Death of the Virgin | Timken Museum

Artist: Petrus Christus
Title: Death of the Virgin
Date: 1460-65
Culture: Dutch/Flemish
Medium: Oil on oak panel, transferred to mahogany
Dimensions: 73.7 x 102.9 cm (67-3/8 x 54-1/2 in.)
Accession Number: 1951:001
Credit Line: Petrus Christus, Death of the Virgin, ca. 1460-65, oil on oak panel, transferred to mahogany, 73.7 x 102.9 cm (67 3/8 x 64 ½ in.), Putnam Foundation, Timken Museum of Art.

Description

Petrus Christus is credited with introducing one-point perspective to Northern European painting. He employs the technique in this painting, his largest known work, which originally included two wings, later destroyed during World War II. Christus' interpretation of the Death of the Virgin, attended by the apostles, is unusual because it shows in one painting the three episodes of the story. The Virgin lies on her deathbed holding a lighted candle, a symbol of her faith. Above, her soul ascends to God the Father. On the far right, an angel drops the Virgin's girdle to Saint

Thomas as proof of her Assumption, body and soul, into heaven.

Related Information / Media

Provenance

Sciacca, Sicily, 16th century; Gaetano Consiglio, Sciacca, until 1856; Marianna Consiglio, until 1865; Giuseppe Santacanale Denti, Palermo,

by 1865 [1]; Villa Santa Canale, Bagheria, Sicily; Sold, Knoedler & Co., New York, 1938 [2]; Acquired by the Putnam Foundation, 1951

Provenance Notes:

[1] The provenance of the Timken painting leads back to Sicily. Although the painting was traditionally thought to have been in the Santacanale family of Palermo from the fifteenth century up until the time it was sold to Knoedler and Company in 1938, Vincenzo Scuderi (“La collocazione originaria della Morte della Vergine attribuita a Petrus Christus, gia della collezione Santacanale a Palermio e ora a S. Diego di California,” in Antonello da Messina, Atti del convegno di studi tenuto a Messina, November 29–December 2, 1981 (Messina, 1981), pp. 101–10) has discovered that it belonged previously to the Consiglio family of Sciacca, a town on the south side of Sicily.
[2] As of October 3, 2000, this item has not been registered a s stolen or missing on the Art Loss Register database. It is also not listed in the published source of World War II losses known to the Art Loss Register.

Exhibited

New York, M. Knoedler and Co., 1942, An Exhibition of Flemish Primitives, pp. 22, 23, ill.; Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, 1948, Early Flemish Painting; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, extended loan, 1952-65; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994, Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges, cat. by Maryan W. Ainsworth, pp. 146-53, no. 15, ill.

Literature

Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana 7, pt. 4 (Milan, 1915), p.172, fig.1oo (before cleaning), as "Maestro della Meta del'4oo"; Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, 19 vols. (The Hague, 1934; reprint, New York, I970), 15:402; Doris Brian, "The

Masters of Gothic Flanders," Art News 41 (April 15-30, 1942): 14, 16, cover ill.; "Flemish Primitives," Magazine of Art 35 (May 1942): 168-69,

ill.; Helen Comstock, "The Connoisseur in America," Connoisseur 110 (October I942): 6o, ill; Joseph van der Elst, The Last Flowering of the

Middle Ages (Garden City, N.Y., 1944), p. 70, pl. 47; Max). Friedlander, "The Death of the Virgin by Petrus Christus," Burlington Magazine 88 (July 1946): 159-63, ill. opp. p. 159, pl. lie, d; Germain Bazin, "Petrus Christus et les rapports entre l'Italie et a Flandre au milieu du XVe si ècle," La Revue des arts 2 (December, 1952): 194-209; Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), 1: no. 8, p. 490 n. 5; "Countrywide Loans from California," Art News 55 (November 1956): 33; Josua Bruyn, Van Eyck Problem en (Utrecht, 1957), pp. 111, 113,119, pl. 40; Liana Castelfranchi Vegas, "I rapporti italia-fiandra, II," Paragone, no. 201 (November 1:966): 48, pl. 33; Giorgio T. Faggin, Petrus Christus (Milan, 1966), pp. 1, 4; Agnes Mongan and Elizabeth Mongan, European Paintings in the Timken Art Gallery (San Diego, 1969), pp. 46, 47, 114-15, no. 14, ill.; Lola Gellman, "Death of the Virgin by Petrus Christus: An Altarpiece Reconstructed," Burlington Magazine 112 (March 1970): 146-48, ill; id., "Petrus Christus" (Ph.D. diss., The Johns Hopkins University, 1970),

pp. 244-52,450-54, no. 20 A; Charles Sterling, "Observations on Petrus Christus," Art Bulletin 53 (March 1971):1-3, 8, 21., fig.1; Joel M. Upton, "Petrus Christus" (Ph.D. diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1972), pp. 159-64 -392-96, no. 26; Peter H. Schabacker, Petrus Christus (Utrecht, 1974), pp.132-34, as work erroneously attributed to Christus; Ursula Panhans-Bühler, Eklelctizismus und Originalität im Werk des Petrus Christus (Vienna, 1978), pp. 17, 34, 72-74, 123-25,131-36, no. 76, pl. 34; James M. Collier, "The Kansas City Petrus Christus: Its Importance and Its Dating," Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum Bulletin 5 (September I979): 27, 28, 34, fig. 4; Joanne Wright, "Antonello da Messina: The Origins of His Style and Technique," Art History 3 (March 1980): 44, 56; Maria Grazia Paolini, "Problemi antonelliani i rapporti con la pittura fiamminga," Storia dell'Arte, nos.38-40 (1980): 163-65; A. T. Lurie, "Newly Discovered Eyckian St. John the Baptist in a Landscape," Cleveland Museum Bulletin 67 (April 1981):105, 109, 118; Martin E. Petersen, "Three Centuries of European Paintings, 1300-16oo," Apollo 1I5 (June 1982): 441, pl. 1; Timken Art Gallery: European and American Works of Art in the Putnam Foundation Collection (San Diego, x983), pp. 30-31,11.7, no. 8, ill.; Joel M. Upton, Petrus Christus: His Place in Fifteenth-Century Flemish Painting (London, 1.990), pp. 44, 65, 71-77, fig. 64; Hans J. van Miegroet, "Petrus Christus, The Death of the Virgin," in Flemish Paintings in America (Antwerp, 1992), pp. 6o-62; id., "Afterthoughts and Challenges to Modern-Day Connoisseurship," in id., ed., Petrus Christus in Renaissance Bruges: An Interdisciplinary Approach (New York and Turnhout, 1995), pp. 205-14.

Rights & Reproductions

The Timken provides collection images to scholars, educators, publishing companies, commercial entities, and the public. Please review the TERMS GOVERNING REPRODUCTIONS OR PUBLICATION OF IMAGES.

To proceed with your image request, fill out the Image Request Form and email it to registrar@timkenmuseum.org.

For questions please contact info@timkenmuseum.org.

Note

This record has been reviewed by Timken Museum of Art staff and may be incomplete or contain errors. Our records are constantly revised. Inquiries about provenance are advised to contact the Director of Curatorial Affairs: curator@timkenmuseum.org.