Lot 64: Michiel Coxcie (Mechelen 1499-1592)

Christ Carrying the Cross oil on panel 433/4 x 371/4 in. (111 x 94.5 cm.) PROVENANCE The Dukes of Mantua and by descent to Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga, 10th and last Duke of Mantua (1650-1708, reg. 1669-1707). Sold by Giovanni Battista Rota in 1724, with other works of art from the collection of the Dukes of Mantua, to Field Marshal Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661-1747), and by family inheritance until Anon. Sale [The Property of a Lady], Christie's, London, 11 December 1992, lot 353, as 'Follower of Sebastiano del Piombo' (sold œ36,500 to the present owner). LITERATURE Inventaire de la Gallerie de feu S. E. Mgr. le Feldmarechal Comte de Schulenburg, Berlin, c. 1750, p. 3, no. 36, as 'Hannib. Carraccii. - Tableau en planches repr‚s. Jesus Christ avec la croix aure [i.e. aux] ‚paules & les deux larrons'. A. Binion, 'From Schulenburg's Gallery and Records', The Burlington Magazine, CXII, no. 806, May 1970, p. 297. A. Binion, La Galleria scomparsa del maresciallo von der Schulenburg. Un mecenate nella Venezia del Settecento, Milan, 1990, pp. 134, 192, 222, 270 and 275. NOTES Michiel Coxie seems to have arrived in Rome in 1529 at the age of thirty. Although his works before this date are entirely in the Flemish tradition of artists such as Isenbrandt, he soon adopted a more Mannerist style in his compositions, crowded with voluminous, sculptural figures. His main influence was Raphael, but the works of Michelangelo, Perino del Vaga and in particular Sebastiano del Piombo had an impact on his style that would be recognisable thoughout his long career. His most prominent patron in Rome was Cardinal Enkevooirt, who in 1531 commissioned frescoes from him depicting the Life of Saint Barbara for the chapel of Saint Barbara, S Maria dell'Anima, Rome. When Coxcie returned to Brabant in 1539 he entered the painters' guild in Mechelen and became a citizen of Brussels in 1543. Dubbed in his own day 'the Flemish Raphael', Coxcie soon became an established painter, whose altarpieces in Mechelen, Antwerp and Brussels were of great importance for the introduction of Italian Mannerist art in the north, and were influential on artists like Hendrick de Clerck and Marten de Vos. This picture is inspired by Sebastiano del Piombo's painting of the same subject in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg; in the present work, however, the positions of both the Cross and Christ are different, while the soldier and the thief are not present in Sebastiano's picture. Another signed version of the subject by Coxcie in the Prado, Madrid, in which the soldier and thief are not depicted in the background, has been identified as that listed in the collection of the Emperor Charles V (see N. Dacos, 'Michiel Coxcie et les romanistes', Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen, XCVI, no. 2, 1992, p. 75, fig. 12). The features of the thief are similar to those of Saint Sebastian in the left wing of the triptych by Coxcie of the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, signed and dated 1587 (see A. Jacobs, 'Les tableaux de Michiel Coxcie … la cath‚drale Saint-Rombaut', ibid., fig. 2). The soldier is reminiscent of the one in the centre of the triptych of the Martyrdom of Saint George, signed and dated 1588 ( ibid., fig. 5). Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661-1747) was made field marshal and commander-in-chief of the forces of the Venetian Republic in 1715. His defence of Corfu against the Turks in 1715-6 made him a hero to the Venetians, who erected a statue in his honour and granted him a life pension. He established himself at Palazzo Loredan near San Trovaso in Venice. The present picture was one of the first works of art that he bought when in 1724, at the age of sixty-three, he paid the dealer Giovanni Battista Roli 7,233 ducats for eighty-eight paintings, two drawings and a bas-relief by Puget of The Assumption of the Virgin, most of which were from the gallery of the last Duke of Mantua. This acquisition awoke in the Marshal a voracious appetite for collecting and in the remaining two decades of his life he amassed over nine hundred and fifty pictures. Ably assisted by his advisors, first Pittoni and then Piazzetta, Schulenburg acquired works by almost all the leading Venetian painters of his day.