Artist: Gaspard De Crayer
Date: 1650
Size: 309 x 224 cm
Technique: Oil On Canvas
The account of how the shepherds, having heard the good tidings from the angel of the Lord, went to Bethlehem and ‘found Mary, and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger’ is told in Luke 2:15-16. The words on the banderole, held by the angels above, are those which had earlier been proclaimed to the shepherds by a ‘multitude of the heavenly host praising God in the highest…’, Luke 2:13-14. Here Gaspar de Crayer follows the by then accepted formula for the depiction of the subject: the shepherds have brought gifts of a lamb, eggs and a brass churn of milk.2 There is no reason to doubt Gaspar de Crayer’s authorship of this Adoration. Vlieghe dates it to the decade after circa 1638, pointing out that the composition and protagonists relate quite closely to De Crayer’s Adoration of the Shepherds in the Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Doornik.3 There, Mary also faces to the right, and lifts up the swaddling cloth. For the rest the protagonists have been reversed. The shepherd with the lamb and the boy are repeated, as is the kneeling shepherd who holds a houlette that rests against his shoulder. Vlieghe dates the Doornik picture circa 1638-42. That the far arm of the shepherd holding the lamb is covered in the Doornik Adoration might argue for the precedence of the Amsterdam painting where his arm was first depicted uncovered; indeed there are other small, detail pentiments in this composition executed with reserves. The head of Mary is similar to that of the Virgin’s in the Virgin and Child Adored by Saints at Ghent,4 which Vlieghe dates to the same decade. St Joseph seems unusually young (he is more mature in the Doornik altarpiece). His upward glance is to be compared with that of the acolyte in the Ecstacy of St Augustine in Valenciennes.5 Unusual too is St Joseph’s tethering of the ox. Vlieghe points to a possible influence of Anthony van Dyck’s Adoration of the Shepherds at Dendermonde.6 De Crayer’s composition is calmer and both may owe the placement of the ox and ass and of the kneeling shepherd to a common source, perhaps Jacopo Bassano (active c. 1535-died 1542) or a print after him.7 The Rijksmuseum Adoration is about the same size as De Crayer’s Descent from the Cross (SK-A-75) with which it was acquired by King William I (1772-1843). From this it has been supposed that they might have been painted as altarpieces in the same church.8 Perhaps they were intended to replace each other during the course of the liturgical calendar.9 What remains obscure is the provenance of the two works prior to 1818. Very probably they were an ecclesiastical commission, but they cannot be identified in Descamp’s long review of 1753 of De Crayer’s works for religious institutions in the southern Netherlands.10 It may be that the commission was for a Catholic institution outside the region. Gregory Martin, 2022
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