Hans Baldung, called Grien

Dr. H. Angst, Zurich, until 1907;
The Electors of Hohenzollern, Sigmaringen, by whom acquired in Basel in 1907, and subsequently located in the Fürstlich Hohenzollernsche Museum, Sigmaringen (inv. 7353), until 1928;
Acquired by Robert von Hirsch (1883-1977) in 1928, first housed in Bockenheimer Landstrasse, Frankfurt-am-Main, and from 1936 in the Engelgasse, Basel;
His posthumous sale, London, Sotheby's, 21 June 1978, lot 119, sold for £245,000, to Julia Kraus on behalf of the present owner.

Frankfurt-am-Main, Städelsche Kunstinstitut, Sigmaringer Sammlungen, 1928, no. 31.

M.J. Friedländer, in U. Thieme & F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, vol. II, Leipzig 1908, p. 404;
M. Escherich, Hans Baldung Grien Bibliographie 1509-1915, Strasbourg 1916, no. 343a, ziff. 3;
H. Curjel, Hans Baldung Grien, Munich 1923, pp. 75 and 151, reproduced plate 45;
F. Rieffel, "Das fürstlich Hohenzollernsche Museum zu Sigmaringen, Gemälde und Bildwerke", in Städel-Jahrbuch, vols. 3-4,1924, p. 61, reproduced plate xixa;
L. Baldass, "Der Stilwandel im Werk Hans Baldungs", in Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, NF III 1926, p. 30;
A.L. Mayer, "Die fürstlich Hohenzollern'schen Sammlungen in Sigmaringen; I. Die Gemälde...," in Pantheon, 1928, vol. I, p. 62;
Kurzes Verzeichnis der im Städelsches Kunstinstitut ausgestelten Sigmaringer Sammlungen, exhibition catalogue, Frankfurt-am-Main 1928, no. 31;
O. Fischer, Hans Baldung Grien, Munich 1939, p. 32;
C. Koch, "Katalog der Gemälde, der Einblattholzschnitte und illustrierten Bücher von Hans Baldung Grien", in Kunstchronik, vol. VI, no. 11, November 1953, p. 298;
P. Strieder, in Lexikon der Marienkunde, Regensburg 1959, p. 530;
[C. Koch], Hans Baldung Grien, exhibition catalogue, Karlsruhe, Kunsthalle, 4 July - 27 September 1959, p. 352, under no. XXIV;
F.-G. Pariset, "Grünewald et Baldung", in Cahiers Alsaciens d'Archeologie, d'Art et d'Histoire, vol. XIX, 1975-76, p. 150;
Masterpieces from the Robert von Hirsch Sale at Sotheby's, London 1978, p. 53, reproduced in colour p. 52;
F. Herrmann, `The sale of the Robert von Hirsch collection,' in Art at Auction, London 1978, p. 12, reproducedp. 25;
M. Stettler, Erinnerungen an robert Hirsch.  Meisterwerke aus der Sammlung von Hirsch erworben für Deutsche Museen, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1979, p. 9;
F. Herrmann, Sotheby's.  Portrait of an Auction House, London 1980, p. 437;
G. von der Osten, `Hans Baldung Grien' in Beitrag zu Jan bialostocki zum 60. Geburtstag, Cologne 1982, p. 128;
G. von der Osten, Hans Baldung Grien, Berlin 1983, pp. 128-129 and 256, cat. no. 35, reproduced plate 96;
U. Söding, Hans Baldung Grien in Freiburg, Freiburg 2001, p. 23;
S. Weber am Bach, Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85-1545), Regensburg 2006, chapter IV.2, pp. 75-78, reproduced in colour plate I.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a panel which appears to have been backed, and cradled since. There were a few small flakes in the past but no trace of any recent insecurity. The few small retouchings visible under ultra violet light show one little lost flake touched out in the halo at upper centre left above the crown, with one other in the halo just above the right peak of the crown. This seems to have been by a little brief crack rising upwards at that point. Other minute touches can also be seen rarely in the flesh painting, with a tiny touch on the cheek of the Child and one or two little muting touches in the neck and breast of the Madonna, apparently on minute junctions in the craquelure or other superficial marks. One or two slightly more substantial retouchings also perhaps past flakes, beautifully retouched, in the arm of the Madonna: in the crook of her elbow, on and just under her lower arm and in the fold of drapery at lower left, with a touch or two in the lower left drapery of the Child. There is also some retouching at the base edge rising slightly up into the red drapery. The edges have narrow strips of retouching, particularly along the base and top edges and there is a certain amount of older strengthening in the blue background, just touching the outline of the arm of the putto on the right. Essentially however the exquisite condition of this Madonna and Child must reflect stability and reverent care over centuries. The luminosity and unworn richness of the glazing and brushwork is exceptionally pure and intact. The delicate original hatching can be seen in places as the paint grows more translucent over time. 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."

Hans Baldung Grien was Albrecht Dürer's foremost pupil.  He entered Dürer's workshop in Nuremberg in 1503, and was entrusted with the running of it during Dürer's second Venetian trip in 1505-7.  As early as 1504 however, Baldung was executing independent commissions for stained-glass in Nuremberg churches, and in 1507, shortly after Dürer's return from Venice, he left Nuremberg for Halle, where he had received two important commissions for altarpieces, one of which includes a self-portrait clad in green, the colour that is his nickname.¹  While Baldung deserves his reputation as Dürer's greatest pupil, it is nonetheless misleading.  While his formation in Dürer's workshop gave him a new visual language, Baldung's style - for example his sense of colour - always retained strong links with the artistic traditions of the east and west banks of the Upper Rhine: of his native Swabia and of its western counterpart, Alsace, where Baldung must have encountered Grünewald's masterpieces, and where he almost certainly received his earliest training in the city of Strasbourg.

Baldung returned to Strasbourg in 1509 where he settled, and from where he never strayed, apart from a highly productive five-year sojourn from 1512-17 in Freiburg-im-Breisgau, a day's ride up the Rhine valley, but on its eastern flank, in Swabia.  That Baldung was invited there to paint the eleven-panel high altar of the cathedral, a highly-coveted commission, shows how high his star had ascended.  The altarpiece, not unveiled until May 1516, took the best part of his time in Freiburg to complete, and is considered to be his masterpiece.  It certainly put the seal on his reputation, but he was extremely active throughout his Freiburg stay, producing paintings commissioned privately as well as stained-glass designs for the cathedral, woodcuts, and book-illustrations.  During this time he also started to produce the finished drawings of witchcraft and devilry and of man's mortality that provide the inspiration for his oil paintings throughout much of his later career, and which reveal a turbulent but highly fecund imagination and - perhaps - a somewhat tormented personality.²  Despite the productive Freiburg period, many of Baldung's oil paintings apart from altarpiece commissions and the occasional portrait date from after he returned permanently to Strasbourg in 1517.  After 1520 his style crystallizes into a refined and smooth Mannerism, and develops at a much slower rate than in the first two decades of his career.  Undoubtedly the Reformation, which reached Strasbourg in the 1520s, affected his output, style and subject matter.

This picture is generally dated circa 1515-18, either at the end of Baldung's period in Freiburg, or shortly after he returned to Strasbourg in 1517-18.  Most scholars have dated it to this period, although Koch thought it could be as early as 1514, and Baldass, certainly aberrantly, placed it as late as 1540.³  Recently Sibylle Weber am Bach has argued on iconographic grounds for a more specific dating to circa 1517-18, pointing out that the unusually large crown that the Virgin wears as Queen of Heaven is an imperial one, and that it incorporates Strasbourg lilies.⁴  Though associated with the city of Strasbourg in armorials, and on coins, medals and banners, since the 10th century, it was during the so-called Lilienstreit between Thomas Murner and Jakob Wimpfeling in the years around 1500 that the origins and significance of the Lily in Strasbourg became the subject of a bitter dispute.  Wimpefing maintained that it was an emblem of strictly German origins, while Murner insisted that its presence in the Arms of Strasbourg linked the city with the French crown, and that its imperial connotations go back to the time of Julius Caesar, when all that lay on the west bank of the Rhine was decreed to be a part of Gall.  In 1502 Murner made an explicit connection between the city of Strasbourg and the Virgin Mary: "Wie die Stadt Strassburg in die Hand der geheigten Jungfrau ist."⁵  Weber am Bach connects Baldung's use of the lily in an imperial crown in this picture with his renewal of his Strasbourg citizenship in 1517 to argue for a dating of it to that or the following year.

This painting is the earliest of a series of seven half-length depictions of The Virgin and Child that Baldung painted up until the early 1540s, as well as the only one remaining in private hands.  Several of these are, like this picture Maria lactans, with the Virgin suckling the Holy Infant.  This subject is of course well-known before Baldung's time, but becomes much more widespread around 1500.  Weber am Bach points to an anonymous woodcut of circa 1460-70, which in reverse shows a similar composition to the present work, and in which the Virgin also wears a large crown.⁶

The present Virgin and Child is followed by another, now in Freiburg, in which the Christ Child is asleep and the present cool blue background is replaced by a rich red one, of about 1520.⁷  Possibly from around 1518, but more likely from circa 1530, is a Virgin and Child with cherubim in Vercelli.⁸  Dated 1530 is a Virgin and Child before an architectural setting in Nuremberg, and in the same museum is a Virgin and Child with a parrot from 1533.⁹  The last two in the sequence are works of circa 1539-40 in Berlin, and of circa 1541-3 in Strasbourg.¹⁰

The present picture is markedly different in mood to Baldung's later treatments in paint of the theme of the Virgin and Child, which reflect the artist's concerns and interests in his later period.  It does however present an interesting contrast with the Freiburg picture, which is closer to it in date than the others.  Here the Virgin appears as a hieratic figure, presented to us with her huge crown as Regina Coeli.  A deep blue background from which a single cherub emerges evokes the firmament, and her halo - she is the only one of this series of Baldung's painted Virgin's to appear with one - is an ethereal glow, as if an other-worldly atmospheric phenomenon.  She is veiled, and her eyes are cast down to the Holy Infant suckling at her breast.  Her long undulating tresses of hair are highlighted, and seem as if made from threads of gold.  They, and the veil, billow out to our right, as if caught by a gust of heavenly wind.  Her deep red robe, and especially the swaddling cloth in which she holds the Christ Child, are given swirling, rhythmic folds, similar to those found in other works of this period, such as the full-length Virgin and Child in an Interior in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.¹¹  The Freiburg picture, painted only two or three years later, presents a stark contrast.  The background is a red that is almost fiery.  The Virgin, whose blue robe extends to cover the crown of her head as a hood, stares straight out at the viewer, and her flesh, and that of the Christ child, is painted with a smooth porcelain-like texture.  While radically different, both paintings still show the influences both of Baldung's formative years with Albrecht Dürer, as well as in the pictorial traditions of the Upper-Rhine.  The Freiburg picture however anticipates the Mannerism of Baldung's later career, while the present picture, painted a decade before Dürer's death, remains firmly rooted in the German Renaissance.

Baldung was a prolific engraver, and treated the subject of the Crowned Virgin and Child in several woodcuts, from as early as 1505-7 (where the crown is substantial, as in this painting) , as well as in a drawing in Coburg of 1511.  An undated woodcut depicts the Maria Lactans.

Infra-red reflectographs reveal beautiful linear under-drawing (see fig. 1), which shows a composition already fully worked-out.  The style of the under-drawing is, as might be expected, very similar to Baldung's pen and ink drawings on paper from the second decade of the 16th century, and in particular the finished drawings for stained glass (Scheibenrisse).  Most of the underdrawing appears to have been applied with the tip of the brush, but some of the more delicate parts, for example on the hand of the Virgin, appears as if applied with a pen.  The under-drawing of the central part of the crown makes it even clearer that Baldung intended it to be formed of Strasbourg Lilies.  There are a few small pentimenti, for example  in the middle finger of the Virgin's left hand.  In some areas, especially the folds of the Virgin's robe, meticulously hatched contours are overlaid with paint that conceals Baldung's original intention - but the purpose of under-drawing is to guide the artist as he applies paint, not to map out in all parts how the finished work will appear.  Under-drawing can be clearly read in the Virgin's tresses to the right of the composition, but was barely detectable by IRR to the left.  Finally, although leaving the Virgin's forehead largely unmodelled in the under-drawing indicates that it was Baldung's intention that she should wear a veil that was to cover the upper part of her face, the extensive veil itself is not otherwise indicated at all in under-drawing.
 
Gert van der Osten records a copy, which he listed as Kopp. 95, in the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, and Baldass mentioned a replica dated 1539, which might be the same picture.¹²

This picture was probably acquired by Wilhelm, Fürst von Hohenzollern for the Princely Collections at Sigmaringen, and its sale followed his death in October 1927.¹³  In 1928 other Early German paintings from Sigmaringen were acquired by the Städel, Frankfurt, following the large-scale exhibition there of the collection in 1928, and Robert von Hirsch acquired from them several outstanding medieval works of art, including bronzes, ivories and glass, as well as this painting.

Robert von Hirsch (1883-1977) was one of the greatest collectors of the 20th century. Although he had started to collect works by contemporary artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso in the first decade of the 20th century, most of his collections of Medieval and Renaissance art were assembled in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when he was living in Frankfurt.  His tastes were enormously varied, and his collections spanned Furniture, Meissen porcelain, Works of Art, Manuscripts and Old Master Drawings as well as Old Master and Impressionist and Modern Paintings.  The advent of National Socialism in Germany caused him to move with most of his collections to Basel in 1936, permission being given on condition that he left  behind a Lucas Cranach, subsequently restituted to him and bequeathed to the Kunstmuseum Basel in gratitude for the sanctuary afforded him by the city, that he had been forced to donate to Hermann Goering (whose label is still affixed to the reverse).  After the War, Von Hirsch married Martha Dreyfus-Koch, and under her influence, more 20th-century art was added to the collection, including great works by Modigliani, Matisse, Cézanne, Seurat and Van Gogh.  Among his drawings was the last Dürer watercolour landscape to remain in private hands, as well as another Dürer and several Rembrandts.  His greatest Old Master Painting was the magnificent Giovanni di Paolo Branchini Madonna sold in the Von Hirsch sale to the Norton Simon Foundation, Pasadena, for £500,000, but the present picture was the second most expensive of his Old Master Paintings, and among the Old Masters its price was only exceeded by the Dürer watercolour and another sheet by Dürer; the Rembrandts, including a landscape, fetched less, as did all the Impressionist and Modern Art bar one of the Cézannes and a Matisse.


1. Apparently given to him to distinguish him from Dürer's other pupils with the same Christian name: Hans Suess von Kulmbach & Hans Schäuffelein.
2.  These are the subject of a fascinating exhibition and catalogue at the Städel in Frankfurt: B. Brinkmann, Hexenlust und Sündenfall/Witches' Lust and the Fall of Man, exhibition catalogue, Frankfurt 2007.
3.  See under Literature.
4.  See Weber am Bach, under Literature, pp. 76-8.
5.  J. Murner, Nova Germania, Strasbourg 1502, p. 219; cited by Weber am Bach, op. cit., p. 78.
6.  Ibid., p. 76, reproduced (in reverse) fig. 13.
7.  Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Augustiner Museum; see Weber am Bach, ibid., reproduced in colour plate II.
8.  Vercelli, Museo Civico Borgogna; idem, colour plate III.
9.  Both Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg; idem, colour plates IV & V.
10.  Berlin, Gemäldegalerie & Strasbourg, Musée d l'Oeuvre Notre-Dame; idem, colour plates VI & VII.
11.  See G. van der Osten, under Literature, pp. 133-4, no. 38, reproduced plate 101.
12.  See G. van der Osten, op. cit., p. 129, under no. 35, and p. 256, Kopp. 95.; also Baldass, under Literature,  p. 30, n. 34.
13.  Wilhelm's grandfather, Fürst Karl Anton (ruled 1849-1885), starting adding outstanding medieval works of art to the ancestral Hohenzollern Princely Collections at Sigmaringen, to which his son and grandson added.