（傳）巴托洛梅烏斯·蔡特布洛姆

Art market, Munich, 1936 (according to Buchner 1953);
Heinz Kisters (1912-1977), Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, by 1963;
Thence by descent.

Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Sammlung Heinz Kisters, 25 June - 15 September 1963, no. 60 (as Zeitblom);
Bregenz, Künstlerhaus, Palais Thurn und Taxis, Meisterwerke der Malerei aus Privatsammlungen im Bodenseegebiet, 1 July – 30 September 1965, no. 124 (as Zeitblom);
Ulm Museum, on loan, 1981–1989.¹ 

E. Buchner, Das deutsche Bildnis der Spätgotik und der frühen Dürerzeit, Berlin 1953, pp. 182–83, cat. no. 207, and p. 221, reproduced pl. 207 (as Upper Swabian master, dating to the beginning of the 16th century, as circle of Bernard Striegel);
A. Stange, Deutsche Malerei der Gotik VIII, Munich–Berlin 1957, p. 30, reproduced in black and white fig. 56, (as Zeitblom, mature work c. 1505);
Sammlung Heinz Kisters, exh. cat., Nürnberg 1963, p. 12, cat. no. 60, reproduced in black and white p. 41 (as Zeitblom);
G. Wilhelm et. al., Meisterwerke der Malerei aus Privatsammlungen im Bodenseegebiet, exh. cat., Bregenz 1965, cat. no. 124, reproduced in black and white fig. 5, (as Zeitblom);
E. Treu, Ulmer Museum. Kat. I. Bildhauerei und Malerei vom 13. Jh. bis 1800, Ulm 1981, p. 155, cat. no. 104, reproduced in colour (as Zeitblom, c. 1505);
R. Baldwin, 'Gates Pure and Shining and Serene': Mutual Gazing as an Amatroy Motif in Western Literature and Art', in Renaissance and reformation, vol. 10, no. 1, February 1986, p. 30, reproduced p. 29, fig. 2 (as Zeitblom);
R. Baldwin, ‘A window from the song of songs in conjugal portraits by Fra Filippo Lippi and Bartholomäus Zeitblom’, in Source: Notes in the History of Art, vol. 5, no. 2, Winter 1986, p. 7, reproduced p. 9, fig. 2 (as Zeitblom);
P. Kathke, Porträt & Accessoire. Eine Bildnisform im 16. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1997, p. 148, cat. no. p. 342, reproduced in black and white fig. 100, (as Zeitblom c. 1505);
D. Bosch, Bartholomäus Zeitblom. Das künstlerische Werk. Forschungen zur Geschichte der Stadt Ulm, Stadtarchiv, Ulm, vol. 30, Stuttgart 1999, p. 329, no. 3 (as not by Zeitblom);
D.M. Woodall, Sharing space: double portraiture in Renaissance Italy, PhD thesis, Cleveland 2008, p. 141, reproduced p. 581, reproduced in black and white fig. 2.47 (as Upper Swabian Master).

 

The following condition report has been provided by Karen Thomas of Thomas Art Conservation LLC., 336 West 37th Street, Suite 830, New York, NY 10018, 212-564-4024, info@thomasartconservation.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is in sound condition overall. The resiliency of the artist's technique of frequently employing opaque mixed colors rather than thinly applied layers of paint allows the picture to retain a strong visual presence despite some wear. Restoration, visible under ultraviolet illumination, includes a portion of the woman's sleeves near the hands and an area crossing the upper right portion of the sky. Retouching also reinforces the red and green garments and, to varying degrees, modeling in the flesh passages. Mild cupping following the craquelure, visible in a strong raking light, appears stable. The varnish is clear and even, adequately saturating the pigments. The horizontally grained wood panel support is planar, and has been thinned in order to attached a cradle to the reverse. Given the freshness of the colors and quality of the restoration, this painting displays no need of conservation treatment at this time and may be displayed in its current state.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Three hundred years before Zeitblom painted this serene image of courtly romance, his fellow countryman Gottfried von Strassburg wrote the story of Tristan and Isolde in which the two lovers are described as follows: ‘They were so joined in love that each was clearer than a looking-glass to the other. They had one heart between them’.² Sight was traditionally the most noble and spiritual sense, and such ocular metaphors were particularly suited for the refined sentiments of conjugal or courtly love. The mutual gaze of this young betrothed couple speaks clearly to the venerable poetic tradition that described the eyes as the windows or pathways by which hearts and souls mingled.

Here the two lovers are depicted in separate special planes, divided by a wall and window depicted with a primitive naturalism. Fra Filippo Lippi’s celebrated Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, dated to around 1440, follows a similar pictorial device (fig. 1). These two conjugal portraits emerge from a tradition of extensive commentary on the Song of Songs, particularly verse 2:9: ‘Behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.’ The Song of Songs, unique in its celebration of sexual love, is the most heavily interpreted of all the books in Scripture, and it became the basis for a rich imagery of love in Medieval and Renaissance literature and art. In his interpretation of the Song of Songs, a 12^th century prior of the Cistercian monastery of Forde, in Dorset, England, named John of Forde, wrote that ‘they had simply to return the gaze of their beloved, standing behind our wall and gazing on us through the window of our senses. Only the thickness of one wall, only one step, separated them from the ineffable contemplation of the eternal light which is heaven.’ Of course John of Forde is speaking of the souls’ mutual gazing with God; the wall is the sinful flesh which separated mankind from God, bride from groom (in prohibiting physical embraces and other, less sacred exchanges), but this peaceful restraint defines the couples union as sacramental, and reflects Christ’s love for His Church.

Such metaphors have long been illustrated in manuscripts; such conjugal gazing is depicted in a frontispiece of a twelfth-century manuscript of Honorius of Autun’s commentary on the Song of Songs (fig. 2). In this frontispiece Christ is shown enthroned with His bride, the Church, as embodied by Mary, upon whose shoulders he has one hand and to whom his gaze is turned. His other hand, through a small window in a wall, rests on the cheek of his other bride; a female figure embodying the human soul, and clearly awaiting the direct sight of Christ as enjoyed by Mary. As Robert Baldwin wrote of the present painting and Lippi’s painting in the Met, in combining the window gazing from the Song of Songs, and the accompanying tradition of eschatological gazing that it inspired, "Lippi and Zeitblom may have even hinted at the new esteem given to marriage in the Renaissance. For here was a state of grace in which men and women could – at least occasionally find a semblance of heaven on earth."³

Bartholomäus Zeitblom was born in Nördlingen but had moved to Ulm by 1482 when he became a citizen of that city. He is known to have soon made contact with the leading master Hans Schüchlin and had connections with many prestigious families in Ulm. The wide distribution of his works throughout the Swabian Alps and surrounding Danube region is thanks to the numerous noble patrons whose support Zeitblom enjoyed. For one of his patrons, the knight Georg von Ehingen, Zeitblom painted the altarpiece from Kilchberg near Tübingen which was praised by the poet Justinus Kerner (1786-1862) as the work of ‘a German Leonardo’. It is thought that the young Bernhard Strigel was his pupil in his workshop in Ulm before establishing his own practice and becoming a favored painter of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.

We are grateful to Till Holger Borchert for noting the similarities in the physiognomy of the faces of the male figures in the wings of the Heerberger Altarpiece in Stuttgart which is signed by Zeitblom and dated to 1497; the slim elongated nose of the young lover in this double portrait is particularly reminiscent of those of Simeon and his attending priests in the panel representing the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.⁴ The present painting is not included among those paintings attributed to Zeitblom in Deitlinde Bosch's 1999 catalogue, but the gathering of so many excellent images of his works enables one to draw certain stylistic comparisons between the artist’s works. Indeed, the young male lover’s appearance is close to that of the Saint John the Evangelist, depicted half-length with his eagle, in the predella for the Blaubeuren Altarpiece in the Chor der Klosterkirche, in Blaubeuren.⁵ In addition, the faces of the women in the panel depicting the Birth of the Virgin from the Pfullendorfer Altarpiece, also in the collection at the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, warrant close comparison with the face of this female sitter.⁶ The delicacy of their features, with their small chins, long narrow noses, the eyes placed far apart and long necks. Their faces are all framed by the clean white linens of their headdresses.

The motif of the window, and the artist’s interest in representing sitters in different spaces, is evident in details such as his Saint Valentine converting the Executioner in the Valentinstafeln Altarpiece, Staatsgalerie, Ausburg;⁷ and in the eight half-length portraits of prophets, each gesturing as they hang out of separate window frames (all similarly portrayed as in the present painting), that accompany the aforementioned Birth of the Virgin, in the Pfullendorfer Altarpiece.⁸

Infra-red photography of the panel reveals a comprehensive liquid under-drawing that was likely applied with a brush (fig. 3). The spontaneity and lucidity of its execution is clear in the extensive use of parallel hatching employed throughout the composition to denote shadow and delineate the forms of the two figures. The marks made are vigorous and loose, and there are numerous differences between the drawn and painted composition that show a noteworthy degree of fluidity in the design process of the painter. The most significant changes are in the positioning of the male sitters hands, and in the lines of the profile of his face, nose and lips. There are also noticeable changes in the contours of the female sitters face, in both of their costumes, and in the details of the towers in the back-ground. Furthermore, infra-red photography tells us something of the artists working process – for example it is clear that it was his method to paint the costumes early on in the process, before even the flesh tones of the sitters: visible, for example, the pigment of the male sitters fingers extending over the already completed black of his collar.⁹

1. According to Dr. Eva Leistenschneider, Ulmer Museum.
2. See translation: A.T. Hatto, Tristan, London 1960, p. 200.
3. R. Baldwin, Winter 1986, p. 12.
4. Staatscalerie, Katalog Der Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1957, p. 327-9. For images see D. Bosch, Bartholomäus Zeitblom : das künstlerische Werk, Stuttgart 1999, p. 372, fig. 74.
5. See Bosch 1999, p. 359, fig. 40.
6. See Bosch 1999, p. 402, fig. 137.
7. See Bosch 1999, p. 395, fig. 123.
8. See Bosch 1999, p. 400, figs 133 and 134, p. 403, figs. 138 and 139, p. 408, figs 146-49.
9. Infra-red images are available from the department upon request.