Utrecht, Tentoonstelling van Noord-Nederlandsche Schilder- en Beeldhouwkunst voor 1575, 3 September - 3 October 1913, no. 23; Berlin, 1914, no. 39
Literature
M.J. Friedländer,in Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, Leipzig 1918, p. 67, reproduced, as Jan de Cock;. J.G. van Gelder, "Some unpublished works by Jan Wellens de Cock", in The Burlington Magazine, vol. LI, 1927, pp. 68-79, reproduced p. 74; M.J. Friedländer, Die Altniederländische Malerei, vol. XI, Leiden 1933, pp. 59-62, 125, no. 104, reproduced plate XLV; N. Beets, "Zestiende-eeuwse kunstnaars, IV: Lucas Corneliszoon de Kock", in Oud Holland, vol. LIII, 1936, pp. 55, note 2; J. Lavalleye, 'Un Cabinet d'Amateur' in Bulletin de la Société Royale d'Archéologie de Bruxelles, Brussels 1937, p. 175; G.J. Hoogewerff, De noord-Nederlandse schilderkunst, vol. II, The Hague 1939, pp. 357-364, reproduced plates 190-193; G.J. Hoogewerff, "Werken van Matthijs (of Jan) Wellens de Kock", in Mededelingen Nederlands Historisch Instituut te Rome, vol. IV, 1939, pp. 41-6, reproduced p. 44; M.J. Friedländer, "Jan de Cock oder Lucas Kock", in Miscellanea Leo van Puyvelde, Brussels 1949, pp. 84-8, reproduced p. 85; F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts..., Amsterdam 1949, vol. I, p. 2, vol. IV, p. 193; H.G. Franz, Niederländische Landschaftsmalerei im Zeitalter des Manierismus, Graz 1969, vol. I, pp. 115-7 (as without positive attribution but datable circa 1535), reproduced vol. II, p. 59, fig. 104 (captioned "Jan de Cock (?)"); M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. XI, The Antwerp Mannerists..., Leiden 1974, pp. 37-8, 78, no. 104, reproduced plate 90 (as by Jan de Cock); W.S. Gibson, The Paintings of Cornelis Engebrechtsz., New York/London 1977, pp. 197-200 (as by The Lamentation Master); G. Unverfehrt, Hieronymus Bosch: Die Rezeption seiner Kunst im Frühen 16. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1980, pp. 180-182, reproduced fig. 166; J.O. Hand, in The Age of Bruegel: Netherlandish Drawings in the Sixteenth Century, exhibition catalogue, Washington, National Gallery of Art, 7 November 1986 - 18 January 1987, p. 110 (as "the painting most often given to Cock"); W.S. Gibson, "Mirror of the Earth". The World Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting, New Jersey 1989, p. 43, reproduced fig. 3.11 (as by The Master of the Vienna Lamentation); H. Devisscher, in The Dictionary of Art, London 1996, vol. 7, p. 497 (as by Jan Wellens de Cock); U.R. (=U. Römer), in Saur Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, Munich/Leipzig 1998, p. 71.
Provenance
THE PROPERTY OF A NOBLEMAN
Otto von Wesendonck, Zurich, by 1888; His daughter, who married Professor Friedrich von Bissing, Munich and later Oberaudorf, Bavaria, by 1927; Their daughter Myrrha, Freiin von Bissing; Thence by descent and marriage to the present owner.
Notes
This famous but rarely seen Patinir-like painting is an enigma which has long puzzled art historians. The attribution to Jan Wellens de Cock, or as Friedländer calls him, Jan de Cock, is based on an engraving after it in reverse by C. Danckerts which is inscribed: Pictum J. kock (see Hollstein, under Literature, and reproduced here, Fig. 1). He is probably the artist who became Dean of the Antwerp Guild in 1520, and died just before 1527, and who was the father of the publisher Hieronymus Cock and the landscape painter Matthijs Cock. Friedländer (see Literature, esp. 1974) links him stylistically to both Cornelis Engebrechtsz. of Leiden, and Jan de Beer of Antwerp. The engraving dates from circa 1550, long after Jan Wellens de Cock's death, and Friedländer suggests that Jan's son Hieronymus (Jerome in Friedländer's English) may have published it, perhaps due to his owning his father's picture.
Around this picture quite a number of other paintings have been grouped, some convincingly, some less so. Although it remains the cornerstone of the reconstruction of this artist's work summarised by Hans Devisscher in his Dictionary of Art entry (where attributions to Leiden hands are patriotically rebutted), the attribution to Jan (Wellens) de Cock has never gained universal acceptance, which is why the rather ponderous nomenclature "The Putative Jan Wellens de Cock" has been retained here. It seems to be the Leiden School characteristics of the present and associated works that has spurred on the search for alternative attributions. As early as 1935 Nicolaes Beets proposed an attribution to Cornelis Engebrechtsz.'s third son Lucas Cornelisz. de Kock (1492-1552), and Hoogewerff followed him in 1939 (for these and subsequent references, see under Literature below).
H.G. Franz dated the present painting well after Jan Wellens de Cock's death, and suggests that the inscription on the engraving may refer to Hieronymous (alternatively spelt Jeronymus) Cock. Franz dates the present picture circa 1535. Walter Gibson too rejects the attribution to Jan Wellens de Cock, but does think it is the work of a contemporary, an occasional collaborator of Cornelis Engebrechtsz. in Leiden known as The Master of the Vienna Lamentation. He believes this artist trained in Antwerp, before moving to Leiden circa 1515, remaining there, perhaps with intermittent trips back to Antwerp, until after 1520. Gibson dates the present picture to the 1520s and, like Friedländer, acknowledges the artist's debt to Bosch as well as to Patinir.
Among the paintings of this subject given to this artist in which the figure of Saint Christopher derives from the present work, one, recorded in 1936 in the collection of Rudolf Freiherr von Fürstenberg (at Körtlinghausen in Westphalia) is of particularly high quality, and would appear to be by the same hand (see Beets under Literature, p. 76, reproduced fig. 68). Another, known only through an otherwise unidentified photograph from the Hoogewerff archive kept at the R.K.D. in The Hague is also of high quality, while a derivation of lesser quality was in sold in New York, Sotheby's, 11 January 1990, lot no. 18A (as Circle of Jan Wellens de Cock).
The subject of Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child across a river is related in The Golden Legend. The Saint (alas removed from the Calendar in 1969, four centuries after the Council of Trent tried to abolish his cult) was a Canaanite of huge stature, who sought to serve the most powerful person in the land. When his first master, a king, failed him, he served the devil, until he saw him trembling before the Cross, whereupon he resolved to serve Christ, carrying the poor and weak across the river, guided by a hermit who is seen holding a lantern in the present picture. One night he carried a small child, who grew heavier and heavier with each step, until revealing himself as Christ, telling Saint Christopher (in Greek "Christ-carrier") that he had been carrying the weight of the world. This subject obviously gives great scope for the depiction of landscape, and was thus popular with the pioneers of landscape painting in The Netherlands in the 16th Century. Such landscapes are now termed "World-Landscapes", of which this, with its limitless horizon, is one of the best early examples.
Friedländer, in 1933, recorded a copy on the art market in Berlin.
Otto von Wesendonck (see Provenance) was an active collector from the late 1850s until his death in 1896. He lived with his wife Mathilde, whom he married in 1850, in a villa in Zurich. He started buying Old Masters in the winter of 1859-60 when he sojourned in Rome, but by 1867 he was buying Dutch and Flemish pictures at auction in Paris, and in 1876 he bought heavily in the Wynn-Ellis sale in London. A catalogue of his collection was published in Berlin in 1888. A large part of his collection - some 223 pictures in all - was lent by his heirs in 1909 to the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, including a Pieter Brueghel the Younger, a triptych by Jan Mostaert, a small copper by Elsheimer, an Esaias Boursse and a Jan van Goyen. The present picture, and another Pieter Brueghel the Younger, sold in these Rooms on 10 July 2003, lot 11, were not.
