Artist: Quinten Massys
วันที่: 1530
ขนาด: 75 x 63 cm
เทคนิค: Oil On Panel
The Virgin is seated on a pseudo-classical throne to the right of a window with a view of a landscape. The Christ Child is in the crook of her left arm, kissing her on the lips, and in her right hand she holds two cherries, the ‘fruit of paradise’ that Christ brought to mankind. Lying in the foreground is an apple, symbol of the Fall of Man, and a bunch of grapes, which refer to the wine of the Eucharist and thus to the Redeemer’s blood.7 Curtains hang on either side of the throne, the one on the right creating the illusion that it belongs to the viewer’s world. This painting is closely related to the lost Virgin by Quinten Massijs which was in the Cornelis van der Geest collection at the beginning of the 17th century, and was depicted as such in 1628 by Willem van Haecht (fig. a). That painting commemorated the visit that Archduke Albrecht (1559-1621) and Isabella (1566-1633) made to Van der Geest’s collection in 1615, when they wanted to buy Massijs’s Virgin for the royal collection.8 There are several versions of The Virgin that are associated with Massijs and his workshop. The one in the E.W. Edwards collection in Cincinnati comes closest to the lost painting owned by Van der Geest (fig. b). Seven other versions differ only in minor details and the Virgin’s expression from the lost work.9 The Rijksmuseum painting is of better quality than these versions, and also differs significantly from the work recorded by Van Haecht. The main discrepancy is the more ornate throne. The Virgin is also wearing a blue, not a mauve gown, and the apple and the grapes have switched position. The Virgin in a private collection in the United States (fig. c) corresponds to the one in the Rijksmuseum as regards composition and palette. It is conceivable that Quinten Massijs made two different variants of The Virgin for separate patrons, both of which were then copied in his workshop. The one in the Rijksmuseum is a good version, and could thus be autograph, but since it is just one of the several versions it could also have been executed by workshop assistants. The composition with the Christ Child embracing the Virgin and kissing her on the lips is derived from Byzantine icons, where the type is known as Elousa (tenderness). This emotional pose had been introduced into western art back in the 12th century. Quinten Massijs’s main source for this intimate gesture was Dieric Bouts, who painted many different variants of the subject.10 However, the Italian elements that give Massijs’s Virgin such a totally different look from Bouts’s works came from Joos van Cleve, for at the end of his career he was influenced by the Madonnas based on Italian models by his younger Antwerp colleague. Van Cleve, in turn, was indebted to Leonardo da Vinci for his Virgin and Child in Aachen.11 Massijs then incorporated the window in the corner, the throne decorated with meshwork, and the human presentation of the holy figures in his Virgin.12 The Rijksmuseum painting has similarities to the signed Rattier Madonna of 1529, particularly in its atmospheric landscape and the Virgin’s face.13 It is therefore probably a late product of Massijs’s workshop. With its ornate throne decorated with Renaissance motifs, its palette and modelling, it is also close to The Madonna Enthroned in Berlin, which is dated around 1523-24.14 The late dating, c. 1525-30, is confirmed by the dendrochronology, which gives the most likely date as around 1527. This Virgin and Child was already in the collection of the Frisian stadholder in the 17th century, for a 1681 inventory of the court in Leeuwarden lists an ‘Our Lady with the Child painted by Quinten Massijs, with double frame’.15 It passed by descent to the Dutch stadholder, and in 1798 was transferred from Paleis Het Loo to Huis ten Bosch.16 The 1801 catalogue of the Nationale Konst-Gallerij lists it as a work by J. de Mabuze,17 and it was then attributed to ‘Mazzuoli, called il Parmigianino’ in the 1809 catalogue of the Koninklijk Museum.18 It was only from 1880 on that it has been regarded as a work by Quinten Massijs.19 (Vanessa Hoogland)
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