The Master of the Parrot

Anonymous sale, Christie's Online, New York, 20 October 2020, lot 22 .

Active in Antwerp in the first half of the sixteenth century, the Master of the Parrot, so called by the art historian Max Friedländer in the early twentieth century, owes his notname to the parrot that appears in many of his compositions. Close to the Master of the Female Half-lengths and to Pieter Coecke van Aelst, in 2017 it was suggested that he is in reality Cornelis Bazelaere, member of the Antwerp Guild, listed in the registers in 1523.

The present panel represents a Virgin and Child against a landscape background. The Virgin wears a dark dress with a transparent, diaphanous collar, edged with fur on the sleeves and tied with a sash at the waist. Crimson drapery embroidered with gold thread falls over her shoulders and legs in broken folds, typical of Flemish works of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Her oval face with rounded eyebrows, a thin, tightly closed mouth and elegantly braided hair, are characteristic features of the Master’s Virgins. Apparently enthroned, the Virgin looks down at the Child, who holds a parrot in his hand, symbol of the Immaculate Conception. A gold fountain in the shape of an angel holding a cross can be glimpsed to her left.

The background behind and below her consists of rolling and rocky landscapes with huge architectural elements – castles on the hillsides and imposing towers – with a dreamlike appearance, as well as busy villages that recall the genre scenes of sixteenth-century Flemish painting. The atmospheric perspective in our panel is typical of the Master’s landscapes. 

On a table in the foreground, there is a bunch of grapes, a book and a fruit, favourite elements in the Master’s compositions which reflect the Flemish tradition of realistic domestic detail which also has a very precise symbolism. The grapes are a reference to the blood and Passion of Christ, a symbolism perfectly illustrated by the theme of the ‘mystical winepress’. Meanwhile, the fruit more obviously represents the original sin and fall from grace. Finally, the book seems to stand for the figure of the Madonna leggente.