Monday, September 4, 2017

Painted in Northern Europe after 1490

Geertgen tot Sint Jans
The Holy Kinship
ca. 1494
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Albrecht Dürer
Lot and his daughters fleeing Sodom
ca. 1496-99
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Albrecht Dürer
Madonna and Child
ca. 1496-99
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

The two Dürer panel-paintings directly above (Lot and his Daughters, and Madonna and Child) are painted on the front and back of the same panel.  Curators at the National Gallery of Art have no conclusive explanation for this juxtaposition  "Since the combination of the story of Lot with the depiction of the Virgin and Child is extremely unusual, the exact relation of the two images remains unclear.  However, they could be understood as two examples of the value of a just life and of the pervasive grace of God, especially if the Madonna and Child on the obverse was intended as a private devotional image." 

Albrecht Dürer
Feast of Rose Garlands
1506
oil on panel
Národní Galerie, Prague

Lucas Cranach the Elder
Saints Christina and Ottilia
1506
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Lucas Cranach the Elder
Saints Genevieve and Apollonia
1506
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Lucas Cranach the Elder
Madonna and Child
1515
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Jan van Scorel
Left wing of Triptych, with Saints
1526
oil on panel
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

March has come to the bridge head,
Peach boughs and apricot boughs hang over a thousand gates,
At morning there are flowers to cut the heart, 
And evening drives them on the eastward-flowing waters.
Petals are on the gone waters and on the going,
        And on the back-swirling eddies,
But to-day's men are not the men of the old days,
Though they hang in the same way over the bridge-rail.

 from Poem by the Bridge at Ten-Shin by Li Po (AD 701-762), a translation by Ezra Pound – who names the Chinese poet 'Rihaku'  first published in Cathay (1915)

Hans Holbein
Allegory of the Old and New Testaments
1530
oil on panel
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

Maarten van Heemskerck
Triumphal Procession of Bacchus
1536-37
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Cornelis Metsys
Landscape with the Flight into Egypt
ca, 1545-50
oil on panel
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

Frans Floris
Marine Deities
before 1570
oil on panel
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Bartholomeus Spranger
Fall from Paradise
ca. 1593-95
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Bartholomeus Spranger
Epitaph of Goldsmith Nicolas Müller of Prague
1592-93
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Who list to live upright, and hold himself content,
Shall see such wonders in this world, as never erst was sent.
Such groping for the sweet, such tasting of the sour,
Such wand'ring here for worldly wealth that lost is in one hour.
And as the good or bad get up in high degree, 
So wades the world in right or wrong it may none other be. 

 lines from Of the Wretchedness in This World, credited to an 'Uncertain Author' and originally printed in Tottel's Miscellany (1557)