Circle of the Master of the Brunswick Monogram
Renaissance, second quarter of the 16th Century, ca. 1525-30
The Flight into Egypt set in a Flemish Village with a Maypole
Oil on panel, with old collectors seal and lables verso
H. 31,7 cm. W. 39,8 cm.
PROVENANCE
Collection Mr R.G. de Boer, Laren, The Netherlands;
Private collection;
Anonymous sale, Hampel, Munich, 12 April, 2018, as lot 2141 (as attributed to Jan van Amstel);
Private collection
EXHIBITION
Singer Museum, Laren, Kunstbezit rondom Laren. 1958, cat. nr. 63
Singer Museum, Laren, Nederlandse primitieven uit Nederlands particulier bezit. Juli – September 1961, cat. nr. 2 (lable verso)
LITERATURE
Boon, K. G. (1961). Nederlandse primitieven uit Nederlands particulier bezit. Laren: Singer Museum, p. 7, cat. nr. 2;
Schubert, D. (1970). Die Gemälde des Braunschweiger Monogrammisten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Niederländischen Malerei des 16. Jahrhunderts. Schauberg: Dumon, p. 106, ill. 68;
Wied, A. et al. (2003). Die flämische Landschaft. 1520-1700. Lingen: Luca Verlag, p. 68
REFERENCE LITERATURE
Gibson, W. S. (1989). Mirror of the Earth. The world landscape in sixteenth-century Flemish painting. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 26, ill. 2.37
EXPERTISE
With dendrochronology report by Marta Domínguez Delmás, University of Amsterdam, dating the panel in 1512. Considering sapwood estimations, seasoning time and transport, the earliest production date would be the late 1520s. The oak originates form the coastal area of Lithuania.
The biblical motif of the Virgin riding on a donkey with the Christ Child accompanied by the preceding Joseph is set into a Flemish village scenery, with the entrance to a walled courtyard of a homestead on the right of the composition. This narrative scene shows several children playing around a Maypole, one of them is handed a piece of bread by the Virgin as a symbol of her mercy.
Formerly the present picture was given to the Antwerp master Jan Aertszone van Amstel (see Boon, 1961, p. 7), who became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke of Antwerp in 1528 and was active there until his death in ca. 1542. Van Amstel was possibly identical to the anonymous master know as the Master of the Brunswick Monogram, who signed with the monogram 'JvAMS' (e.g. Parable of the Great Supper, collection of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Brunswick, cat. nr. 165) and who was active between ca. 1525 - 1545. The present picture can be placed in the group of works within the circle of both rather undetermined masters.
Another, slightly larger version (H. 41,8 cm. W. 51,8) of the present work is know and kept in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Zürich (inv. nr. 1996.2). The Zürich version was formerly attributed to Henri met de Bles, one of the earliest landscape painters in the southern Netherlands, by cataloged by Subert (1970, p. 106, ill. 67) and Gibson (1989, p. 26, ill. 2.37) as a copy after a lost original by Jan van Amstel . The present the work is still catalogued as as an anonymous South Netherlandish master after Jan van Amstel and dated to 1540 - 1550. As such, given the date of the panel, the present picture may well be the original composition. In any case, it is a highly interesting and very early example of a realistic depiction of a landscape with a Flemish village.
