Gerard David, 'Adoration of the Kings', about 1515
Two Panels from an Altarpiece
These two paintings – the Adoration of the Magi and the Lamentation – most likely come from a polyptych (an altarpiece made up of several panels) painted by Gerard David and his assistants in the workshop he set up in Antwerp in 1515. They are roughly the same size and the figures are painted on the same scale, and have been together since at least the nineteenth century. They may have come from a lost altarpiece showing scenes from the life of Christ.
These two paintings – the Adoration of the Magi and the Lamentation – most likely come from a polyptych (an altarpiece made up of several panels) painted by Gerard David and his assistants in the workshop he set up in Antwerp in 1515.
Although we don‘t have any written evidence linking these paintings, they are roughly the same size, the figures are painted on the same scale and the horizon is at the same level in both. They have been together since at least the nineteenth century. The Lamentation is about 3 cm taller and wider than the Adoration of the Magi, and there are differences in how the panels are constructed, but this doesn’t rule out their being from the same series. They probably came from a lost altarpiece showing scenes from the life of Christ. The backs of both have been planed down; it is possible that they were once painted and intended to fold over a central panel. Although we don‘t know where the altarpiece was, it was likely to have been in Antwerp, where the Adoration was probably copied in the mid-sixteenth century.
We can reconstruct the history of these paintings from the early nineteenth century onwards. Both have pink papers on the back inscribed ’King‘. This might be Frederick Benjamin King, a grocer and sugar refiner who lived in Princes Square in the East End of London and who went bankrupt in 1829. They were first recorded in the collection of the German merchant Charles Aders, who put together one of the most significant collections of so-called ’primitives‘ – early Netherlandish and Italian artists – in England, also including Portrait of a Man (Jan van Winckele?) and The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor.
By 1831 Aders’ financial affairs were in chaos and in 1832 he tried to sell his paintings to the National Gallery. Negotiations came to nothing and the works by David were eventually purchased by the eminent surgeon Joseph Henry Green, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s literary executor. They were bequeathed to the Gallery by Green’s widow Anne Eliza in 1880, in accordance with his wishes.
More paintings by Gerard David
