Virgin and Child
Frame: 15 9/16 in. diameter (39.5 × 39.5 cm)
Bode, Wilhelm von. Catalogue de la collection Rodolphe Kann. Paris: Sedelmeyer, 1907.
Dijkstra, Jeltje. “Technical Examination.” In Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research, edited by Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne Van Buren, and Henk van Veen, 292–329. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005.
Henderiks, Valentine. Albrecht Bouts (1451/55–1549). Brussels: Institut royal du patrimoine artistique and Centre d’étude des primitifs flamands, 2011.
Pächt, Otto. Early Netherlandish Painting from Rogier van der Weyden to Gerard David. London: Harvey Miller, 1997.
Vermeylen, Filip. “The Commercialization of Art: Painting and Sculpture in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp.” In Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads: A Critical Look at Current Methodologies, edited by Maryan W. Ainsworth, 46–61. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2001.
Vos, Dirk De. Rogier van der Weyden. The Complete Works. Antwerp: Mercatorfonds and New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997.
ProvenanceRodolphe Kann, Paris; Martin Bromberg, Kiele, Germany; [Arnold Seligmann, Rey & Co., Paris, by 1939]; purchased by Percy S. Straus, August 4, 1939; bequeathed to MFAH, 1944.The name of the artist who painted this small tondo is not known. Percy Straus bought the painting as a work of the Flemish School. The dealer Arnold Seligmann provided Straus with a certificate from Max Friedländer attributing the painting to a follower of Rogier van der Weyden. A curator from the Cloisters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York judged the tondo to be based on an unidentified model by Albrecht Bouts (c. 1452–1549), but to date, the identity of the artist remains unknown.1
The little panel is taken up almost entirely by the figure of the Virgin. She holds the Christ Child to her breast, against which he rests a cheek. The Child looks out of the panel past the viewer. The Virgin’s downcast eyes look not at the Child but just in front of him. As Friedländer recognized in 1939, the composition is based on models by Rogier van der Weyden. The frontal view of the Virgin is taken from Rogier’s Virgin and Child in Caen (fig. 25.1). The design of the circlet around her head, the fall of her hair over one shoulder, the gentle curve of her neck, and the folds of the white cloak across her breast all derive from the Caen panel, though they have been reversed on the Straus panel.2 In the Caen painting, the Virgin folds her hands in prayer and looks at the Child; the gesture of touching the breast before nursing is taken from Rogier’s Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin in Boston (fig. 25.2).
The panel was likely produced around the turn of the sixteenth century in one of the many workshops in the Low Countries. X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy reveals the presence of lead tin yellow in the Virgin’s and Child’s hair, a pigment widely used until the early eighteenth century.3 The Virgin’s costume is much simplified from Rogier’s examples. A hint of a pink mantle appears at the top of her head, but her blue outer mantle has none of the jeweled or embroidered embellishment of Rogier’s earlier works, and a simple stitch finishes the edges of the white and pink scarves. The circular format and focus on the Virgin diminish both the sense of intimacy between the figures in the St. Luke and the hieratic solidity of the composition in the Caen panel.4 The artist was clearly familiar with Rogier’s works, but failed to capture the tenderness of the connection between the figures that is the hallmark of Rogier’s many paintings of the Virgin and Child.
The attribution to Albrecht Bouts suggested in the 1970s is unlikely. Although the facial features bear a general similarity to paintings by both Albrecht Bouts and his better-known father, Dieric (1410/20–1475), the hard modeling of the face gives the eyes a pronounced almond shape and the nose a harsh linearity atypical of works attributed to Albrecht Bouts, for example the Christ Crowned with Thorns in Dijon.5 Many Flemish workshops employed large numbers of assistants to produce copies of a few popular compositions; the Virgin and Child is likely such a product.6 The Straus panel is evidence of both the popularity of Rogier’s St. Luke Drawing the Virgin and of the enormous demand in Northern Europe around the turn of the sixteenth century for small panels that could be used for private devotions.7
—Michelle Packer
Notes
1. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, object file. The file also includes a 1972 quotation, without detailed reference, from Jack L. Schrader, then a curator at the Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The quotation reads, “While the Virgin and Child represented here derive ultimately from those in Roger Van Der Weyden’s enormously influential St. Luke Drawing the Virgin, the immediate model must have been a painting by a follower of Dirc Bouts, possibly by his son Aelbrecht, in which the original image was reversed.”
2. The reversal of the image suggests that the painter of the Straus tondo may have seen a print after the Caen panel.
3. X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy Results, March 3, 2017, conservation files, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. I thank Melissa Gardner, associate conservator of paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, for her assistance in interpreting the laboratory report.
4. Otto Pächt, Early Netherlandish Painting from Rogier van der Weyden to Gerard David (London: Harvey Miller, 1997), 72.
5. Albrecht Bouts, Christ Crowned with Thorns, c. 1495, oil on wood, 14 5/8 x 11 in. (37 x 28 cm), Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. no. D 1948-1-P; and Valentine Henderiks, Albrecht Bouts (1451/55–1549) (Brussels: Institut royal du patrimoine artistique and Centre d’étude des primitifs flamands, 2011), 236–40.
6. Filip Vermeylen, “The Commercialization of Art: Painting and Sculpture in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp,” in Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads: A Critical Look at Current Methodologies, ed. Maryan W. Ainsworth (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2001), 52; and Jeltje Dijkstra, “Technical Examination,” in Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research, eds. Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne Van Buren, and Henk van Veen (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 312.
7. On the popularity of Rogier’s St. Luke Drawing the Virgin, see Dirk De Vos, Rogier van der Weyden: The Complete Works (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999), 205.
Comparative Images
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