Italo-Flemish School (16th/ 17th Century)

Italo-Flemish School
(Fourth Quarter 16th/First Quarter 17th Century)

"Christ in the House of Mary and Martha"

oil on copper
unsigned.
Presented in a custom-made Heydenryk frame.
13-3/4" x 10-1/2", framed 19-1/2" x 16-1/4"

Provenance: Private collection, Italy; Sotheby, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, New York, September 29, 1972, lot 7; Collection of Sue and Andy Schwartz, Houston, Texas.

Notes: Christ in the House of Martha and Mary refers to a scene from the life of Jesus recorded in Luke 10:41-42, and it was a favorite theme portrayed numerous times in 16th-century Flemish and Dutch painting. According to scripture, Martha complained to Christ, her guest, that her sister Mary is so consumed by listening to his teachings that she has neglected to help her with dinner in the kitchen and is a poor hostess. Christ responds that it is acceptable as the spiritual need supersedes that of a bountiful feast.
In the absence of religious iconography following the Protestant Reformation, Northern European artists turned to personal explorations of faith culled from direct readings of the newly translated German bible. Instead of saints and reliquaries, they explored landscapes and genre scenes, particularly vanitas still-lifes and domestic interiors. The still-life was par excellence the ultimate metaphor for the transience of life: ripe fruit and flowers, a skull, an hourglass, a butterfly or sly mouse, are all visual reminders of death - "finis gloriae mundi" (end of world glories) written throughout Ecclesiastes where the faithful are warned to not falsely store up treasures in coffers, as they too will decay, but to do so instead in the faith of everlasting life in the Kingdom of Heaven.
The story of Christ in the House of Martha and Mary depicted here in this painting represents another parable of Christian faith rich in visual resonance as the kitchen is a tour-de-force of material bounty. The fine and realistic detail of the cabbage leaves, the down feathers of the bird, hung carcass, and refractive detail of the hourglass and all the copper pots and pewter plates lined along the walls is distinctly Flemish, even the architecture of the small town in the background, and recalls the works of Joachim Beuckelaer and Pieter Aertsen. Yet, the dynamism of the figures correctly rendered through perspective with a central vanishing point and rich modeling of robes recalls the works of Italian art - the draftsmanship characteristic of the Florentine School, the facial, portrait-like detail and saturation of the color is Venetian School and redolent of the religious buffet scenes of Tintoretto. In typical Dutch/Flemish depictions of Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, the secular and spiritual space are separate and asymmetrical with the abundance of the vanitas piled in the foreground and devoid of pictorial depth. The illusion of depth is thus created by a diminutive Christ, not likely more than 3-1/2 apples tall, crowded into a small niche with leaded windows or upturned floor tiles - a convention drawn from the reverse perspective of 14th-century Late Gothic and Byzantine traditions. Here the styles of both Northern and Italian Renaissance/early Baroque traditions are seamlessly blended into a unique work born of cross-cultural influence courtly at the dawn of 17th-century Enlightenment.
Condition Report: **Surface dirt and toning of the varnish layer. Several small areas of paint loss, upper left (shelf), mid-left (above hat), center (curtain), mid-right (Christ's hair) and lower left (by bird). Larger area of paint loss, mid-right by edge (back of man). Diagonal surface mark upper center (sky through window) and surface abrasions, mid-left (across woman's face). Surface abrasions along lower edge on right. Signs of inpainting lower left corner, linear horizontal upper left (red plate) and mid-left by edge (his shirt). Modern frame with rustic aesthetic. Surface marks, nicks and abrasions.