The Virgin and Child

Leiden, Leiden, c. 1530

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 34.5 cm × width 27.5 cm

Technical notes

The support consists of a single vertically grained oak plank, 0.8 cm thick. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1460. The panel could have been ready for use by 1471, but a date in or after 1485 is more likely. The plank comes from the same tree as the wings of The Dance around the Golden Calf (SK-A-3841). The white ground is visible at the edges of the composition. No barbe or unpainted edges are visible with the naked eye; only in the X-rays there is a very narrow unpainted border (approx. 0.2 cm wide) visible at the top of the support. It can therefore be assumed that the panel was probably trimmed on all sides. Infrared reflectography revealed some lines of the underdrawing in a dry medium, possibly black chalk, in the hands and face of the Virgin, the Child, and the Virgin’s clothes. The figures were reserved. The head of the Child, however, was partially painted over the Virgin’s sleeve. The paint layers were thinly applied.

Scientific examination and reports

X-radiography: RMA, no. 1463, September 1975
infrared reflectography: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, RKD, nos. AB 143:17-144:2, 1977
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, May 1984
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, February 1986
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 26 October 1995
condition report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 1 March 2006
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG374, 11 April 2006

Literature scientific examination and reports

J.P. Filedt Kok, 'Underdrawing and other technical aspects in the paintings of Lucas van Leyden', Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 29 (1978), Haarlem 1979, p. 1-184

Condition

Poor. The paint layers are heavily abraded. Many of the broad cracks of the craquelure have been painted in, especially at the bottom of the painting. These and other retouchings and the varnish are discoloured.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1986: complete restoration

Provenance

…; the dealer Robert Langton Douglas (1864-1951), London;¹ …; collection Adolphe Schloss (c. 1842/43-1910) and his wife, Lucie Schloss (1858-1938);² confiscated by the Nazis from their children, Château de Chambon, near Tulle, for Adolph Hitler’s Führermuseum, 1943; war recuperation, CRA, 30 January 1946;³ restituted to the Schloss family after WW II; their sale, Paris (Galerie Charpentier), 25 May 1949, no. 29, fl. 15,784, to the museum

Object number: SK-A-3739

The artist

Lucas van Leyden (Leiden c. 1494 - Leiden 1533), attributed to

According to Van Mander, Lucas van Leyden was born in Leiden in May or June 1494 as the son of the painter Huygh Jacobsz. He is described as a child prodigy who took to art at an early age. He was already making engravings when he was 9 years old, and sold his first painting at the age of 12. Several specialists have cast doubt on the date 1494, preferring to place his birth around 1489. Lucas was one of the five children from the first marriage of Huygh Jacobsz (c. 1460-c. 1535) to Marie Hendriksdr, who died in 1494. Although Huygh Jacobsz is well documented in the archives, there is not a single work that can be attributed to him with any certainty. Van Mander reports that Lucas was first trained by his father, and then by Cornelis Engelbrechtsz. Together with the latter and his sons, Lucas is listed as a member of the crossbowmen’s guild between 1514 and 1519. He was still living with his father in Breestraat in 1515. In early June 1521 he met Albrecht Dürer in Antwerp, with whom he exchanged prints and who drew his portrait in silverpoint. He must have returned to Leiden soon afterwards, for at the end of June he stood surety for his brother Dirk, who was also a painter. His presence in the city is documented in 1525 and 1529 for the same reason. Shortly after 1526 he must have married Lysbeth van Bosschuysen, who belonged to one of the most powerful and richest families in Leiden. Van Mander’s anecdotal story about Lucas’s journey to Zeeland, Flanders and Brabant around 1527 seems implausible, given his high output at that time, as does reports of an illness caused partly due to his suspicion that he had been poisoned. He was buried in Leiden’s Pieterskerk in 1533.

The core of Lucas van Leyden’s oeuvre consists of almost 170 engravings and etchings, almost all of which have the monogram ‘L’, most of them bearing a date between 1508 and 1530. The artistic rivalry with the graphic work of Albrecht Dürer, which had already been remarked upon by Vasari, was central to his entire development. The reputation that Lucas enjoyed during his lifetime was due mainly to the international circulation of his prints. In addition to his work as an engraver he designed woodcuts, book illustrations and stained-glass roundels.

Some of the paintings described by Van Mander have survived, including his earliest dated panels of a Diptych with the Virgin and Child with a Donor and Mary Magdalen of 1521.⁴ The Triptych with the Last Judgement of c. 1526-27,⁵ and the Triptych with the Dance around the Golden Calf of c. 1530 (SK-A-3841) are also described by Van Mander, as is his last dated painting, The Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho of 1531.⁶ In addition to a tempera painting of Moses Striking Water from the Rock,⁷ which is signed and dated 1527, there are a dozen other pictures that can be attributed to the master. His early work, dating from around 1508, consists of small pieces with half-length figures in Old Testament scenes, as well as people playing chess and cards. Among his mature works are the altarpieces, as well as a few portraits and small devotional works.

Updated by J.P. Filedt Kok, 2017

References
Vasari 1568, III, p. 860; Van Mander 1604, fols. 211-15; Dülberg 1899b; Wescher in Thieme/Becker XXIII, 1929, pp. 168-70; Friedländer X, 1932, pp. 78-113, 134-38; Hoogewerff III, 1939, pp. 207-320; Rupprich I, 1956, pp. 174-75; ENP X, 1973, pp. 46-63, 81-84; Vos 1978b; Miedema III, 1996, pp. 1-31; Filedt Kok in Turner 1996, XIX, pp. 756-62; Kik in exh. cat. Leiden 2011, pp. 198-99

Entry

The Christ Child lies on the lap of the Virgin, who is seated in front of a green curtain and supports him with her right arm. In his right hand he is holding a pink as a symbol of divine love, and in his left hand he has an orb surmounted by a cross as a token of his worldly authority.

This Virgin and Child was first attributed to Lucas van Leyden in 1913, and was for a long time regarded as one of his undisputed works. However, its rather poor quality led Reznicek-Buriks to question this attribution in 1965,⁸ and those doubts were confirmed by technical examination.⁹ The sparse underdrawing and the paint structure lack the precision and liveliness found in The Virgin and Child in Oslo, which can be regarded as autograph and is related to the Rijksmuseum painting in its figure types and palette (fig. a).¹⁰ Although the paint surface of the Oslo panel has suffered badly from overheating, it can be seen that the paint was handled in a far more draughtsman-like way. In view of the close relationship with the figures in Lucas van Leyden’s Triptych with the Last Judgement,¹¹ the small Oslo painting can be dated around 1528.

Dendrochronological examination has shown that the support of the Rijksmuseum Virgin and Child came from the same tree as the wings of Lucas van Leyden’s Triptych with the Dance around the Golden Calf (SK-A-3841). This makes it likely that ‘The Virgin and Child’ was executed in Lucas’s workshop around 1530 - the date of The Dance around the Golden Calf.

There is a smaller, rather more subtle version of this Virgin and Child in which the composition extends further at the bottom and sides (fig. b). This suggests that the Amsterdam painting has been cut down on three sides, which is confirmed by the lack of unpainted edges there. Both paintings are probably slightly later versions of a lost original by Lucas van Leyden that can be dated around 1530, like the work in Oslo.

(Jan Piet Filedt Kok)

Literature

Beets 1913, p. 128 (as Van Leyden); Utrecht 1913, suppl., p. 10, no. 167 (as Van Leyden); Beets 1914, pp. 59-60 (as Van Leyden); Friedländer X, 1932, pp. 96, 136, no. 126 (as Van Leyden); Hoogewerff III, 1939, pp. 285-86 (as Van Leyden); Beets 1940, pp. 38, 55 (as Van Leyden); Beets 1952b, p. 183 (as Van Leyden); Amsterdam 1958, p. 110, no. 135 (as Van Leyden); Friedländer 1963, p. 69 (as Van Leyden); Reznicek-Buriks 1965, p. 245 (as follower or pupil of Van Leyden); ENP X, 1973, pp. 54, 83, no. 126 (as Van Leyden); Filedt Kok 1978a, pp. 132-34 (as copy after a lost original by Van Leyden); Smith 1992a, pp. 134-36, 317-18, no. C 22

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Collection catalogues

1951, p. 103, no. 1452 A1; 1960, p. 175, no. 1452 A1; 1976, p. 346, no. A 3739 (as workshop of Van Leyden)

Citation

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2010, 'attributed to Lucas van Leyden, The Virgin and Child, Leiden, c. 1530', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8892

(accessed 8 May 2024 22:17:51).

Figures

fig. a Lucas van Leyden, *The Virgin and Child*, c. 1530. Oil on panel, 24.5 x 21.5 cm. Oslo, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design

fig. b Copy after Lucas van Leyden, *The Virgin and Child*, c. 1530. Oil on panel, 27 x 22.5 cm. Norfolk (Virginia), Chrysler Museum of Art, gift of Walter P. Chrysler Jr