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Lot Essay
This panel is an excellent example of one of Marten van Cleve’s most popular early compositions. The subject ultimately derives from a lost painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, known through copies by his sons Pieter Brueghel the Younger (Museo Stibbert, Florence) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). While interpretation of this Brueghelian subject has varied, the most convincing explanation is that it represents a wealthy bourgeois couple visiting the country home of their child’s wet-nurse, shown in the center of this painting. Van Cleve painted several versions of his own, unique interpretation of the scene (see K. Ertz, Marten van Cleve, 1524-1581: Kritischer katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Lingen, 2014, pp. 185-159, nos. 107-119), and in a number of these he extended his composition to the left to include a group of farmers drinking and making merry at a table by an open door leading to a farmyard. It would appear that this panel may originally have formed part of a larger painting, of which the left-hand section, showing figures around a table, is now in the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (fig. 1): the two panels are almost identical in height and, allowing for a small missing area between the fragments (presumably damaged when the pictures were separated), details like the cast shadows on the floor, the bed in the background and even the base of the jug held by the man approaching the table can be traced exactly between the two sections.
Georgio T. Faggin has previously suggested van Cleve’s various depictions of this subject date to relatively early in the painter’s career (‘De genre-schilder Marten van Cleef’, Oud Holland, LXXX, no. 1, 1965, p. 34). Stylistically, this painting shows affinities with the work of van Cleve’s master, Frans Floris, most notably in the modelling of the nurse’s head, which is reminiscent of the sculptural handling of the features in works by Floris, such as his Study of the Head of a Woman of circa 1555-60 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Ertz has recently proposed a somewhat later dating of the Saint Petersburg panel, suggesting it was probably executed in the late 1570s (op. cit., no. 108).
The distinctive marks on the reverse of this Baltic oak panel are an extremely rare and important survival, and provide valuable insight into the processing, supply and transportation of artists’ supplies in the sixteenth century. The panel shows a densely-gathered group of incised lines, one running straight along the wood grain, intersected by seven slanting diagonal incisions. This can be identified as cargo or timber merchants’ marks, made after the tree was felled and the planks hewn but before it was shipped to the Netherlands. Ian Tyers has suggested that the lines represent different offspring from merchant families, with marks added with every new generation (private communication, 1 May 2019). Typically, such marks would have been planed or sanded down when the wood was processed by panel makers in the Netherlands. The survival of the marks here provides fascinating insight into the complexities of the trade in artists’ materials in the early modern period.
The attribution has been endorsed by Dr. Klaus Ertz following firsthand inspection of the painting. A copy his certificate dated 20 November 2020 is available upon request.
Georgio T. Faggin has previously suggested van Cleve’s various depictions of this subject date to relatively early in the painter’s career (‘De genre-schilder Marten van Cleef’, Oud Holland, LXXX, no. 1, 1965, p. 34). Stylistically, this painting shows affinities with the work of van Cleve’s master, Frans Floris, most notably in the modelling of the nurse’s head, which is reminiscent of the sculptural handling of the features in works by Floris, such as his Study of the Head of a Woman of circa 1555-60 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Ertz has recently proposed a somewhat later dating of the Saint Petersburg panel, suggesting it was probably executed in the late 1570s (op. cit., no. 108).
The distinctive marks on the reverse of this Baltic oak panel are an extremely rare and important survival, and provide valuable insight into the processing, supply and transportation of artists’ supplies in the sixteenth century. The panel shows a densely-gathered group of incised lines, one running straight along the wood grain, intersected by seven slanting diagonal incisions. This can be identified as cargo or timber merchants’ marks, made after the tree was felled and the planks hewn but before it was shipped to the Netherlands. Ian Tyers has suggested that the lines represent different offspring from merchant families, with marks added with every new generation (private communication, 1 May 2019). Typically, such marks would have been planed or sanded down when the wood was processed by panel makers in the Netherlands. The survival of the marks here provides fascinating insight into the complexities of the trade in artists’ materials in the early modern period.
The attribution has been endorsed by Dr. Klaus Ertz following firsthand inspection of the painting. A copy his certificate dated 20 November 2020 is available upon request.