Christ’s Second Visit to the House of Mary and Martha

Leiden, c. 1515 - c. 1520

Object data

oil on panel

support: height c. 55 cm × width c. 44.5 cm × height 54.5 cm (painted surface) × width 43 cm (painted surface)

Technical notes

The support consists of two vertically grained planks (29.3 and 14.1 cm), 0.4-0.7 cm thick. The panel is bevelled on all sides. There is a well preserved barbe, and unpainted edges approx. 0.5 cm wide on all sides (painted surface: 54.5 x 43.5 cm). Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1481. The panel could have been ready for use by 1492, but a date in or after 1506 is more likely. The white ground is visible at the edges, and was applied to the panel when already framed. There is an extensive and detailed underdrawing done with the brush in a wet black medium. Rather significant deviations from the underdrawing were made to the painted architecture of the windows above Christ and Mary, and in the doorway (fig. d). The figures in the background were indicated in the underdrawing with rapid contour lines; some heads were left as empty ovals (fig. e). The shaded areas in the Magdalen’s gold brocade dress were underdrawn with remarkable care (fig. f). The brocade pattern was applied with a stencil, the gold threads were painted with lead-tin yellow, and the shadows with red lake.

Scientific examination and reports

infrared reflectography: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, RKD, nos. AB 144:25-36, 1977
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters, RKD/RMA, no. RKDG41, 1 October 1998
dendrochronology: P. Klein / J.P. Filedt Kok [2], RMA, 11 June 2004
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer [2], RKD, no. RKDG313, 13 September 2004
condition report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 7 March 2005
X-radiography: RMA, nos. 1822/1-4, 12 October 2007
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 169/1-9, 18 December 2007
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 10 February 2008

Literature scientific examination and reports

Van Asperen de Boer/Wheelock 1973, pp. 88-93; Wallert et al. 2009

Condition

Poor. The paint layers of the foreground figures are severely damaged.

Conservation

J.A. Hesterman, 1907: complete restoration
H.H. Mertens, 1950: complete restoration
H. Kat, 1991: slightly retouched; loose paint consolidated
G. Tauber, 2007 - 2008: complete restoration

Original framing

The painting is mounted in a medieval oak frame (fig. j and the verso (fig. k). A cross-section of the profile shows a tenia, followed by a cove, an asymmetric bead, a fillet, a scotia and a bevel at the sight edge (fig. g). The sill has a wide bevel at the sight edge (fig. h). The frame has a closed rebate and is constructed with open-end mortise and tenon joints held together with dowels (fig. i). There are two nail holes on the back of the top rail, possibly from a former wooden attachment.

Provenance

…; sale, M. Dimitri Schevitz (†) (Paris), Paris (P. Chevallier), 4 April 1906 sqq., no. 30, as Dutch school, early 16th century, frs. 3,600, to the dealer F. Kleinberger, Paris;¹ from whom, fl. 2,100, to the museum, with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1906; on loan to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2004-10

Object number: SK-A-2232

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.² 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.³ 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, pp. 12-29, 223-66

Entry

This painting and Christ Taking Leave of his Mother (SK-A-1719 or fig. g) were probably part of a series of scenes from the life of the Virgin. An example of such a series is Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen’s woodcut suite of 1507, which depicts eight episodes from the Virgin’s life (fig. a). However, there are no other surviving painted scenes from the life of the Virgin in Engebrechtsz’s oeuvre. Since the original frame of Christ’s Second Visit to the House of Mary and Martha has no trace of any hinges, it can be assumed that the panels were not part of a polyptych or altarpiece, but that the ensemble consisted of separate panels.

The scene is based on the late medieval Meditationes vitae Christi by Pseudo-Bonaventura, which recounts the life and Passion of Christ.⁴ Instead of the popular subject of Christ’s visit to Martha and Mary as described in Luke 10:38-42, this is a later visit by Christ and the apostles, when he returned to Bethany in the first days of Passion week. The Meditationes describes how, after supper, Mary Magdalen came and sat at Christ’s feet and asked him to celebrate the Jewish Passover with them. The Virgin also implored her son to stay, but Christ refused and foretold his death and resurrection to both women.⁵

Engebrechtsz has situated the event in a lavishly decorated domestic interior with the main protagonists in the foreground. In 1934, Henkel rightly drew attention to the compositional similarity to a contemporary drawing, Christ Among the Doctors in the Temple, in the British Museum, London (fig. b).⁶ In addition, Engebrechtsz copied the richly decorated portal from an Annunciation attributed to Jan de Beer, which also contains a similar spatial structure (fig. c).⁷

The underdrawing of the Amsterdam panel shows that Engebrechtsz, who rarely depicted rooms in his work, hesitantly sought to arrive at a convincing definition of the space. The left-hand window had Gothic tracery in the underdrawing (fig. d), and the ceiling in the room beyond the portal was considerably lower (fig. e). The foreground figures are by no means as well preserved as those in Christ Taking Leave of his Mother (SK-A-1719), and as a result far less can be seen in the latter painting of the stylistically very similar underdrawing in brush.⁸ What is clearly visible is how the background figures in the kitchen were very sketchily prepared with swiftly drawn contours, with some of the heads being merely empty ovals (fig. e). The paint was brushed in fluidly in Engebrechtsz’s distinctive way, sketchily in pastel colours.

The attribution to Engebrechtsz has rightly never been doubted, and both paintings are thus two of his rare autograph works. They are from his mature period, from the same time as the Leiden Triptych with the Crucifixion.⁹ The careful underdrawing in brush, the fairly broad brushstrokes and the lively palette are also found in this triptych, which can be dated between 1517 and 1522.

Updated by J.P. Filedt Kok, 2017

Literature

Wescher 1924, p. 99; Gavelle 1929, p. 290; Friedländer X, 1932, p. 131, no. 81; Hoogewerff III, 1939, p. 179; Pelinck 1948, p. 59; Amsterdam 1958, p. 104, no. 117; Gibson 1969a, pp. 107-09, 239-40, no. 10; Van Asperen de Boer/Wheelock 1973, pp. 65, 67, 88-93; ENP X, 1973, p. 78, no. 81; Filedt Kok in Rotterdam 2008a, pp. 232-34, no. 39

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Collection catalogues

1908, p. 392, no. 905a; 1934, p. 95, no. 905a; 1960, p. 96, no. 905 A2; 1976, p. 220, no. A 2232

Citation

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2010, 'Cornelis Engebrechtsz., Christ’s Second Visit to the House of Mary and Martha, Leiden, c. 1515 - c. 1520', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8385

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