Lot 35: Master of the Female Half-Lengths (active Antwerp (?), first half of the 16th-century)

The Virgin and Child oil on panel 101/2 x 8 in. (26.7 x 20.3 cm.) PROVENANCE Count Johannes Von Welcek. NOTES The group of works traditionally given to the Master of the Female Half-Lengths are now perceived to be in large part the product of a workshop, specializing particularly in small-scale panels of aristocratic young ladies in half-length devotional scenes such as the present lot. They are often shown reading, writing or playing musical instruments, usually in a wood-panelled interior or against a neutral background; some of the women, are represented with an ointment jar, the attribute of Mary Magdalen (for example, in the painting sold at Christie's London, 10 July 2002, lot 16 for œ430,000). The workshop also produced a group of landscapes that clearly show the influence of Joachim Patinir, with whose work they were for a long time confused (see, for example, the small Landscape with Saint John the Baptist sold in these Rooms, 31 January 1997, lot 21 for $290,000). The present work may be regarded as by the same hand as the Virgin and Child in the Museo L zaro Galdiano, Madrid (see M.J. Friedl„nder, Early Netherlandish Painting, XII, Leiden, 1975, no. 61, plate 36). The place and period of the master's activity have been widely disputed: suggestions have ranged from Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent and Mechelen to the French court, with dates from the early-to-late sixteenth century. Friedl„nder and Koch both placed the workshop in Antwerp and Mechelen in the 1520s and 1530s, owing to the closeness of the landscapes to those of Joachim Patenir and the similarity of the female types to those of Barent van Orley. Koch believed that the artist may have been trained in Patenir's shop in Antwerp in circa 1520. This proposal has since been accepted by a number of writers, who have tried to identify the master's hand in the background landscapes of the paintings by Antwerp artists such as Quinten Massys (for example, the Virgin and Child in a Landscape, in the National Museum, Poznan). At least one instance is known where the master painted the landscape background for Jan Gossaert, in a Madonna and Child in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, which is dated 1532, representing the latest secure date for this group.