.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The artist of this unique wedding portrait has long eluded identification. Painted with an idiosyncrasy reminiscent of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), it was most recently suggested by Dr. Dieter Koepplin, to whom we are grateful, that the picture belongs to the obscure oeuvre of an anonymous master known as the Monogrammist I.W., active in Bohemia in the 1530s, when he most likely trained in Cranach’s workshop (on the basis of photographs; private communication, March 2019). The artist was first associated with a group of five or six works bearing the same monogram (see Thieme-Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, Leipzig, 1950, XXXVII, pp. 425–26), characterised by their distinctive stylistic similarity to Cranach’s figures, and painted with the fine detail and curvilinear forms of a confident and highly skilled draughtsman. While Cranach’s studio practice was carefully organised to produce a precise, homogenous style across its output, the Monogrammist I.W. demonstrates a unique creativity that has set him apart from his contemporaries.
While paintings of couples would have been more familiar to sixteenth-century viewers in the moralising context of the ‘ill-matched lovers’ – which warned against the folly of old men being fooled by younger women – informal betrothal or marriage portraits of Saxon nobility such as this would have been extremely rare during this period. Indeed, no doubt at the patron’s request for joviality, the author of this picture took inspiration from the popular series of genre prints entitled Small Wedding Dancers by the German engraver Heinrich Aldegrever (1502-c. 1561), basing the present animated poses on an etching of a dancing couple dated 1538 (fig. 1; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art). This painting was probably conceived around a similar date and was perhaps even inspired by the series, with Aldegraver’s dancing couple recast in the stylistic idiom of Cranach’s slender figures, dressed in the fashionable attire of patricians of the Wittenberg Court. Shown standing on a balcony behind a curtain, drawn partially to reveal a distant landscape, the viewer is made privy to a moment of intimacy between the couple. The artist accentuates its significance by altering Aldegrever’s design and lowering the bride’s right hand to tenderly touch her lover’s, bringing attention to their wedding rings and their unity in marriage. The picture’s clear emanation from the Cranach workshop would have signified the prestige of the commission and the nobility of its patrons.
While paintings of couples would have been more familiar to sixteenth-century viewers in the moralising context of the ‘ill-matched lovers’ – which warned against the folly of old men being fooled by younger women – informal betrothal or marriage portraits of Saxon nobility such as this would have been extremely rare during this period. Indeed, no doubt at the patron’s request for joviality, the author of this picture took inspiration from the popular series of genre prints entitled Small Wedding Dancers by the German engraver Heinrich Aldegrever (1502-c. 1561), basing the present animated poses on an etching of a dancing couple dated 1538 (fig. 1; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art). This painting was probably conceived around a similar date and was perhaps even inspired by the series, with Aldegraver’s dancing couple recast in the stylistic idiom of Cranach’s slender figures, dressed in the fashionable attire of patricians of the Wittenberg Court. Shown standing on a balcony behind a curtain, drawn partially to reveal a distant landscape, the viewer is made privy to a moment of intimacy between the couple. The artist accentuates its significance by altering Aldegrever’s design and lowering the bride’s right hand to tenderly touch her lover’s, bringing attention to their wedding rings and their unity in marriage. The picture’s clear emanation from the Cranach workshop would have signified the prestige of the commission and the nobility of its patrons.