Albrecht Altdorfer died 1538
NG 6463 
Christ taking Leave of his Mother

Susan Foister, 2024

Extracted from:
Susan Foister; with Rachel Billinge, Marika Spring and Lea Viehweger; and contributions by Lorne Campbell and Allison Goudie, The German Paintings before 1800 (London: National Gallery Global and Yale University Press, 2024).

Oil on wood (probably lime), 139.2 × 108.7 cm, painted surface approximately 137 × 106.8 cm

Inscriptions

See below.

Provenance

The painting is first recorded in 1809 in the possession of Prince‐Abbot Coelestin Steiglehner (1739–1819), abbot of the Benedictine foundation of St Emmeram, Regensburg, scientist, climatologist and collector of bronzes, gems and paintings.¹ It is listed in the inventory of Steiglehner’s estate on his death in 1819 as ‘No 1431 Ein Stück der Abschied Christi von sein Mutter auf Holz gemahlen von Albr. Altdorfer (1538) Gulden 500’ (‘… A piece of Christ Taking Leave of his Mother on wood painted by Albr. Altdorfer (1538) 500 guilders’); it was sold for 1,030 guilders to an unknown purchaser.² By 1829 it had been acquired by the collector Count Joseph von Rechberg (1769–1833) and was noted as: ‘Christus Abschied von den Frauen oder er heilt eine Kranke? von Altdorfer aus d. Sammlung des Prelaten von St Emeran’ (‘Christ Taking Leave of the Women or the Healing of a Sick Woman? By Altdorfer from the collection of the Prelate of St Emeran’).³ The painting was subsequently sold at Berlin in October 1851 to the ecclesiastical historian and collector the Revd John Fuller Russell (1813–1884).⁴ It was auctioned at the Fuller Russell sale, Christie’s, London, 18 April 1885, lot 140 and sold for 23 guineas.⁵ The art historian and future Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, the Revd Robert Langton Douglas (1864–1951/2), bought the picture in 1904.⁶ Langton Douglas sold it to the mining magnate and collector Sir Julius Wernher (1850–1912); the picture was displayed with others from his collection at Wernher’s London residence, Bath House, 82 Piccadilly, where it hung on the staircase; it was inherited by his son, Sir Derrick Wernher (1889–1948).⁷ It was on loan to the National Gallery, 1945–9, and after 1949 hung at Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire.⁸ In 1980 it was purchased by private treaty sale from the Wernher Estates, through Christie’s, with the aid of contributions from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Pilgrim Trust and the National Art‐Collections Fund (Eugene Cremetti Fund).

Exhibitions and Loans

RA 1877 (144); Burlington Fine Arts Club 1906 (52); London 1911; on loan to the National Gallery 1945–9 ; NG 1945–6; London 1946 (11); NG 1983–4; NG 1986–7 (12); NG 1996; NG 2002–3 (13); NG 2014a; NG 2014b; Paris 2020 (40).

Technical Notes

NG 6463 was cleaned and restored in 1982. The painting is in good condition. The paint layers are well preserved, except for some losses along the joins and across the top and bottom edges. There is some slight wearing in the sky. The wood panel support has been reduced in thickness to about 6 mm and was cradled until 1981, when the cradle was removed, the splits secured and the panel built up with balsa wood. The original wood is badly worm‐damaged.

The panel, probably lime, consists of six members joined vertically with recesses for butterfly keys (possibly not original and filled during the 1981 panel treatment) to reinforce the joins. The boards are between 17.9 and 22.8 cm in width, except for that on the right, which is 5.4 cm wide.

The panel has a thin ground of chalk (calcium carbonate) probably bound in glue. A border of exposed wood roughly 1 cm wide is present on all four sides, which would have been covered by a frame. Down the left side the frame edge seems to have been moved fractionally, creating two lips of ground and paint. An off‐white, slightly pink priming consisting of a very thin layer of lead white containing a little red lead can be seen in most samples.

Extensive free underdrawing with a brush and a fluid medium is visible with infrared reflectography (fig. 2).⁹ Examination of cross‐sections that include underdrawing shows this to be directly on the ground beneath the priming and to consist of a mixture of black and a little red earth, which would have produced a brownish line.¹⁰ Some lines in the architecture and the area of the sky just above it appear relatively faint, but most of the drawing is considerably darker, perhaps more thickly applied. All the figures are outlined, and shadows are indicated by areas of bold parallel hatching. There are a number of revisions, for example a late alteration to Saint John’s cloak, which resulted in new fold lines crossing the hatching for the shadow of an earlier fold, and the reduction in the size of the left foot of the figure of the seated Mary supporting the Virgin. The main architectural features are all underdrawn, but details such as the capitals were altered and elaborated during painting: the decoration of the capital supporting the arch was originally drawn with a simple vertical moulding and that at the top of the round pillar was drawn smaller with a series of concentric rings. There were a number of changes at the painting stage to the background landscape as underdrawn, the most important of which are the reduction in size of the mountains next to Christ, which originally reached above the level of his shoulder, the suppression of the foliage in the area above this, and the decision to paint different smaller buildings to those outlined in the underdrawing on the hillside beside Christ and in the distant landscape seen through the arch at the left (where the drawing had included a church with a tall spire).

Heat‐bodied linseed oil was identified as the paint binder in four samples: blue from the sky, black from the bottom right‐hand side and two from green‐coloured paint at the bottom and top edges respectively.¹¹ Analysis of the last three samples by GC–MS (the first having been examined only with GC ) also identified an addition of pine resin.

The foliage consists of various green layers, based principally on verdigris mixed with varying amounts of lead‐tin yellow.¹² The architecture, most of which was painted before the figures, has an opaque warm light brown base layer containing yellow earth, red lead and a little [page 85] [page 86] lead white and vermilion, with shadows and details added in a dark brownish‐black paint. Christ’s robe consists of an underpaint of lead white, fluorite with probably some lake pigment with an upper layer of kermes lake with some fluorite, and in places a simple kermes lake.¹³ The glaze of Saint John’s drapery has also been identified as kermes lake; a sample of the red drapery of the figure supporting the Virgin has the appearance of a kermes lake glaze over a thin opaque red layer of vermilion and red lead, while the red lake in the sleeve of the woman praying on the left has been identified as kermes by HLPC HPLC and TLC analysis.¹⁴ All the blues are azurite, mixed with lead white in the sky and in the robe of Mary Magdalene, the kneeling figure pleading with Christ. The robe of the woman in green standing on the left has an underlayer of verdigris, lead‐tin yellow and lead white glazed with verdigris mixed with a little lead‐tin yellow.

Subject and Composition

The subject of the picture is not of biblical origin, but occurs in such devotional texts as the Pseudo‐Bonaventura Meditations on the Life of Christ and the German Life of Mary by Philipp the Carthusian (Philipp von Seitz) of around 1300. It was also included in German Passion plays: in the Augsburg play, Christ blesses his mother, saying: ‘My heavenly Father took pains to order me to follow His will. Thus, beloved mother, I must go to Jerusalem. You shall stay with your friends and pass your time with them. Thus I give you my blessing – may the heavenly father preserve you.’¹⁵ Medieval devotional texts emphasised the Virgin’s sorrow and reluctance to allow Christ to depart to his death, while Christ, in contrast, was resolute. Altdorfer’s painting similarly initiates the sequence of events which will lead to Christ’s Passion: Christ, in Bethany, prepares to enter Jerusalem, while his mother, the Virgin Mary, knowing this will lead to his death, pleads with him not to go.

The elongated figure of Christ, in a plum coloured robe, stands in the centre of the composition, making the sign of blessing towards the figures on the left.¹⁶ In the foreground the Virgin Mary, in a dark blue robe, lies collapsed in grief at his departure, supported by one of the three or four Holy Women who were said in the Bible to have attended Christ’s entombment, and who included members of the Virgin’s extended family.¹⁷ Her long legs covered by a reddish‐pink robe edged with white fur extend behind the Virgin and end in feet of an exaggerated size, the soles of her shoes turned towards the viewer. Behind her stands another tall woman with a disproportionately small head wearing a green robe with pink undersleeves, while the third woman, also clasping her hands, again wears reddish‐pink. The fourth, kneeling, female figure is that of Mary Magdalene, who can be identified by her youthful appearance and more fashionable dress, a low‐cut gown of pale blue edged with black over a sleeved garment of deep red; all the women wear white headdresses, but only hers is trimmed with a pattern of dark red stripes near the edges extending over her shoulders. On the right stand the very tall figures of Saint John, his small head fringed with his characteristic long fair hair and wearing a bulky red robe with one end looped back over his right shoulder, and Saint Peter with a white beard in a whitish robe over dark blue, his joined hands perhaps indicating, as Smith has suggested, that the women should keep quiet and contain their emotions.¹⁸ In the distance, between Christ and Saint Peter, is a male figure in a red robe, probably another apostle.

The right‐hand side of the picture is dominated by tall trees, the left‐hand side by an apparently ruined structure with a Gothic arch and carved scroll work in the spandrels and the frieze above it. Vegetation hangs over the top and a bare‐branched tree or shrub is silhouetted against the sky. Immediately behind the column to the right of the arch is a column with, above or behind it, a domed shape with a spike on top; behind this is another column topped with a domed shape. An incomplete wall covered in vegetation is shown projecting to the right with, at the lower level, a semi‐pointed, arched window opening: a column is seen in the centre of the opening which does not connect with the top of the arch. Above is an arcaded opening with columns and round‐headed arches.

In the foreground to the right of the arch is a column which shows, at the top, a sculpted relief of the Flagellation of Christ (fig. 3), an intimation of the ordeal to come. Above it is the semblance of carved decoration which, Smith claimed, has the appearance of the numerals 520, perhaps part of a date. They are not easily read and close examination suggests that Altdorfer may not have intended to depict any numerals here (see further discussion under Date, below): there are no indications of the number 5; the 2 is doubtfully a numeral, while what was interpreted by Smith as a floriated 0 was perhaps rather intended to suggest an animal head, possibly the ox head skull typical of a classical frieze with bucrania.¹⁹ On top of the column is a grey‐coloured spike matching that seen in the distance to the left, to which presumably some missing piece of architecture was once attached. Behind to the left is an apparently disconnected architectural ornament with a fluted base and scalloped shapes above.

Through the arch can be seen a landscape with a bridge over water and a tall tower to the right; there are distant trees and mountains, as well other buildings visible behind the bridge. The sky framed by the arch is deep red, and a halo of light on the extreme left around which clouds are swirling indicates the position of the setting sun; bare branches project across it. At the bottom of the picture, on the extreme right, are a kneeling, praying donor family (fig. 6): husband and wife dressed in black and holding prominent scarlet rosaries, the wife in a white headdress which covers the lower part of her face, and four fair‐haired sons and a daughter, all dressed in green, the daughter in front of the family with a black band around her long hair and her dress also trimmed with black.

The subject of Christ taking Leave of his Mother was not uncommon in German art of the early sixteenth century (and indeed in the art of early sixteenth‐century northern Europe), and it is represented in both paintings and prints.²⁰ Traditionally, the subject was represented, often in a series of Passion paintings, by the figures of Christ and the Virgin, upright and alone.²¹ Two woodcuts by Dürer, from his Life of the Virgin (about 1503 –5, published in 1511) and the Small Passion (published in 1511), introduced widely imitated compositions in which Christ blesses the kneeling Virgin.²² This was followed with variations by artists such as Wolf Huber in his painting dated 1519 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), Hans Schäufelein (about 1482–1539/1540) in drawings and Martin Schaffner (1477/8 –1548) (Alte Pinakothek, Munich).²³ Altdorfer himself made a small woodcut of the subject as part of his series of the Passion, in which the Virgin is shown seated.²⁴ He again showed the Virgin seated with the arms of one of the Marys around her in an engraving dating from about 1515–18.²⁵

In NG 6463 Altdorfer has created a very different composition: the Virgin is unusual in the extent of her distress, lying collapsed in the pose often demonstrated by the Virgin at the Crucifixion. Here the Magdalen occupies the kneeling, pleading position more normally reserved for the Virgin in representations of this subject (as in Altdorfer’s Saint Sebastian Altarpiece in the abbey of St Florian, although there less dramatically). The recumbent pose Altdorfer has chosen for the Virgin is one which seems to have preoccupied him in the second decade of the sixteenth century, as evidenced for example in his drawing of Pyramus and Thisbe, and also occurring in his Lamentation and Saint Florian Rescued.²⁶ It is inspired in part by Mantegna’s engravings of the Deposition and the Entombment with Four Birds (fig. 4), from which the figure of Saint John seen from [page 89] the back is also adapted.²⁷ These may have formed part of the collection of Italian engravings which Altdorfer mentioned in his will (see biography, p. 75).²⁸ A further compositional innovation is the substitution of a blazing sunset and sparsely populated distance for the detailed view of Jerusalem shown in the woodcut by Dürer and others inspired by him: Christ’s lonely path to his doom is instead reflected in the mood of the landscape Altdorfer depicts.²⁹ Although Altdorfer has departed from the compositional model provided by Dürer in his woodcut of this subject in the Life of the Virgin series, Bartrum has noted that the Visitation from the same series appears to have influenced both the elongated female figures and the somewhat similar landscape composition.³⁰

Patron and Original Location

No coat of arms is present to identify the kneeling donor family, and there is no indication that such a coat of arms ever existed within the painting; it is likely that they were identified by inscriptions and coats of arms on the frame, now lost. Like most of Altdorfer’s patrons, they were probably a family of Regensburg citizens. The subject of Christ’s farewell was considered particularly suitable in Germany for the commemoration of the dead, and NG 6463 may well have been commissioned as a painted epitaph. The subject of Christ taking Leave of his Mother is one that occurs in epitaphs made for Regensburg churches: there is for instance a bronze relief by Peter Vischer the Elder (1455–1529) in Regensburg Cathedral (1521) with this subject, while on a wall outside the church of St Emmeram in Regensburg is a carved stone epitaph of Christ taking Leave of his Mother with a donor family beneath (fig. 5); their costume is that of the early sixteenth century, although here the iconography of the subject is the traditional one, with two standing figures of Christ and the Virgin.

The picture’s history connects it with the church of St Emmeram in the early nineteenth century. According to Waagen, NG 6463 came ‘from a church in Ratisbon [Regensburg]’,³¹ but this may be no more than a reference to the fact that it was in the possession of Prince‐Abbot Coelestin Steiglehner, last abbot of the Benedictine abbey of St Emmeram, from at least 1809 until his death in 1819 (see Provenance). As Steiglehner’s rule coincided with the period of the Napoleonic wars and the dissolution of the foundation in 1803, it is possible that he took the painting from the abbey church into his personal care to save it from damage or destruction: in 1809 the building was attacked by Napoleon’s [page 90] troops, and in 1810 its library and treasures removed.³² A wooden tablet is recorded in the sacristy of St Emmeram measuring 107 cm in width with the date 1522 and an inscription indicating that it came from a work by Altdorfer; Endres assumed this was once attached to the National Gallery picture (itself 108.7 cm wide), and also suggested that Halm’s reference in 1809 to a monogram and date of 1522 on the picture’s painted surface ‘at the left edge one foot up from the bottom’ was in fact a reference to this tablet.³³ As Smith has argued, the precision with which the inscription and location of this date is described (see below) makes this unlikely.³⁴ There is no trace of such a date today, and the tablet has no provable connection with the picture. The possibility that Steiglehner obtained the painting from another church in Regensburg or elsewhere cannot be excluded.

The interior of the Gothic abbey church of St Emmeram was refurbished in the baroque style in 1731–3, but the walls are filled with numerous much earlier monuments. An epitaph of the size of the National Gallery painting would probably be just slightly wider than one of the pillars against which some epitaphs hang today, and it is conceivable that this was its original location.

Attribution and Date

The painting was recorded as the work of Altdorfer in the inventory of Abbot Steiglehner in 1819 (see Provenance), and the attribution has been generally accepted since then.

It is not dated, although Smith suggested that the numbers 520, standing for the date 1520, are visible on the column in the background of the picture on which a carved scene of the Flagellation of Christ is depicted (fig. 3).³⁵ However, close examination suggests that Altdorfer did not intend to depict numerals here (see discussion under Subject, above). There are no parallels in his work for such concealed dates: on the contrary, when his paintings are dated, the dates are obviously placed and the numerals clearly legible.

As mentioned above, the painting was described in 1809 as bearing Altdorfer’s monogram and the date 1522 at the left edge, one foot up from the lower edge.³⁶ It has been suggested that this might have been an original inscription which was removed during an early cleaning, but no trace of any damage or disturbance to the paint surface here has been found in the X‐radiograph (fig. 1) or in technical examinations.³⁷ Nevertheless, it is possible, as Smith has suggested, that both monogram and date were actually later interpolations and thus easily removed in a subsequent unrecorded cleaning.³⁸ Even if the tablet with the same date mentioned above has no connection with NG 6463, the date of 1522 which was apparently recorded on the painted surface in 1809 might well have derived from information taken from an original frame and added to the painting but subsequently cleaned off; it should perhaps be considered for that reason.³⁹

However, the painting’s style has generally been regarded as more typical of a slightly earlier period. Friedländer dated the painting to around 1516, noting the parallels with the Saint Sebastian Altarpiece for the abbey of St Florian, commissioned in about 1509 and installed in 1518, while Baldass dated it slightly later, to 1518 or 1519.⁴⁰ Winzinger recognised parallels with earlier works, such the Kassel Crucifixion, which he dated to 1513; a comparable ruined arch in conjunction with similar vegetation occurs in the woodcut of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, dated 1512. He concluded that the similarity to the Saint Sebastian Altarpiece meant NG 6463 must have been painted contemporaneously, but at the earlier stages of its creation, from about 1513 or 1514.⁴¹ Grollemund, observing the consistency of certain motifs across the period during which the altarpiece was created, has dated NG 6463 to about 1518–20, noting how the use of exaggeration, colour and light reinforce the drama and emotional dimension of the painting, stimulating the compassion of the viewer.⁴²

It is notable that the strongly vertical, flat and uneven vegetation hanging down in the architectural backgrounds of the scenes of the Recovery of the Body of Saint Sebastian and the Carrying of the Cross in the Saint Sebastian Altarpiece are more characteristic of earlier paintings and drawings, and do not recur in the National Gallery painting. However, there are certainly similarities between the architecture of NG 6463 and elements of architecture [page [91]] [page 92] in the Saint Sebastian Altarpiece, in particular to the arch in the Shooting of Saint Sebastian (fig. 7), as well similarities as as similarities in the colouring used, for instance the plum‐coloured robe of Christ; comparisons may also be drawn with the figures and setting of the Resurrection at Vienna from the predella of the Saint Sebastian Altarpiece (fig. 9), dated 1518 (although there is no gold used in NG 6463). There are parallels in the architecture of the arch on the left and in the arcading to the right in both Altdorfer’s etchings of the interior of the Regensburg synagogue dated 1519.⁴³

Again, a figure not dissimilar to that of the Virgin lying with bent knees occurs several times in Altdorfer’s work within the whole period encompassing the painting of the Saint Sebastian Altarpiece: notably in the woodcut of the Judgement of Paris, dated 1511, in the drawing of the Lamentation (Munich), dated 1512, in the drawing of Pyramus and Thisbe (fig. 10, Erlangen), on which Altdorfer’s woodcut of 1518 is based, in the drawing of the Lamentation (Erlangen), most recently dated to 1517/18, as well as in the Saint Sebastian Altarpiece Recovery of the Body of Saint Sebastian and in the painting of the Beating of Saint Florian (Prague), dated about 1516–18 by Winzinger.⁴⁴

The underdrawing of NG 6463 can be most closely related to these latter and to other drawings datable to around 1515–18 on stylistic grounds: for example, the underdrawing of Saint John resembles a figure on the right of the drawing of the Erlangen Carrying of the Cross in the broken, curving line of the facial features, the looping curls of the hair and the delineation of the garments; both the Pyramus and Thisbe and Lamentation (both Erlangen) have similar narrowly spaced hatching to the underdrawing of NG 6463.⁴⁵ Consideration of all these comparisons suggest that a date around the middle of the second decade of the sixteenth century, or slightly later, is most plausible.

Select Bibliography

Colvin 1877, p. 140; Sturge Moore 1900, p. 17; Endres 1908; Friedländer 1923, p. 80; Tietze 1923, p. 124; Baldass 1923, p. 57; Benesch 1939, pp. 21, 45; Baldass 1941, pp. 127, 134; Oettinger 1959, pp. 74, 77; Winzinger 1963, p. 98; Winzinger 1975, pp. 83–4, no. 26; Smith 1983; Smith and Wyld 1983, pp. 51–64; Smith 1985, p. 90; Goldberg 1988, p. 122; Billinge and Foister 1993, pp. 687–91; Grollemund 2020, p. 154, no. 40.

Notes