Lot 116: The Master of the Female Half-Lengths (active Antwerp? 1st half 16th Century)

The Magdalen
oil on panel
15 3/4 x 12 7/8 in. (40 x 32.7 cm.)

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 15 December 1983, lot 124, as the Master of the Parrot.

THE PROPERTY OF A FRENCH PRIVATE COLLECTOR

The oeuvre of the anonymous Master of the Female Half-Lengths has been much debated and is now believed to represent in large part the product of a workshop, specializing particularly in small-scale panels of aristocratic young ladies in half-length and devotional scenes as well as landscapes that clearly show the influence of Joachim Patinir. 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 the late-sixteenth century. Friedländer 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 Patinir and the similarity of the female types to those of Barent van Orley. Koch believed that the artist may have been trained in Patinir's shop in Antwerp in circa 1520. This proposal has since been accepted (for at least the hand within the workshop responsible for the central group of landscapes) by a number of writers, who have tried to identify that hand in the background of landscapes of paintings by Antwerp artists such as Quinten Metsys. At least one instance is known where the artist 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 the group.

This painting was previously attributed to the Master of the Parrot, an anonymous hand originally named by Max Friedländer ('Der Meister mit dem Papagei', Phoebus, 1949, II, pp. 49-54) for the slightly idiosyncratic parrots that appear in many of his works. Presumed to be active in Antwerp, he would appear to have been influenced by, and was perhaps an assistant of, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, with the result that a large number of the works identified by Friedländer as by him had formerly been regarded as by that artist. He is also credited for a group of related pictures, mostly depicting the Virgin and Child or the Magdalen that are closely similar to those produced by the workshop of the Master of the Female Half-Lengths. The relationship between the two artists and their workshops is unknown, but they must have enjoyed a close connection of sorts, as often attributions are indeterminable between the two groups. The present painting has stylistic affinities with both, however it has here been given to the Master of the Female Half-Lengths on the grounds of its debt to Van Orley and its closeness in costume and design to the epicentral work of the Half-Lengths workshop, the Three Woman Musicians in the Harrach collection.

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.