Cologne School, circa 1520/25, The Lamentation of Christ

Cologne School, circa 1520/25

The Lamentation of Christ

Oil on oak panel. 55 x 80 cm. Certificate

Anna Moraht-Fromm, February 2019. Provenance

In the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, inv. no. 478, until 1944. - Rhenish private collection. Literature

C. Heße / M. SchlagenhauferVollständiges Verzeichnius der Gemäldesammlung des Wallraf-Richartz Museums, Cologne, 1986, p. 311, illus. 2.

We would like to thank Dr. Anna Moraht-Fromm for her research into this work. She established this depiction of the Burial or Lamentation of Christ to be a work of the Cologne School, painted around 1520/1525. Criteria for establishing this were the varying influences found within the work. The composition is based on Dürer's woodcut depiction of the same scene from his “Grosse Passion” but the artist has transformed the original portrait format into landscape. However, the artist was not Franconian. The costumes, especially that of Mary Magdalene, betray the influence of the Netherlandish Mannerists, but the artist is not from the Netherlands.

This variety of differing pictorial sources and “signatures” is typical of late Gothic painting in Cologne. We know of numerous artists from this time, although the majority are known only under notnames such as the Master of St. Severin, who was strongly influenced by Netherlandish painting, or the Master of the Legend of St. Ursula. Alongside the great artistic personalities, Cologne was also home to more workshops and workshop associations than many other artistic centres at this time.

In the sea of various borrowings, this Lamentation scene based on the works of Dürer can be placed among the works of the transitional phase moving in to the times of Barthel Bruyn and Anton Woensam. Like so many artists in this city, they also moved to Cologne from other regions.