Circle of Adam Elsheimer

Estimate

2,000 - 3,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

Adam Elsheimer
The Flight into Egypt
Pen and brown ink, made up lower left side;
bears old attribution in pen and brown ink, on the made-up section, lower left: Jan Lven
2 3/4 x 3 3/4 inches
72 x 94 mm

Provenance

Private Collection, Paris;
with Galerie Terrades, Paris,
from whom acquired by the late Jan Krugier in March 2002

Literature

R. Klessmann, Adam Elsheimer 1578-1610, exhib. cat., Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, Dulwich Picture Gallery, and Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt-am-Main, 2006, pp. 37-38, fig. 56; p. 174; p. 177, note 1 (as Attributed to Adam Elsheimer);
J. Jacoby, Die Zeichnungen von Adam Elsheimer, Frankfurt 2008, pp. 250-52, cat. no. A5, reproduced (under rejected drawings)

Catalogue Note

This drawing relates to the central figures in Elsheimer's famous 1609 painting of The Flight Into Egypt, in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.¹ The study was first published in 2006 by Rüdiger Klessmann, who noted that the position of the Virgin's head has clearly been altered, and considered that it could well be an autograph preparatory study for the painting, in which the artist is known to have revised the placement of the figures (infrared images show that St. Joseph was initially placed ahead of the donkey).

Joachim Jacoby does not, however, recognise Elsheimer's drawing style in this sheet. In his recent monograph on the artist's drawings, it is listed under the rejected attributions, and associated with a number of other studies, in the Louvre and elsewhere, that Jacoby believes were made by another, anonymous artist working in Elsheimer's circle in Rome.

1. Klessmann, op. cit., cat. no. 36