Lot 1015 Dα

This composition, known in several versions, derives from a Holy Family (Bruges, Joly collection) by Pieter Coecke van Aelst (G. Marlier, La Renaissance flamande. Pierre Coeck d'Alost, Brussels 1966, p. 238-239, fig. 199). The theme appeared to be most popular in Antwerp at that time. In a second compositional type originated in the workshop of the master, the figures of the Virgin and Child are presented in front of a large landscape illustrating scenes from the flight into Egypt. It is to this type that the present painting belongs.
The master owes his provisional name to the parrot that frequently appears in his works. Grete Ring was the first to recognize his artistic personality in 1913 followed by Max J. Friedländer in 1949. Active in Antwerp in the second half of the 16th-century, the painter is close in style and in mode of production of his contemporary fellows Pieter Coecke van Aelst, the Master of the Female Half-Length and the Master of the Prodigal Son. Typical of the Italian Renaissance idiom used by Coecke van Aelst and his circle is the way the Child stands on the lap of his Mother while in the right lower corner a parrot stands proudly on top of some fruits displayed in a cup. This obvious detail makes the attribution to the Master of the Parrot most convincing when in other variants given to the Master of the Prodigal Son (e.g. sale Christie, Amsterdam, 13.11.1995, lot 162) the bird is lacking.