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BULLETIN OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

AN IMPORTANT LOAN

By the kindness of Mr. H. C. Frick there is now on view at the Museum a painting of unusual interest representing the Deposition. It is a picture which has caused great interest among critics ever since it first became generally known at the Bruges Exhibition of Flemish Primitives in 1902. That it figured there at all was due presumably to an idea that its author may have been a Flemish artist, but when it was seen surrounded by undoubted Flemish paintings its isolation was so evident that critics were unanimous in endeavoring to find another origin for it. In the official catalogue at Bruges it was attributed to Antonello da Messina and identified with a picture of the same subject described by Boschini in Le ricche minore della Pittura. Mons. G. Hulin, however, considered it to belong to the school of Southern France, and the picture consequently figured again in the exhibition of the Primitifs Francais at Paris, in 1905. To several more appropriate setting among the pictures of the Provencal school than it had among the Netherlandish.

Such prolonged hesitation about deciding even the country of origin of a picture is indeed most unusual and can only be explained by supposing its author to have been eclectic to a quite remarkable degree. The present writer discussing it in the year 1902 was impressed by the Flemish and Italian influences and came tentatively to the conclusion that it was by an Italian artist under the influence of Justus of Ghent who was settled in Urbino. Since the picture has come to America a more prolonged and minute examination of it has led him to the conclusion that, after all, the original attribution to Antonello da Messina is correct. It would require more space than the Bulletin affords to show in detail the reasons of this conclusion but they may be summarized as follows: First, the mixture of Flemish and Northern Italian influences. The type of the dead Christ and of the drapery is decidedly Flemish, the general conception of the painting, the harmony of the landscape with the tragic mood of the figures is Bellinesque and reminds one of such pictures as the Agony in the Garden of the National Gallery. The weeping Magdalen is again a conception that might be derived from the early Bellini or mantegna. The head and drapery of the Mary who supports Christ's head is almost identical with the annunciate Virgin in the Academy at Venice by Antonello. (Indeed, one might hazard the guess that they are from the same model.) The peculiar method of designing drapery falling in long, straight, spreading lines from the Virgin's knees and then forming a wide mass of intricate folds upon the ground, occurs in the St. Jerome of the National Gallery and elsewhere. The minute figures in the distant landscape painted with miniature-like precision are to be found constantly in Anotonello's work, e.g., Pieta in the Correr Gallery, St. Jerome, National Gallery. The crucified thieves show marked similarities in treatment to those in the Antwerp crucifixion. Again, the technique is essentially that of Antonello, the subtle use of semi-opaque couches over a brown underpainting. Finally the imaginative attitude, the high passion and strange poetical mood are akin to what we know of Antonello from certain works such as the Antwerp Crucifixion and the Correr Pieta.

If this be indeed Antonello's it may make us inclined after all to accept Vasari's story of a stay in the Netherlands, since here the Netherlandishinfluence is so pronounced and the architecture of the Northern Gothic church so intimately understood as to make such a visit probably. This story of Vasari's has been denied offhand by most modern critics, but a consideration fo this picture and still more the St. Sebastian at Bergamo, with is minutely realized Netherlandish architecture, may well decide us to suspend judgement or even to inclne to the presumption that Vasari's story was based on a true tradition.