1005 - Johann Koerbecke

Johann Koerbecke The Annunciation Oil on oak panel. 94 x 78.5 cm. Provenance Alexander Haindorf Collection, Hamm, until 1862. – By descent to Sophie Loeb, née Haindorf, Hamm. – Loeb Caldenhof Collection, entailed estate (Fideikommiss), Hamm. – By descent to Helene Sophie Victoria Hermine (known as Ellen) Funke, née Heintzmann, Hamm, 1934 – 19 October 1936. – Galerie Stern, Düsseldorf, 1936/37. – Galerie Hans Bammann, Düsseldorf, 1936/37. – Landesmuseum Bonn, 1–5 June 1937. – Carl Härle Collection, Mülheim an der Ruhr. – By descent to Maria and Regina Härle. – Donated to Kolumba, Art Museum of the Archdiocese of Cologne, 1996. – Restituted to the heirs of Ellen Funke in December 2025. Literature A. Wormstall: Zur Geschichte der Liesborner und Marienfelder Altargemälde, in: Westfälische Zeitschrift, LV (1897), pp. 85ff. – J. Sommer: Johann Koerbecke. Der Meister des Marienfelder Altars von 1457, Münster 1937, pp. 54f. – J. Prinz: Urkundliches zur Geschichte der Malerfamilie Koerbecke, in: Westfalen, XXVI (1941), pp. 99–102. – H. Busch: Meister des Nordens. Die altniederländische Malerei, 1450–1550, Hamburg 1943, pp. 68f. – P. Pieper: Westfälische Maler der Spätgotik 1440–1490 (exh. cat. Westfälisches Landesmuseum Münster 1952), Münster 1952, pp. 3 and 23f., nos. 68–69a. – A. Stange: Deutsche Malerei der Gotik, vol. 6: Nordwestdeutschland in der Zeit von 1450–1515, Munich/Berlin 1954, pp. 19 and 21. – K. Zuhorn: Die Behandlung des Marienfelder Gemäldebestands nach der Aufhebung der Abtei, in: Westfälische Zeitschrift, 103/104 (1954), pp. 196–200. – A. Stange: Kritisches Verzeichnis der deutschen Tafelbilder vor Dürer, vol. 1: Köln, Niederrhein, Westfalen, Hamburg, Lübeck und Niedersachsen, Munich 1967, pp. 154f. – Altdeutsche Gemälde: Köln und Nordwestdeutschland (coll.-cat. Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Munich 1972), ed. by Gisela Goldberg and Gisela Scheffler, Munich 1972, pp. 180–184 (with the complete earlier literature for the Vision of St Bernard). – W. Kohl: Germania Sacra, 3rd series, vol. 2, Das Bistum Münster 11: Die Zisterzienserabtei Marienfeld, Berlin/New York 2010, p. 41. For art historical reasons, the two important panels (Lots 1005 and 1006) will first be offered individually and then together. Johann Koerbecke’s depictions of the Vision of St Bernard and the Annunciation can be identified, on the basis of written sources as well as their stylistic features and the nature of their support, as the front and reverse of a double-sided panel from a polyptych. They most probably adorned the exterior and interior of a left-hand altarpiece wing belonging to a retable in the monastery church at Marienfeld. Following the dissolution of the Cistercian monastery, the painter Johann Christoph Rincklake (1764–1813) had nineteen valuable panels set aside from the sale in February 1804, among them above all the sixteen panels from Koerbecke’s principal work, the Marienfeld high altarpiece completed in 1457. The three remaining panels most likely belonged to a different, smaller altarpiece in the monastery church, created by Koerbecke one to two decades later; alongside the double-sided panel, this group included a depiction of the Nativity (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, inv. no. 10347), while the third panel remains unidentified. The separation of the double-sided panel was carried out at the instigation of the art dealer Max Stern in 1936 against the wishes of the owner; since that time the Vision of St Bernard and the Annunciation have been kept apart, and are now reunited for the first time. Born around 1410, probably in Coesfeld or Münster, Johann Koerbecke is an outstanding painter of Westphalian Late Gothic art. He received his training under his father or in another local workshop, possibly that of the Master of the Schöppingen Altarpiece. From the mid-century onwards he is documented as a citizen of Münster, where he ran a successful workshop until his death on 13 June 1490. The earliest works attributable to him are panel paintings from the collegiate church at Langenhorst, datable to around 1450. Koerbecke had close ties to the Cistercian convent at Marienfeld, which gave him his most important commission: for the reliquary retable completed in 1457 at the high altar of the monastery church, he painted scenes from the Passion and the Life of the Virgin. These works, now distributed among museums in Europe and the United States — the majority of them in the Westfälisches Landesmuseum in Münster — mark the pinnacle of his mature output and define the specific characteristics of his pictorial language. They therefore provide a reliable stylistic basis for assigning those three panels that formed part of the aforementioned smaller retable in the Marienfeld monastery church to the œuvre of Koerbecke. The surviving scenes suggest that this winged altarpiece presented scenes from the Life of the Virgin on its interior, while the exterior depicted various themes of the Cistercian order or was dedicated entirely to its founder. Koerbecke shows Bernard of Clairvaux at the moment of his mystical vision of Christ — his embrace by the Crucified One (Amplexus Bernardi) — as recounted by Conrad of Eberbach in his Exordium Magnum Cisterciense in the late twelfth century. The saint, identified as an abbot by his golden crozier, kneels on the ground before the cross, raising his arms to support the Redeemer — marked by his sufferings and bending down towards him — and to receive his embrace. On scrolls, the saint’s exclamation may be read: “Gloria tibi, Domine”, together with Christ’s response: “In caritate perpetua dilexi te” (Jer. 31:3). The painter has sensitively captured the intimate immediacy of this supernatural encounter, contrasting the luminous and delicately articulated body of Christ with the figure of the saint, whose heavy brown habit envelops him with volumetric amplitude while forming ornamentally deep and angular folds — a stylistic device characteristic of Koerbecke’s draped figures. Equally distinctive is the spatial staging of the figures: a room laid out in central perspective, whose depth is emphasised above all by the polychrome tiled floor, forms a box-like stage enclosed by a green cloth of honour on which the slender, monumental figures are presented to full effect. The painter situates the scene in a barrel-vaulted monastic interior that opens to the right into a further room or cloister, where two biforate windows afford a view into a walled garden and, beyond it, the silhouette of a city. The ambitious rendering of such architectural detail and interior vistas is matched by the delight in particulars with which Koerbecke — inspired by Early Netherlandish painting — describes the Virgin’s bedchamber: in the Annunciation scene, the bed, fitted with a green canopy and covered in vivid red, divides the pictorial space in two; only the rays of the Holy Spirit and the angel’s scroll ("Ave gratia dominus tecum") effectively bridge this division. To the left, the Archangel Gabriel appears in brightly luminous robes adorned with a brocade mantle. To the right, Mary kneels in prayer, her back turned to the angel but already on the point of turning towards him. The golden nimbus and her deep-blue mantle, falling far across the tiled floor, lend weight to her figure. From the potted plant and the book in the foreground, by way of the embroidered pillow at the head of the bed and the small cabinet at the centre, to the stone framing of the fireplace, the painter demonstrates his interest in the faithful depiction of the material world. The angel of the Annunciation bears witness to the fact that Koerbecke aspired to a more differentiated physiognomy in his figures, and was capable of introducing subtle gestural and mimetic accents. Koerbecke’s work on the altarpiece at Marienfeld — to which the once double-sided panel bearing the Vision of St Bernard and the Annunciation belonged, and which was probably completed around 1470/80 — is so closely related in style to his principal work, the Marienfeld high altarpiece, that the attribution to him and/or his workshop has remained undisputed in recent scholarship. The scenes are somewhat stiffer and less richly embellished than those of the high altarpiece, yet they clearly demonstrate the high quality that this Westphalian master developed in dialogue with Early Netherlandish painting and in engagement with the art of Conrad of Soest and Stephan Lochner. A.S. The two paintings by Johann Koerbecke were held in museums in Munich and Cologne until 2025 and, following a thorough examination by the museums, were legally returned to the primary parties affected in 2025 in accordance with the Federal Government’s guidelines. This is how they are recorded in the databases. They are not subject to any export restrictions.