Lot 11: NICOLAAS HOGENBERG

MUNICH (?) CIRCA 1500 - 1539 MECHELEN RECTO: THE ENTOMBMENT; VERSO: STUDIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND A FEMALE NUDE Pen and brown ink with traces of red chalk (recto); black and red chalk (verso); on three joined pieces of paper; bears small numerical annotation, verso: 43 Circular, 332 mm diameter

A.E. Popham, 'Aert Claesz.', Old Master Drawings, vol. II, no. 7, December 1927, p. 38 (as Attributed to Aert Claesz.); K.G. Boon, 'Rondom Aertgen,' Miscellanea I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Amsterdam 1969, p. 56; idem., Netherlandish Drawings of the 15th and 16th Centuries in the Rijksmuseum, The Hague 1978, vol. I, p. 114, under no. 323 (as Nikolaus Hogenberg); F. Stampfle and J.S. Turner, Netherlandish Drawings...in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York 1991, p. 46; K.G. Boon, The Netherlandish and German Drawings ...of the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris 1992, vol. I, p. 224

Mrs. Vivian Neal; sale, London, Sotheby's, 23 March 1968, lot 121 (together with another); sale, London, Sotheby's, 9 April 1981, lot 64; sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 1 December 1986, lot 1 (purchased by the present owner)

This is one of seven designs for stained glass roundels showing scenes from the Passion, which were formerly in the collection of Mrs. Vivian Neal and were dispersed at auction in these Rooms in 1968 (see Provenance; lots 118-121). In that sale, the present work was offered together with another drawing depicting Christ in Limbo; at the time, the two drawings were mistakenly considered as recto and verso of the same sheet, but it subsequently emerged that they were in fact two separate sheets, pasted back to back (as was also the case for the two other pairs of drawings, lots 118-119 in the same sale). Popham believed all these designs to be by the same hand as two other drawings in the British Museum, which bear old attributions to Aert Claesz., although he noted that their mix of German and Netherlandish styles made an attribution uncertain. In 1969, however, Dr. K.G. Boon proposed an attribution to Nikolaus Hogenberg, an artist of Netherlandish origins who trained in Munich but moved to Mechelen in 1527. This attribution has since been generally accepted, although Hans Mielke noted that it still deserved further examination.1 In addition to the two drawings from this series in the British Museum, two further sheets are in each of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, The Lugt Collection, and the Pierpont Morgan Library, while the Rijksmuseum, the Fogg Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art each has one sheet. 1. H. Mielke, review of 'L'Epoque de Lucas de Leyde..', Master Drawings, vol. XXIII-XXIV, no. 1, Spring 1986, p. 88