Thursday 29 November 2018

"Late 16th c. Adoration" is copy after Raphaël

Carlo Bonte, from Belgium, sells on 11 December 2018 a "Posibly French late 16th century" Adoration of the Shepherds, estimated at 1,000 to 1,500 Euro.

At first I thought it maight be the work of Jost de Laval, a probably Flemish painter who worked a long time, until his death in 1578, in Lübeck, but in the 1550s worked in Bruges (where the auction is). Certainly that second one (found through RKD) has many of the same elements (from the depiction of God over the use of a wooden, derelict construction inside a ruinous old temple, to the arrival of the shepherd with a reluctant dog, left in the work for sale and right in the RKD one), and a similar awkward style.

But a much closer match was another work I found at RKD, a "Follower of Lambert Lombard" from the Lindenau Museum in Altenburg, and from a similar date as the Laval ones (which would date this work somewhat earlier than the auction house thinks). The works clearly share the same origin, even though the background on the right is totally different.

It turns out that both works are copies after Raphael, through an engraving published by Hieronymus Cock in 1563 (found at the Rijksmuseum). The work for sale is a much more faithful reproduction of the engraving than the Lombard version.

The work probably is only worth the estimate, but it is a good enough old Flemish copy of a Raphael to be interesting.

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