ANVERSOISE School circa 1540, workshop of Pieter... Lot 22

ANVERSOISE School circa 1540, workshop of Pieter COECK VAN AELST (Aalst, 1502 - Brussels, 1550) Adoration of the Magi surrounded by the Annunciation and the Rest during the Flight into Egypt Panels, triptych. Height. 88, Width. 131 cm. (ancient restorations). Provenance: descendant of Jean Marie-Pie Michel Claret (1805-1886), architect-decorator of Napoleon III and protégé of Baron James de Rothschild. Triptych to the Adoration of the Magi. Workshop of Pieter Coeck Van Aelst, Antwerp school around 1540. According to the historian and biographer Carel Van Mander, Pieter Coeck van Aelst studied in Bernard van Orley's studio in Brussels before making the traditional trip to Rome, where he became immersed in the models of the High Renaissance. In 1527 he was appointed master at the Guild of Antwerp and stayed in Constantinople around 1533-1534, where he designed the oriental costumes from which some of the exotic details of the Magi in his paintings were derived. After spending ten years in Antwerp, he moved to Brussels in 1546 and was appointed court painter to King Charles V four years later, the year of his death. Pieter Coeck and his studio produced a number of triptychs for private devotion. In this one, the alternation of the same three Gospel scenes is similar to two others kept at the Palazzo Bianco in Genoa (Georges Marlier, La Renaissance flamande, Pierre Coeck d'Alost, 1966, p.122, fig.46, 93 x 109 cm) and at Princeton University (Marlier, op.cit., p.125, fig.49, 99.5 × 137.5 cm) with each time a few variations. In the left panel, the Annunciation, the Virgin's face is turned differently to the left. The details of the landscape of the Flight into Egypt also vary each time, and the central composition of our work inverts the place of each magus king in relation to the other two triptychs mentioned. In the central panel, the eye can find the taste for detail characteristic of the Flemish pictorial tradition in the rich brocades, embellished with mot