Sunday, October 13, 2019

Master of the Half-Lengths (16th Century)

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