The given name of the artist who painted this Virgin and Child at the beginning of the sixteenth century has been lost to history. He is called the Master of the Holy Blood after the Deposition altarpiece in the Chapel of the Brotherhood of the Holy Blood in Bruges. Max Friedländer first assembled the artist’s oeuvre on the basis of similarities in figural types and technique to the Bruges Deposition.¹ Characteristic of this group of paintings are the elongated hands and tapered fingers of the female saints and Virgin Mary, and the attention to the luxurious textures of fur, fine embroidery, and polished stone. Perhaps most readily recognized is the artist’s tendency to place somewhat oddly shaped ears too high on the heads of his figures, a feature seen in the Straus Virgin and Child. The works attributed to the Master of the Holy Blood all date from the early years of the sixteenth century, and many, like the altarpiece from which the name derives, are associated with the city of Bruges. They also, however, betray a familiarity with the work of the Antwerp artist Quentin Massys (1465/66–1530) so strong as to suggest that the artist knew Massys’s works, and perhaps even trained with him, in Antwerp before relocating to Bruges.²

In the Straus panel, the seated Virgin cradles the infant Christ on her lap. She wears a purple-red gown trimmed in gold embroidery and gemstones over a blue underdress. Her red mantle is also edged in goldwork. Both she and the Christ Child have strawberry blond hair, his in tight curls, hers elaborately braided and covered by a gossamer veil with a jewel at the top. In an archaizing touch, rays of divine light emanate from behind her head. The polished agate columns, typical of the work of Massys and his Antwerp followers, define a coldly luxurious yet darkened and generalized space that suggests the divinity and timelessness of the scene. The overt presentation of the Christ Child’s genitalia and the insistence of his reach into the Virgin’s bodice, however, emphasize Christ’s physical body and his human need for nourishment.³  

The Straus panel is among the Master of the Holy Blood’s finest works. The agate columns are particularly skillfully painted and immediately call to mind works by Quentin Massys, such as The Virgin Enthroned (fig. 27.1).⁴ The red and purple of the Virgin’s costume glow with a softness that contrasts with the hard stone textures of the background. The Virgin’s head is also deftly painted, and includes the long, sharp nose and elaborate coif that are characteristic of the Master of the Holy Blood’s style. Friedländer pointed out in 1928 the weaknesses that make attribution of the Straus panel to Quentin Massys untenable: in addition to the characteristic treatment of the fingers and ear, the folds of skin on the Christ child’s arm and leg are too regular to appear natural, and the reflections off the skin are too harsh for Massys.⁵ The circular base of the column and the square plinth on which it rests are also awkwardly assembled.

The artist likely had models by Massys in mind when composing the work. The only figure of the Virgin by Massys in which her hair is rolled as in the Straus Virgin and Child is the Virgin Enthroned in Berlin. The Berlin painting also features the strawberry-blond hair of figures seated before agate columns. The position of the Child’s legs is the reverse of that in a painting by the so-called Master of the Mansi Magdalen (fig. 27.2), suggesting a common model with which the two artists were familiar.⁶

The painting is in generally good condition, although there is some abrasion around the Virgin’s face. Percy Straus purchased the panel in 1929 from the dealer and connoisseur Vitale Bloch, who had provided Straus with Friedländer’s expert opinion on the work.⁷

—Michelle Packer