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Lot Essay
This triptych is an elegant example of the style of painting which flourished in Antwerp during the early-sixteenth century. Executed by one of the leading members of the ‘Antwerp Mannerist’ school, it demonstrates the enduring technical and painterly brilliance that Netherlandish painting continued to achieve during the period.
Throughout the fifteenth century, Bruges had been firmly established as an international centre for trade and commerce. By the end of the century, however, the Zwin channel, which led from the sea directly into the city, had begun to silt up, resulting in the route becoming increasingly impassable for merchant ships. Consequently, the numerous foreign banking houses and the main economic activity of the Netherlands became increasingly focused on Antwerp. As with Bruges before it, Antwerp’s economic flourishing was accompanied by a dramatic rise in the market for luxury goods. The city had not been among the most prominent creative centres of the late middle ages, however, with its rapid rise to economic supremacy, artistic practices in the city similarly thrived.
By the early years of the sixteenth century, the city had developed a highly distinctive visual tradition, led by painters like Quentin Metsys and Joos van Cleve. This invigorating climate saw painters from elsewhere seeking to establish themselves in the city, especially since the Antwerp Painters’ Guild offered more liberal regulations than in other cities. The Bruges painter Gerard David, for instance, established a second workshop in Antwerp in order to benefit from the more varied and widespread patronage he could attract there.
This first generation of Antwerp painters laid the groundwork for perhaps the most distinctive development in the city’s artistic output. Dubbed ‘Antwerp Mannerism’, this newly formulated style combined traditional Flemish naturalism with exuberant decorative details, especially in the form of exotic costumes and capricious architectural inventions, often Italianate in accent. These elements are expertly brought together and used to brilliant effect in this triptych. Characteristically, the figures are enveloped in lively, billowing drapery, offset against the meticulously rendered embroidery of the cloth-of-gold worn by the Magi.
Depictions of the Adoration of the Magi became the single most popular subject for devotional paintings produced in Antwerp during the early-sixteenth century. Scholars, like Ewing, have argued that this narrative assumed such a specific interest and significance in this period because the Magi, as travellers bearing luxurious gifts from distant lands, possessed a special resonance and interest for merchants and traders in the city, themselves the largest group of patrons in Antwerp (see D. Ewing, ‘‘An Antwerp Triptych’: Three Examples of the Artistic and Economic Impact of the Early Antwerp Art Market’, in Antwerp: Artworks and Audiences, Northampton, 1994; and D. Ewing, ‘Magi and Merchants: Civic Iconography and Local Culture in Antwerp Adorations, 1505-1609’, Mobile, 2002). Indeed, interest in the Magi within the urban mercantile elite appears to have been so strong that the traditional names of the three kings - Balthasar, Casper and Melchior – can be frequently found in Antwerp merchant families.
The scale of this triptych suggests that it was commissioned as a work for private devotion, something likewise implied by the intimate closeness of the figures to the viewer. The central magus, Melchior, kneeling before the Virgin and Child may have been intended as a portrait of the man who commissioned the triptych. This was not uncommon in the period, allowing the patron to experience a deeper engagement with the narrative and to place him, in perpetuity, in a position of privileged proximity to Christ and His mother. The devotional impact of the triptych is equally heightened through the gestures of the Holy figures and the inclusion of small subsidiary elements. Behind Saint Joseph in the right wing, for example, is an extinguished candle, resting in a niche in the wall. This represents the light, described in the visions of Saint Bridget of Sweden and very often represented in Netherlandish paintings of the fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, which Joseph held up at the Nativity and whose light was entirely eclipsed by the ‘divine splendour’ of the light of Christ (B. Morris, Saint Bridget of Sweden, Woodbridge, 1999, p. 135). More sombre associations are evoked through the gesture of the Virgin, who holds the Christ Child’s foot in a way that deliberately invites the devout viewer to contemplate the future wounds of His Passion.
Though formerly attributed to ‘The Master of the van Groote Adoration’, this triptych was identified by Dr. Peter van den Brink, on the basis of photographs, as by the hand of ‘The Master of the Antwerp Adoration’, so named after the Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi in Antwerp (Koninklijk Musea voor Schone Kunsten). The anonymous painter’s oeuvre was first formulated by Friedländer in 1915 in his seminal article ‘Die Antwerpener Manieristen von 1520’ (Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, 1915, pp. 65-91), which sought to group together and distinguish the various artistic personalities of the Antwerp Mannerist movement.
Mistakenly illustrated in a 1990 publication on Flemish paintings in Italy, this triptych should not be confused with the Adoration given to a ‘Collaboratore di Pieter Coeck van Aelst’ and now in the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, Palermo (see L. Collobi Ragghianti, op. cit., no. 376 and under no. 382). This confusion arose partly from the popularity of the Adoration as a subject, and the resultant number and variety of Adoration triptychs that are to be found in European museums. It is to be noted, however, that relatively few are of such high quality as the present, superlative example of the type.
Throughout the fifteenth century, Bruges had been firmly established as an international centre for trade and commerce. By the end of the century, however, the Zwin channel, which led from the sea directly into the city, had begun to silt up, resulting in the route becoming increasingly impassable for merchant ships. Consequently, the numerous foreign banking houses and the main economic activity of the Netherlands became increasingly focused on Antwerp. As with Bruges before it, Antwerp’s economic flourishing was accompanied by a dramatic rise in the market for luxury goods. The city had not been among the most prominent creative centres of the late middle ages, however, with its rapid rise to economic supremacy, artistic practices in the city similarly thrived.
By the early years of the sixteenth century, the city had developed a highly distinctive visual tradition, led by painters like Quentin Metsys and Joos van Cleve. This invigorating climate saw painters from elsewhere seeking to establish themselves in the city, especially since the Antwerp Painters’ Guild offered more liberal regulations than in other cities. The Bruges painter Gerard David, for instance, established a second workshop in Antwerp in order to benefit from the more varied and widespread patronage he could attract there.
This first generation of Antwerp painters laid the groundwork for perhaps the most distinctive development in the city’s artistic output. Dubbed ‘Antwerp Mannerism’, this newly formulated style combined traditional Flemish naturalism with exuberant decorative details, especially in the form of exotic costumes and capricious architectural inventions, often Italianate in accent. These elements are expertly brought together and used to brilliant effect in this triptych. Characteristically, the figures are enveloped in lively, billowing drapery, offset against the meticulously rendered embroidery of the cloth-of-gold worn by the Magi.
Depictions of the Adoration of the Magi became the single most popular subject for devotional paintings produced in Antwerp during the early-sixteenth century. Scholars, like Ewing, have argued that this narrative assumed such a specific interest and significance in this period because the Magi, as travellers bearing luxurious gifts from distant lands, possessed a special resonance and interest for merchants and traders in the city, themselves the largest group of patrons in Antwerp (see D. Ewing, ‘‘An Antwerp Triptych’: Three Examples of the Artistic and Economic Impact of the Early Antwerp Art Market’, in Antwerp: Artworks and Audiences, Northampton, 1994; and D. Ewing, ‘Magi and Merchants: Civic Iconography and Local Culture in Antwerp Adorations, 1505-1609’, Mobile, 2002). Indeed, interest in the Magi within the urban mercantile elite appears to have been so strong that the traditional names of the three kings - Balthasar, Casper and Melchior – can be frequently found in Antwerp merchant families.
The scale of this triptych suggests that it was commissioned as a work for private devotion, something likewise implied by the intimate closeness of the figures to the viewer. The central magus, Melchior, kneeling before the Virgin and Child may have been intended as a portrait of the man who commissioned the triptych. This was not uncommon in the period, allowing the patron to experience a deeper engagement with the narrative and to place him, in perpetuity, in a position of privileged proximity to Christ and His mother. The devotional impact of the triptych is equally heightened through the gestures of the Holy figures and the inclusion of small subsidiary elements. Behind Saint Joseph in the right wing, for example, is an extinguished candle, resting in a niche in the wall. This represents the light, described in the visions of Saint Bridget of Sweden and very often represented in Netherlandish paintings of the fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, which Joseph held up at the Nativity and whose light was entirely eclipsed by the ‘divine splendour’ of the light of Christ (B. Morris, Saint Bridget of Sweden, Woodbridge, 1999, p. 135). More sombre associations are evoked through the gesture of the Virgin, who holds the Christ Child’s foot in a way that deliberately invites the devout viewer to contemplate the future wounds of His Passion.
Though formerly attributed to ‘The Master of the van Groote Adoration’, this triptych was identified by Dr. Peter van den Brink, on the basis of photographs, as by the hand of ‘The Master of the Antwerp Adoration’, so named after the Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi in Antwerp (Koninklijk Musea voor Schone Kunsten). The anonymous painter’s oeuvre was first formulated by Friedländer in 1915 in his seminal article ‘Die Antwerpener Manieristen von 1520’ (Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, 1915, pp. 65-91), which sought to group together and distinguish the various artistic personalities of the Antwerp Mannerist movement.
Mistakenly illustrated in a 1990 publication on Flemish paintings in Italy, this triptych should not be confused with the Adoration given to a ‘Collaboratore di Pieter Coeck van Aelst’ and now in the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, Palermo (see L. Collobi Ragghianti, op. cit., no. 376 and under no. 382). This confusion arose partly from the popularity of the Adoration as a subject, and the resultant number and variety of Adoration triptychs that are to be found in European museums. It is to be noted, however, that relatively few are of such high quality as the present, superlative example of the type.