Lot 1200 | Gerard David | Lamentation of Christ

DAVID, GERARD
um 1460 Oudewater - 1532 Brügge

Follower 16th/17th C.

Title: Lamentation of Christ.
Technique: Oil and tempera on wood.
Measurement: 33 x 26.5cm.
Frame: Framed.

Provenance:
Collection Geheimrat Josef Cremer, Dortmund;
his estate auction at A. Wertheim's, Berlin, 29.05.1929, lot 20;
since then private ownership, Germany.

Gerard David is generally considered the last great painter of the Bruges School. Compared to Hans Memling, he was distinguished by a more monumental effect in composition and a deeper, more harmonious colour intensity with original experiments in foreshortening and grouping of figures.
Although he was only rediscovered and reassessed by art historians in the 19th century, he exerted a lasting influence on Bruges painting during his lifetime and in the decades after his death, both among miniaturists and panel painters such as Adriaen Isenbrant and Ambrosius Benson. Some of his works even became icons, such as the famous " Madonna and Child with the Milk Soup" or the "Lamentation".
The present painting was painted in the late 16th and early 17th century by a successor of Gerard David after the famous prototype of 1510 (private collection, 17 x 17.5 cm). This type of painting was reproduced many times, with some variations, especially in the background behind the group of the Madonna with Christ, to produce small-format objects for private devotion.
The current framing was added later, probably in the 19th century, to adapt the painting to an altarpiece or to give it a neo-Gothic touch in keeping with the artistic revival of antiquity.