Franz Timmerman

Anonymous sale, Lempertz, Cologne, 14th May 1926, lot 196;
With C. van der Feer Ladèr, Baarn;
Dr. Wilhelm Mautner (1889-1944), Amsterdam;
Erhard Göpel, acquired from the above for Adolf Hitler's "Sonderauftrag Linz" (inv. no. 2996) in July 1943 for hfl. 24.000;
Recovered by the Allied forces and deposited with the Munich Central Collecting Point (inv. no. 3727) in 1945;
Returned to the custody of the Stichting Nederlandsch Kunstbezit, Holland in 1946 (inv. no. NK1655);
On loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht;
Restituted to the heirs of Dr. Wilhelm Mautner in 2010.

This is an exceptionally rare signed work by Franz Timmerman, one of only a handful of signed and dated works by his hand that have come down to us. What is known of his life and career affords a fascinating glimpse of the relationships and training of painters in mid 16th-century Germany as well as the fame and influence of Lucas Cranach the Elder, of whom Timmerman is a documented follower. 

A native of Hamburg, Timmerman was sent in 1538 by the city council to Wittenberg, the court of the Electors of Saxony, with a stipendium to undertake training in the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, on the understanding that he would then return to Hamburg. Timmerman's stay in Wittenberg lasted until 1541 or shortly thereafter, when he received a payment of 36 thalers from Hamburg for a painting together with the money for his return journey. He kept his word and was certainly back in Hamburg by 1543 when he was officially appointed Painter to the City Council. The date on this painting, 1534, suggests that Timmerman may already have met or known Cranach, for in its style and figure types it is heavily dependent upon his master's patterns. Indeed, it would appear to be his earliest known signed and dated work. Timmerman may have had in mind Cranach's own depiction of the subject from nearly twenty years earlier, one of a pair of panels painted in 1515 for Stanislav Thurza, Bishop of Olmutz, and now in the Archiepiscopal Palace in Kromeritz.

Although this picture shares with that the general disposition of the figures, especially those of Salome and the ladies of the Herodian court on the right, the introduction of the palace architecture and distant landscape suggest that Timmerman may also have seen Cranach's numerous drawings and paintings of David and Bathsheba which would have been present in the workshop from the mid 1520s for over a decade. Of Timmerman's other work little survives, but two signed and dated works, a Lucretia of 1536 and a much more accomplished Fall and Redemption of Man are both today in Hamburg, Kunsthalle, and a pair of Heraclitus and Democritus.

For a biography of Dr Wilhelm Mautner, see lot 11 in the Evening sale.