The Virgin and Child

c. 1525 - c. 1530

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 75.4 cm × width 62.9 cm
sight size: height 75 cm × width 62 cm
frame: height 110 cm × width 96.5 cm

Technical notes

The support consists of two vertically grained oak planks (33.5 and 29.4 cm), 0.7-1.3 cm thick. The panel is slightly bevelled on all sides. There are seven indentations along the top edge of the support, the purpose of which is unknown. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1502. The panel could have been ready for use by 1513, but a date in or after 1527 is more likely. The off-white ground, covering the entire support, is visible through the paint layers and along the edges. In some places it runs over the edge of the panel. Although no underdrawing can be detected with infrared reflectography, an underdrawing in a seemingly liquid medium can be seen with the naked eye in the Child’s hands, the Virgin’s eyes, her left hand and in some of the ornaments. The paint layers were applied up to the edges of the panel and the figures and the architecture were reserved. The composition was built up in transparent layers and glazes, with some opaque layers as well (especially red and blue). Lead-tin yellow highlights were applied to the ornaments. Only one small change is visible with the naked eye and infrared reflectography: the Virgin’s sleeve has been slightly painted over her blue robe.

Scientific examination and reports

condition report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 24 October 2005
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 27 July 2007

Condition

Fair. The pillow and curtain are slightly abraded. The paint used for the skin has a strong craquelure pattern. In some areas there is overpainting and discoloured retouching. The blue robe of the Virgin and the pillow have discoloured, as has the varnish.

Conservation

Loeff (Mauritshuis) , L. van der, 1987: flaking paint consolidated; cleaned and old varnish removed

Provenance

…; estate inventory, Albertina Agnes (1634-96), Princess of Oranje-Nassau, Frisian Stadholder’s Court, Leeuwarden, January/February 1681, the princess’s cabinet, no. 899 (‘Onse Lieve Vrouw met kindcken, geschildert door Quintus Masius, met dubbele liste’);¹ …; transferred from Paleis Het Loo to the museum, 18 September 1798;² on loan to the Mauritshuis, The Hague, since 1948

Object number: SK-A-247

The artist

Quinten Massijs (Louvain 1466 - Antwerp 1530), workshop of

Quinten Massijs was born in Louvain between 4 April and 10 September 1466 as the son of a smith, Joost Massijs, and his wife Catherina van Kincken. His apprenticeship is not documented, but he probably trained as a painter in his native Louvain, possibly in the workshop of Aelbert Bouts, whose influence is evident in his work. Massijs then moved to Antwerp, where he is first recorded as a master in the ledgers of the Guild of St Luke in 1491. He was married twice, first to Alyt Tuylt in Louvain in 1492, and after her death in 1507 to Catherine Heyns in Antwerp in 1508. He and Catherine owned two houses in the city. He died between 13 July and 16 September 1530, at which time he was staying in a Carthusian monastery in Kiel, on the outskirts of Antwerp.

There are four pupils of Quinten Massijs documented between 1495 and 1510: Adriaen (1495), Willem Muelenbroec (1501), Eduart Portugalois (1504) and Hennen Boeckmakere (1510). No further pupils are mentioned, probably because the two sons of his second marriage, Cornelis and Jan, were apprentices and later assistants in his workshop. This supposition is bolstered by the fact that in 1531, shortly after their father’s death, both of them enrolled as masters in the Antwerp guild.

Massijs’s reconstructed oeuvre consists of some 60 paintings, 6 of which are signed and dated. He mainly painted religious works, both large and small, as well as secular subjects and portraits. He executed his first major commission between 1507 and 1509: the St Anne Altarpiece for the chapel of the St Anne fraternity in the St Pieterskerk in Louvain.³ Before it was finished he accepted another assignment to paint the St John Altarpiece for the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk in Antwerp.⁴ Massijs also received several commissions from Portugal. Between 1509 and 1513, for instance, he painted a Retable of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows for the Madre de Deus Convent at Xabregas, near Lisbon.⁵

Massijs worked in the Flemish tradition, particularly at the beginning of his career, when his paintings show the influence of important predecessors like Dieric and Aelbert Bouts, Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck. He later incorporated Italian elements that he encountered in Antwerp. Among other things, he was clearly inspired by the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, although there is no indication that he ever went to Italy himself.

Massijs was a friend of Joachim Patinir, as evidenced by the fact that after the latter’s death in 1524 he was appointed guardian of his daughters, along with the painters Karel Alaerts and Jan Buyst. One of the paintings on which Massijs and Patinir collaborated was the Landscape with the Temptation of St Antony in Madrid.⁶

References
Van Mander 1604, fols. 215-16; Fickaert 1648; Van Fornenbergh 1658; Van Even 1846; De Bosschere 1907; Friedländer VII, 1929, pp. 15-78; Friedländer in Thieme/Becker XXIV, 1930, pp. 227-28; Boon 1942; ENP VII, 1971, pp. 12-40; De Bosque 1975; Silver 1984; Miedema III, 1996, pp. 37-47; Campbell-Hutchison in Turner 1996, XXI, pp. 352-57

(Vanessa Hoogland)

Entry

The Virgin is seated on a pseudo-classical throne to the right of a window with a view of a landscape. The Christ Child is in the crook of her left arm, kissing her on the lips, and in her right hand she holds two cherries, the ‘fruit of paradise’ that Christ brought to mankind. Lying in the foreground is an apple, symbol of the Fall of Man, and a bunch of grapes, which refer to the wine of the Eucharist and thus to the Redeemer’s blood.⁷ Curtains hang on either side of the throne, the one on the right creating the illusion that it belongs to the viewer’s world.

This painting is closely related to the lost Virgin by Quinten Massijs which was in the Cornelis van der Geest collection at the beginning of the 17th century, and was depicted as such in 1628 by Willem van Haecht (fig. a). That painting commemorated the visit that Archduke Albrecht (1559-1621) and Isabella (1566-1633) made to Van der Geest’s collection in 1615, when they wanted to buy Massijs’s Virgin for the royal collection.⁸

There are several versions of The Virgin that are associated with Massijs and his workshop. The one in the E.W. Edwards collection in Cincinnati comes closest to the lost painting owned by Van der Geest (fig. b). Seven other versions differ only in minor details and the Virgin’s expression from the lost work.⁹ The Rijksmuseum painting is of better quality than these versions, and also differs significantly from the work recorded by Van Haecht. The main discrepancy is the more ornate throne. The Virgin is also wearing a blue, not a mauve gown, and the apple and the grapes have switched position. The Virgin in a private collection in the United States (fig. c) corresponds to the one in the Rijksmuseum as regards composition and palette. It is conceivable that Quinten Massijs made two different variants of The Virgin for separate patrons, both of which were then copied in his workshop. The one in the Rijksmuseum is a good version, and could thus be autograph, but since it is just one of the several versions it could also have been executed by workshop assistants.

The composition with the Christ Child embracing the Virgin and kissing her on the lips is derived from Byzantine icons, where the type is known as Elousa (tenderness). This emotional pose had been introduced into western art back in the 12th century. Quinten Massijs’s main source for this intimate gesture was Dieric Bouts, who painted many different variants of the subject.¹⁰ However, the Italian elements that give Massijs’s Virgin such a totally different look from Bouts’s works came from Joos van Cleve, for at the end of his career he was influenced by the Madonnas based on Italian models by his younger Antwerp colleague. Van Cleve, in turn, was indebted to Leonardo da Vinci for his Virgin and Child in Aachen.¹¹ Massijs then incorporated the window in the corner, the throne decorated with meshwork, and the human presentation of the holy figures in his Virgin.¹²

The Rijksmuseum painting has similarities to the signed Rattier Madonna of 1529, particularly in its atmospheric landscape and the Virgin’s face.¹³ It is therefore probably a late product of Massijs’s workshop. With its ornate throne decorated with Renaissance motifs, its palette and modelling, it is also close to The Madonna Enthroned in Berlin, which is dated around 1523-24.¹⁴ The late dating, c. 1525-30, is confirmed by the dendrochronology, which gives the most likely date as around 1527.

This Virgin and Child was already in the collection of the Frisian stadholder in the 17th century, for a 1681 inventory of the court in Leeuwarden lists an ‘Our Lady with the Child painted by Quinten Massijs, with double frame’.¹⁵ It passed by descent to the Dutch stadholder, and in 1798 was transferred from Paleis Het Loo to Huis ten Bosch.¹⁶ The 1801 catalogue of the Nationale Konst-Gallerij lists it as a work by J. de Mabuze,¹⁷ and it was then attributed to ‘Mazzuoli, called il Parmigianino’ in the 1809 catalogue of the Koninklijk Museum.¹⁸ It was only from 1880 on that it has been regarded as a work by Quinten Massijs.¹⁹

(Vanessa Hoogland)

Literature

Fickaert 1648, p. 15; Van Fornenbergh 1658, p. 24; Van Langendahl 1881, pp. 163-74; Friedländer VII, 1929, pp. 124-25, no. 67; Bergström 1955, p. 304; coll. cat. The Hague 1968, pp. 39-40, no. 842; ENP VII, 1971, p. 68, no. 67; De Bosque 1975, pp. 222-24; Silver 1984, pp. 230-31, no. 50A

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Collection catalogues

1801, p. 49, no. 91 (as J. de Mabuze); 1809, p. 44, no. 185 (as by or in the manner of Mazzuoli, called il Parmigianino); 1843, p. 38, no. 191 (as by or in the manner of Mazzuoli, called il Parmigianino; ‘is original, but irreparably cracked in the nude’); 1853, p. 33, no. 351 (as by or in the manner of Mazzuoli, called il Parmigianino; fl. 15,000); 1858, p. 106, no. 234 (as by or in the manner of Mazzuoli, called il Parmigianino); 1880, p. 407, no. 476 (as Massijs); 1887, p. 108, no. 902 (as Massijs); 1903, p. 169, no. 1529 (as Massijs); 1934, p. 180, no. 1529 (as Massijs); 1976, p. 370, no. A 247 (as Massijs)

Citation

V. Hoogland, 2010, 'workshop of Quinten (I) Massijs, The Virgin and Child, c. 1525 - c. 1530', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6734

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