French or Northern school, circa 1490

F. Elsig, 'Remarques stylistiques sur le Maître des Trois prophètes', in Peindre à Avignon aux XV^e-XVI^e siècles, Milan 2020, pp. 143-149, fig. 113 and 115 (as Maître des Trois Prophètes ?, circa 1490-1500);

E. Adam and S. Caron, La maison Changenet. Une famille de peintres entre Provence et Bourgogne vers 1500, Paris 2021, pp. 32-33, fig. 9 (as Follower of Hugo van der Goes).

Unpublished until its recent rediscovery in the collection, this intriguing and important panel, most probably a fragment of a large-scale religious composition, raises questions about its author.

The painting was first published in 2020 by Frédéric Elsig, in an in-depth article on the ‘Master of the Three Prophets’, a still anonymous artist whose name comes from the famous panel in the Louvre (inv. 1992), and who was probably active in Provence at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries.

From a strictly iconographic point of view, Elsig considers our fragment to represent ‘Jews watching a scene from the Passion of Christ, or, more likely, executioners taking part in the martyrdom of a saint’ (op. cit. p. 144). Above all, he sees in this work a ‘link’ between the art of Hugo van der Goes and Provençal painting in the last third of the 15th century, and even wonders whether the panel might not be a youthful work by the Master of the Three Prophets, when he was still under the marked influence of Van der Goes, in the years 1475-1480.

The following year, Sophie Caron republished the painting, once again placing it in the orbit of Van der Goes, and also hypothesising that it was executed by the young Jean Changenet, who was strongly influenced by the Dutch painter.