1007 - Meister von Frankfurt

Meister von Frankfurt Master of Frankfurt Madonna and Child with Musical Angels Oil on panel. 103.5 x 68.8 cm. Provenance Private Collection, Belgium. A rare late work of grace and lightness: the Master of Frankfurt appears here in Renaissance guise, at the height of Antwerp Mannerism. Seated in a voluminous, gold-embroidered mantle, with a light-blue ribbon fashionably woven into her hair, the Virgin sits enthroned with the Child. Playfully, her son toys with her hair and, smiling joyfully, reaches for her face. The intimate scene unfolds before a spectacular Renaissance-style architectural setting, with a coffered round arch and a shell niche, crowned by playful putti bearing garlands of fruit. The scene is accompanied by music from youthful angels playing the lute and flute, set against a landscape. A mood of solemn cheerfulness prevails, yet, like the lowered gazes of the figures, it remains inward-looking and spiritually detached. The sole exception is the angel with the flute at the right edge of the painting, who looks out at the viewer with a lively gaze and may even bear portrait features. The so-called Master of Frankfurt, who is probably to be identified with the Antwerp painter Hendrik van Wueluwe (1460–1533), was highly esteemed during his lifetime, not least by fellow artists such as Quinten Massys and Joos van Cleve. He served as dean of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke no fewer than six times and ran a highly productive workshop. Unlike the two aforementioned painters, who introduced to Antwerp the Italian influences that Wueluwe takes up in the present work, the Master of Frankfurt was, particularly in earlier scholarship, characterised as somewhat conservative, backward-looking, and stiff. Max Friedländer, for example, described his works as 'not Renaissance-like in cheerfulness, but rather ecclesiastically constrained' (M. J. Friedländer: Der Meister von Frankfurt, in: Jahrbuch der Königlich Preußischen Kunstsammlungen XXXVIII (1917), pp. 135–150, here: p. 135). The present work, a rare late painting that was probably executed after 1520, reveals a different, 'liberated' Master of Frankfurt, who kept pace with his times through Italianizing grace and lightness. We would like to thank Dr Till-Holger Borchert, Aachen, for confirming the authenticity of the work on the basis of digital photographs and for suggesting the dating.