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Lot Essay
This dignified Lamentation with an elaborately rendered landscape background may have once formed the central panel of a triptych and is one of at least five known versions of this composition. The finest of these is the panel today given to the workshop of Dieric Bouts in the Louvre, Paris, which is strongly influenced by Rogier van der Weyden's Lamentation in the Miraflores altarpiece, datable to before 1445 (fig. 1; Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin). A second panel is today in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt-am-Main, while a third attributed to the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy forms the central panel of a triptych in the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid. A fourth, considerably weaker, version was offered Sotheby’s, London, 26 June 1957, lot 111 as a work by Hans Memling.
Having been out of public view for the past sixty years and in the same private collection since the mid-1930s, the recent reemergence of this panel has provided an opportunity to reassess the relationship between the various versions of this composition. The Louvre panel exhibits numerous stylistic and compositional differences from the present painting and the panel in Frankfurt, with the central panel of the Madrid triptych being yet further afield. Among the most notable differences between the Louvre painting and both the Städel picture and ours are the landscape backgrounds and the positioning of Christ’s proper left arm, which is closer to his body in the Louvre painting. By contrast, Christ's positioning in this and the Städel painting is identical to that of Rogier's Lamentation in the Miraflores altarpiece. While the Madrid painting employed the same positioning of Christ as in this painting and the one in Frankfurt, the landscape displays considerable changes and the Magdalene also appears bareheaded.
On account of the stylistic and compositional affinities between the present painting and the one in Frankfurt, Dr. Valentine Henderiks has posited that the two works were likely produced in the same as-yet unidentified Bruges workshop. She further suggested that each of the versions was probably based on a cartoon, plausibly after a lost prototype by Rogier van der Weyden, which must have been circulating widely in the Southern Netherlands at the time.
Recent dendrochronological examination of the oak panel by Dr. Pascale Fraiture at KIK-IRPA in Brussels revealed that the wood originated in the Ardennes or middle Rhine region of western Germany and northeastern France, as opposed to the more typical Baltic region, and that the youngest tree ring dates to 1449. The earliest possible manufacturing date of the panel would therefore be 1456, with a likely usage date of circa 1470-80. This would place the painting roughly contemporaneous with the version in the Louvre, the panel of which was available for use from 1468 on.
We are grateful to Dr. Valentine Henderiks for her assistance cataloguing this lot. A copy of the full dendrochronological report is available upon request.
Having been out of public view for the past sixty years and in the same private collection since the mid-1930s, the recent reemergence of this panel has provided an opportunity to reassess the relationship between the various versions of this composition. The Louvre panel exhibits numerous stylistic and compositional differences from the present painting and the panel in Frankfurt, with the central panel of the Madrid triptych being yet further afield. Among the most notable differences between the Louvre painting and both the Städel picture and ours are the landscape backgrounds and the positioning of Christ’s proper left arm, which is closer to his body in the Louvre painting. By contrast, Christ's positioning in this and the Städel painting is identical to that of Rogier's Lamentation in the Miraflores altarpiece. While the Madrid painting employed the same positioning of Christ as in this painting and the one in Frankfurt, the landscape displays considerable changes and the Magdalene also appears bareheaded.
On account of the stylistic and compositional affinities between the present painting and the one in Frankfurt, Dr. Valentine Henderiks has posited that the two works were likely produced in the same as-yet unidentified Bruges workshop. She further suggested that each of the versions was probably based on a cartoon, plausibly after a lost prototype by Rogier van der Weyden, which must have been circulating widely in the Southern Netherlands at the time.
Recent dendrochronological examination of the oak panel by Dr. Pascale Fraiture at KIK-IRPA in Brussels revealed that the wood originated in the Ardennes or middle Rhine region of western Germany and northeastern France, as opposed to the more typical Baltic region, and that the youngest tree ring dates to 1449. The earliest possible manufacturing date of the panel would therefore be 1456, with a likely usage date of circa 1470-80. This would place the painting roughly contemporaneous with the version in the Louvre, the panel of which was available for use from 1468 on.
We are grateful to Dr. Valentine Henderiks for her assistance cataloguing this lot. A copy of the full dendrochronological report is available upon request.