This intact altarpiece shows Adam and Eve on the exterior wings. On the interior side panels are two Old Testament prefigurations of the Last Supper, shown on the central panel. The left wing depicts the king and high priest Melchizedek outside the gates of Salem giving bread and wine to the patriarch Abraham. The right wing represents Moses and the Israelites in the desert fed by manna falling from heaven.

At least three artists collaborated on this altarpiece. One painted the nude Adam and Eve based on Dürer's 1504 engraving of the subject, another produced the generalized mannerist figures on the interior, and a third may have contributed the individualized figure in the left foreground of the central panel. This figure may be a portrait of the man who commissioned the work.

Forthcoming

Inscription: Inscribed (on frame): (under left wing) CENANTIBVSILLIS, ACZEPIT; (under central panel) IESVS PANEM BENEDIXIT, ACFREJIT, DEDITQV[E]; (under right wing) DISCIPVLIS, SVIS, DICENS (And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said . . . [Matthew 26:26].); (right wing, on tent in background) AVE MARIA . . .

comte de Montebello (until 1909; sold to Kleinberger); [Kleinberger, Paris and New York, 1909; sold to Morgan]; J. Pierpont Morgan, New York (1909–d. 1913; his estate, 1913–17)

Little Rock. Arkansas Arts Center. "Five Centuries of European Painting," May 16–October 26, 1963, unnumbered cat. (pp. 10–11).

Bruges. Groeninge Museum. "Primitifs flamands anonymes," June 14–September 21, 1969, no. 91.

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. 68.

B[ryson]. B[urroughs]. "Recent Loans." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 4 (September 1909), p. 154, ascribes the triptych to Herri Met de Bles.

Max J. Friedländer. "Die Antwerpener Manieristen von 1520." Jahrbuch der Königlich Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 36 (1915), pp. 80–81, ill. (central panel), includes this triptych with works by the Antwerp follower of Pseudo-Blesius who painted the Adoration of the Magi in the Ertborn collection [now Koninklijk Museum, Antwerp].

Max J. Friedländer. "Die Antwerpener Manieristen; Adriaen Ysenbrant." Die altniederländische Malerei. 11, Berlin, 1933, pp. 38, 120, no. 43, pl. 23 (central panel), ascribes it to the Antwerp follower of Pseudo-Blesius who painted the Adoration of the Magi in the Van Groote collection, Kitzburg [pls. 18 and 19, present location unknown].

Ernest Lotthé. La pensée chrétienne dans la peinture flamande et hollandaise. Lille, 1947, vol. 2, pp. 192, 337.

Harry B. Wehle and Margaretta Salinger. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Early Flemish, Dutch and German Paintings. New York, 1947, pp. 129–30, ill., as the work of an Antwerp Mannerist.

Erik Larsen. Les primitifs flamands au Musée Metropolitain de New York. Utrecht, 1960, p. 93.

Georges Marlier. Pierre Coeck d'Alost. Brussels, 1966, p. 106, relates the iconography of our painting to that of an engraving of the Last Supper by the Monogrammist I. A. from Zwolle, from the last quarter of the 15th century (fig. 36, Albertina, Vienna).

D. Farmer. Primitifs flamands anonymes. Exh. cat., Groeninge Museum. Bruges, 1969, pp. 164–65, 167, no. 91, ill. (the triptych and central panel).

Max J. Friedländer et al. "The Antwerp Mannerists, Adriaen Ysenbrant." Early Netherlandish Painting. 11, New York, 1974, pp. 25, 71, no. 43, pl. 47.

Guy Delmarcel. "Het antependium van Herkenrode, Antwerps borduurwerk uit 1528–1529." Bulletin des Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire 55, no. 1 (1984), pp. 59, 71, fig. 5, publishes an antependium dated 1528 (Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels) that includes a scene of the Last Supper; notes that the scene's composition derives from altarpieces like ours and another Last Supper triptych (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels), both of which he attributes to the Master of the Groote Adoration.

Barbara Welzel Freie Universität, Berlin. Abendmahlsaltäre vor der Reformation. Berlin, 1991, pp. 108, 158, no. 9, fig. 9, identifies the iconographic theme as the communion of Judas and dates the altarpiece between 1510 and 1520.

Ariane van Suchtelen in Art on Wings: Celebrating the Reunification of a Triptych by Gerard David. Exh. cat., Mauritshuis, The Hague. The Hague, 1997, pp. 68–69, ill.

Véronique Sintobin in From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1998, pp. 80, 262–65, no. 68, ill. (color), dates the altarpiece 1515–20, calling it a collaborative work in which one artist contributed the idealized figures of Adam and Eve after Dürer's 1504 engraving of the Fall of Man, another provided the stereotyped figures on the interior, and a third apparently painted the head of the man in the left foreground of the central panel, perhaps a portrait.

Maurits Smeyers in Dirk Bouts (ca. 1410–1475): Een Vlaams primitief te Leuven. Exh. cat., Sint-Pieterskerk en Predikherenkerk, Leuven. Louvain, 1998, p. 58 n. 63, refers to this picture, with its scenes of Abraham and Melchizedek, as well as the Gathering of Manna, among antecedents to Dirk Bouts "Last Supper Altarpiece," Sint-Pieterskerk, Leuven.

The central panel of this intact triptych depicts the Last Supper, the left wing Abraham Receiving Bread and Wine from Melchizedek, and the right wing the Fall of Manna. The exterior depicts Adam and Eve.