Vente anonyme ; Londres, Sotheby's, 7 décembre 2005, n° 1 ;

Galerie De Jonckheere, Paris ;

Acquis auprès de cette dernière par les parents des actuels propriétaires en 2006 ;

Collection particulière, France

Véronique Bücken, " Maître des Portraits princiers ", in cat. exp. L'héritage de Rogier van der Weyden, Bruxelles, 2013, p. 226-227, ill. 158 et 159

Stéphanie Deprouw-Augustin, « Jean Beugier, alias le Maître des Portraits princiers. Un peintre de la fin du XVe siècle entre Amiens, Bruxelles et Bruges », Revue de l’Art, 2020/2, n° 208, p. 17-29 (consulté en ligne le 10 juillet 2024)

Max J. Friedländer's corpus by the Master of the Portraits of Princes is built around the Portrait of a Young Man of the Fonseca Family (Rotterdam, Boijmans van Beuningen Museum) and the Portrait of Engelbert II van Nassau (Amsterdam Rijksmuseum). Additional portraits, small private devotional scenes and various Virgins with Child (Antwerp, Ghent, Berlin, Louvre and the one from the van Bibaut diptych held in private hands) were also added to the oeuvre of this painter, who favoured small-format works with a few variations in his devotional portraits. This is true of the portrait of Adolphe de Clèves, of which four versions are known. The painter also produced some more ambitious paintings. He participated in the Triptych with the Miracles of Christ (dated to around 1491-1495, now in Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria), painting the left-hand panel representing the Rest during the Flight into Egypt alongside two other Brussels masters, the Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine and Aert van den Bossche, who executed the rest. The exhibition held in Brussels in 2013 (op. cit.) also added a ceremonial shield to this nucleus (London, British Museum). Specialising in portraits of men, in particular dignitaries from the Court of Burgundy such as Philippe le Beau, Louis de Gruuthuse, Engelbert II de Nassau and Adolphe de Clèves, the Master of the Portraits of Princes excelled in individualising features, perhaps under the influence of Hugo van der Goes. We know, for example, that he drew from life, as shown by the work in the Berlin collections (Kupferstichkabinett, inv. KzD 4209) depicting a portrait of a young man on one side and two studies of hands on the other. Several painters have been put forward as more or less serious candidates for the identification of this anonymous master: Pieter van Coninxloo, Bernard van der Stockt, Lieven van Lathem and Jan van Coninxloo, but none of them has yet been selected due to a lack of reliable archival sources. Recently, Stéphanie Deprauw-Augustin suggested that the painter Jean Beugier, from Picardie, France, who worked in Brussels, Bruges and Amiens between 1468 and 1500, should be considered in the same context as the Master of the Portraits of Princes.

Our two panels show a direct link with the compositions of Rogier van der Weyden, who was the first to impose the use of backgrounds inspired by existing architecture in Brussels painting, where it had previously been customary to use either gilded backgrounds or those adorned with polychrome motifs in the manner of brocades. In 1440-1441, van der Weyden designed a new house for the carpenters' guild on the Grote Markt, and tried his hand at depicting architectural elements. In the triptych of Saint Columba, kept at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (no. WAF 1189, 1190 and 1191), he shows the interior of a sacred building around 1455 in his painting of the Presentation in the Temple (fig. 1).

This device was adopted by his followers, such as the Master of the Prado Redemption, the Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine, the Master of the Life of Joseph, the Master with the View of Saint Gudule and the group known as the Master of the Embroidered Foliage. Our two scenes, the Marriage of the Virgin and Christ Among the Doctors, are set within a décor inspired by a contemporary Brabant church, perhaps the Church of Saints Michael and Gudula in Brussels. The painter set the narrative of the Marriage of the Virgin in the choir of a church in which he paints the structural and ornamental elements of the building in minute detail, such as the jubé, vaults and bays, while bringing them to life with an ingenious effect of an architectural section. It is also possible to observe the figures inside, such as those accompanying the Virgin Mary at the entrance of the building.

This setting can also be seen in a painting given to a follower of Rogier van der Weyden depicting the same episode, which is kept in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp (fig. 2, KIK-IRPA, 7602). As in our panel, the architectural elements are depicted in detail, and the effect of depth is provided by the depiction of a town in the background, as well as by the figures placed between the exterior and interior in a succession of architecture and the motif of the church tiles. It is possible that these two anonymous painters were inspired by the same prototype: perhaps a lost work by Rogier van der Weyden?  Our two panels are both wonderful examples of a lesser-known aspect of the work of the Master of Princely Portraits, which we hope will be the subject of new discoveries.

We would like to thank Peter van den Brink for confirming the authenticity of this work following his examination of the painting on 2 July 2024.