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Lot Essay
Though published and exhibited as a work by Lambert Lombard on several occasions in the middle of the twentieth century, this intriguing panel is now thought to date to a generation or so later by an artist around Willem Key or Frans Floris, both of whom trained with Lombard.
The figure ultimately derives from the Venus de’ Medici (Florence, Uffizi Gallery), but with her head turned in the other direction and a change to the positioning of her left hand. The origins of this classical sculpture are unknown. It was published in the collection of the Villa Medici in Rome in 1638 and must have been unearthed prior to 1559, when it appeared in a bronze reduction by Willem van Tetrode on a cabinet commissioned by Niccolò Orsini, Count of Pitigliano, as a gift for Philip II of Spain. The painting carries an unusual iconography: the basket of flowers would seemingly mark her as Flora while the hunting scene in the background points instead to an association with Diana.
A note on the provenance:
Dr Arthur Kauffmann (1887-1983)
In 1919, art historian Arthur Kauffmann was appointed director of the Frankfurt branch of the renowned Berlin auction house Hugo Helbing. He had previously studied in Berlin and Paris, and was awarded his doctorate in 1910 with a dissertation on the painter Giocondo Albertolli in Erlangen. In the summer of 1937, Kauffmann was prohibited from holding auctions at the Frankfurt branch due to his Jewish ancestry, and the following year he emigrated with his family to London, never returning to Germany.
In London Kauffmann would find himself in company with a number of refugee art dealers displaced from Germany, including Herbert Bier, Francis Matthiesen, and Francis and Margaret Drey. He opened a gallery in the West End in 1939, and received British citizenship in 1947. After the war, he worked as a consultant for private art collectors, advising and selling to the Swiss collector Emil Georg Bührle. After Bührle's death in 1956, Kauffmann helped establish the E. G. Bührle Collection Foundation.
A notable sale of Kauffmann’s was The Entombment, an early Netherlandish masterpiece of circa 1425, attributed to Robert Campin. This he acquired at a sale in these Rooms in 1942 in partnership with a consortium of German refugee art dealers, and subsequently sold to eminent Anglo-Austrian collector and art historian Count Antoine Seilern. Much of Seilern’s outstanding collection was anonymously bequeathed to the Courtauld Gallery, transforming its holdings.
Professor Michael Kauffmann FBA (1931-2023)
Another Kauffmann would go on to contribute significantly to the Courtauld: Arthur’s son, the late Professor Michael Kauffmann, from whose collection the present lot is sold. Michael was born in Frankfurt in 1931 prior to his family’s emigration. His career as an art historian started at the Warburg Institute, after which he became Assistant Keeper at the Manchester City Art Gallery, before moving to the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Department of Prints, Drawings and Paintings as Asst. Keeper from 1960-75 (during which he was also Asst. to the Director, 1963-66), and then Keeper from 1975-85.
Appointed Director in 1985, Michael Kauffmann will be remembered not only for his rigorous scholarship, but as the man who brought the Gallery and its Institute back together in Somerset House, whilst fostering an academic excellence that led student numbers to almost double during his six-year tenure.
The figure ultimately derives from the Venus de’ Medici (Florence, Uffizi Gallery), but with her head turned in the other direction and a change to the positioning of her left hand. The origins of this classical sculpture are unknown. It was published in the collection of the Villa Medici in Rome in 1638 and must have been unearthed prior to 1559, when it appeared in a bronze reduction by Willem van Tetrode on a cabinet commissioned by Niccolò Orsini, Count of Pitigliano, as a gift for Philip II of Spain. The painting carries an unusual iconography: the basket of flowers would seemingly mark her as Flora while the hunting scene in the background points instead to an association with Diana.
A note on the provenance:
Dr Arthur Kauffmann (1887-1983)
In 1919, art historian Arthur Kauffmann was appointed director of the Frankfurt branch of the renowned Berlin auction house Hugo Helbing. He had previously studied in Berlin and Paris, and was awarded his doctorate in 1910 with a dissertation on the painter Giocondo Albertolli in Erlangen. In the summer of 1937, Kauffmann was prohibited from holding auctions at the Frankfurt branch due to his Jewish ancestry, and the following year he emigrated with his family to London, never returning to Germany.
In London Kauffmann would find himself in company with a number of refugee art dealers displaced from Germany, including Herbert Bier, Francis Matthiesen, and Francis and Margaret Drey. He opened a gallery in the West End in 1939, and received British citizenship in 1947. After the war, he worked as a consultant for private art collectors, advising and selling to the Swiss collector Emil Georg Bührle. After Bührle's death in 1956, Kauffmann helped establish the E. G. Bührle Collection Foundation.
A notable sale of Kauffmann’s was The Entombment, an early Netherlandish masterpiece of circa 1425, attributed to Robert Campin. This he acquired at a sale in these Rooms in 1942 in partnership with a consortium of German refugee art dealers, and subsequently sold to eminent Anglo-Austrian collector and art historian Count Antoine Seilern. Much of Seilern’s outstanding collection was anonymously bequeathed to the Courtauld Gallery, transforming its holdings.
Professor Michael Kauffmann FBA (1931-2023)
Another Kauffmann would go on to contribute significantly to the Courtauld: Arthur’s son, the late Professor Michael Kauffmann, from whose collection the present lot is sold. Michael was born in Frankfurt in 1931 prior to his family’s emigration. His career as an art historian started at the Warburg Institute, after which he became Assistant Keeper at the Manchester City Art Gallery, before moving to the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Department of Prints, Drawings and Paintings as Asst. Keeper from 1960-75 (during which he was also Asst. to the Director, 1963-66), and then Keeper from 1975-85.
Appointed Director in 1985, Michael Kauffmann will be remembered not only for his rigorous scholarship, but as the man who brought the Gallery and its Institute back together in Somerset House, whilst fostering an academic excellence that led student numbers to almost double during his six-year tenure.