The Holy Kinship,
oil on panel, 106 x 132.5 cm, framed,

Provenance:
J. V. Sheffield, Laverstoke House, Whitchurch, Hampshire (1958, a label on the reverse);
Robert Holden Gallery, London (1988).

Literature:
A. Morrall, Jörg Breu, Art, Culture and Belief in Reformation Augsburg, Aldershot 2001, p. 37 and p. 70, no. FN83, pl. 1.17.

We are grateful to Dr. Bernd Konrad, Radolfzell, for cataloguing the present painting. The painting is accompanied by an extensive certificate compiled by Dr. Konrad.

Andrew Morrall (see literature) was the first to publish the painting as a work by Jörg Breu the Elder. The composition is neither mentioned in any of the comprehensive older publications on the artist, nor in the smaller and more recent ones. Breu, who was born in Augsburg, is said to have been apprenticed to Ulrich Apt the Elder in 1493. Breu’s earliest works appeared in Lower Austria. Around 1500, he painted his first retable, with scenes from the legend of Saint Bernard (now in Zwettl Monastery). A winged altarpiece for Aggsbach, today preserved in Herzogenburg Monastery (signed IORG PREW VON AV), is dated to 1501. Having returned to Augsburg in 1502, Breu soon established himself with preliminary designs for woodcuts. His oeuvre is extremely extensive, and besides panel paintings, preliminary designs for prints and stained glass windows, and drawings, also includes book illustrations and wall decorations. Breu’s strength – through which he, together with Ulrich Apt and Narziss Renner, stood out from the Augsburg painting school – lies in an impulsive and naturalistic rendering of physiognomies that went far beyond the figural canon of both Late Gothic art and the Early Renaissance and which can thus be considered a highly individual artistic accomplishment. Here the Holy Kinship is depicted in light and bright colours, with the Virgin Mary, the Christ Child, and Mary’s mother Anne appearing in the centre. As legend tells, Anne was married three times (trinubium); three daughters were born from these marriages and some of their sons eventually became disciples of Jesus. The horizontal panel offers the ideal format for this crowded subject. Whereas in 15th-century painting compositions of the Holy Kinship were simply arranged on a large bench, with the husbands placed behind the backrest, a new and felicitous approach to the subject arose in the early 16th century, when the scene came to be set in an interior constructed according to the laws of central perspective, so that the depiction gained in spatial depth and vivacity. This can also be observed in the present panel. The main group, comprising Mary, Anne, and the Infant Jesus, appears enthroned at centre, before a painted brocade curtain. Since Anne is the actual protagonist here, she is depicted rising slightly above the Virgin Mary. Anne also supports the upright standing Child on her lap, affectionately caressing him. She is clearly the key member of this core group. To Anne’s right appears Joseph (IOSEPH) and to Mary’s left, Joachim (IOCHAIM). Anne’s two other husbands, Cleophas (CLEPHAS) and Salomas (SALOME), are not grouped together with their descendants either, but form part of the group on the right-hand side, with Mary Salome and her husband Zebedee (ZEBEDEUS – indicated in the bonnet) and the children John (John the Evangelist – IOHANNES) and James the Less (IACOB MINOR). On the left appear Mary Cleophas (CLEPH, with an E inscribed in the letter H), her husband Alphaeus (ALPHEUS), and the children Judas (IUDAS) Thaddaeus and James the Greater (IACOBUS MAIOR), while Joseph Justus (IOSEPH JUSTUS) and Simon are depicted in the centre of the picture. The two women assigned to the groups on the left and right respectively are shown seated on benches and rendered almost in profile, thereby directing the spectator’s eye into the composition. The benches on the side, which are adumbrated rather than clearly described, extend into the side walls and further into a rounded arch that closes the picture space at the top. In line with Italian precursors, the composition makes a harmonious and deliberately constructed impression. The heads of the figures are modelled in different degrees of sharpness, with heads farther towards the back – such as those of Joachim and Joseph and that of Cleophas next to theirs, as well as that of Zebedee, whose position is subordinate – rendered in subdued hues of brown and seemingly pushed towards the background. A number of grandchildren are represented with great vivacity, and the artist placed great importance on the lively rendering of their hair. In late 2012, the panel was examined at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts to investigate its underdrawing (fig. 1). The composition shows preparatory underdrawing throughout, executed in various inks of different degrees of darkness and in strokes of different breadths. The lively manner in which the artist prepared the faces can also be found in Breu’s earliest works, such as in the Aggsbach altarpiece from 1501 in Herzogenburg Monastery. The underdrawing also comprises numerous colour annotations in the form of both symbols and written words or parts of words. Jörg Breu is known to have used such colour annotations from the very beginning of his career (Aggsbach altarpiece, 1501). Underdrawing which incorporates colour annotations also recurs in later works by Breu, which were already painted at a time closer to that of the present Holy Kinship (Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts, The Crucifixion, and Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, The Lamentation of Christ, both c. 1517–20), for which the artists partly even used the same wording or handwriting (fig. 2). The underdrawing is entirely by the hand of Jörg Breu the Elder, whereas one can assume the participation of his son for the application of the colours. The period that has been relied upon for stylistic comparison spans from 1517 (organ wing in Augsburg) to 1528 (the panel of Lucretia in Munich, Alte Pinakothek). The Allegories of the Months from 1531, now in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, are referred to in this context as well, even if there are reservations in terms of an inferior artistic quality and of the poor state they were in before their restoration in 1992. Apart from one exception (the Coburg Madonna from the Schäfer Collection), all of these paintings show the same dark, deep colours interspersed with extensive highlights that are in opposition to the overall impact of the Holy Kinship (for the development of a brighter palette, see further below, where the chronological order is discussed). In the works of both Breu and Apt, the human physiognomies sometimes appear to be rather modern. Together with the third Augsburg-based artist of the period in question (1520s), Narziss Renner (better known as a book illuminator), they stand for the highest advancement in German painting at the time. Frequently, these faces indeed appear to be “new” in a contemporary sense, devoid of any reference to earlier, traditional form and often approximating the grotesque and bizarre. Such faces can also be found in the panel of the Holy Kinship (Alphaeus, Salomas). The female faces resemble most closely those in a woodcut depicting the Virgin Mary and Child with Saint Brigitta of Sweden and her daughter, Catherine. The respective details of their heads appearing in the reverse direction lend themselves to comparison with Anne and Mary Salome on one side and Mary Cleophas and the Virgin Mary on the other. However, a novel feature has also been introduced here - the young John in his charming red beret is a most modern figural invention that one also encounters in the Allegories of the Months in Berlin. Cleophas’s head as well points to a later date of execution than c. 1520, as it shows conspicuous similarities to the copper engraving of Philipp Melanchthon by Albrecht Dürer, which dates from 1526. It can therefore be assumed that the Holy Kinship was painted c. 1530. Its bright palette also recurs in other paintings executed around that year, such as in two retables from 1532 and 1533 in the church of Rapperswil (Switzerland). Obviously, the composition was meant to take into account new expectations linked to painting after the turmoil of the Reformation.