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拍品专文
Ambrosius Benson is recorded living in Bruges by 1518, when he entered the workshop of Gerard David, under whose influence he remained for the majority of his career. Benson’s combination of David’s successful pictorial style with a bolder color palette and more solid forms saw him establish his own successful workshop in the city that catered to a wide range of local and international patrons. Two works, an Altarpiece of Saint Anthony of Padua (Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts, Brussels) and a Holy Family (formerly Groeningemuseum, Bruges), are signed with an ‘AB’ monogram and form the basis of his oeuvre. The composition of the present work, dated by Peter van den Brink at the time of its sale in 2016 to circa 1531, relates closely to a complex group of works attributed to Benson, Gerard David, Adriaen Isenbrandt and the manuscript illuminator Simon Bening. This group of paintings emphasizes the rich artistic environment of Bruges in the early sixteenth century and the fascinating means by which pattern drawings and designs were circulated between workshops. The ultimate source for Benson’s Virgin and Child appears to be the hugely successful Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Gerard David (National Gallery of Art, Washington), a highly successful design and one which was copied and varied several times by David himself and by his workshop which set a model for contemporaries to follow. Here, the gentle tilt of the Virgin’s softly modelled head echoes David’s example.
The circulation of drawings through different workshops in Bruges allowed painters to repeat successful compositions, catering to an increasing demand for paintings of specific types and images. The use of model drawings had, of course, been established practice in Netherlandish painting for a long time, but in the early years of the sixteenth century, with the increasing creation of objects for the open market, painters relied more directly on established, popular models in their work. The composition of the present Virgin, for example, appears in several works by Benson, including his Crowned Virgin and Child (present location unknown, see Friedländer, op. cit., p. 97, fig. 260a), and other painters, like Adriaen Isenbrandt’s Virgin and Child roundel (Museu Nacional de Machade de Castro, Coïmbra). Given the proximity of much of Benson’s work to David’s compositions and, indeed, the almost ubiquitous influence that master had on Bruges painting in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, developments in the scientific study of paintings have allowed scholars to begin separating and analyzing the style of underdrawings and gain a better understanding of how Benson approached his craft alongside his contemporaries. An infra-red reflectogram of the present panel made at the time of its sale in 2016 showed two distinct approaches in the underdrawing of the work. While the handling of the landscape displayed a much freer, more rapid drawing, that of the figures was more carefully articulated. This would suggest that the figures may well have been copied or transferred from an existing drawing. No visible pouncing or tracing lines are found in the underdrawing, though Till-Holger Borchert suggested that the artist may have used a non-carbon based medium for this process, which would not appear under IRR, before going over these lines in a carbon-based ink.
The painting’s small scale indicates that it would have been an object for private devotion. As a picture the viewer would have returned to time and again, the devotional import of the imagery is carefully designed to allow for multiple levels of interpretation, providing an ongoing source for meditation and prayer. Thus, for example, the tender gesture of the Christ Child, reaching up to cup His mother’s chin can be read in a variety of ways. Not only does this gesture serve as a means of emphasizing His humanity and the closeness between mother and son, but it might also be read as possessing deeper meaning, suggestive of the Virgin as the bride of Christ in Heaven through reference to the famous passage in the Song of Songs: ‘His left arm under my head, his right arm will embrace’. This idea was frequently illustrated from early in the Middle Ages by a gesture similar to that seen in this painting (see, for example, a historiated letter accompanying the passage in an illuminated Bible made around 1200; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. Lat. 16745, fol. 112v). Christ, too, holds a small apple in his other hand, a familiar reference to Him as the new Adam and, by implication, the Virgin as the new Eve. The extensive landscape background might also have served to invite and sustain a viewer’s contemplation. As Maryan Ainsworth has discussed in relation to Gerard David, such landscapes can be linked to ‘the concept of naturalism, already developed on medieval though, and to contemporary devotional treatises’ (Gerard David: Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition, New York, 1998, p. 209). The beauty of nature had from early in the Middle Ages been cited as a source of wonder at God’s creation, artistry and power. These vistas also allowed the viewer to imagine themselves in the scene before them. An exercise widely promoted by popular devotional literature like the Meditations on the Life of Christ by the Pseudo-Bonaventure or Ludolph of Saxony’s Vita Christi was for readers to implicate themselves into scenes of Christ’s life in order that they might better experience, identify and empathize with the protagonists. A prominent element of these texts was the idea of the need to follow in the footsteps of Christ in order to live a good life. As such, as Reindert Falkenburg argues, paintings like the present can be seen as ‘visual aids for meditation on the pilgrimage of life’ (Joachim Patinir: Landscape as an Image of the Pilgrimage of Life, Amsterdam and Philadelphia 1988, p. 9). These ideas are prominently reflected in Benson’s small panel, with the winding road and the diminutive pilgrim traversing it, serving as a means for the viewer to enter the scene before them and follow the same path to reach the Virgin and Child and salvation.
The circulation of drawings through different workshops in Bruges allowed painters to repeat successful compositions, catering to an increasing demand for paintings of specific types and images. The use of model drawings had, of course, been established practice in Netherlandish painting for a long time, but in the early years of the sixteenth century, with the increasing creation of objects for the open market, painters relied more directly on established, popular models in their work. The composition of the present Virgin, for example, appears in several works by Benson, including his Crowned Virgin and Child (present location unknown, see Friedländer, op. cit., p. 97, fig. 260a), and other painters, like Adriaen Isenbrandt’s Virgin and Child roundel (Museu Nacional de Machade de Castro, Coïmbra). Given the proximity of much of Benson’s work to David’s compositions and, indeed, the almost ubiquitous influence that master had on Bruges painting in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, developments in the scientific study of paintings have allowed scholars to begin separating and analyzing the style of underdrawings and gain a better understanding of how Benson approached his craft alongside his contemporaries. An infra-red reflectogram of the present panel made at the time of its sale in 2016 showed two distinct approaches in the underdrawing of the work. While the handling of the landscape displayed a much freer, more rapid drawing, that of the figures was more carefully articulated. This would suggest that the figures may well have been copied or transferred from an existing drawing. No visible pouncing or tracing lines are found in the underdrawing, though Till-Holger Borchert suggested that the artist may have used a non-carbon based medium for this process, which would not appear under IRR, before going over these lines in a carbon-based ink.
The painting’s small scale indicates that it would have been an object for private devotion. As a picture the viewer would have returned to time and again, the devotional import of the imagery is carefully designed to allow for multiple levels of interpretation, providing an ongoing source for meditation and prayer. Thus, for example, the tender gesture of the Christ Child, reaching up to cup His mother’s chin can be read in a variety of ways. Not only does this gesture serve as a means of emphasizing His humanity and the closeness between mother and son, but it might also be read as possessing deeper meaning, suggestive of the Virgin as the bride of Christ in Heaven through reference to the famous passage in the Song of Songs: ‘His left arm under my head, his right arm will embrace’. This idea was frequently illustrated from early in the Middle Ages by a gesture similar to that seen in this painting (see, for example, a historiated letter accompanying the passage in an illuminated Bible made around 1200; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. Lat. 16745, fol. 112v). Christ, too, holds a small apple in his other hand, a familiar reference to Him as the new Adam and, by implication, the Virgin as the new Eve. The extensive landscape background might also have served to invite and sustain a viewer’s contemplation. As Maryan Ainsworth has discussed in relation to Gerard David, such landscapes can be linked to ‘the concept of naturalism, already developed on medieval though, and to contemporary devotional treatises’ (Gerard David: Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition, New York, 1998, p. 209). The beauty of nature had from early in the Middle Ages been cited as a source of wonder at God’s creation, artistry and power. These vistas also allowed the viewer to imagine themselves in the scene before them. An exercise widely promoted by popular devotional literature like the Meditations on the Life of Christ by the Pseudo-Bonaventure or Ludolph of Saxony’s Vita Christi was for readers to implicate themselves into scenes of Christ’s life in order that they might better experience, identify and empathize with the protagonists. A prominent element of these texts was the idea of the need to follow in the footsteps of Christ in order to live a good life. As such, as Reindert Falkenburg argues, paintings like the present can be seen as ‘visual aids for meditation on the pilgrimage of life’ (Joachim Patinir: Landscape as an Image of the Pilgrimage of Life, Amsterdam and Philadelphia 1988, p. 9). These ideas are prominently reflected in Benson’s small panel, with the winding road and the diminutive pilgrim traversing it, serving as a means for the viewer to enter the scene before them and follow the same path to reach the Virgin and Child and salvation.