ATTRIBUÉ À MICHIEL COXIE (MALINES 1497/1501-1585) - photo 1
ATTRIBUÉ À MICHIEL COXIE (MALINES 1497/1501-1585) - photo 2

ATTRIBUÉ À MICHIEL COXIE (MALINES 1497/1501-1585)

Starting price
€ 7 000
Auction dateClassic
20.03.2024 15:00UTC +02:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
France, Paris
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1172953
Lot 23 | ATTRIBUÉ À MICHIEL COXIE (MALINES 1497/1501-1585)
ATTRIBUÉ À MICHIEL COXIE (MALINES 1497⁄1501-1585)

Tête d’homme couronné de lauriers

pierre noire, sanguine, aquarelle, pinceau, lavis gris

27,6 x 24,5 cm (10 ¾ x 9 5⁄8 in.)





Further details

ATTRIBUTED TO MICHIEL COXIE, HEAD OF A MAN CROWNED WITH A LAUREL WREATH, BLACK AND RED CHALK, BRUSH AND GREY WASH, WATERCOLOUR

This attractive and colourful drawing must be a fragment of a much larger cartoon, undoubtedly made for one of the magnificent tapestries made in the Brussels workshops which were known all over Europe, and which counted the most prestigious collectors and crowned heads of their times among their clients. While no directly related composition has been identified, several tapestries in one of the richest collections of its kind, Spain’s Patrimonio Nacional, include figures of emperors and crowned with a laurel wreath (P. Junquera de Vega, C. Herrero Carretero, Catálogo de tápices del Patrimonio Nacional, I, Siglo XVI, Madrid 1986, pp. 248-262 (series 35, Alexander the Great), 279-289 (series 39, Cyrus the Great), 314-324 (series 51, Augustus)). In particular in the series devoted to scenes from the life of the founder of the Persian empire, Cyrus the Great, of which ten panels are preserved in the Patrimonio Nacional but which was probably larger, the depictions of the triumphant emperor come very close to the head in the cartoon fragment under discussion here (fig. 1; for the most closely related panels in Madrid, see Junquera de Vega and C. Herrero Carretero, op. cit., p. 282, no. III, p. 288, no. IX, ill.; for this series, see also E. Duverger, ‘De Brusselse stadspatroonschilder voor de tapijtkunst Michiel van Cocxyen (ca. 1497-1592). Een inleidende studie’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen, XCVI, 1992 (published 1993), no. 2, Michiel Coxcie, pictor regis (1499-1592). Internationall colloquium, 5 en 6 juni 1992, pp. 178, 181). The design of the Cyrus series has convincingly been attributed to one of the leading Italo-Flemish artists of the sixteenth century, Michiel Coxie. Indeed, the drawing presented here can also be compared to some of the artist’s most securely attributed paintings, such as the two wings of an altarpiece with the Fall of Man and the Expulsion from Paradise in the Gemäldegalerie, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. 1031, 1032; and the altarpiece of the Martyrdom of Saint Philip in the Real Monasterio de El Esxcorial, Patrimonio Nacional (K. Jonckheere and A. Pérez de Tudela in Michiel Coxcie (1499-1592) and the Giants of his Age, exhib. cat., Leuven, M – Museum Leuven, 2023-2024, pp. 83-84, figs. 77, 78, 80, p. 109, fig. 107). The round eyes and short noses seen from below are also frequently seen in other paintings and tapestry designs attributed to Coxie, dating from well after his return from Italy in 1539, in the last decades of his life, when his activity as painter of cartoons fro Brussels weavers is documented (Duverger, op. cit.).
The drawing is a new addition to the small corpus of surviving cartoons and cartoon fragments related to the Golden Age of Brussels tapestry production. Few cartoons or fragments by Netherlandish artists are still known today, apart from those by Pieter Coecke van Aelst and his workshop (S. Alsteens, ‘The Drawings of Pieter Coecke van Aelst’, Master Drawings, LII, no. 3, Autumn 2014, pp. 316-320, nos. B1-B17, ill.). By Bernard van Orley, only one fragment has been identified (S.W. Mallory, ‘A Lost Dog Found. A Tapestry Cartoon Fragment Attributed to Bernard van Orley’, Master Drawings, LII, no. 3, Autumn 2014, pp. 363-370). A cartoon attributed by some to Coxie is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. RP-T-2004-1), but another cartoon of the same composition (Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. RF 51923) has been attributed to an artist from Giulio Romano’s circle in Mantua, Fermo Ghisoni (for the Amsterdam cartoon and the related one in Paris, see E. Hartkamp-Jonxis, ‘Een geschilderd patroon voor een wandtapijt met de Landing van Scipio op de kust van Afrika uit het midden van de 16de eeuw’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, LVI, nos. 1-2, 2008, pp. 82-101, figs. 1, 7). A fragment recently on the market can be situated in the workshop of the Italian artist active in Brussels, Tommaso di Andrea Vincidor, by whom also some other fragments are also still known today (formerly in the sale Christie’s, London, 23 July 2020, lot 126, now in the collection of the Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp; see An Van Camp in From Scribble to Cartoon. Drawings from Bruegel to Rubens in Flemish Collections, exhib. cat., Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus, 2023-2024, no. 53, ill.).
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