Lot 347 D

This large sheet's charm lies not just in its intensely preserved colour scheme and the nuanced use of watercolours but also in the masterful interweaving of the image's different planes in depth. The modernist contraction of the composition's foreground, middleground and background avoids any kind of spatial depth, resulting in our perceiving a shallow, horizontal layering like that of a densely woven, decorative tapestry. And the central motif of the flowers and figure is in fact set off by a carpet behind it, whose pattern is granted an equal voice in the work - just as the grain of the table's wooden frame is emphasised compositionally and takes on an arabesque life of its own. Nonetheless, the selection and placement of the colours results in an expertly realised, optical calm. The delicate and sensitive flowers, known as Christmas roses, unfold in a beautiful natural symmetry before the dark Gothic figure of a saint turned slightly to the right, who materialises in front of the blueish background.