The Master of the Prodigal Son

The following condition report is provided by Hamish Dewar who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: The artist's panel is cradled. The paint surface is secure and has an uneven, slightly abraded and discoloured varnish layer. There is a vertical split visible running down through the centre of the composition. This appears secure. There is a small loss, just to the right of centre, by the cherries on the lower margin (visible in the catalogue illustration). Inspection under ultra-violet light shows a discoloured varnish layer and a line of retouching corresponding to the vertical split mentioned above, retouchings in the drapery of the Virgin's robes and other scattered retouchings along the lower horizontal horizontal framing edge and around the lower right vertical framing edge. There are other scattered retouchings. Some of these retouchings are slightly discoloured and visible in natural light. Overall the painting is in reasonably good condition. The work is framed.
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This is one of the most delicate and subtle works by this anonymous master, named after the grand and complex painting of that subject in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 986),¹ of which there is also a related drawing in reverse, now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin.² Gustav Glück had ascribed the Vienna work to Jan Mandijn (1500–60), but it was Georges Hulin de Loo who was the first to reattribute the painting to the anonymous Master in as early as 1909. Georges Marlier expanded the list of attributions to the artist in his article of 1961.³

It seems clear that the Master must have run a busy studio, as several subjects, such as Susannah and the Elders, are known in multiple versions of the same composition. In many works, which frequently depict subjects from the Old Testament, the master’s elegant, elongated figures recall the work of Pieter Aertsen (1508–75). His style has also been likened to that of Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502–50) and Frans Floris (1517–70), comparisons which would appear to confirm that the Master was primarily active in Antwerp, most likely from the 1530s until at least the 1550s.

The plastic, sculptural bodies of the Virgin and particularly the Christ Child here are reminiscent of the figure types of Coecke van Aelst, who in turn was looking back to the work of Bernard van Orley (1487–1541). The Master employed these types on several occasions: see, for example, the painting sold in these rooms, 24 March 1965, lot 49, and the work in the Cleveland Museum of Art, formerly in the J. H. Wade collection, in which apples are a similarly prominent feature.⁴ The figures of the Christ Child and the Infant Saint John the Baptist in the painting sold, Cologne, Lempertz, 11 May 2013, lot 1009, are likewise highly comparable. The poses of the figures here – particularly the Christ Child, his head and hand gently resting on the Virgin’s breast – also recall the example of the great Antwerp artist of the previous generation, Joos van Cleve (1485–1541), along with his son Cornelis (1520–67).

An infra-red image of this painting is available on request.

1. See Die Gemäldegalerie des Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien, Vienna 1991, reproduced pl. 313.
2. See G. Marlier, 'L’Atelier du Maître du Fils Prodigue', in Jaarboek: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1961, pp. 83–84, reproduced p. 78, fig. 2.
3. G. Glück, in Jahrbuch der königlich-preussischen Kunstsammlungen, vol. 25, 1904, p. 175; G. Hulin de Loo, Catalogue du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Gand, Ghent 1909; Marlier 1961, pp. 75–111.
4. See Marlier 1961, p. 101, reproduced p. 100, fig. 12.