Lot 1012 Dα

Compared to his contemporaries Pieter Breughel the Elder and his brother Hendrik, Marten van Cleve has received relatively little attention from modern research. This is unusual for a painter belonging to the generation of artists responsible for Antwerp's rise to one of the leading art centers in the 16th century.
Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz shed some light on his oeuvre in their comprehensive monograph and catalogue raisonné, published in 2014. An almost identical piece appears in this book under the catalogue number 190, in which the authors attribute the landscape background to Abel Grimmer.
In his certificate Klaus Ertz has accepted this painting as an authentic work by Marten van Cleve to be dated to the 1570s.