The Holy Family with a Female Saint in Adoration

Entry

Although accepted by Glück in 1931⁷ and Burchard in 1949⁸ as autograph, the attribution of the present work to Anthony van Dyck has rightly never been advanced by the museum, by which it was last catalogued in 1976 as in his manner. Barnes, in the mistaken belief that it was then described as a copy, placed it in her A section (repetitions and copies) of works executed by Van Dyck in Italy (1621-27), although no prototype was known to her. While an attribution to Jan van den Hoecke (1611-1651) can be ruled out,⁹ a convincing alternative has yet to be advanced for this Van Dyckian work, whose level of execution is not much better than average.

While the painting can at the least be described as the work of an anonymous follower of Van Dyck, a more precise determination of its status is difficult. Barnes proposed some possible but not compelling influences of Italian works copied by Van Dyck in the Italian Sketchbook (British Museum), but evidence that the prototype was in Genoa is at best tenuous.¹⁰

In fact, the figure of the Virgin does show a pronounced Italian influence, namely from that figure in Titian’s (c. 1488-1576) Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Catherine of Alexandria (National Gallery).¹¹ The Infant Saint John in that work, which was in Rome during the 1620s, may have been the prototype for the drawing on folio 12 of Van Dyck’s Italian Sketchbook.¹² The unusual overall blue of the Virgin’s attire and her veil are remarkably similar in the Rijksmuseum and National Gallery paintings, as is her gesture of reaching out for a proffered blossom. In the Titian, Saint John offers a lemon with a single blossom attached; it is the latter, which she plucks, in order to give it to the Child who reaches out for it.

In the present painting, it is not clear what the Virgin intends to do with the blossom she takes from Saint Joseph as the Infant Christ is wholly engaged with the kneeling female saint beside him. Christ’s pose combines those in two paintings by Van Dyck: The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (British Royal Collection Trust)¹³ and The Virgin and Child with Two Donors (Musée du Louvre).¹⁴ His different actions in these two paintings are conflated in the Rijksmuseum picture, where his right hand is ready to bestow a ring (replaced by an ill-drawn shadow) and his left reaches out to caress the saint. There is thus a lack of psychological coherence in the gestures of the Virgin and her Child.

A further element of confusion is provided by the female saint, traditionally identified as Saint Mary Magdalen, among whose emblems are indeed a bible and skull, but whose inclusion in such a scene as this has been described by Healy as unusual.¹⁵ In fact, the identification of the saint as the Magdalen is not certain and probably incorrect, because the palm-frond at her feet would indicate that the personage had been martyred, which fate did not befall the Magdalen, and further her dress is not that of a penitent as for instance it is in the Virgin and Child Adored by Penitent Sinners (Musée du Louvre).¹⁶

Barnes states that the models for Saint Joseph and the Virgin are ‘characteristic [of] the Italian-period’. While the figure of Joseph – albeit damaged as it is – may bring to mind physiognomies of the old men which occur in the Tatton Park Stoning of Saint Stephen,¹⁷ or of the Apostles in the Incredulity of Saint Thomas (State Hermitage Museum),¹⁸ there is also an affinity with the later Joseph in the Holy Family (Munich, Alte Pinakothek).¹⁹ The same model for the Virgin appears in the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine and elsewhere, circa 1630, as Vey²⁰ points out, even if he is hesitant about accepting the possible sketch of the model for it, last espoused by Held.²¹ The model for Saint Catherine in this devotional picture is the same as for the saint in the Rijksmuseum picture.

The handling in the Rijksmuseum Holy Family seems not to be by a Genoese, let alone an Italian painter, as would be the case if Barnes’s surmise of it being a copy is correct; rather it would seem to be typically that of a southern Netherlandish, probably Antwerp, artist active circa 1630-50. Of course, it may turn out to be a maladroit copy of this date of a lost painting by Van Dyck. In that case, the likelihood is that the prototype would prove to have been executed in Antwerp circa 1630. Alternatively, the picture could be a variant by a follower, who was acquainted with the compositions of the British Royal Collection Trust and Louvre pictures, and also had some knowledge of Titian’s Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine or a copy of it.

Gregory Martin, 2022