Galerie Dreyfus
24
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ALSACIAN SCHOOL Christ Mocked c. 1500
See original version (French)
24
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ALSACIAN SCHOOL Christ Mocked c. 1500
See original version (French)
Estimate €70,000 - €75,000
Voluntary lot
Description
ALSACIAN SCHOOL
Christ Mocked
c. 1500
Parquet-style oak panel
60 x 42 cm
Seated in the centre of the room, recognisable by his large red cloak and his crown
of thorns, Christ is left to the torments of his tormentors, thus beginning his Passion
after being handed over to his people by the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. The scene takes place in
the house of the High Priest Caiaphas in Jerusalem. Outside, it is night-time, in accordance with the
Gospel account which states that from the moment Judas went out to hand Jesus over, ‘it was night’ (John 13:
21–38). The four torturers flank Christ symmetrically, by turns brandishing
sticks to strike him, a branch to whip him, and finally pulling
at his hair. Their costumes, contemporary to the painter’s own time, are not those of soldiers but
rather suggest civilians occupying different ranks in society. Their headdresses suggest,
in turn, those of a king, a nobleman, a bourgeois and a commoner, as if
the whole of society were flogging Christ. Whilst the depiction of Jesus blindfolded is a
rather rare motif, Fra Angelico nevertheless adopted it at the Convent of San Marco in Florence in his
famous ‘Christ Mocked’, where the tormentors are reduced to the gestures or instruments of
their offences. According to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: ‘Then they spat in his face
and struck him; others beat him, saying, “Prophesy to us, O Christ! Who
struck you?” ’ (Mt 26:67–68) and ‘They mocked him whilst striking him, and they veiled his
face’ (Lk 22:63–65). This depiction is reminiscent of a game played in the Middle Ages,
‘qui fery?’, meaning ‘who is striking?’, in which a blindfolded player must guess
who is about to strike them. In the Passion plays performed on cathedral forecourts during the
Middle Ages, two executioners, Marquin and Haquin, played this ‘qui fery’ with Christ as
the victim.
This panel, the sole surviving panel of a polyptych depicting the Passion of Christ, provides further
evidence of the vibrancy of Alsatian artistic creation in the late Middle Ages. Alongside
the flourishing artistic centres of Strasbourg, Colmar and Sélestat, there were
numerous convents and churches in more modest towns, such as the famous Antonine Convent
at Issenheim, which were the source of prestigious commissions, attesting to both the productivity
and the artistic influence of this Rhenish school. Whilst Gaspard Isenmann (c. 1410 –
1472?) and his pupil Martin Schongauer (c. 1450–1491), both originally from Colmar, are
the most eminent representatives of this 15th-century school, other artists whose names have not
gone down in history nevertheless left behind works of the very highest quality. For instance, the Master of
the Karlsruhe Passion painted an altarpiece depicting the Passion of Christ for St Thomas’s Church in
Strasbourg (now partly preserved at the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe), or
the Master of Guebwiller, who was probably the former’s pupil. Thus, this refined work,
with its delicate and harmonious colour palette, bears witness to artistic exchanges with Italy as well as
Flanders and Germany during this late Gothic period, known as ‘International Gothic’.
The The Alsatian art world was gripped by the humanist ideas of ‘modern devotion’,
which heralded the coming Reformation and whose most extraordinary realisation was the
Issenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald, a contemporary of this panel.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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