FOLLOWER OF JOOS VAN CLEVE

This painting derives from a composition by Joos van Cleve that is in turn based on a painting of this subject executed by Albrecht Dürer in Antwerp in 1521. According to Micha Leeflang, Dürer's painting provides a terminus post quem for van Cleve's composition (Joos van Cleve: A Sixteenth-Century Antwerp Artist and his Workshop, Turnhout, 2015, pp. 179-180). Further dated examples are known, including works dated 1530 (Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach) and 1540 (Musée Oldmasters, Brussels).

Ludwig Meyer, formerly of the Archiv für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, had proposed an alternative attribution to an artist in the circle of Jan Sanders van Hemessen on account of similarities with the artist's work. Meyer further suggested that this painting and at least seven further known variants, all but two of which are today in public collections, derive from a lost prototype, likely by Quentin Metsys.