Ambrosius BENSON and workshop Lombardy, ca. 1495... Lot 12

Ambrosius BENSON and workshop Lombardy, ca. 1495 - Bruges, 1550 The Deposition Oil on panel, upper part fretworked The Descent from the Cross, oil on panel, by A. Benson and workshop 96 x 71 cm (37.80 x 27.95 in.) Provenance : Collection C.F. Turner Esq., Spalding, United Kingdom, in 1951 ; Art Market, United Kingdom, 1954; Private collection, London, 1957; Private collection, Switzerland; On loan to the Museum het Spaans Gouvernement (later Museum aan het Vrijthof), Maastricht, inv. no. 0279; Anonymous sale; New York, Sotheby's, 28 January 2016, No. 13 (as Ambrosius Benson); Private collection, Belgium Exhibitions : Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht , inv. 5031 (on loan) Bibliography: 'The Connoisseur', December 1951, p. 186 (as anonymous) Georges Marlier, 'Ambrosius Benson et la peinture à Bruges au temps de Charles-Quint', Damme, 1957, p. 100 and p. 294, n°47, repr. pl. XII (among the paintings of Ambrosius Benson and his studio) Comment: The 15th century was a particularly prosperous period for the city of Bruges. Located not far from the northern coast of present-day Belgium, it had important trade relations with Italy and Spain, as well as with England and the German states. The residence of the Prinsenhof regularly welcomed the Dukes of Burgundy and their court, thus attracting artists. The greatest names of the so-called Flemish Primitives succeeded one another there: Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling and Gerard David. All of them left a notable imprint on the artists of the next generation, active at the beginning of the 16th century, the most lasting being undoubtedly that of Rogier van der Weyden from Tournai. It is to the latter that we owe the inspiration for the composition we present, through a work that is now lost but of which a drawn copy preserved in the Louvre has kept a trace (fig. 1, inv. 20666, recto). To make it the central panel of a triptych, th