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Lot Essay
From a group of circular drawings by the same hand and of the same dimensions, showing scenes from the Passion and probably intended for stained glass. The Vivian Neal sale included three others from the group, two of which were in the same format as the present work, with recto and verso on separate sheets of paper which had been pasted together back to back. Those have now been separated and the present drawing is one of only two in the whole group which preserve their original recto-verso format. Other drawings from the series are The Betrayal of Christ and Christ before Pilate in the British Museum, London (Rowlands, op. cit., nos. 295-6); The Last Supper and The Agony in the Garden in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Christ's Descent into Limbo in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard; The Flagellation and The Crowning with Thorns in the Fondation Custodia, Paris (Boon 1992, op. cit., nos. 124-5); Christ at the Foot of the Cross in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Noli me tangere and the double-sided Deposition (recto); The Three Maries (verso) in the Morgan Library, New York (Stampfle and Turner, op. cit., no. 76); and The Incredulity of Saint Thomas in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The present drawing is one of only two from the group to remain in private hands.
Although the group had been traditionally attributed to Aertgen van Leyden (1498-1564), A.E. Popham noted in 1932 that the drawings had stylistic similarities to South German art (op. cit.), although he disagreed with Ernst Buchner's earlier suggestion that the group could be attributed to Abraham Schöpfer (active 1533) (op. cit.). For Popham, the group's style pointed not to Schöpfer but to a draughtsman who had also been influenced by Dutch artists like Jan van Scorel (1492-1562). Boon was the first to link the group to the Danube School (1969, op. cit.), at which point he suggested Nicolaus Hogenberg as the artist. Born in Munich, Hogenberg moved in 1527 to Mechelen, where Archduchess Margaret of Parma had established her court as Governor of the Netherlands, and which had become a thriving artistic centre (see lots 2 and 5 for other artists who lived and worked in Mechelen). In 1978 (op. cit.) Boon added that the group probably dated from an early stage in Hogenberg's career, prior to 1527, while he was still working in Munich. Their association with Hogenberg is now generally accepted, although Hans Mielke argued that further research remained to be done to confirm that attribution, since despite the stylistic connections with Hogenberg's prints some discrepancies remained (H. Mielke, ‘Review: L’Epoque de Lucas de Leyden et Pierre Bruegel: Dessins des anciens Pays-Bas’, Master Drawings, XXIII-IV, no. 1, Spring 1986, p. 88).
Although the group had been traditionally attributed to Aertgen van Leyden (1498-1564), A.E. Popham noted in 1932 that the drawings had stylistic similarities to South German art (op. cit.), although he disagreed with Ernst Buchner's earlier suggestion that the group could be attributed to Abraham Schöpfer (active 1533) (op. cit.). For Popham, the group's style pointed not to Schöpfer but to a draughtsman who had also been influenced by Dutch artists like Jan van Scorel (1492-1562). Boon was the first to link the group to the Danube School (1969, op. cit.), at which point he suggested Nicolaus Hogenberg as the artist. Born in Munich, Hogenberg moved in 1527 to Mechelen, where Archduchess Margaret of Parma had established her court as Governor of the Netherlands, and which had become a thriving artistic centre (see lots 2 and 5 for other artists who lived and worked in Mechelen). In 1978 (op. cit.) Boon added that the group probably dated from an early stage in Hogenberg's career, prior to 1527, while he was still working in Munich. Their association with Hogenberg is now generally accepted, although Hans Mielke argued that further research remained to be done to confirm that attribution, since despite the stylistic connections with Hogenberg's prints some discrepancies remained (H. Mielke, ‘Review: L’Epoque de Lucas de Leyden et Pierre Bruegel: Dessins des anciens Pays-Bas’, Master Drawings, XXIII-IV, no. 1, Spring 1986, p. 88).