Meister des Verlorenen Sohnes, zugeschrieben Lot n° 2010

Master of the Prodigal Son, attributed to The Virgin and Child in a Landscape with the Flight into Egypt in the Distance Oil on panel (parquetted). 110 x 79 cm. Certificate Giorgio T. Faggin, Udine, 26. June 1982 (as a work by the Master of the Prodigal Son). - Jacqueline Folie (IRPA), Brussels, 31st March 1988 (analysis of the originally overpainted backgrounds). - Prof. J. Verougstraete (UCL), Laboratoire d’étude des œuvres d’art par les méthodes scientifiques, Louvain-la-Neuve, May 2002. Provenance Gisbert Verzyl (1803-1914). – Céline Verzyl (1850-1914), wife of Johan Beetz (1849-1876). - By descent to Georges Beetz (1876-1950) until 1950. – Belgian private collection until 2002. – Auctioned by Hôtel de Ventes Vanderkindere, Brussels, 23rd November 2002, lot 18 (as Antwerp school, first half 16th C.). - Belgian private collection Exhibitions Musée d’Art Ancien de Bruxelles: Les primitifs septentrionaux, Brüssel, 1923 (as Lambert Lombard and with the overpainted background). Literature G. Marlier: L’atelier du Maître du Fils Prodige, in: Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 1961, p. 75-111, p. 101, not illus. (as Master of the Prodigal Son). - S. Speth-Holterhoff: La collection de M. Georges Beetz, in: Apollo, Chroniques des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, March 1943, no. 20, p. 14-17, illus. p. 14. The present representation is characterised by the fine quality and delicacy of the painterly execution. The gentle face of the Madonna is executed extremely delicately. She has turned Her head slightly towards Her Son. In one hand She holds an apple, in the other the Child. The posture and expression of the mother are reminiscent of the Madonnas of Raphael and his successors in their softness and sensitivity. The gray-blue dress with pink sleeves is covered by a red, sweeping mantle. The bright colour palette and movement of the figures are fine and typical examples of Nordic Mannerism. The Master of the Prodigal Son is an anonymous master who was probably active in Antwerp in the second third of the 16th century. He owes his notname to a painting in the Kunsthistorischen Museum depicting the Prodigal Son in gallant company. He seems to have run a prolific workshop that specialised in depictions of episodes from the Old Testament, as well as devotional scenes of the life of Christ or the Virgin. Georges Marlier was the first to examine the activity of this master in more detail and also attributed the present painting to him (G. Marlier, L'atelier du Maître du Fils Prodige, in: Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp 1961, pp. 75-111, p. 101, not illustrated). In addition to the stylistic proximity to the "Romanists" Lambert Lombard, Pieter Aertsten and Frans Floris, the influence of Pieter Coecke van Aelst is especially noticeable in the work of the anonymous master. The pose of the Virgin with the apple in Her right hand and the Child running, or rather flying, towards Her are derived from a composition by Coecke. This "Holy Family" is common in numerous workshop variants (G. Marlier, La Renaissance flamande. Pierre Coeck d'Alost, Brussels, 1966, pp. 238-39, fig. 199). Like the so-called Master with the Parrot, the Master of the Prodigal Son repeatedly used the motif of a parrot sitting on a fruit bowl in his depictions of the Virgin and Child, such as in a painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The background with buildings piled high before rocky landscape à la Patinir, in turn, resembles in every detail a lost version in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna (inv. no. 756). Among other things, the pale landscape with light shades of green, orange and yellowy-pink, against which the figure of Madanna stands out in vivid colours, as well as the style of the figure with ivory-coloured skin, almond-shaped eyes, a long nose and a shadowed dimple above the chin, speak for the attribution of the present work to the Master of the Prodigal Son.