Tuesday 9 October 2018

A 1595 work without an estimate or reserve price

Metz Auktionen, which isn't from Metz but from Heidelberg, Germany, sells on 13 October 2018 in an unlimited auction (i.e. without estimates or reserve prices) a "16th century monogrammist B, dated 1595" Entombment of Christ, an oil on panel.

A 1595 painting without a limit is interesting in any case, and this one doesn't look half bad either, although somehow it looks more like a well-preserved tapestry than like a painting, probably caused by the absence of dark shadows and contours in the figures.

The work is not an original invention though, but a copy after an engraving. It's made by Raphael Sadeler, ca. 1593, after a painting by Hans von Aachen (I've not found this painting though). The above copy comes from the Rijksmuseum.The date of 1593 is extremely close to the 1595 date of the painting.

The RKD lists another copy after the engraving, which was sold at Sotheby's in 2007. It's nice to see how the need to add colours and in general turning an engraving back into a painting can lead to quite different results.

And while researching all this, I find out that the work for sale had been offered at Nagel (Germany) in 2015 already, and then with the right attribution of "After Hans von Aachen". No idea what happened between then and now...

What's it worth? A few hundred Euro, perhaps a bit more if you believe the 1595 date (which may well be correct, but is of course hardly proof of the age of the work).

1 comment:

  1. I think I have the original version of Hans Von Aachen of better quality, painted on a wooden tablet that is part of a tabernacle or one retable; I can send you the image

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