Virgin Suckling the Child

The Artist: As the Virgin in this painting (in particular her moon-shaped face and delicate facial features) is related stylistically to the Virgin figures found in paintings in the Quinten Massys group, the artist has been located in Antwerp, about 1520.

The Painting: This painting, traditionally called in Latin a Maria lactans, represents the Virgin breastfeeding the Child. It may have derived in part from the popular type of Robert Campin’s Virgin and Child in an Apse (a version of which is 05.39.2). The extensive copying of this image likely indicates that the prototype was believed to have miraculous healing powers. One of the inscriptions in this painting frames the figures, beginning at the lower left, proceeding up and across the top, and then down the right side of the image. It is the first stanza of an anthem that was part of a prayer recited at Compline, the last of the Hours of the Virgin, which is included in breviaries and Books of Hours (see Inscriptions). It refers to the radix sancta, the Root of Jesse, which is part of the earthly genealogy of Christ, and thereby relates to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This doctrine holds that the Virgin Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin. The second inscription, at the base of the image, is the response found in the Hours of the Virgin after the second lesson at Matins (see Inscriptions) and also relates to the Immaculate Conception.

The Virgin is shown behind a window understood as the window to heaven, or the Fenestra Coeli, a common accolade for the Immaculate Virgin. Around the Virgin is an aureole of flames, related to her role as the Virgin of the Sun, again imagery connected with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This doctrine gained in popularity throughout Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was officially accepted in the fifteenth century when Pope Sixtus IV introduced offices for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1476 and 1480, and guaranteed indulgences to those who celebrated the office in bulls of 1476 and 1477. The doctrine was notably popular with the royal family of the Habsburgs, particularly with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who fostered its spread in Spain (Ainsworth 1998). It is quite possible that the inscriptions on this painting were prayers said by members of religious orders devoted to the Immaculate Conception (Martens 1986). The order that was founded in 1489 in Spain required nuns to recite the office of the Immaculate Conception every day. The recitation of such prayers may have resulted in guaranteed indulgences, contributing to the increased popularity of this type of image.

According to Lionel Cust, Max Friedländer suggested that relatively inexpensive paintings on linen, based on an image believed to hold miraculous powers, might have been sold to pilgrims as souvenirs at holy sites.[1] Such images could be mass-produced and made available for a reasonable price based on their comparative simplicity and small size. In his consideration of the Royal Collection version, Cust offered another explanation: that the multiple copies may be due to a confraternity annually commissioning an image on a particular feast day, as was done by the confraternity of Notre Dame du Puy d’Amiens on the feast of the Purification.

The Attribution and Date: This painting is a fine example of the uncommon technique of tempera on linen, known by the German term Tüchlein. The multiple versions of the composition appear to have been produced in the same workshop, but by different hands (Wolfthal 1989). Friedländer thought the master of the workshop was German (Eisler 1989). However, the face of the Virgin and the figure of Christ in The Met painting bear a resemblance to similar figures painted by Quinten Massys. Ludwig Baldass believed that the many versions were the product of a south Netherlandish workshop, most likely in Antwerp in the circle of Massys at the beginning of the sixteenth century.[2] Some of the versions are or were attributed to the Master of the Louvre Madonna, so-called after a copy on linen in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. The Met’s painting, with the Child’s face turned toward his Mother and grasping her breast with his left hand, is closest to the example in the Thyssen-Borenemisza Collection, Lugano, and others that have appeared on the market (Eisler 1989).[3] The fragility of paintings on linen may have caused the disappearance of many additional copies.

Maryan W. Ainsworth 2012; updated by Ainsworth 2020

[1] Lionel Cust, "Notes on Pictures in the Royal Collections," Burlington Magazine 11 (1907), pp. 231–32.
[2] Ludwig Baldass in Mélanges Hulin de Loo, Brussels, 1931, pp. 24–32.
[3] Another replica attributed to the Master of the Louvre Madonna, painted on linen, was sold at Christie’s, London, November 2, 2001. It lacks the inscription and window frame, and the Child’s head turns more fully to face the viewer.

Support: The primary support is a very fine canvas, measuring 27 x 35 threads per square centimeter on average, and estimated to be linen. The canvas has been adhered to a single piece of Masonite. There is no evidence of the original means by which the painting was attached to a secondary support.

The current dimensions are likely close to the original. The edges are uneven with a small amount of original canvas folded over the Masonite at the upper left corner, suggesting that all that remained of the original edges was retained at the time that the painting was mounted on this secondary support. Furthermore, the dimensions and composition are quite similar to the only other published version, in the Museo Thyssen-Borenemisza, Madrid (see Eisler 1989, pp. 236–38).[1]

There are several large horizontal tears in the canvas, which were not fully brought together when they were repaired. The canvas was likely marouflaged to the Masonite in order to stabilize these tears.

Preparation:
There is no preparatory layer evident beneath the figure of the Virgin, although it is likely that the canvas was sized with glue prior to painting.[2] Beneath the gold background the canvas was prepared with a very thin yellow priming layer composed of finely divided yellow particles, likely iron ochre, and a small amount of chunky black particles, which appear to be charcoal. On top of this yellow priming is a translucent layer, which fluoresces yellow in ultraviolet light, and is likely an oily layer that served as the mordant for gilding. The use of “gold colored” paint or priming has been noted elsewhere beneath oil gilding.[3] The use of yellow priming may have been an attempt to increase the luminosity of the mordant gilding, which cannot be burnished after application.

No underdrawing was observed using infrared reflectography.[4] The black particles present in the yellow priming may be traces of underdrawing in a dry medium that was brushed off before painting. The inscription was positioned prior to gilding by scoring guiding lines into the priming using a straight edge.

Paint Layers: The painting is in remarkably good condition considering the inherent fragility of tüchlein paintings. The fleshtones of the Virgin and Child were built up using extremely thin, subtle washes of distemper paint. As is characteristic of tüchlein painting, the paint is very matte and appears unsaturated. The painting does not have a protective coating or varnish. Although varnishes can serve to protect delicate paint layers, they often alter the tone and opacity of the distemper paint, and no original varnish has been detected on a tüchlein.[5]

The contrast between the delicate tones of the figures’ faces and the striking blue of the Virgin’s robe has been achieved in part by varied paint handling. The bold blue was created by thickly layering pure azurite, so thick that the artist was able to incise hatching and cross-hatching lines into the blue to accentuate the folds of the drapery (see fig. 1 above).[6] The richness of the blue was further deepened by undermodeling the shadows with a very dark brown layer and shading the folds with glazes of a dark reddish-brown glaze. This could be a red lake or even sinopre, which was occasionally requested specifically as a glaze for azur robes.[7]

The flames behind the Virgin were painted with a translucent red glaze, which appears to be a red lake. A very thin red lake glaze was washed across the background to impart a rosy tone to the gold. The aureole of flames was originally augmented with a pattern of evenly spaced red dots across the gold background. The red dots and the gold beneath them have flaked off over time, exposing the glossy yellow of the priming and mordant layers. The present optical effect is a network of pale yellow dots rather than the stunning effect the deep red would have originally had. It is possible to see that the red dots were applied more thickly than the red glaze elsewhere, and would have stood slightly proud of the surface (fig. 2). The thick globules of red glaze would have had great cohesive strength and so were more likely to detach from the support over time, perhaps in response to movements of the canvas support, pulling off the gold leaf below as well.[8]

A similar phenomenon has occurred in the inscription at the lower edge. Most of the painted lettering and the gold is lost, revealing the glossy yellow priming layer where the inscription had been present. There are traces of pale pink paint here which was made by mixing a small amount of white particles with the red glaze.

The highlights in the Virgin and the Child’s hair and in the Virgin’s robe were gilded using shell gold, which would have adhered more effectively to the granular topography of the coarse blue pigment than gold leaf.

A network of raised ray-like cracks begin at the boundary between the ungrounded painting and the gilded background and extend out into the background. This phenomenon was likely caused by the canvas reacting to changes in the environment over time. Due to the differing preparation and buildup of material on the figure and the background, the painting responded differently in these areas, resulting in differential cracking.

Sophie Scully 2020

[1] Eisler notes that the borders of the Thyssen tüchlein have been trimmed, but as the dimensions and framing are quite close to The Met's version, it seems most likely only a small amount of canvas has been removed from the Thyssen version.
[2] David Bomford, Ashok Roy, Alistair Smith, “The Technique of Two paintings by Dieric Bouts,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 10 (1986), p. 46, and Diane Wolfthal and Cathy Metzger, Los Angeles Museum (Corpus of Netherlandish Painting 22), Brussels, 2014, p. 59. Glue sizes were observed on three Bouts tüchleins, in London, Los Angeles, and Pasadena.
[3] “Methods and Materials of Northern European Painting in the National Gallery, 1400–1550" in National Gallery Technical Bulletin 18 (1997), p. 9.
[4] Infrared reflectography completed with a Merlin Indigo InGaAs near Infra-red camera with a StingRay macro lens customized for the wavelengths covered by the camera, 0.9 to 1.7 microns.
[5] Diane Wolfthal, The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting: 1400–1530, Cambridge, 1989, p. 28.
[6] Analyzed by Dr. Silvia A. Centeno with Raman spectroscopy, Spring 2014. A very small amount of green particles are also present within the azurite and are likely a naturally occurring mineral inclusion
[7] “Methods and Materials of Northern European Painting in the National Gallery, 1400–1550" in National Gallery Technical Bulletin 18 (1997), p. 11.
[8] Wolfthal 1989. Red dots are intact in the versions in the Thyssen, Louvre, and Hampton Court.

Inscription: Inscribed (on simulated frame): (sides and top) Ave·regina·celorum·ave·domina·angelorum·salve·radix·sancta·ex·qua·mundo·lux·[est]·orta· (Hail to thee, O Queen of Heaven; hail, Mistress of Angels; hail, root and gateway through whom the light has risen upon the world. [From a Compline antiphon]); (base) Beata·es·maria·qu[a]e·omniu[m]·p[o]rtasti / creatorem·genuisti·eum·qui·te fecit / et·inaeternum·permane[s] Virgo (Blessed art thou, O Mary the Virgin, who didst bear the creator of all things. Thou broughtest forth him who made thee and remainest a virgin forever. [From the offertory of the old office of the Immaculate Conception])

Robert Lehman, New York (until 1945)

New York University, The Catholic Center. May 1–20, 1954, no catalogue?

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 22, 1998–February 21, 1999, no. 63.

Harry B. Wehle and Margaretta Salinger. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Early Flemish, Dutch and German Paintings. New York, 1947, p. 113, ill., suggest that "our picture and its several replicas were painted for various houses of the order of the Immaculate Conception, founded in 1489 in Spain, and that they were carried as banners in processions"; note that the picture is painted in a style that resembles the works of Quentin Metsys before 1520.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 36.

Erik Larsen. Les primitifs flamands au Musée Metropolitain de New York. Utrecht, 1960, p. 87.

Colin Eisler. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. Vol. 4, European Schools Excluding Italian. London, 1977, p. 50, relates the inscription on the simulated frame to that on the frame of the Virgo Lactans by a Follower of Robert Campin in the collection of Mrs. Rush H. Kress, New York.

Didier Martens. "A propos d'un Tüchlein flamand du XVI siècle conservé au Louvre." Revue du Louvre et des musées de France (1986), p. 399, attributes it to the Master of the Louvre Madonna and assembles and groups the works attributed to him; relates the text to the monastic office of the Virgin.

Diane Wolfthal. The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting: 1400–1530. Cambridge, 1989, pp. 81–84, no. 80, figs. 20 (detail), 138, connects eight paintings very similar to this one in subject and composition; finds The Met's painting closest to the works in the Louvre and at Hampton Court (nos. 78 and 79), also painted on very fine, tightly woven linen and bearing similar inscriptions; ascribes all three to the Master of the Louvre Madonna and supports the Louvre's attribution of their picture to an artist of the Flemish school active in the first half of the sixteenth century; doubts that they served as banners [see Wehle and Salinger 1947] but believes a connection with the Order of the Immaculate Conception is possible; believes they probably were "mass–produced devotional works obtainable at a modest price".

Colin Eisler. Early Netherlandish Painting: the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. London, 1989, p. 238, fig. 1.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 270, ill.

Maryan W. Ainsworth. "A Meeting of Sacred and Secular Worlds." From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Maryan W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1998, pp. 43, 85, 252–54, no. 63, ill. (color), ascribes it to a Netherlandish (Antwerp) Painter, about 1520 and believes it derives from the Campin-inspired composition of the Virgin and Child in an Apse [see MMA 05.39.2]; suggests that this panel and its variants were associated with the granting of indulgences, in papal bulls of 1476 and 1477, for prayers honoring the Virgin's Immaculate Conception .

Didier Martens. "Un 'Tüchlein' flamand de la Renaissance au château de Peralada et le Maître de la Madone (RF 46 du Louvre)." Locus Amœnus 6 (2002–3), p. 120, as by the Master of the Louvre Madonna; places the artist's style between that of Quentin Metsys and the Master of the Antwerp Adoration.

Old Master Paintings and Sculpture. Sotheby's, New York. January 31, 2013, p. 26, under no. 111.

Other replicas of this composition, also on linen, are in the Thyssen–Borenemisza Collection, Lugano (formerly National Museum, Munich), the Louvre, Paris, and the Royal Collection, Hampton Court. The replica in the Royal Collection is listed as German School, ca. 1500 in the Catalogue of the Exhibition of the King's Pictures, Royal Academy, London, 1946, p. 68, no. 70. Lorne Campbell, in a letter, 1982, notes that this version came from the collection of Joseph Count of Rechberg (1769–1833) and was sold in 1815 to Ludwig Krafft Ernst, Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein. The version in the Louvre is catalogued as School of Antwerp, between 1490 and 1510, in E. Michel, Catalogue raisonné des peintures du Moyen-Age, de la Renaissance, et des temps modernes: peintures flamandes du XVe et du XVIe siècle, Paris, 1953, pp. 98–99; and the Thyssen picture is catalogued in R. J. Heinemann, Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz, Lugano, 1958, p. 78, no. 308, as by a North German artist, about 1500. In a letter from the Thyssen–Bornemisza Collection, 1982, the picture is dated about 1480.

Lionel Cust ("Notes on Pictures in the Royal Collections," Burlington Magazine 11 [1907], pp. 231–33) illustrates and discusses the picture in the Royal Collection, London, acquired by Prince Albert with the Oettingen-Wallerstein collection, and mentions other replicas in the Louvre, Paris, and the National Museum, Munich; notes that the Munich painting was said to come from the convent of the Altomünster near Aichach, Germany; relates M. J. Friedländer's suggestion that these paintings are taken from some miracle-working painting of the Virgin and Child in Germany, of which many copies were made for pilgrims and suggests the possibilty that these pictures are due to some confraternity on the borders of France and Flanders, and that they belonged to a series like the paintings known to have been commissioned annually by the confraternity of Notre-Dame du Puy at Amiens.

Ludwig Baldass (in Mélanges Hulin de Loo, Brussels, 1931, pp. 24–32) discusses the replica at Schloss Rohoncz (formerly National Museum, Munich), and notes that he saw a Netherlandish painting on panel with the same composition with Julius Böhler in Munich in 1929; concludes that if Friedländer's hypothesis of a miracle-working prototype is correct, it must have been produced in the southern Netherlands rather than in Germany; rejects Cust's suggestion that these paintings may have been made on the Franco-Flemish border; notes similarities with the early works of Quentin Massys and ascribes them to an Antwerp artist in his circle at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

In the Catalogue of the Exhibition of the Kings Pictures (see above), the author notes, in relation to the London replica, that "the style and wording of the inscription, which corresponds with a version used at Cologne, indicate that the prototype . . . may have come from Cologne or the Lower Rhine district."

M. J. Friedländer, in an unpublished opinion, n.d. (see letter from G. Goldberg, February 24, 1982 in archive) calls the Lugano replica Netherlandish or North German, from about 1500.