Master of the Female Half-Lengths

With Dr. Paul Mersch, Paris;

Anonymous sale, Berlin, Rudolph Lepke, 22 February 1910, lot 25;

With Gemälde-Galerie Abels, Cologne, by March 1951;

Anonymous sale, Monte Carlo, Christies, 7 December 1987, lot 21;

With Heinz Kisters, Kreuzlingen.

M.J. Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei, vol. XII, Leiden 1935, p. 172, cat. no. 61;

M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. XII, New York 1975, p. 96, cat. no. 61 (as 1601).

This sensitively rendered Virgin and Child is typical of the Master of the Female Half-Lengths, among the most successful artists working in Antwerp in the second quarter of the sixteenth century. The painter, who often repeated popular compositional formulae, executed the present picture with subtle underdrawing that reveals several small adaptations to the figures. Such half-length depictions of the Virgin and Child set before dark, neutral backgrounds were extremely sought-after at the time and may have been produced to meet market demand.