Description
PROPERTY FROM A EUROPEAN FAMILY OF TITLE
A TRIPTYCH REPRESENTING THE CRUCIFIXION, FLANKED BY THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN AND THE RESURRECTION, WITH SCENES FROM THE PASSION BEYOND
A TRIPTYCH REPRESENTING THE CRUCIFIXION, FLANKED BY THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN AND THE RESURRECTION, WITH SCENES FROM THE PASSION BEYOND
measurements note
central panel: 100.5 by 66.8 cm.; 39 1/2 by 26 1/4 in. wings (each): 103 by 31cm.; 40 1/2 by 12 1/4 in. overall (including frame): 112 by 156.5 cm.; 44 by 61 1/2 in.
oil on oak panel, in a partially engaged (and possibly original) frame
PROVENANCE
Don Juan Manuel Manzanedo y González, Primer Marqués de Manzanedo, y Primer Duque de Santoña (created Marques in 1864);
By descent to Don Juan Manuel Mitjans y Domecq, Marqués de Manzanedo y de Santurce, y Duque de Santoña (b. 1951);
Thence by descent to the present owners.
NOTE
Traditionally attributed to Hugo van der Goes, this hitherto unrecorded altarpiece has only recently been correctly identified as an early work by Bartholomäus (or Barthel) Bruyn the Elder, the leading painter working in Cologne during the first half of the 16th Century.
The work can be dated circa 1515-20 by comparison with a similar triptych by the artist representing The Crucifixion, flanked by Saint Agnes and a Bishop Saint, today in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (see Fig. 1).1 Both altarpieces share numerous affinities, most strikingly in the disposition of the Christ figure on the cross, the pose of the Virgin, the arrangement of the landscape, and the detailed treatment of the skull, stones and foliage in the immediate foreground. In his 1964 monograph on the altarpieces of Barthel Bruyn, Horst-Johs Tümmers dates the Munich altarpiece, on stylistic grounds, to relatively early within Bruyn's career, circa 1515-20; a likely dating for the present work.2
Bruyn's surviving oeuvre reveals a coherent and distinctive stylistic development throughout the artist's career. His earliest works date from around 1512 and during the formative years 1512-15 his style underwent a rapid transformation, emerging from the pictorial tradition of the local Cologne school (in particular the work of the Master of Saint Severin, to whom Bruyn is believed to have been apprenticed) to a greater dependence on the Netherlandish tradition, known directly to Bruyn through the work of Jan Joest (an artist from the Lower Rhine -- probably Calcar -- but who worked in Haarlem and Brussels during the early 16th century), who is recorded as either father-in-law or brother-in-law to the younger artist. Although the exaggerated gestures and (in some cases) distinctly Germanic features of the soldiers and apostles within the wings of the present altarpiece find parallels with works by Bruyn from this initial phase of his production,3 the triptych reveals a greater sophistication in the depiction of form and spatial setting from the artist's works prior to 1515 and also seemingly slightly post-dates his first documented altarpiece (painted for Dr. Pieter von Clapis, law professor at the University of Cologne), representing The Coronation of the Virgin, which dates from 1515-16 and is today in a private collection, Germany.4
As displayed in the Munich, Von Clapis and present altarpiece, works from this point of the artist's production (circa 1515-20) are characterised by the use of large blocks of primary colours and the placement of the figures across the front of the picture plane, positioned before a landscape that functions primarily as a backdrop to the protagonists rather than a spatial setting within which the narrative unfolds. By the time Bruyn received his key commission to paint the high altar of Essen Cathedral, granted in 1522 (although final payment was not made until 1525), this one-dimensional use of the picture plane had already given way to a more sophisticated use of perspective, in which the artist positions the figures deeper within the picture plane, thereby linking the narrative from the foreground through to the distance with greater harmony and effect.5 The Essen altarpiece also reveals a stylistic evolution beyond that of the present work, characterised as it is by the profound influence of the work of Joos van Cleve on Bruyn's style, which came into effect from the 1520s onwards, and is chiefly manifested in the adoption of classicizing ornamentation to the architecture, the depiction of more elaborate draperies and a greater characterisation of the facial types than in our altarpiece and other works by the artist produced prior to 1520. In turn, this Antwerp-derived phase of the artist's production would subsequently give way from the 1530s onwards to Bruyn's assimilation of the work of the leading painters of the Italian High Renaissance, in particular Raphael and Michelangelo, known to him at second hand through the prints of Marcantonio Raimondi and the work of Romanist painters Jan van Scorel and Martin van Heemskerck, which dominated his style up until his death in 1555.
Bruyn's reputation as the pre-eminent painter in Cologne was built upon his remarkable skill as a painter of altarpieces and his establishment of an important tradition of portraiture in Cologne (where no portrait tradition had prior existed), which would continue through until the end of the 16th century through the work of his son Bartholomäus Bruyn the Younger. One of only three surviving triptychs by Bruyn from around 1515-20, the present work constitutes an important new discovery and a significant addition to the artist's oeuvre.
1. See G. Goldberg & G. Scheffler, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Alte Pinakothek, Münich, Altdeutsche Gemälde, Munich 1972, vol. XIV, pp. 44-49, reproduced fig. 162-64.
2. See H.-J. Tümmers, Die Altarbilder des Alteren Bartholomäus Bruyn, Cologne 1964, p. 60, nos. A29-A33, reproduced p. 162.
3. For example, compare Bruyn's painting of The Resurrection, datable circa 1512-15, for which see Tümmers, op. cit., pp. 50-51, no. A10, reproduced p. 150.
4. Tümmers, op. cit., pp. 48-49, nos. A4-A6, reproduced p. 148.
5. See Tümmers, ibid., pp. 64-69, nos. A40-43, reproduced pp. 165-175.
