The Painting: A group of mourners surrounds the figure of the dead Christ whose pale body lies on his shroud at the foot of the cross. With the exception of a single female figure at the far right of the scene, who gazes somewhat abstractedly to her right, all attention focuses on the lifeless body in the foreground. The Evangelist’s billowing mantle lends the scene a sense of dramatic movement that contrasts with the limp figure of Jesus. The Lamentation, a Christian theme oft-depicted in the Low Countries during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, focused viewer’s attention on the body of Jesus, a reminder of his sacrifice on the cross and the significance of the Eucharistic wafer as essential to salvation.
Inscribed on the back of the tablet is an excerpt from Psalm 27:14, "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord".[1] According to James Draper, it is probable that a painted decoration was intended for the plaque, despite the lack of other similar extant metal artworks to verify such a hypothesis.[2]
Attribution and Dating: The painting’s uneven condition and unusual support complicate efforts to attribute the work with certainty.[3] However, tenuous connections between the Lehman painting and other examples of sixteenth-century Lamentations exist. Martha Wolff (1998) posited a compositional link with a 1548 engraving of the same subject by Enea Vico, which was popular in Spain and the Netherlands. In particular, she noted a possible connection between the ‘way the heads of the mourners crowd around the figure of Christ’.[4] Not only do the mourners display more intense emotion in the print, but any relationship between figural groups between the Lehman painting and the Vico example should be recognized as relating to the demands of shared subject matter and its attendant visual tropes. Wolff’s suggestion of general stylistic ties between the Lehman picture and followers of sixteenth-century artists like Bernard van Orley (Netherlandish, Brussels ca. 1492–1541/42 Brussels) and Pieter Coecke van Aelst (Netherlandish, Aelst 1502–1550 Brussels), while less specific, are more convincing. Further reinforcing her dating are the caps worn by the holy women, which are reminiscent of those worn in the mid-sixteenth century.[5]
Lamentation scenes, produced in the Antwerp milieu, feature the same motif of the Evangelist’s robe caught in air and group protagonists around Christ in a similar, if not identical, fashion to the Lehman picture. Examples by Jan de Beer (active c. 1475 – 1528 in Antwerp) and his workshop as well as other anonymous Antwerp painters like the Master of 1518 establish a convincing compositional connection to the Lehman
Lamentation, the latter forming an abbreviated version largely due to scale.[6] Such comparative works suggest that the Lehman picture was produced in the same context, an hypothesis strengthened by the close links between Antwerp and the trade in paintings on copper, which flourished in the early seventeenth century.[7] The city served as an important export hub of these works by anonymous or lesser-known artists to Spain and Mexico, many examples of which can still be found in religious foundations.[8] During the height of their popularity, from about 1575 to 1650, predominately small-scale works were created by painters in Antwerp who took advantage of the metal substrate and created many fine paintings.[9]
The high quality of details in the Lehman painting – those that survive whatever destructive force caused the widespread paint losses – reflect the contemporary appreciation for copper as a support. Minute brushwork and smooth surfaces were rendered possible by the use of oils on the metallic surface with its often thin, toothed ground layer, affording what Karel van Mander referred to in his
Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters as ‘excellent precision and neatness’.[10] The
Lamentation is a small but impactful painting intended to captivate its viewers and ultimately inspire them in their Christian devotions.
Nenagh Hathaway, 2019
[1] Translation taken from Refs., Wolff, 1998, p. 120.
[2] It is unclear whether Draper is referring to painted decoration on the back or framing elements of the plaque or to the
Lamentation itself. Refs., Wolff, 1998, p. 120.
[3] Wolff’s proposal that the ‘figures’ restrained sobriety and the muted tones of the landscape suggest that the artist was aware of Spanish conventions’ should be reassessed in light of the painting’s discolored varnish, which obscures the original artist’s intentions. Refs., Wolff, 1998, p. 120.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] For the Jan de Beer and workshop example see L Dan Ewing,
Jan de Beer Gothic Renewal in Renaissance Antwerp, Belgium, 2016, pp. 239-241, 328-329, fig. 218, illustrated, (as Workshop of Jan de Beer). The Royal Collection Trust’s
Lamentation Triptych, attributed to the Antwerp school c. 1520-1530 serves as a second comparative picture. See Lorne Campbell,
The early Flemish pictures in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Cambridge, 1985, RCIN 405718. Further examples include the
Lamentation and Entombment at the National Museum in Stockholm, which is attributed to the Antwerp-based Master of 1518 (
The Lamentation and The Entombment). For a final anonymous example, see RKD Image site (
RKD6890), which describes the painting as by an artist, active in the southern Netherlands during the first half of the sixteenth century. The panel was lot number 965 at Lempertz’s auction in Cologne on May 20, 1995.
[7] On Antwerp and paintings on copper see Michael K. Komanecky, Isabel Horovitz and Nicholas Eastaugh, "Antwerp artists and the practice of painting on copper". Studies in Conservation 43:sup1 (1998) 136-139, DOI:10.1179/sic.1998.43.Supplement-1.136.
[8] Ibid., p. 136.
[9] See Edgar Peters Bowron’s essay ‘A Brief History of European Oil Paintings on Copper, 1560-1775’ in
Copper as canvas: two centuries of masterpiece paintings on copper, 1575-1775. Oxford University Press, USA (1999): p. 25.
[10] Ibid., p. 16 and Karel van Mander,
The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters… , trans. and ed. Hessel Miedema, Doorspijk, 1994, I 445.
ReferencesMartha Wolff in
The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 2, Fifteenth- to Eighteenth-Century European Paintings. New York, 1998, pp. 120-121, ill. p. 121.
