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拍品专文
The model for this Virgin and Child can be traced to Rogier van der Weyden’s Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), painted in circa 1435–40, which was the direct source for a large number of half-length devotional diptychs produced by the master’s followers. The motif of the Virgin feeding the Christ Child became rapidly established as a popular devotional image and was reproduced in several versions by the master’s workshop and by his followers. The same composition, for example, can be seen in the Diptych of Jean Gros (Tournai, Musée des Beaux-Arts; and Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago), painted in van der Weyden’s workshop in the early 1460s.
The adoption of the iconography became widespread throughout the Netherlands and was especially popular in Bruges, where the cult of the Virgin was particularly strong and where significant relics of the Virgin’s hair and milk where venerated at the Sint-Donaaskerk. This painting compares closely with works made in the city by artists like the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, who painted a similarly arched panel with a gilded background in the last quarter of the fifteenth century (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). Dendrochronological examination of the present single-piece oak panel indicates a dating between circa 1489 and 1521 (report by Ian Tyers, dated October 2019, available upon request), suggesting that the artist was a part of this artistic milieu. The intimate scale of this work means that it was almost certainly designed for private devotional use, with the integral frame displaying obvious signs on both sides of old attachments for wing panels, indicating that it would originally have been part of a small triptych.
The adoption of the iconography became widespread throughout the Netherlands and was especially popular in Bruges, where the cult of the Virgin was particularly strong and where significant relics of the Virgin’s hair and milk where venerated at the Sint-Donaaskerk. This painting compares closely with works made in the city by artists like the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, who painted a similarly arched panel with a gilded background in the last quarter of the fifteenth century (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). Dendrochronological examination of the present single-piece oak panel indicates a dating between circa 1489 and 1521 (report by Ian Tyers, dated October 2019, available upon request), suggesting that the artist was a part of this artistic milieu. The intimate scale of this work means that it was almost certainly designed for private devotional use, with the integral frame displaying obvious signs on both sides of old attachments for wing panels, indicating that it would originally have been part of a small triptych.