Anonymous Hispano-Maltese master, entourage... - Lot 120 - Daguerre

Anonymous Hispano-Maltese master, entourage of Gil de Siloé (circa 1440 - 1501), circa 1500 Virgin and Child leafing through a book Sculpture in high relief in polychromed wood with "a estofado" decoration, added flesh tones and polychromy, hollowed out back H : 69 cm ; L. 30 cm ; Pr.24 cm. Small lacks and refixing to the polychromy Provenance : Spanish private collection An electronic copy of the Scientific Report n°1019-OA-364Z of the dating analysis by the carbon 14 method coupled with spectrometry carried out by the CIRAM laboratory on November 5, 2019 will be given to the buyer. Of very high quality, this Virgin and Child leafing through a book is a rare testimony to the artistic relations that linked the region of Brabant to Castile during the reign of the Catholic Kings. Inspired by the aesthetics of Rogier van der Weyden (1399 or 1400-1464), borrowing a typical Brabant canon -precisely Malinois-, this sculpture perfectly combines the art of the Flemish masters and the technical and stylistic elements of the late-Gothic Castilian school. This sculpture, which was to have taken its place in a monumental altarpiece, represents the Mother of God, gentle and youthful, seated on a rather modest throne-bench and holding on her knees the Child Jesus, dressed in a long shirt open at the front, leafing through a book with all the innocence and joy proper to the Infancy. Our work presents a rich and syncretic theme that attests to the numerous contacts and exchanges between Spain and the Southern Netherlands in the 15th century. Works of art of all types - altarpieces, tapestries, sculptures - were massively exported from the Southern Netherlands to Burgos, Toledo, Valladolid, Cantabria, Rioja or other regions from the ports of Northern Spain. The influence of the Flemish masters began to spread in the Peninsula, especially with the presence of the Duràn Madonna in Spain, from the time of its author, the painter Rogier van der Weyden, as well as a copy of a Madonna and Child reading by Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441 now lost) in the Collegiate Church of San Cosmo and San Damiano de Covarrubias in Burgos. These two paintings propagate the iconography of the Virgin holding a book that the Child Jesus is leafing through, an image that is the precursor of the inevitable story of the future sacrifice of the Savior. Thus, as early as 1461, van Der Weyden's painting was copied by an Aragonese painter, Bernart de Aras (1448 - Circa 1471) for a church in Pompén (Huesca), and then by many others until the beginning of the 16th century, foremost among whom was the Master of the Luna, a painter in the service of the Castilian nobility. At the end of the 15th century, the Duran Madonna was the most copied Flemish work in Castile, proof of the success of this iconography, whose influence did not only affect Spanish painters but also sculptors. Thus, the Spanish-Flemish sculptor Egas Cueman (Brussels, first half of the 15th century-Castile 1495) created a Virgin and Child leafing through a book in the chapel of Santa Ana in the Royal Monastery of Guadalupe in the years 1467-80, as an overture to the tomb of Alfonso de Velasco, president of the Council of the Catholic Monarchs, and his wife Isabel de Cuadros. As evidenced by the drawing by the artist Vranck ven der Stockt (1424-1495) (Virgin and Child, ca. 1440; H.: 17.3 cm, inv.20686 recto, Department of Graphic Arts, Musée du Louvre, Paris) and the sculpted Virgin and Child depicted in the "Laredo Altarpiece" in Cantabria (Iglesia nuestra senora de la Asucion Church, altarpiece of the former high altar, Virgin executed in Brussels around 1435-1440), the iconographic detail of the Child Jesus wearing a shirt revealing his genitals was also spread and repeated from the first half of the fifteenth century, from Brabant to Castile. The "Ostentatio genitalium" and the total nudity of the Infant Jesus, which appeared around 1340 in Italy, allowed to emphasize the humanity of the Son of God, who, by this detail, is similar to the sons of men. In a period when devotion was striving to make the divine figure more accessible, the humanization of the Child Jesus was invested with a high symbolic value in a demystified staging. While his Mother, represented in a frontal and still hieratic position (borrowed from the typology of the Sedes Majestae very common in Spain), seems lost in her premonitory thoughts of the Passion, the Child, naked and mutinous, leafs through the book of his Destiny. The Brabantine nature of the charming figure of the Child is also more than striking. The barrel of the Christ's head corresponds to that of one of the favorite subjects of contemporary Malinese production, the blessing Child Jesus. These statuettes of Christs standing naked on a pedestal, sculpted in the round and polychromed, offer smiling, chubby faces with a touch of elegance.