Catalogue-2014-Jean-Luc-Baroni

Master of The Female Half-Lengths
Antwerp, first half of the 16 th Century
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The Virgin and Child
Oil on panel.
38 x 30 cms. (15 x 11 ¾ in).
This beautifully preserved panel painting is an exceptional example of the work of an artist or workshop
so far not precisely identified but clearly recognisable on the basis of style and quality. Other examples
can be seen in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the National
Gallery, London, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and the Art Institute, Chicago, amongst other collections.
Max Friedlander, the historian of Netherlandish Art, believed the artist or artists to have been active in
Antwerp or possibly Mechelen during the 1520s and 1530s; he analysed the figure style as being close
to Bernart van Orley and where there are landscapes, likened them to Joachim Patinier’s 1 . More recently,
the similarity has been noted with the works given to Ambrosius Benson, who is sometimes thought to
have had workshops in two different cities, Antwerp and Bruges and who equally had a successful career
producing refined panels on a domestic scale. The nomenclature is based on a specific group of panels
depicting aristocratic ladies in half-length scenes, often interiors, reading, writing or playing musical
instruments, while others shown with a jar, the attribute of Mary Magdalen. The present picture belongs
to a group of representations of the Virgin and Child, some as here, focused entirely on the figures and
others in broader, landscape settings. The artist shows great delicacy in the treatment of drapery and hair;
here the voluminous folds of the red robe contrast with the minute and subtle detailing of the veil on the
Virgin’s head and the border of fur at her neck, while rolling waves of hair flow over her shoulder towards
the almost luminescent pallor of the Christ Child’s short curls and alabaster skin. Echoes and borrowings
from other Netherlandish artists have been frequently noted and in the case of the Virgin and Child
compositions, the inspiration often comes from Rogier van der Weyden. These references are deliberately
sophisticated underlining the cultivated atmosphere of the paintings coming from this studio.
Friedlander considered the so-called Master of the Female Half-Lengths to be one of the most successful
of the generation working alongside the “giants” such as Quentin Massys and Joos van Cleve. He
remarks, however, upon the total absence of clues to aid identification of the hand, neither signatures
nor monograms, inscriptions nor recorded commissions, although the Madonnas have a trademark in the
small round metal or gold button which secures the Virgin’s robe, as here. It would appear that much of
the work - around one hundred paintings have been attributed to this workshop - was sent to Spain for
the hungry market there 2 and given the relatively small scale of the panels and their refinement it may be
presumed that they were made particularly for secular collectors and patrons of the arts.
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