The Virgin and Child

Details

The Master of the Magdalen Legend (active Brussels, c. 1490-c. 1526)
The Virgin and Child
oil on panel, in an integral frame
16½ x 12¼ in. (42 x 31 cm.)
the frame inscribed 'O maria O regina simplex casta columbina que es mundi medicina ad medendum me festina' (Oh Mary, oh queen Simple chaste dove Who art the medicine of the world Hasten to cure me)

Provenance

Hohenzollern collection, Sigmaringen, no. 31.
Abel collection, Cologne, 1863, no. 13, with shutters.
with Knoedler, with shutters.
Archibald van Beuren, New York.

Literature

Pantheon, VII, 1931, p. 218.
M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, Leiden and Brussels, 1975, p. 90, no. 5, pl. 4.

Exhibited

Drey, New York, 1928.
Munich, Alte Pinakothek, September-October 1928.
Toledo, 1935.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

The composition derives from a prototype by Rogier van der Weyden (for which, see D. de Vos, in Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 1971). Several variations of Rogier's composition were produced by the Master of the Magdalen Legend and his workshop (see, for example, Friedländer, op. cit., no. 4). When this panel was in the Abel collection, Cologne, and when it was with Knoedler (according to photographs in the Witt Library, London) it had two shutters attached to it, one of which depicted Saint Arnold of Liziwang and a donor, the other Saint Catherine.

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