Master of Alkmaar (attributed to)
c. 1500 - c. 1504
oil on panel
support/centre panel: height 48 cm (centre panel) × width 46.6 cm (centre panel)
support/left wing: height 48.5 cm (left wing) × width 14 cm (left wing)
support/right wing: height 48.5 cm (right wing) × width 14 cm (right wing)
depth 8 cm
The support of the centre panel consists of two vertically grained oak planks, approx. 1 cm thick. Two triangular pieces of wood were later added to the upper left and right corners of the original arched top in order to make the panel square. These additions are completely painted and are now covered by the frame. The supports of both wings also consist of single vertically grained oak planks, trimmed at the top left and right sides respectively. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring of the centre panel was formed in 1467. The panel could have been ready for use by 1478, but a date in or after 1492 is more likely. The centre panel has unpainted edges of approx. 0.4 cm and a barbe on the left and right sides. The wings also have a barbe on the left and right sides. Although underdrawing is not visible to the naked eye, infrared reflectography reveals that the centre panel and wings are partially underdrawn with fine hatching and cross-hatching in what appears to be a dry medium. This seems to have been mostly done in the main figures in the foreground. A few adjustments were made in the paint layers. In the centre panel some of the feet have been repositioned, such as those of the Virgin and the elder king kneeling before her. The two bricks in front of the king at lower right were painted over his robe. On the inner right wing, the position of the right horse in the foreground is different in the paint layers than in the underdrawing (fig. a). Underdrawing is also visible with infrared reflectography on the outer wings, where it mainly follows the outlines of the figures and includes only minor hatching and cross-hatching. The figures were reserved and the paint was applied with great care.
Good. There is some minor discoloured retouching. The varnish is thick and discoloured.
…; dealer, A.H. Buttery, London, 1925;1 donated to the Mauritshuis, The Hague, by Jan Herman van Heek (1873-1957), Lonneker, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Wilhelm Martin’s employment at the Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1926;2 from which institution on loan to the museum, since 1948
Object number: SK-C-1364
Credit line: On loan from the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen Mauritshuis
Copyright: Public domain
Master of Alkmaar (active in Haarlem and Alkmaar c. 1490-1510), attributed to
The Master of Alkmaar takes his name from the Polyptych with The Seven Works of Charity dated 1504 (SK-A-2815; date on SK-A-2815-4), which remained in its original location in Alkmaar’s Laurenskerk until 1918. The mark on the first of the seven scenes, Feeding the Hungry, is probably that of the artist. Valentiner, followed by Van Gelder-Schrijver, Friedländer and Hoogewerff, attributed several rather heterogeneous paintings to this master. In addition to a few smaller pictures, they include two wings with donor’s portraits from an epitaph for the Van Soutelande family of Haarlem (SK-A-1188-A, SK-A-1188-B), and two wings of an altarpiece in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-1307 and SK-A-1308). The provenance of The Seven Works of Charity and the donors of the epitaph have resulted in the artist being placed in the northern part of the province of Holland, most likely in Haarlem and/or Alkmaar.
Valentiner identified him with the Haarlem painter Cornelis Willemsz. Bruyn published a series of archival data and convincingly rejected that identification. Friedländer, Hoogewerff and others suggested the possibility that the Master of Alkmaar was the brother of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Cornelis Buys I, who is said to have been active as a painter in Alkmaar until his death in 1524. One argument against this is the mark on Polyptych with The Seven Works of Charity, which does not resemble the family mark of his son, Cornelis Buys II (c. 1500-45/46), which is identical to that of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen.3 The suggestion put forward in 1958 that the Master of Alkmaar was Pieter Gerritsz, a Haarlem painter who died in 1540 and who worked regularly in Egmond Abbey between 1515 and 1529, as well as for the St Laurenskerk in Alkmaar, is less plausible. Bruyn and Van Regteren Altena’s theory that the Master of Alkmaar was actually two brothers from Haarlem, Mourijn Simonsz (c. 1440/50-1509) and Claas Simonsz van Waterlant (c. 1440/50-1533), has been explored further in a recent study by Bangs, in which the master’s entire oeuvre has been allocated to them. The exceptionally rich trove of archival data shows that the brothers carried out a series of commissions between 1464 and 1505, which they often worked on together, and received payments for gilding and paintings, such as the work they did for the high altar of the St Bavokerk in 1485 and 1487, when they were expressly instructed to leave the portraits to another artist. This hypothesis, which lacks convincing corroboration, would mean that the Master of Alkmaar belonged to the same generation as Geertgen tot Sint Jans.
The master’s oeuvre, which was assembled in the early decades of the 20th century and described at length by Friedländer in 1932, is rather heterogeneous in style, and has hardly been subtracted from of added to by recent research. This is clear from the core works, the polyptych from which he takes his name and the fragmentary works in the Rijksmuseum. He had a remarkable talent for portraiture, as can be seen from the donors’ portraits of the Van Soutelande family of Haarlem (SK-A-1188-A, SK-A-1188-B). His figured pieces reveal him to have been an amiable, rather naive narrator whose works are of a craftsman-like nature but lack the quality of Haarlem predecessors or contemporaries like Geertgen tot Sint Jans and Jan Mostaert. The work of these two artists must have been a model for the master. His work can be dated between c. 1490 and c. 1510 on stylistic grounds.
References
Valentiner 1914, pp. 76-77, 201; Hirschmann 1919, pp. 88-91; Van Gelder-Schrijver 1930; Van Gelder-Schrijver 1931; Friedländer X, 1932, pp. 33-44, 125-26; Hoogewerff, II, 1937, pp. 347-87; Amsterdam 1958, pp. 89, 92; Bruyn 1966, pp. 197-217; ENP X, 1973, pp. 24-29, 73-75, 86, 90-91; Van Regteren Altena 1974; Snyder 1985, pp. 446-48; Bangs 1999
(J.P. Filedt Kok)
Although the adoration of the Magi was frequently depicted in northern art of the 15th and 16th centuries, this is one of the few works to include the journey of the Magi, in this case spread over all three panels of the triptych.4 (SK-A-2150) and Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (SK-A-4706 and SK-A-3324) in the museum.] On the left wing the three kings are setting off for Bethlehem with their attendants. The centre panel is reserved for the adoration. The Virgin and Child are shown frontally and are surrounded by the Magi and their large entourage, who take up the entire picture surface. The streets of Bethlehem on the right wing are those of a contemporary Netherlandish town and are filled with the remaining courtiers mounted on horses or camels. The outer wings show two grisaille saints in niches. On the left outer wing is St Antony Abbot with his attributes of a staff, bell and pig.5 The saint on the right outer wing is the armoured Adrian with his attributes of a lion, sword and an anvil under his left arm.6 At left and bottom right on the centre panel is the monogram or house mark ‘AA’ or ‘AV’, which is repeated on the outer wings. It differs from the house mark on the Polyptych with the Seven Works of Charity, the Master of Alkmaar’s principal work (SK-A-2815; for the mark see SK-A-2815-1, fig. a), and has not yet been identified.
The execution of the inside of this triptych is highly detailed and refined, and has the light palette reminiscent of the Master of Alkmaar’s work. Although Friedländer placed it in the master’s oeuvre as an early work of c. 1500, other authors generally regard it as a painting from his circle, or even as a later copy after a lost work of his.7 And it is true that, the coloration and the attention to detail apart, there are not many points of similarity to The Seven Works of Charity. The underdrawing of the Adoration (fig. a) also differs from that on the Charity panels, which are more consistently underdrawn and are far more extensively hatched. These discrepancies cannot solely be put down to the differences in scale between the paintings.
That being said, there are good arguments for placing the triptych in the Master of Alkmaar’s oeuvre. It is close in style and execution to the panel with The Virgin and Child with St Anne in Brussels, which is attributed to the master and was dated c. 1495 by Friedländer.8 Despite the differences in composition, the execution of the doll-like figures and above all the two Virgins with their oval faces, short chins and long noses suggest that the same hand was at work. Both works, which are far removed from the Polyptych with the Seven Works of Charity in composition and execution, can be associated with two pairs of wings which have convincingly been attributed to the Master of Alkmaar. They are the panels with the members of the Soutelande-van der Graft family in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-1188-A , SK-A-1188-B), and two wings of an altarpiece with The High Priest Refusing Joachim’s Sacrifice and The Meeting of Joachim and Anna under the Golden Gate in Haarlem.9 In both sets there is the same type of landscape background as in the Rijksmuseum triptych, the figures in the Haarlem wings are executed in the same detailed way, and the cloak of the king seen from the back in the Adoration has the same texture as Mary Magdalen’s gown in the right wing of the Amsterdam panels. The relationship between these four works and the Polyptych with the Seven Works of Charity is sufficiently close to justify an attribution to the Master of Alkmaar.
The discrepancy between the slightly old-fashioned, miniature-like composition on the inside of the triptych and the broad treatment of the grisailles with saints on the outer wings were grounds in the past for attributing those saints to another hand.10 The minimal underdrawing of the grisailles fails to resolve the problem, but it is very possible that the difference in style is due to the larger size of the figures and their rendering in grisaille. Friedländer’s early dating of the triptych seems to be confirmed by both the dendrochronology and the slightly old-fashioned composition in the inside of the triptych.11 The close relationship with the archaic Virgin and Child with St Anne in Brussels makes it likely that the triptych was painted before the Polyptych with the Seven Works of Charity of 1504.
The artist seems to have drawn on existing models for his arrangement of the composition on the inside of the triptych. For example, the anecdotal use of the figures and horsemen from the retinue of the three kings, especially those on the right inner wing, appears to be based on the background figures in The Adoration of the Magi painted by Geertgen tot Sint Jans around 1485-90, which is now in the Národní Galerie in Prague (fig. b). The same frontal composition of the Virgin and Child with the three kings was used several times around 1510-15, as in an Adoration of the Magi that is currently regarded as a workshop product of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (SK-A-3324), and in several embroideries on northern Netherlandish church vestments, such as the Y-shaped cross of around the same date in Utrecht (fig. c).12 It was for that reason that Defoer suggested that the above examples could have been derived from the centre panel of the Rijksmuseum triptych.13 Given the repetition of existing compositions on the wings, however, it seems more likely that the central scene, too, was based on an earlier prototype that is no longer known and was used over a longer period in northern Netherlandish workshops.
(J. Niessen)
Van Gelder-Schrijver 1930, pp. 115-17 (as circle of Master of Alkmaar); Friedländer X, 1932, pp. 36-37, 43, 125, no. 49 (as Master of Alkmaar); Hoogewerff II, 1937, p. 369-72 (as studio of Cornelis Buys I); ENP X, 1973, pp. 25-26, 28, 49-50, no. 49 (as Master of Alkmaar); Defoer in Utrecht 1987, pp. 63-65 (as Master of Alkmaar); Bangs 1999, pp. 96-97 (as Mourijn and Claas van Waterlant); coll. cat. The Hague 2004b, pp. 346-47 (as follower of, or after the Master of Alkmaar)
1948, p. 60, no. 1538 B 3; 1976, p. 629, no. C 1364 (as circle of Master of Alkmaar)
J. Niessen, 2010, 'attributed to Meester van Alkmaar, Triptych with the Adoration of the Magi (centre panel and inner wings), St Antony Abbot (outer left wing) and St Adrian (outer right wing), c. 1500 - c. 1504', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9047
(accessed 10 November 2024 00:33:55).fig. a Detail of the infrared reflectogram assembly of SK-C-1364, showing the horse on the lower right of the inner-right wing (© Stichting RKD)
fig. a Detail of the infrared reflectogram assembly of SK-C-1364, showing the horse at lower right on the inner right wing (© Stichting RKD)
fig. b Geertgen tot Sint Jans, centre panel of a Tryptich with the adoration of the Magi, c. 1485-90. Oil on panel, 111.5 x 69.5 cm. Prague, Národní Galerie, on loan from the Art Collections of the Prague Castle (© Prague Castle Administration, Photo Jan Gloc)
fig. c Y-shaped cross on a chasuble (from the Cyriacus and Franciscuskerk in Hoorn) with The adoration of the Magi, c. 1520. Embroidery in silk and gold on linen, 110 x 87 cm. Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent