Beschreibung:

Details
ÉCOLE DE LEYDE DU XVIe SIÈCLE, SUIVEUR DE LUCAS DE LEYDE
Le Christ de Douleur ; La Vierge de Douleur
huile sur panneau, une paire
31,2 x 24 cm. (12 1/4 x 9 7/16 in.) ; 31 x 23,9 cm. (12 3/16 x 9 7/16 in.)
(2)
Provenance
Collection de Roger Ehrhardt de Schiltigheim ; sa vente, hôtel Drouot, Paris, (Me Baudoin), 16 février 1939, lots 8 et 9 (tous deux comme 'attribué à Lucas van Leyden').
Vente anonyme, palais Galliera, Paris, (Me Ader), 13 juin 1963, lots 12 et 13 (tous deux comme 'attribué à Lucas de Leyde').
Vente anonyme, Nouveau Drouot, Paris, 12 juin 1986, lot 98 (comme 'attribué à Lucas de Leyde').
Collection particulière, France.
Literature
M. Compton, Walker Art Gallery. Foreign Schools Catalogue. Text, Liverpool, 1963, p. 100, sous le n°1184.
E. Lawton Smith, The paintings of Lucas van Leyden. A New Apparaisal, with Catalogue Raisonné, Columbia-Londres, 1992, p. 117, sous le Cat. C16 (5).
Post lot text
LEIDEN SCHOOL 16th CENTURY, FOLLOWER OF LUCAS VAN LEYDEN, MAN OF SORROWS; MATER DOLOROSA, OIL ON PANEL, A PAIR
The root of the iconography of the Christ of Sorrows and the Virgin of Sorrows can be found in the works executed in Byzantine and Italian workshops of the 13th and 14th centuries. The pair was conceived as elements of a diptych, inviting believers to reflect on and remember the suffering of Christ’s Passion and the pain experienced by the Virgin (Ringbom, Icon to narrative: the rise of the dramatic close-up in fifteenth-century devotional painting, Doornspijk, 1965, p.127).
This reminder of the physical and moral hardships endured by Christ and his Mother was very popular in the Netherlands in the second half of the 16th century. From the Flemish workshops, especially those of Dirk and Albrecht Bouts in Leuven, numerous panels were produced depicting Christ crowned with thorns, sometimes with the weeping Virgin as a pendant. Examples include the Man of Sorrows and the Mater Dolorosa by Albrecht Bouts, both of which are in the Fogg Art Museum (Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, inv. nos. 2001.170 and 2001.171).
These powerful images are situated within a particular social and spiritual context. In the Netherlands of the second half of the 14th century, the devotio moderna had a considerable influence on Christian spirituality, inviting believers to adopt a personal, intimate and daily religious practice by devoting themselves more to prayer and to the reading and study of the Holy Scriptures. Thomas a Kempis' (c. 1380-1471) The Imitation of Christ was the emblematic text at the heart of this reform.
Thanks to an engraving in the British Museum (London, inv. no. Kk,6.102), Christ as the Man of Sorrows and the Virgin as Mater Dolorosa in a Landscape, whose upper left corner bears the monogram and date "1522 / L", we can relate our two panels to a lost prototype by Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533), a Dutch painter and engraver whose work is marked by the Germanic pictorial tradition and Italian mannerism. Probably executed around 1600, this engraving testifies to the interest shown in the artist half a century after his death, as do the numerous painted versions of this composition (see E. Lawton Smith, 1992, op. cit., pp.116-119), including two paintings in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (inv. nos. SK-A-1483 and SK-A-1484).
The Rijksmuseum essay on their paintings by Menno Balm and Jan Piet Filedt Kok lists some thirty versions, more than half of which are complete diptychs. This also mentions the presence of such diptychs in seventeenth-century inventories in Antwerp and The Hague, such as that of Claes Claesz. van Leeuwen, who died in Leiden in 1645, in which "twee taferelen, sijnde een Christus en Lieve Vrouw, copiën naar Lucas van Leyden" ("two paintings, a Christ and a Madonna, copies after Lucas of Leyden") are listed (M. Balm, 2010, 'copy after Lucas van Leyden, Inner Left Wing of a Diptych with Christ as the Man of Sorrows, c. 1557 - c. 1600', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.12114).