Thursday 8 November 2018

"Flemish painter, ca. 1520" is copy after Quinten Massys

Lempertz, from Germany, sells on 14 October 2018 a "Netherlandish Master, ca. 1520" Lamentation, estimated at 20,000 to 25,000 Euro.

The work is a somewhat awkward copy after Quinten Massys, a Lamentation from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

The Lempertz catalogue mentions a sale of the work in 1976, but it is also included at the RKD which shows that it was known to Friedländer in 1967. The estimate seems rather high, even though it is a large, well preserved early work. But it really isn't well painted, the figures and faces seem wooden (on its own, and certainly when compared to the original).

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for this excellent post. The RKD version comes close but it is not the same as the one for sale. For instance the trees are missing in the RKD version. Let's see what it will do at auction.

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  2. I wonder if the differences aren't more due to a restoration / cleaning in the past? The works are very, very close otherwise. But well observed in any case, I hadn't spotted the missing trees.

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  3. Sold for €26.040

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