 |
| Quentin Metsys, Madonna of the Cherries, 1520s. J. Paul Getty Museum |
The Getty Museum was high bidder for Quentin Metsys' Madonna of the Cherries, auctioned at Christie's London for £10.66 million ($13.53 million). On X, Bendor Grosvenor called the record price "a bargain" for "one of the most important Netherlandish Renaissance religious pictures."
The image was one of Metsys' most popular compositions, known in a dozen or so copies. The current painting was itself believed to be a studio copy and was auctioned as such in July 2015—also by Christie's. At that time it was covered with discolored varnish, and the window landscape was obscured behind a translucent green curtain. Conservators concluded the latter was not original and removed it. Cleaning revealed such high quality of execution that scholars have accepted the painting as Metsys' long-lost original.
 |
| Pre-conservation image—as auctioned in 2015 |
 |
| Willem van Haecht, The Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest, 1628. Rubenshuis, Antwerp. |
A painting made a century later, Willem van Haecht's Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest (1628), features the Metsys Madonna as an Old Master of the ascendent Antwerp school. It records an incident in which Archduke Albert VII of Austria asked Van der Geest to sell him the Metsys. The collector refused to sell his prized possession, even at a high price. Shown to the right of the Metsys, Van der Geest points at the picture while holding the other hand over his heart. Two contemporary artists—Rubens and van Dyck—look on.
Madonna of the Cherries measures 29-5/8 by 24-3/4 in. Images reveal remarkable treatment of skin, hair, fabrics, metalwork, jewels, and marble. The cherries, symbolic of Christ's blood, show knowledge of a lost Leonardo composition from around 1510. The curtain at right was a trompe l'oeil element, and early Metsys biographer Alexander van Fornenbergh repeats the age-old tale: Viewers thought the curtain was real and wanted to pull it aside.
 |
| Detail of Getty Madonna of the Cherries |
 |
| Quentin Metsys and/or Studio, Madonna of the Cherries, about 1525-30. Rijksmuseum, on loan to the Mauritshuis, The Hague |
The best-known version of
Madonna of the Cherries has been
the one in the Mauritshuis. (It's actually owned by the Rijksmuseum and has been on loan for decades.) But it's clearly not the one celebrated in
van Haecht's painting. The Mauritshuis Virgin's dress is blue, not mauve. The throne is completely different, with a shell and cloth of honor, and the apple is to the right of the grapes rather than the left.In the 1920s circus impresario John Ringling bought what he hoped was the original Madonna of the Cherries and brought it to America. Now in the Ringling Museum, Sarasota, Florida, that version is very close to the Getty picture in composition. The Ringling panel is of lesser quality, however, and was "likely produced in the master's workshop, perhaps under the hand of Matsys himself," according to the Ringling site.
The Getty says its painting will go on view in the coming weeks. The museum has relatively few Netherlandish paintings, though it bought a Gerard David Holy Family last year and a Quentin Metsys Christ as the Man of Sorrows in 2018.
 |
| Detail of Getty Madonna of the Cherries |
UPDATE (Aug. 14, 2024): The Metsys is now on view in gallery N202.
 |
| Installation view with Holy Family subjects by Gerard David and Jan Gossaert. Photo by Gerald Sequeira |
Comments
I watched a technician not long ago repair an office copier. We marveled at all the complexity required, first in designing it, then fabricating the parts and finally putting it all together.
As for over 400 years ago, the intricacies of small watches built by geniuses who had a sense of how to design, manufacture and assemble them are astonishing.
By contrast, whoever thought the Metsys should have drapery over the window makes me think of renovated Beaux-Arts buildings originally from the early 1900s. Their owners in the 1950s-1960s deemed them dowdy and old-fashioned and gave them a stripped-down facade. Or homeowners who don't think twice ("less costly, yea!, and just as good!") about resurfacing their house with stucco instead of sticking with original clapboard.
The mystery is why someone painted out the landscape. That's often done when part of the painting is damaged. I can't see any indication of that in the digital images (haven't seen the painting). The press releases speak of "the exceptional condition of the original paint surface" (Christie's).
It's a purty picture, certainly.
But Orsay is 12 weeks away. Pity it should come off the wall now. I can't imagine there's any remediation needed. It's only been up for a minute.
When I visited Cologne (only once), I went to see the vaunted collection at the Wallraf-Richartz. Blew my mind, particularly the works by the Master of the St. Bartholomew Altarpiece.
But what really makes me want to go to Cologne again is the 20th Century and contemporary collection at the Museum Ludwig.
Also, Gerhard Richter's stain-glass window in the cathedral next door is sublime, especially when lit in full afternoon sun.
I forgot. There's a full Roman-era city, fully excavated, beneath the center of modern-day Cologne that is simply a knock-out.
And there's a modest-price restaurant near Wallraf-Richartz that's been in business for 5 centuries, with excellent traditional fare. Everyone knows it, but the name escapes me.
Perhaps you will find it of interest.
Extra interesting that the bio notes that the artist's father was a blacksmith who may have also given the artist his early training.
[*] There are multiple variations on the spelling of the artist’s surname.]
...
The Artist: Quinten Massys (also known as Metsys and Matsys) was born in 1466 in Leuven, the son of Catherine van Kincken and the blacksmith Joos Massys, from whom he may have received his early training. By 1491 he had launched his painting career when he entered the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as a Master, thereafter taking on apprentices in 1495, 1501, 1504, and 1510. In 1509, Quinten married Katline Heyns. They had ten children, two of whom—Jan (ca. 1509–73; see 32.100.52) and Cornelis (1510/11–1556/7)—also became masters in the Antwerp Guild. The family became embroiled in the religious controversies of the Reformation,[1] and Jan and Cornelis, who were associated with a libertine sect, called the Loists, were charged with heresy and banished from Brabant, their property confiscated.
Massys’s early works exhibit knowledge of Dieric Bouts’s workshop in Leuven, the city where Massys was born and raised, but also the achievements of other predecessors, namely Hugo van der Goes in Ghent, Hans Memling in Bruges, and Rogier van der Weyden in Brussels. Among his earliest dated works is the Holy Kindship (or the Saint Anne Altarpiece) of 1509 (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels) painted for the Confraternity of Saint Anne at Saint Peter’s in Leuven. Soon thereafter came his initial achievements in portraiture: Portrait of an Old Man of 1513 (Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris) and the Banker and His Wife of 1514 (Musée du Louvre, Paris). Other dated paintings that provide the linchpins for Massys’s late oeuvre are The Met’s Adoration of the Magi of 1526, and the Virgin and Child (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and the Christ as Savior, both of 1529 (Museo del Prado, Madrid). In addition to these is a group of reliably documented works: the Lamentation Triptych, commissioned in 1508 for the chapel of the Joiners’ Guild in the Collegiate Church of Our Lady (today the Cathedral) in Antwerp, and the Portraits of Erasmus and Pieter Gillis (Royal Collection, Hampton Court, and Earl of Radnor, Longford Castle) painted in 1517 for Sir Thomas More. The Temptation of Saint Anthony of about 1520–24 (Museo del Prado, Madrid) is signed by Patinir, but documents in an El Escorial inventory indicate that the figures were painted “by the hand of Master Quinten.”[2]
(cont'd)
Massys’s lasting legacy as the “founder” of the Antwerp school of painting is justifiable. He was keenly aware of both the achievements of his forerunners of Early Netherlandish painting as well as of contemporary developments. The Holy Kindship Altarpiece of 1509 (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels) and the Saint John Triptych (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp,) likely completed in 1511 show Quinten’s clever conflation of compositional sources from Rogier van der Weyden, prints by Albrecht Dürer, and caricature studies of Leonardo da Vinci. Massys ascended to fame when that city was emerging as the economic hub of Western Europe and a center of multi-national influences. For him, in particular this meant the influx of Italian art, notably that of Leonardo da Vinci, mainly through prints. Fashionable decorative motifs for multipurpose use were also easily conveyed through the print medium and abundantly available as Antwerp was the leading European center for printmaking.[3] It was also the age of the emergence of landscape painting as an independent genre. Massys recognized that by allying himself with Antwerp’s leading landscape artist, Joachim Patinir (see 36.14a–c), he could guarantee further success for his paintings—artistically and economically—by collaborating with him. The younger Antwerp painter, Joos van Cleve (see 32.100.57), and Massys appear to have influenced each other over time and probably competed for the same clientele. The extant paintings of both artists reflect the taste of the times in an affluent period for Antwerp when secular subjects were beginning to emerge as equal in importance to religious themes.
Quinten was well-connected with the Humanists of his day. He knew Peter Gillis, who himself was close to both Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. When Dürer visited The Netherlands in 1520–21, he spent time in Antwerp and especially requested to see Massys’s house there. Dürer’s diary of his trip makes no mention of having actually met Massys. However, he did spend time with Joachim Patinir, whom he called the “good landscape painter” and who was a collaborator of Massys.
There are five things about this particular Madonna and Child that, to my mind, transform it from meh to masterpiece:
1) the filigree, sculptures and jewels featured on the throne, at left of the Madonna's head and beneath the Child's pillow.
2) the fineness of the headpiece worn by the Madonna.
3) the gold-wrapped threads that make up the tassels of the Child's pillow.
4) the Madonna's fingers clutching the Child's torso.
5) the delicate positioning of the Child's toes.
As if keeping the essay online was costing them money.
I have no way of knowing, but perhaps the buyer made that choice for the auction house. Pure surmise.
Lend it if you can't display it!
See the most important painting west of that river, and also the most important Baroque painting in America, a short-ish drive away....
*
Artist Name: Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598-1664)
Title: Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose
Date: 1633
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 24-1/2 x 43-1/8 in. (62.2 x 109.5 cm)
Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
Accession Number: F.1972.06.P
*
But not right now; it's at the Prado, I believe.