing page, and English language edition, London 2008, also p. 146, no. 17, reproduced facing page;
A. Kunz, Review of the Cranach exhibition, in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CL, March 2008, p. 200 ('unlike anything in Cranach's oeuvre');
N. H. Yeide, Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection, Dallas 2009, p. 425, no. B45, listed (in the section "Likely in Goering's Collection").

The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has been preserved in exceptionally intact condition. Not only has the carefully selected panel remained remarkably stable but also the calm state of the paint surface, apparently undisturbed over a settled, peaceful early history, seems to have had unusually few interventions since. The lime wood panel has horizontal planks with four joints. A holding frame covering the edges was used during painting by Cranach for many of his panels, although the gesso lip around the edge here is also similar to that of an integrated gilded frame on an Italian religious panel. The back of the panel has been thinned and cradled probably in the early to mid twentieth century, with any worm damage filled behind. Restoration from that period can be seen under ultra violet light along the joints and occasionally elsewhere, with a few more recent adjustments appearing more darkly over the old varnish. There is a fine, even, minute craquelure, altering slightly in the lapis blue of the Madonna's drapery. In the middle of her deep madder drapery above, just below her arm, there is an old semi rectangular repair about four centimetres wide. The joints have old retouching strokes lightly overlapping original paint on each side, and elsewhere the same light fairly old retouching can be seen under ultra violet, unassumingly muting a few minor old cracks near the shoulder of the Child, a small old slanting crack on His chin and a rather longer mark on His temple, another small patch on His thigh, a small flake at the top of the Madonna's forehead, one or two minor old scratches in the sky and occasional retouching at the edges for instance behind St. John's kneeling feet. Some later rather clumsier retouching has adjusted a very few of these places, for example the joint running across the cheek of the Madonna, without removing the old varnish. There is exceptionally little trace of wear from past restoration, only a few rare instances such as the thin Peruginesque curl of the Madonna's tied hair on the left against the horizon. Elsewhere virtually throughout every crisp detail for instance of the foliage, the delicate swirling highlights in the hair and rich warm glazes in the flesh painting are immaculately unworn and intact. The fine technique has matured naturally with minimal intervention. A few minor pentimenti are faintly visible, adjusting the curve of Christ's cheek for example.
"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."

Although known to earlier scholars such as M.J. Friedländer and Ernst Buchner, this early work by Cranach, since 1955 in the same family collection, was largely forgotten until it appeared in the Cranach exhibition in Frankfurt in 2007.  Prior to that, it had been studied by Bodo Brinkmann and Gunnar Heydenreich, both of whom came to the conclusion that it was painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder in Wittenberg circa 1512.

Brinkmann saw in this work an awareness of the work of Pietro Perugino.  Although Cranach was clearly aware of facets of Italian art from early in his career, a number of works painted in the first part of the second decade of the 16th century show a heightened affinity with contemporary Italian painting, and this has led some scholars, notably Mark Evans, to speculate that Cranach might have made a journey to Italy, possibly in early 1509.¹ Evans compares a Cranach Virgin and Child of 1509-10 with a painting of the same subject by Francesco Francia which itself reveals echoes both of Perugino and early Raphael.²  As Brinkmann noted, Cranach's Uffizi Madonna and Child with Saint John of circa 1514 is reminiscent of the early work of Raphael and Perugino, and the present slightly earlier work has an asymmetric note also found in Perugino.³  Brinkmann goes further, suggesting that "we can perhaps see [this] panel as a free re-creation of a model from the school of Perugino".⁴  While the visual evidence that at this time Cranach absorbed influences from Tuscan and Umbrian painting of the preceding decade is abundantly clear, it seems unlikely that he was able to squeeze a transalpine return journey in winter between New Year and Easter 1509, as Evans has raised as a possibility, and if he had, he would have had no time to look before turning round.  Nonetheless, the present picture is striking evidence that Cranach was receptive to Italian influences at this time.

Dr. Gunnar Heydenreich has observed that Cranach used the same carpenter for his panels (probably Michael Tischer) between 1505 and 1512, and that his panels from this period are formed of planks running across the panel; (thus horizontally in a panel support for an upright composition, as here).⁵  After 1512 the panel formation changes to a more conventional lengthways orientation of planks.  The present panel is formed of horizontal planks, so Dr Heydenreich believes this gives a terminus ante quem of 1512 for this painting.  A copy of Dr Heydenreich's report dated Dormagen, 6 June 2008, may be inspected upon request, and will be made available to the purchaser.     

Certificates written by M.J. Friedländer in Berlin on 2 May 1938 and in Amsterdam, 26 November 1952, and by Ernst Buchner in Munich on 4 January 1953 (all as by Lucas Cranach the Elder) have been kept in the archives of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, to whom Hofer offered this work in 1955.  Copies may be inspected upon request, and the originals, which are the property of the consignor, may be made available to the purchaser.

PROVENANCE
Exhaustive searches have revealed no trace of this picture before it was recorded with Curt Benedict in Paris in1937, and it is possible that, as an unsigned work, Cranach's authorship was not recognised until then.

Sotheby's has consulted extensively with public institutions and private researchers on each of the names that appears in the provenance sequence above, and no further information has become available that sheds light on the work's ownership and location prior to 1937, nor how the painting came back into the possession of Walter Andreas Hofer after the end of the Second World War.

Amongst others, Sotheby's has consulted with Walter Feilchenfeldt in Zürich, the leading archival authority on the Paul Cassirer gallery; with the lawyer in Paris for the Oppenheimer family, who owned a number of art dealerships with which Dr. Curt Benedict was associated in Berlin during the 1920s and early 1930s; with Nancy H. Yeide, author of Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection; with Dr. Ilse von zur Mühlen in Munich, author of Die Kunstsammlung Hermann Görings; with Anne Georgeon-Liskenne, Archivist at the French Foreign Office; and with Professor Jonathan Petropoulos, John V. Croul Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College, who has researched Walter Andreas Hofer's art-trading activities before and after the War. None of these scholars and authorities has been able to add substantively to what is already known about the provenance. The painting features on no publicly-available database of art displaced or lost between 1933 and 1945.

This picture was included in the German and English editions of the Cranach exhibition catalogue in 2008. It was exhibited in Frankfurt but not in the subsequent leg of the exhibition in London.

1.  See M. Evans, in Brinkmann 2008 under literature, pp. 49-61, and especially p. 57.
2.  Idem, pp. 56-7, reproduced figs 10 & 11.
3.  For the Uffizi picture see Brinkmann, op. cit., pp. 144-5, no. 16, reproduced in colour.
4.  Idem.  This is probably going too far; there is far more of Cranach in this work than of Perugino.
5.  In a report made in 2008.