Lot 2: GERARD DAVID

PROPERTY FROM A EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION OUDEWATER NEAR GOUDA CIRCA 1460 - 1523 BRUGES THE LAMENTATION oil on panel 57.8 by 48 cm.; 22 3/4 by 19 1/4 in.

London, Tomás Harris, Exhibition of Early Flemish Paintings, June 1935, no. 16 (as Gerard David); Bruges, Groeningemuseum, Gerard David, 18 June - 21 August 1949, no. 9 (as Gerard David); London, Wildenstein Gallery, Gerard David and his followers, 1949, no. 9 (as Gerard David); Amsterdam, Historisch Museum, Art Dealer and Collector, 27 March - 31 May 1970, no. 23 (as Gerard David; lent by Julius Bohler).

E. von Bodenhausen, 'Zum Werk Gerard Davids', in W.R. Valentiner, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, N.F. 22, 1911, pp. 183-189, reproduced p. 187, fig. 10 (as Gerard David); M.J. Friedländer, Von Eyck bis Bruegel, Berlin 1916, p. 181 (as Gerard David); M.J. Friedländer, Die Altniederländische Malerei, vol. VI, Leiden 1924, p. 150, no. 193, reproduced plate XC (as Gerard David); F.J. Dubiez, 'Een vroeg zelfportret van Gerard David,' in Oud Holland, vol. LXII, 1946, pp. 209-11, reproduced; J.G. Van Gelder, 'The Gerard David exhibition at Bruges', in Burlington Magazine, vol. XCI, 1949, pp. 253-4; M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. VI, Leiden and Brussels 1971, part II, p. 104, no. 193, reproduced plate 200 ( as Gerard David); Advertisement in Apollo, vol. 118, 1983, p. 65, no. 259; H.J. van Miegroet, Gerard David, Antwerp 1989, p. 319, no. 67, reproduced (under studio works).

Félix Doistau, Paris (according to the 1983 advertisement); With Julius Böhler, Munich, by 1924; With Tomás Harris, London, 1935; With Julius Böhler, Munich, 1970 and 1983; Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 8 December 1995, lot 12.

Gerard David is often considered as the last of the great early Netherlandish 'Primitives' of the fifteenth century. Though born in the northern Netherlands in Oudewater, he settled in Bruges by 1484. After the death of Hans Memling is 1494 he came to dominate the artistic landscape of Bruges for more than two decades. Far from looking backwards, however, David was an important transitional figure; his innovative assimilation of landscape elements into his art, together with his absorption and dissemination of Italian influences in the early sixteenth century were to be of lasting influence on the generation that succeeded him. As none of David's works are signed, and all dated examples fall into a narrow period between 1498 and 1509, it is very difficult to establish a reliable chronology for his work. Friedländer, who was the first to publish this work, suggested that it was painted before 1510, in what is generally termed the artist's 'middle period'. At the time of the 1949 exhibitions, however, the panel was assigned a later dating to David's second period after 1510. In both instances the panel was enthusiastically received as an autograph work by David. The attribution has since been endorsed by Til Holger-Borchert, following first hand inspection, and also by Dr. Marion Ainsworth, who on the basis of photographs considers this an autograph work by David, though one affected by some damage and restoration. Alone among modern scholars, Hans van Miegroet expressed reservations about David's authorship, accepting the 'dramatic' design as betraying his influence in the composition, but feeling that it was 'possibly executed by a master trained in David's atelier'. Recent examination of the underdrawing on the present panel by infra-red imaging shows the normal two step process used in David's working process. An initial stage of freehand preparatory drawing in black chalk, in which the broad outlines of the design are rapidly and freely sketched, is evident throughout, most noticeably for example to Christ's torso and to pentimenti in both of Saint John's hands. Other parts, such as the drapery of the Virgin or the heads of the saints, suggest the more careful and rehearsed lines of prepared studio patterns. A distant town (Jerusalem?) seems to have been the original choice of landscape background, while a ladder was once to have been propped at the foot of the cross. Although it has no basis in scripture, the depiction of the Lamentation had been established in western art since the 13th century. David treated the subject and the closely related Deposition on a number of occasions. Here he returns to a subject he had first painted in the 1480s in two panels today in the Art Institute of Chicago and the John G. Johnson Collection in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Both panels probably date from around 1485-1490.1 The present painting shares with that in Chicago the larger scale figures of Saint John and the two Maries crowding the foreground space, and already we see in the latter panel similar sharp angular facial features for Saint John. Similarly the distinctive features of Mary Magdalene can be found, for example, in the tiny devotional panel of Christ takling leave of his mother in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which probably dates to the first decade of the 16th century.2 The three figures were to be used again in a small but closely related version of this design, formerly in the collection of Georges Hulin de Loo and today in the Stichting P. en N. de Boer in Amsterdam, in which the protagonists are set at full length.3 The suggestion put forward by Dubiez in 1947 that the figure of Saint John might represent a self-portrait of David himself is not borne out by comparison with his features included with those of his wife in the Virgo inter Virgines (Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts), painted for the Carmelite Convent at Sion aan de Vlamingdam in 1507-8. 1. H.J. van Miegroet, op. cit., 1989, pp. 278-79, nos. 5 and 6, reproduced. 2. Inv. 14.40.636, panel, 15.6 x 12.1 cm. Reproduced in M. W. Ainsworth, Gerard David. Puity of Vision in an Age of Transition, New York 1999, p. 276, fig. 262. The panel is probably a companion to that now in Upton House, Banbury. 3. Van Miegroet, op. cit., 1989, p. 319, no. 68 (as workshop of David).