Chez Van Der Meire, Gand (selon la galerie De Jonkheere) ;

Collection Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook, Londres, East Hampshire, vers 1899 - 1900, une étiquette portant le n° 3 au verso ;

Chez Colnaghi, Londres, vers 1929 ;

Chez Otto Wertheimer, Paris, en 1960 ;

Galerie Römer, Zurich, en 2003 ;

Galerie De Jonckheere, Paris ;

Acquis auprès de cette dernière par les parents des actuels propriétaires en 2004 ;

Collection particulière, France

Winter exhibition, Londres, New Gallery, 1899 - 1900, selon une étiquette au verso

Middeleeuwse kunst der Noordelijke Nederlanden, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 28 juin - 28 septembre 1958, p. 91, n° 89

N. F. van Gelder-Schrijver, “De Meester van Alkmaar, II”, Oud Holland, XLVIII, 1931, p. 44-45, fig. 4 et 5

Godefridus Joannes Hoogewerff, De Noord-Nederlandsche Schilderkunst, La Haye, tome II, 1937, p. 360 

Max Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Paintings, X. Lucas van Leyden and other Dutch Masters of his time, Bruxelles, 1973, p. 74, n° 50, repr. pl. 30

Judith Niessen, « De Meester van Alkmaar en zijn werkplaats, een heroverweging », Oud Holland, Volume 123, 2010, n° 3-4, p. 287

The Master of Alkmaar is named after the polyptych of The Seven Works of Mercy from 1504, which may have been commissioned by the regents of the Holy Spirit Almshouse, and hung in the St Laurenskerk in Alkmaar where it remained until 1918 (Rijksmuseum, (SK-A-2815-1) (fig. 1). The ‘AA’ mark that appears on the first of the seven scenes that make up this polyptych, Feeding the Hungry is probably that of the artist (fig. 2). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the art historian Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner, followed by N. F. Van Gelder-Schrijver, Max J. Friedländer and G. J. Hoogewerff, attributed a number of rather heterogeneous paintings to this master (1). In addition to a number of small paintings, they added to the corpus two panels depicting several portraits of donors taken from a painted epitaph of the Van Soutelande family of Haarlem (Rijksmuseum, SK-A-1188-A, SK-A-1188-B), as well as two other panels depicting Jesus Disputing with the Doctors in the Temple (inner wing) and Christ Appearing to his Mother (outer wing) from an altarpiece also kept at the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-1307 and SK-A-1308). The provenance of the painting depicting the seven works of mercy and the identification of the donors mentioned on the epitaph have enabled us to place the artist's activity in the north of the province of Holland, probably in Haarlem and/or Alkmaar.

From a stylistic point of view, literature has often linked his work to the Haarlem centre, by analogy with the works of Geertgen tot Sint Jans (Leiden, 1460-Haarlem, 1495) and Jan Mostaert (Haarlem, 1475-1555). On the basis of these studies, it has been accepted that the Master of Alkmaar was active in Haarlem between 1490 and 1515, or that at the very least he had trained there as a painter (2).

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, several attempts have been made to identify the Master of Alkmaar. Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner sought to link him to the Haarlem painter Cornelis Willemsz, but this hypothesis was rejected on the basis of archival sources. The name Cornelis Cornelisz. Buijs the Elder, the brother of the painter Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, was suggested by Friedländer and Hoogewerff (1937). The work of this painter is documented in Alkmaar until his death in 1524. There are no archival documents connecting this painter to any of the works attributed to the Master of Alkmaar, nor do any of the works bear Buijs's signature. Additionally, it has been shown that the mark on the polyptych of the seven works of mercy in the Rijksmuseum does not correspond to the family mark of Cornelis Buijs's son, Cornelis II, which is identical to that of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen. K. G. Boon, in the catalogue accompanying the 1958 exhibition entitled Medieval Art of the Northern Netherlands, suggests that he was assisted by a large workshop and likens the Master of Alkmaar to the Haarlem painter Pieter Gerritsz, documented in 1498 and who died in 1540. Although this painter worked regularly for Egmond Abbey in Bergen between 1515 and 1529, as well as for the Church of Saint Lawrence in Alkmaar, this hypothesis remains less plausible (3). Finally, it has been suggested that the Master of Alkmaar may have been the van Waterlant brothers from Haarlem - Mourijn Simonsz (active between 1464 and 1509) and Claas Simonsz (active between 1464 and 1533-1534) (4). The wealth of archival documents relating to these two brothers shows that they carried out a series of commissions between 1464 and 1505, that they worked together and that they received payments for gilding and painting. In 1485 and 1487, for example, they worked on the high altar of St Bavo's church in Haarlem, where they were asked, however, to leave the portraits to another artist. This hypothesis, which is not entirely convincing, means that the Master of Alkmaar belonged to the generation of Geertgen tot Sint Jans.

Aside from these questions relating to the identification of our artist, for Judith Niessen, the Master of Alkmaar was undoubtedly the head of a workshop made up of collaborators and gezellen producing works for a local market. The works of the Master of Alkmaar show a definite talent for portraiture, as demonstrated by the panels depicting the donors of the Van Soutelande family from Haarlem (SK-A-1188-A, SK-A-1188-B). His gentle, delicate, almost naïve style can be seen in our panels.

Saint Agatha is shown with a pair of tongs in her hand, seated next to Saint Lucy, who is holding a torch and a sword. The other panel depicts Saint Margaret wearing a robe with wide pleats into which a dragon has sunk its sharp teeth, and Saint Cecilia carrying a falcon in her gloved right hand and holding an organ in her left. Two other works depicting Saints Catherine and Agnes as well as Saint Ursula and Saint Cunera have been compared with our panels (figs. 3 and 4). The four panels were probably separated at the beginning of the twentieth century or earlier, since the other two panels were first in the hands of the dealer Nicolas Beets in Amsterdam, according to Friedländer, then in the Salomon R. Guggenheim collection in New York and finally on the London market (Hallsborough gallery). A number of hypotheses can be put forward in an attempt to understand the initial form taken by the original work. It is possible that this series of panels accompanied a central painting depicting the Holy Kinship, or that they were part of a larger group of other saints.

We would like to thank Peter van den Brink for kindly confirming the authenticity of these works after examining them on 2 July 2024.

1.    See specifically W. R. Valentiner, Aus der niederländischen Kunst, Berlin, 1914; F. van Gelder-Schrijver, “De Meester van Alkmaar: eene bijdrage tot kennis van de Haarlemsche schilderschool”, Oud Holland, XLVII, 1930, p. 97-121; N.F. van Gelder-Schrijver, “De Meester van Alkmaar II”, Oud Holland, XLVIII, 1931, p. 42-47; G.J. Hoogewerff, De Noord-Nederlandsche schilderkunst, vol. II, The Hague, 1937

2.    In an article from 2010, Judith Niessen suggested that the period during which the painter’s studio was active should be broadened to around 1495 until just after 1532: “De Meester van Alkmaar en zijn werkplaats, een heroverweging”, Oud Holland, Volume 123, 2010, n° 3-4, p. 260-304.

3.    R. van Luttervelt (ed.), Middeleeuwse kunst van de Noordelijke Nederlanden, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 1958.

4.    J.D. Bangs, “The Master of Alkmaar and Hand X. The Haarlem painters of the Van Waterlant family”, WallrafRichartz- Jahrbuch, 60 (1999), p. 65-162.