Lot 3: Studio of The Master of Frankfurt , Place Unknown 1460 - 1533 (?) Place Unknown The Virgin and Child in a landscape setting, with the nativity and the adoration of the magi in the background oil on panel

oil on panel

measurements note 58.9 by 44.8 cm.

M.J. Friedländer, 'Der Meister von Frankfurt', in Jahrbuch der Königlich Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen, 38, 1917, pp. 135-50, possibly mentioned on p. 150, under 'Nachtrag zu Nr. 16';
J. Bialowstocki, Les Primitifs Flamand I, Corpus de la Peinture des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux, les musées des Pologne, Brussels 1966, p. 127;
M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. VII, Leiden/Brussels 1971, p. 78, cat. no. 147c, reproduced plate 110;
S.H. Goddard, The Master of Frankfurt and his shop, Ann Arbor [dissertation], Michigan 1983, p. 354, cat. no. 35, reproduced p. 476, fig. 65;
S.H. Goddard, 'The Master of Frankfurt and his shop', in Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 46, 1984, no. 38, p. 139, no. 35, as workshop of the Master of Frankfurt, ca. 1510-1515.

Professor Noyons-Schmutzer (according to an inscription on the reverse);
With Otto Burchard, Berlin, by 1920;
With Van Diemen & Co, Berlin, circa 1925;
In the family of the present owners since 1958.

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
The Master of Frankfurt takes his name from two important altarpieces produced for, and still in, Frankfurt am Main; the Altarpiece of the Holy Kinship in the Historisches Museum and the Crucifixion Triptych, now in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut.υ1 Most recently he has been tentatively identified as Hendrik van Wueluwe.υ2 One of his earliest works attributed, a self-portrait with his wife, is dated 1496 and bears the coat-of-arms of the Antwerp guild of Saint Luke with the device 'wt jonsten versaemt' (united in friendship), of the Antwerp chamber of rhetoric called the 'Violieren' (Violets).υ3 It reveals that he led one of the most important Antwerp workshops at the end of the fifteenth century.

The present painting relates to a painting with the Virgin seated in a landscape, now in the Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe, Germany.υ4 Dated by Goddard to around 1509, it is probably the prototype for a design which is known in four other versions, including the present panel.υ5 The other versions are now in the Accademia Carrara, one with Kunsthandel P. de Boer by 1964 and one in the collection of Percy B. Tubbs in London, by 1954. As it closely follows the Karlsruhe panel this picture can be attributed to an assistant in the studio of the Master of Frankfurt; there are minor weaker differences in the handling of the canopy and the landscape. Interestingly enough, this workshop version handles the biblical story after the Nativity; on the left we see Mary presenting the newborn Christ Child to the Angels and on the right she presents him to the three Magi. The Karlsruhe panel shows the Annunciation on the left and the Flight to Egypt on the right.
1. See Goddard, 1984, under Literature, p. 147, no. 67 and p. 157, no. 101.
2. Goddard, op. cit., p. 106, for a further discussion.
3. idem, p. 129, no. 2.
4. idem, p. 139, no. 33, reproduced fig. 30.
5. See Friedländer, 1971, under Literature, p. 78.