Master of the Half-Lengths St Catherine Reading ca. 1525-50 oil on panel Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan |
Master of the Half-Lengths Mary Magdalen Reading ca. 1525-50 oil on panel Musée du Louvre |
Master of the Half-Lengths Lady Writing ca. 1525-50 oil on panel private collection |
Master of the Half-Lengths Lady Reading ca. 1530 oil on panel Art Institute of Chicago |
Master of the Half-Lengths Lady playing a Lute ca. 1525-50 oil on panel private collection |
"The Master of the Half-Lengths was a prolific painter of the second quarter of the sixteenth century whose output of genrelike female figures, small religious works, and landscapes was probably produced with the aid of workshop assistants. His name derives from his half-length depictions of elegant ladies – all with the same heart-shaped face and gentle demeanor – reading, writing, or making music in interiors. These women are painted in a smoothly simplified style that is also readily recognizable in numerous religious paintings, including many half-length Madonnas. Religious paintings with prominent landscape settings and small figures have also been attributed to him. The repetitious character of his paintings and the lack of indications of their patronage or destination suggest that his production was aimed at the open market and at export. Benesch's proposal in 1943 that the Master of the Half-Lengths was identical with a Bruges artist named Jan Vereycke who is mentioned by Van Mander has not found acceptance, and there is still no clear evidence of where he worked. Bruges, Brussels, Mechelen, and Antwerp have all been suggested. Although his figure style shows connections to Bruges and particularly to the work of Adriaen Isenbrandt (d. 1551), he may well have worked in Antwerp, given both his probable reliance on the export trade and his indebtedness to the landscapes of Joachim Patinir (before 1500-1524)."
– Martha Wolff, in The Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Fifteenth- to Eighteenth-Century European Paintings: France, Central Europe, the Netherlands, Spain and Great Britain (1998)
Master of the Half-Lengths Madonna and Child ca. 1525-50 oil on panel private collection |
Master of the Half-Lengths Portrait of a Young Woman ca. 1550 oil on panel Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Master of the Half-Lengths Portrait of a Young Man ca. 1550 oil on panel Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Master of the Half-Lengths Landscape with Rest on the Flight into Egypt ca. 1550 oil on panel Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Master of the Half-Lengths Parable of the Prodigal Son ca. 1525-50 oil on panel private collection |
workshop of Master of the Half-Lengths St Christopher carrying the Christ Child ca. 1525-50 oil on panel (presented by Queen Victoria) National Gallery, London |
Master of the Half-Lengths St John on Patmos ca. 1540 oil on panel (presented by Queen Victoria) National Gallery, London |
Master of the Half-Lengths Rest on the Flight into Egypt ca. 1525-50 oil on panel (presented by Queen Victoria) National Gallery, London |
Master of the Half-Lengths Triptych with Adoration of the Magi before 1550 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
Master of the Half-Lengths Judgment of Paris 1532 oil on panel Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
Master of the Half-Lengths Head of a Woman ca. 1525-50 oil on panel (presented by Queen Victoria) National Gallery, London |