All works in Early Netherlandish Paintings

Cornelis Engebrechtsz

Christ Taking Leave of his Mother

Leiden, c. 1515 - c. 1520

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 54.7 cm × width 44 cm × height 54.2 cm (painted surface) × width 43.3 cm (painted surface)
height 63.7 cm × width 53.5 cm × thickness 4.5 cm

Inscriptions

Technical notes

The support consists of two vertically grained oak planks (15.5 and 28.5 cm), planed down to a thickness of 0.5 cm and cradled. The panel may be slightly trimmed on the right and left sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1489. The panel could have been ready for use by 1500, but a date in or after 1514 is more likely. The white ground, which is visible at the edges of the paint layers, must have been applied in the frame. There are unpainted edges 0.2-0.4 cm wide on all sides, and traces of a barbe (painted surface: 54.2 x 43.3 cm). An extensive and detailed underdrawing, executed with the brush in a wet medium, is partially visible with the naked eye, and could be revealed almost completely with infrared reflectography. The underdrawing was followed in the reserves left for the figures. Infrared reflectography detected several changes in the heads of the apostles to the left of St John (fig. a), and shows that the right foreground, where the apostles are going down the hill, was originally planned to be higher up. The foliage of the tree beside the tower was indicated with broad curved lines in the underdrawing (fig. b). The city, the city gate and the overhanging rock just to the right of the tree were drawn with a finer brush (fig. c). The rear city wall, which ran below the blue mountains on the right and behind the overhanging rock in the underdrawing, was not painted in.

Scientific examination and reports

infrared reflectography: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, RKD, nos. AB 56:8-22, November 1975
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / A. Wallert [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG40, 1 October 1998
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 11 June 2004
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG312, 6 September 2004
condition report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 7 March 2005
X-radiography: RMA, nos. 1821/1-4, 12 October 2007
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 169/9-17, 18 December 2007

Literature scientific examination and reports

Van Asperen de Boer/Wheelock 1973, pp. 83-93; Wallert et al. 2009

Condition

Good. The painting is slightly abraded at the centre of the Virgin’s robe and there are paint losses.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1913: loose paint consolidated and revarnished
H.H. Mertens, 1950: cleaned; false monogram ‘AD’ and date 1505 removed
H.H. Mertens, 1969: complete restoration
H.H. Mertens, 1969
H.H. Mertens, 1969
G. Tauber, 2007 - 2008: complete restoration
Jessica Roeders, 2007 - 2008

Provenance

…; Leopold Freiherr von Bettendorf, Aachen, 1822;¹ ...; sale, Graf Fürstenberg, Gräfliche Schloss (Bonn), General von Graeve (†) (Koblenz), Dr Christian Widenmann (†) (Cologne), Cologne (J.M. Heberle), 6 August 1877 sqq., no. 9, as Albrecht Dürer, monogrammed and dated 1505, DM 360;² …; from the dealer F. Kleinberger, Paris, fl. 2,885, to the museum, as Dutch school, c. 1530, with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt, June 1897; on loan to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2004-10

Object number: SK-A-1719

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Cornelis Engebrechtsz (Leiden c. 1462 - Leiden 1527)

Cornelis Engebrechtsz was probably born around 1462 in Leiden, for he is first documented as a painter in 1482. Going by the mentions of his name in the Leiden archives, he must have died there between 11 February and 26 August 1527. He probably married Elysabeth Pietersdr in or before 1487. They had six children, three of them sons: Pieter Cornelisz named Kunst (c. 1490-1560/61), Cornelis Cornelisz named Kunst (c. 1493-1546) and Lucas Cornelisz named De Cock (c. 1495-before 27 June 1552), all of whom became painters. The archives show that Engebrechtsz was in Leiden almost uninterruptedly from 1497 to his death. The membership rolls of the city’s civic guard companies show that he was a member of the archers’ guard from 1499 to 1506, and of the crossbowmen’s guard between 1514 and 1522, of which he was captain around 1520, so he clearly belonged to the well-to-do burgher class.

In 1482 he was paid for painted work by the Hieronymusdal priory (also known as Lopsen) near Leiden, and it is not inconceivable that he was trained by Brother Tymanus, who was the resident painter there from 1444 to 1482. The Leiden city accounts record two commissions awarded to Engebrechtsz, one in 1522 for a map made by himself and his son Pieter, and the second in 1525 for four banners. In addition, there are documented commissions between 1496 and 1507 for decorative work for Rijnsburg Abbey and for designs for stained-glass windows. According to Van Mander, he taught not only his sons but also Aert Claesz, better known as Aertgen van Leyden, and was the second teacher of Lucas van Leyden.

Cornelis Engebrechtsz is the earliest Leiden painter to whom work can be attributed with certainty. It includes a Triptych with the Lamentation and a Triptych with the Crucifixion, both of which were made for the Mariënpoel Convent near Leiden and are mentioned by Van Mander.³ The wings with donors’ portraits from a Triptych with a Scene of the Revelation of St John described by Van Mander, an epitaph which was made for the Van der Does-Van Poelgeest family, have also survived.⁴ Dülberg, Friedländer and Gibson attributed several dozen paintings to Engebrechtsz on the basis of these documented works. This makes it likely that he had a large workshop specialising in devotional works. Although his pupils, and above all his three sons, must have played an important role in the shop, it has so far proved impossible to associate one or more of them with specific paintings. Since none of the works described by Van Mander is dated, the chronology of Engebrechtsz’s work is also problematic. His early paintings owe a small debt to the rather archaic style of the Brussels painter Colijn de Coter, while the Leiden altarpieces mentioned above display the influence of the dynamic, mannered style and palette of the Antwerp Mannerists.

Updated by J.P. Filedt Kok, 2017

References
Van Mander 1604, fols. 210r-11r, 217r-v; Taurel 1881, pp. 175-92; Dülberg 1899a, pp. 40-88; Cohen in Thieme/Becker X, 1914, pp. 526-28; Friedländer X, 1932, pp. 53-77, 129-33; Hoogewerff III, 1939, pp. 144-206; Gibson 1969a, pp. 11-30; ENP X, 1974, pp. 34-45; Bangs 1979, pp. 1-46; Miedema II, 1995, pp. 317-23, III, 1996, pp. 60-65; Caroll in Turner 1996, X, pp. 216-17; Gibson in Saur XXXIII, 2002, pp. 569-70; Filedt Kok in exh. cat. Leiden 2011, pp. 195-97; Filedt Kok et al. 2014, 12-29, 223-66

Entry

Just prior to entering Jerusalem, Christ is taking leave of his mother, her two sisters and Mary Magdalen in accordance with the description given by Pseudo-Bonaventura in his Meditationes vitae Christi.⁵ As described in the Meditationes, the leave-taking is situated by the town gate of Bethany, with the apostles in attendance.⁶ The emotion of the moving last embrace is heightened by the gestures of the women and the apostles. Four of the latter are making off down the hill on the right on their way to Jerusalem, the gate of which can be seen in the right background.

As with Christ’s Second Visit to the House of Mary and Martha (SK-A-2232) from the same series, the scene was prepared very painstakingly with a varied underdrawing (fig. a, fig. b, fig. c). The shaded passages within the bold contours were drawn with a great variety of parallel hatchings that follow the folds of the draperies, with cross-hatchings being applied for the dark red passages. Great care was taken over the hands. There are frequently delicate strokes of parallel hatching over the backs of the hands and the individual fingers, and many of the painted fingers are longer than in the underdrawing (fig. a). This manner of drawing the hands and faces, which is typical of Engebrechtsz, is also found in the Leiden altarpieces,⁷ which is further confirmation of the attribution to Engebrechtsz, although that has never been disputed.

The rocky, imaginary landscape in cool blue tints, and the delicately executed underdrawing are also seen in the background of the left wing and central panel of the Vienna Triptych with Elisha Healing Naaman at the River Jordan, which was made in Engebrechtsz’s workshop around 1520.⁸ Although the painting of that triptych is largely the work of an assistant (probably Pieter Cornelisz named Kunst), the landscape and its underdrawing are so close to those in the Amsterdam panel that this part was probably painted by Engebrechtsz himself.⁹ Similar rock formations are also found on the wings of Engebrechtsz’s documented Triptych with the Crucifixion in Leiden.¹⁰

The icy, blue-white colouring of the mountains, rocks and buildings in the Amsterdam panel are in marked contrast to the warm, bright palette used for the foreground figures. The fairly broad manner, which actually becomes sketchy in the background, with little concern for ornamental details, is typical of Engebrechtsz and the Leiden painters he trained. This painting can be dated c. 1515-20 on the basis of the similarities to the Triptych with the Crucifixion in Leiden, as can Christ’s Second Visit to the House of Mary and Martha (SK-A-2232) from the same series.

Updated by J.P. Filedt Kok, 2017

Literature

Dülberg 1899a, pp. 70-71, 83; Wescher 1924, p. 98; Gavelle 1929, p. 290; Friedländer X, 1932, pp. 66, 131, no. 82; Hoogewerff III, 1939, pp. 179-83; Pelinck 1948, p. 59; Amsterdam 1958, p. 104, no. 116; Gibson 1969a, pp. 107-11, 239, no. 11; Van Asperen de Boer/Wheelock 1973, pp. 65, 67, 88-93; ENP X, 1973, p. 78, no. 81; Filedt Kok in Van Os 'et al.' 2000, pp. 127-28; Filedt Kok in Rotterdam 2008a, pp. 232-34, no. 39

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Collection catalogues

1903, p. 6, no. 49 (as Dutch school, beginning 16th century); 1921, p. 371, no. 904a; 1934, p. 95, no. 904a; 1960, p. 96, no. 905 A1; 1976, p. 220, no. A 1719

Citation

(accessed 10 November 2024 00:39:27).

Figures

fig. b Detail of the infrared reflectogram assembly of SK-A-1719, showing the foliage to the right of the tower (© Stichting RKD)

fig. c Detail of the infrared reflectogram assembly of SK-A-1719, showing the landscape in the right background, with the city walls (© Stichting RKD)