Lot 1004 | Virgin and Child

TYROL SCHOOL
ca. 1500
Title:Virgin and Child.
Technique: Oil and gold leaf on wood.
Measurement: 56 x 45cm.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Provenance:
Collection Professor Franz Streber (1806-1864), Bad Tölz, Munich;
Private ownership, Germany (since the 1950s).

The present painting is evidence of high artistic quality and exemplifies the Europe-wide spread of popular devotional motifs in the 15th and 16th centuries. Due to the great distance to Rome, pious Christians commissioned regional artists with high-quality copies in order to be present in the Holy City, at least in spirit.
According to Ludwig Meyer, the portrait of the Virgin Mary was modeled on the famous Madonna painting in Rome, which was designated by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478 as a work of St. Luke the Evangelist. According to an old photograph in the Central Institute of Art History in Munich, the present painting was once considered to be a work of the Munich School from around 1490. A later attribution was to the Salzburg painter Marx Reichlich (c. 1460-1520), a pupil of Michael Pacher. Although this attribution does not seem entirely conclusive, certain stylistic analogies to the art of Pacher and his successors argue for the painting's origin in Tyrol.