Lot 6: LAMBERT LOMBARD LIÈGE 1506 - 1566

oil on oak panels

A TRIPTYCH
CENTRAL PANEL: THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
LEFT INNER WING: THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS
RIGHT INNER WING: THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS
OUTER WINGS: THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES

central panel: 110 by 76 cm.; 43 1/4 by 30 in. wings each circa: 110 cm by 32 cm.; 43 1/4 by 12 1/2 in.

W. Krönig, "Lambert Lombard. Beiträge zu seinem Werk und zu seiner Kunstauffassung", in Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, vol. XXXVI, 1974, pp. 143-152;
M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. XIII, Anthonis Mor and his Contemporaries, Leiden 1975, pp. 111, 121, footnote 132.

THE PROPERTY OF A NOBLE FAMILY

Bought circa 1900 by a member of the Rautenstrauch banking family, and installed in the chapel of Schloß Birlinghoven, in the Rhineland:
Bought with Schloß Birlinghoven (then still uncompleted) and its contents circa 1910-12 by the ancestor of the present owner, and removed to the Sauerland upon the sale of Schloß Birlinghoven to the German Federal Government in the mid-1950s.

This is an early work by Lambert Lombard, probably dating from just before his celebrated altarpiece panels for the Saint-Denis retable done circa 1533 (the panels are currently divided between the church of Saint-Denis and the Musée de l'Art Wallon, in Liège, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Brussels). It shares with them the same strengths: the delight in architectural detail and ornament, the sculptural drapery folds, the well characterized faces, and the same weaknesses: the uncertainty in placing figures convincingly within space; the attenuated feet and the inability to depict feet frontally. Lombard was active as a designer of prints and as an architect, and seems to have run a large workshop, particularly in his later career. He was enormously influential on the development of art in Liège in the 16th Century, and his resolutely classicizing anti-primitive taste established a tradition which lasted in Liège throughout the following century as well. Apart from the Saint-Denis panels, very few paintings by him are known, and the present triptych is an important addition to his oeuvre.

A resolute disciple of all things Italian, from Roman remains to the Renaissance, since long before his trip to Rome in 1537, Lambert Lombard drew on sources from Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance throughout his career. It is thus far from surprising that the Massacre of the Innocents that forms the right inner wing of the present triptych shows a clear debt to Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving after Raphael of the same subject. Lombard's choice of allegorical subjects for the exterior of the wings of this altarpiece is typical of his academic classicizing bent.

Lambert Lombard's authorship of this triptych was first recognised by Wolfgang Krönig, who discovered it in the collection of the present owner's father (see Literature). We are grateful to Gwendolyne Godelieve Denhaene, author of the monograph on Lambert Lombard for verbally confirming the attribution of the three inner panels on the basis of comprehensive first-hand inspection. As she points out, the outer wings are likely to be the work of a workshop assistant.