Leiden School, circa 1530

J. Bloch, The Hague, 1939;
A. Schouten, The Hague;
Acquired for the present collection in the 1960s, as Herri Met de Bles

The support consists of a single panel, which is flat and uncradled, and has a narrow rebate on the reverse of its right and bottom edges. An old canvas strip on the reverse supports what seems to have been a small lateral split in the bottom right hand corner. The paint surface is in very good overall condition, and its varnish layer now a little discoloured. The figures and most of the smallest details are very nicely preserved and legible. Inspection under ultra-violet light reveals no major damages or losses, but there has been quite extensive local strengthening to many of the areas of shadow throughout, around the skeleton lower left or the left side of the main rock group in the centre for example, and especially the areas of water, notably on the right hand side, both in the foreground and further back. These old repairs have now discoloured to some degree but are mostly not obtrusive. Offered in a later parcel gilt wood frame with sgraffito style decoration; numerous small chips or losses.
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Because of the owl in the niche-like opening in the rock to the left, this picture was thought to be by Herri Met de Bles, who often signed with an owl on account of his nickname Civetta (Tawny Owl in Italian), and who worked in the Southern Netherlands. It is not particularly close to Herri in style, however, and has more in common with artists working in Leiden, such as the anonymous hand known as Master J. Kock. Jan Piet Filedt Kok assembled a small group of works under this name, which appears on a woodcut of the Temptation of Saint Anthony dated 1522.¹ Although the central figures are indeed similar to those of Master J. Kock, they do not appear to be clearly by the same hand. They are perhaps closer to those by The Master of the Vienna Lamentation, who Filedt Kok tentatively identifies as Master J. Kock.² 

Subjects such as this were no doubt chosen because they allowed the artist full rein to his imagination. The devils rolling barrels to attempt to block Christ's entry into Hell and the devil sitting down to dine on a black rat in the foreground are not motifs borrowed from other depictions of this and similar subjects.

1 See J.P. Filedt Kok, in Lucas van Leyden en de Renaissance, exhibition catalogue, Leiden 2011, pp. 108–13, 224–27, nos 19a, 20, 21, 22, all reproduced, the woodcut reproduced fig. 4.7. This hand used to be identified as The Putative Jan Wellens de Cock.  We are grateful to Dr Peter van den Brink for suggesting that this work belongs to the Master J. Cock Group (email, 23rd May 2015).

2 Filedt Kok in Leiden 2011, pp. 115–17, 227–29, nos 23, 24 and 24a, especially no. 24, reproduced.