Lot 33

The Beheading of St. John the Baptist and the Feast of Herod, miniature from a biblical text, illuminated manuscript on vellum [southern Germany (Nuremberg), c.1520-30]

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

miniature on a cutting, 185mm. by 255mm., by Nikolaus Glockendon, in two narrative scenes within a sumptuous Renaissance architecture into two narrative spaces, to the left the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, with the executioner offering the severed head to Salome who receives it on a large platter, the torso of the beheaded saint lying on a raised stone podium, to the right Salome presenting the plate with the head to her mother Herodias, with King Herod sitting next to her, in the foreground a servant whose back is turned filling a glass with wine, signed with the artist’s monogram "NG" in the lower left corner on the stone podium of the decapitated saint, mounted on a wooden panel, the surface varnished and yellowed, small wormholes, framed

Provenance

(1) Chester D. Tripp (1882-1974) of Chicago, industrialist, collector and patron of the arts: inscribed on reverse of panel "The Execution of St. John, exhibited: Art Institute of Chicago, coll: Estate of Chester D. Tripp".

Catalogue Note

illumination

Nikolaus Glockendon (c.1490/95-1533/34) was the foremost illuminator in sixteenth-century Germany and he made a career of reworking the compositions of his Nuremberg contemporary Albrecht Dürer. Nikolaus was part of a noted artistic lineage. He was the son of Georg Glockendon the Elder (d.1514), the brother of Albrecht Glockendon (c.1495-1545) and the father of Gabriel (c.1515/20-c.1585) and Sebastian (c.1525/26-1555), all of whom painted illuminated manuscripts. His work is known from over thirty extant manuscripts, many of which he signed, usually with his initials "NG" as here. Nikolaus Glockendon’s principal patron from 1523 onwards was Cardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg, for whom he decorated at least six manuscripts. Nikolaus was technically accomplished, with a sensitive use of colours, a sure handling of anatomy and proportion, and a taste for lavish architecture and detailed spatial staging.

This miniature may have been part of a Historienbibel, a German prose redaction of biblical narratives augmented by apocryphal and secular historical matter. These were very popular in the late fourteenth and fifteenth century, but disappeared during the Reformation in the sixteenth century.