JOOS VAN CLEVE

(1485 / 1540)

JOOS VAN CLEVE Antwerp (1485 / 1540-41) "Madonna and Child with Fruit", c. 1540

Oil on panel. Provenance: - Richard Von Kaufmann Collection (d. 1908); Cassireer and Helbing Sale, Berlin, December 1917; Berlin, Von Der Heydt Collection; Von Der Heydt Heirs. Von Kauffmann's collection of paintings, sculpture and other works of art, which was dispersed in various sales in late 1917, included an important group of 16th-century European paintings, and was, according to the director of the Royal German Museums, Wilhelm Von Bode, hardly surpassed in Germany. This collection included paintings such as: 'The Mystic Marriage of Christ' by the Master of the St Bartholomew's Altarpiece (Washington DC National Gallery of Art); a 'Nativity' by Gerard David (Cleveland Museum of Fine Arts); "Jupiter" and "Samson Slaying the Philistines" by Martin von Heemskerk's, both in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; two pinnacles of the "Annunciation of the Virgin" by Paolo Veneciano and "Portrait of a Jeweller" by Lorenzo Lotto all in the J. Paul Getti Museum, Los Angeles, as well as paintings by artists such as Benvenuto di Giovanni, Botticelli, Van Der Weyden, Jacob Van Amsterdam, Holbein and Cranach. Joos Van Cleve was a member of the Antwerp guild from 1511, achieving great prestige as a portraitist and painter of religious subjects with Renaissance elements. He painted at the court of Francis I in France and at that of Henry VIII in England in his own style, based on his early works on that of his compatriot Jan Joes Van Kalkar, trained in the mannerism of Antwerp and influenced by the atmosphere of Bruges, it is thought that he travelled to Italy for the Leonardesque elements of his paintings. His compositions are delicate and gentle, executed with extreme care, especially his virgins have a very personal charm. This painting has been considered by Von Baldass and Friedländer (see bibliography) as the first version of a composition of 1520. There is a small group of similar paintings considered to be from the workshop that are in the Museum of Fine Arts of Troyes, in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium and in the Gallery of the Palazzo Bianco in Genoa. All these works differ in the lack of a border in the foreground and in that the gaze of the Virgin is directed downwards looking at the Child, instead of looking forward. The last two also have very similar landscape backgrounds on the right, seen from a scalloped edge, and a column on the left. The composition follows traditional patterns, the Child appears on the left, in his mother's right arm, lying asleep on a white cloth and showing the sentimental effusion of Marian iconography of the time, which highlights the expression of motherhood and filial intimacy. It presents various iconographic attributes, such as the lemon, symbol of incorruptibility, or cherries,derivation like other fruits of the small sphere placed in the hands of Jesus or the Virgin to express their greatness and power. Bibliography: - L. Von Baldas, "Joos Van Cleve, the Master of the Todes Mariae", Vienna, 1925, p. 21, no. 33 (circa 1520). - MJ Friedländer "Early Netherlandish Paintings", IX: Leiden and Brussels, 1972, p. 60, no. 52, fig. 66. Measurements: 81.3 x 56.5 cm.