Lot 2015 Dα

This depiction of the Madonna embraced by the Christ Child is based on a lost painting by Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400-1464). Rogier's Madonna and Child in a Loggia was painted around the middle of the 15th century and survives in several copies from the late 15th century. Numerous imitations from the 16th century as well as from later times testify to the success of Rogier's original. A group of Belgian art historians has recently studied this phenomenon in detail (see A. Dimov 2021). At the beginning of the 16th century, in paintings of the southern Netherlands, van der Weyden's Mother and Child group is detached from its original setting and depicted without a loggia and instead against a landscape or (somewhat later) neutral background in full- or half-length. The attempt to ascribe the works to a specific artist is usually of no avail. D. De Vos has compiled groups of works that are stylistically close to Adriaen Isenbrandt or Ambrosius Benson (see literature). The present painting, which has been associated with Benson, probably originates from a Bruges workshop. It can be assigned to a group of comparable Madonnas in front of a rose bush, which can be dated to the second half of the 16th century (see A. Dimov, fig. 121-125). The particularly fine quality of the depiction is striking and sets the painting apart from most pictures of this type.