(Antwerp circa 1535/40–1589) and (Hulst 1528–1598 Antwerp)
Moses at Mount Nebo,
oil on panel, 121 x 154 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Belgium (as Lucas van Valkenborch with figures by Maerten de Vos)

We are grateful to Luuk Pijl for confirming the attribution of the present painting. A written certificate (May 2018) accompanies the present lot.

We are also grateful to Vadim Sadkov of the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, for independently confirming the attribution to both artists on the basis of photographs.

According to Karel van Mander, his contemporaries called the Antwerp-based landscape painter Cornelis Molenaer ‘Schele Neel’ [‘cross-eyed Neel’] (K. van Mander, Schilderboek, Haarlem 1604, fol. 157–159). Luuk Pijl writes about him: ‘Cornelis Molenaer is known to have collaborated with such artists as Gillis Coignet and Gillis Mostaert. Only a few works by the master are known today, all depicting large landscapes with biblical scenes. The narrative of the present painting follows a passage in the book of Deuteronomium (33:48–52 and 34:1–4), where God demands that Moses climbs Nebo mountain to have a look at the Promised Land. The figure of Moses, in the centre of the composition, is recognisable from the rays coming out of his head. This specific scene is rarely depicted in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art. Best known is Luca Signorelli’s rendition of the subject, circa 1482, in the Sixtine Chapel in Rome, and another example of the subject is a much later etching by Matthäus Merian made in the 1620s. The execution of the present painting tallies stylistically with Molenaer’s CM monogrammed painting in Berlin representing a Wooded landscape with the Good Samaritan. It is also stylistically closely related with a fully signed painting sold at Christie’s, Amsterdam, 1 September 1999, lot 27.’ The well-drawn figures were executed by Gillis Mostaert, who collaborated with Cornelis Molenaer several times.

Pijl again: ‘This newly discovered Landscape with Moses at Mount Nebo by Molenaer and Mostaert is indeed an important addition to sixteenth-century Flemish painting by two contemporaries of Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Their work paved the way for masters such as Hans Bol and Lucas van Valkenborch, to whom the present painting was attributed in the past.’