(Westheim/Bad Windsheim circa 1500–1550 Breslau)
The Virgin and Child,
oil on panel, 42 x 31.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Anna Moraht-Fromm for her scientific research. Her written report (March 2024) accompanies the present lot.

We are also grateful to Peter Klein for the examination of the limewood support and Manfred Schreiner for his technical analysis. Infrared reflectography reveals a pentiment in Mary’s head, turned in the opposite direction.

Entirely filling the rectangular format of the picture, the half-length figure of the Virgin Mary has been pushed towards the viewer in the manner of a close-up. Her soft, beautifully shaped hands embrace the naked Child, whose nudity is merely covered by a white cloth. The blond-curled boy stretches out his chubby arms towards his mother in blissful innocence, simultaneously facing and focussing on the viewer. Mary, on the other hand, with her eyes lowered, exhibits a melancholy and absent-minded gaze, almost as if in a state of trance while she envisions the inescapable approach of the Passion. Underneath her white headscarf, her dark-blond hair, strictly parted in the middle, falls over her shoulders in long, curly waves. Her charming features and tenderly blushed cheeks are rendered in nearly impeccable symmetry. Her mouth is characterised by its perfect Cupid’s bow, above which rises a delicately moulded philtrum. The figures are surrounded by nimbuses of finely applied rays of gold over a green background.

There are several substantial arguments why to attribute this panel to Georg Pencz of Nuremberg. Pencz was born in Westheim in the west of Nuremberg around 1500. His name appeared in the register of Nuremberg-based painters as early as 1523, when he purchased the Nuremberg citizenship for 4 florins and was obviously influenced by Dürer, in whose workshop he probably trained. In 1529 he married Margaretha Graf, the daughter of his painter-colleague Michael Graf. The couple had thirteen children. Three years later, in 1532, he was appointed official painter to the city of Nuremberg and was thus regarded as legitimate successor of his master, Albrecht Dürer, who had died in 1528. Pencz, who worked as a painter, cartographer, and copper engraver, would soon be one of the imperial city’s most-sought-after artists. When the demand for paintings rapidly declined due to developments in the wake of the Reformation, Pencz was soon known to be heavily indebted. Like many other artists, he decided to leave Nuremberg and accept the proposal of Duke Albert of Prussia to become his court painter. He died in 1550 on the journey to Königsberg, probably in Leipzig or Wrocław.

Pencz’s subject matters accommodated the needs (and fashions) of the new era: in the spirit of discovering the human being, he concentrated on portraits, delivering the most convincing masterpieces of German portraiture of the post-Dürer period. Moreover, mythological scenes are amply represented, for example in the Roman Charity conserved in the National Museum of Warsaw (inv. no. 77802), whose blond-curled hair must be seen closely similar to that of the young Christ Child in the present picture. Apart from Pencz’s cycles of prints, such Christian and religious themes as the Madonna and Child remain exceptional cases in his painted oeuvre, so that the present panel is of extraordinary importance. Due to the format of the picture, it has to be regarded as a devotional work destined for a private environment or probably for a small chapel.

That Pencz must have travelled to Italy was already obvious to scholars in the nineteenth century. In the meantime, at least two journeys to Italy have turned out to be more than likely, even if pertinent Nuremberg sources surprisingly do not supply any evidence. Yet such journeys, intended to complete an artist’s education, were considered obligatory as early as the latter half of the fifteenth century. An italianitá committed to Italian Mannerism increasingly manifested itself in Pencz’s works after 1525. It seems that Northern Italy, as well as the Florentine and Roman schools, particularly appealed to Pencz. The artist’s innovative treatment of light and shadow, combined with a saturated, brilliant, and partly even exaggerated palette suggests his immediate knowledge of works by artists like Bronzino, Giulio Romano, and/or Bernardino Luini. Italian tendencies, becoming more and more distinct, led to a unique individual style characterised by the artist’s training in Franconia.

Pencz could have seen a version of the Madonna and Child by Giulio Romano (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, inv. no. Reg. Cron. 682; after Raphael’s Mackintosh Madonna): the carefree, blond-curled Christ Child merrily looks out of the picture while turning towards the viewer and resting his right arm on his mother’s shoulder. It seems that here one would have to envisage the complete composition as being quite similar.