(Antwerp c. 1535/40– c. 1605/25)
The Holy Family with Saint Anne,
dated 1563 in the plinth upper right,
oil on panel, 110 x 141 cm, framed

We are grateful to Peter van den Brink for having identified the present painting as a work by Huybrecht Bueckelaer. A written report by Peter van den Brink accompanies the present lot. We are also grateful to Margreet Wolters who also considers this a rediscovered autograph work by the artist. Van den Brink and Wolters intend to publish the present lot in a forthcoming article.

The present painting is one of the earliest works by Huybrecht Bueckelaer that has been discovered so far. It had been unknown to art historians until it recently resurfaced in a Southern German private collection. The only other known work from the early 1560s is the Passover Seder in a private collection, USA, which is also dated 1563, and which is stylistically very close to the present painting, as Peter van den Brink notes (sale Sotheby’s, New York, 26 January 2012, lot 105). It was only a few years ago that Margreet Wolters succeeded in identifying the painter of the present picture as the Antwerp artist Huybrecht Bueckeleer. In the nineteenth century, the few works by Huybrecht known by then were wrongly given to his brother, Joachim Bueckeleer, until Johannes Sievers directed attention to the stylistic idiosyncrasies of this specific group of works and subsumed them under the name of the so-called Monogrammist HB (see J. Sievers, Joachim Bueckeleer, in: Jahrbuch der preußischen Kunstsammlungen, 32, 1911, pp. 210–212).

Sievers identifies the main distictions between Huybrecht and his better known brother: ‘The heads of his figures are much more individualized, his bodies are treated with a higher emphasis on their three-dimensionality and details. His treatment of certain elements such as the hair and beards is freer than his brother’s. Furthermore the arrangement of the figures is decidedly more relaxed and gestures and movements appear more fluent and naturalistic.’ Sievers’s early observations were deepened by Detlev Kreindl in 1976 (see D. Kreindl, Joachim Beuckelaer und der Monogrammist HB, in: Oud Holland, 90, 1976, p. 162-183). The brothers Joachim and Huybrecht Bueckeleer were trained by Pieter Aertsen in Antwerp and were probably working together when Joachim took over Aertsen’s studio in 1560. The underdrawing of the present painting (see fig.) reveals the common artistic background of both brothers in their quick and confident drawing of the main outlines of the composition, partly visible to the naked eye (see M. Wolters, Drawing, underdrawing, painting – compositional evolution in the working process of Joachim Beuckelaer, in: Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, 4, Issue 2, 2012, p. 1-33). The rediscovered painting offered here, one of his earliest known works undoubtedly provides invaluable further material to study Huybrechts and Joachims working practice and will be published by Van den Brink and Wolters as it widens our understanding of this rare artist. Later works include a Madonna and Child varying the narrative of the Nativity and a Prodigal Son, which are preserved in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne and in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Scholars assume that Huybrecht also collaborated with Anthonis Mor and with Bronzino, whom the artist seems to have met during a journey through Italy. Several portraits associated with Huybrecht Bueckeleer clearly suggest that they were acquainted (see D. Kreindl, op. cit., pp. 173–175).


Additional image:
Infrared reflectograph of the present painting (detail)
Huybrecht Bueckelaer, Madonna and Child, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Inv. 2365