Studio of Jan Gossart, called Mabuse Maubeuge (?) circa 1478 - 1532 Antwerp (?)

In the collection of Maxwell Blake, U.S. Ambassador in Tangiers, during the early part of the 20th century;
By whom given to his brother-in-law Oscar Snurmacher (d. 1941), Tangiers;
By inheritance to his wife Adela Abrines Snurmacher (d. 1970);
By descent to her daughter, the present owner.

This is a highly accomplished studio copy after a lost original by Gossaert, of which at least eight others exist today, several of them in museums: New York, Metropolitan Museum of art, inv. no. 17.190.17; Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, inv. no. 3377; Dresden, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 805; and London, Courtauld Institute of Art. The original was painted circa 1525, at a time when Gossaert employed a large atelier, hence the numerous studio replicas of the composition.

In his Lives Karel van Mander notes "an image of Mary" painted when in the service of the Marquis of Veere, "the face... painted after the Marquis' wife and the little child after her child.^"2 There being no other physiognomic likenesses in Mabuse's oeuvre as strong as that between 'Virgin' and child in this portrait it is widely assumed that the present work, or rather its prototype, is identifiable with the Veere double portrait (the Marquise de Veere, Anna van Bergen, was wife of Adolphus, Duke of Burgundy). Van Mander makes special note of the lost original, describing it as "so outstandingly subtle, and painted so purely, that everything else one sees by him appears crude by comparison."³

1. See M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. VIII, Leiden 1972, p. 96, nos. 39a, 39b, 39c, 39g respectively, all reproduced plate 37.
2. See H. Miedma (ed.), Karel Van Mander. The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, vol. I, Doornspijk 1994, p.161.
3. ibid., p. 161.