Lot 101: Jörg Breu the Elder , Augsburg circa 1475/80 - 1537 The Virgin And Child seated in a garden oil on panel, gold ground

oil on panel, gold ground

measurements note 73.2 by 55.9 cm.; 28 3/4 by 22 in.

The Fürsten von Anhalt-Dessau (according to the 1928 bill of sale);
Acquired in Hamburg, 12 October 1928 by August Neuerburg (died 1944), for 24,000 Reichsmarks, as 'Jörg Breu';
Thence by descent.

THE PROPERTY OF A FAMILY
Following his more exuberant early style, after 1510 Breu settled into a restrained classicism, and he painted several unadorned natural versions of the Virgin and Child, showing Christ `as an ungainly and ordinary baby'.υ1 This picture would seem to be one such work. Comparable dated paintings are in fact from the following decade. One dated 1521 coming from the Georg Schäfer collection is at Veste Coburg, and another dated 1523 was listed by Buchner in the Österreichischen Galerie in Vienna.υ2 These works are all similar in style to the present picture, which differs from them only in its gilded background. The elegant chalk drawing dated 1519 which served as the model for the head of the Virgin in the ex-Schäfer picture and which is also close to the present Virgin seems to have been influenced by Italian, Raphaelesque types. The gold-ground of the present picture, and the restrained pose of the Virgin and Child evoke a Tuscan resonance.

We are grateful to Mr. Ludwig Meyer for endorsing the attribution to Breu on the basis of photographs.
There were substantial sales from the Anhalt-Dessau collections in and around 1928.

1. G. Krämer, in The Dictionary of Art, vol. IV, London 1996, p. 759.
2. For the ex-Schäfer picture see I. Lübbeke, in B. Bushart (ed), Altdeutsche Bilder der Sammlung Georg Schäfer Schweinfurt, Schweinfurt 1985, p. 64, no. 5, reproduced in colour facing page.