Workshop of Quinten Massys, 'The Virgin standing in a Niche', about 1520?

These two paintings – Saint Luke painting the Virgin and Child and The Virgin standing in a Niche – are, in fact, the back and front of the same panel, which has been sawn through its thickness. Both are painted on single boards of Baltic oak, cut from a tree growing between 1429 and 1508. They once formed the right wing of a triptych. Although they have been cut on all four sides, not much has been lost and the triptych must have been tall and narrow in format.

The centre panel (now missing) probably showed the Virgin and Child enthroned, much as they appear in the picture Saint Luke is painting. The Virgin must have looked rather as she does in The Virgin and Child with Saints Catherine and Barbara. The infant Christ in Saint Luke’s picture twists his body to look away from his mother, and we can assume that in the centre panel he also looked away from the Virgin and towards the triptych’s left wing (also missing). This may have shown a donor, or a donor presented by his patron saint (as in Saint Ambrose with Ambrosius van Engelen by Albrecht Bouts, for example).

Technical analysis shows that, although originally opposite sides of the same painting, the pictures were painted in slightly different ways. Both are on chalk ground, but while Saint Luke painting the Virgin and Child does not have a priming, The Virgin standing in a Niche has a grey priming which has been applied across the surface in broad roughly horizontal brushstrokes. Infrared reflectography has revealed underdrawing on both panels, but that for Saint Luke was done freehand, with straight lines incised using a ruler, while that for the Virgin appears to have been based on a cartoon. There is much diagonal hatching for Saint Luke’s headgear and draperies, whereas there is none for the Virgin.

The differences in the styles of underdrawing and some of the painting techniques suggest they were by different painters. Both, however, are close to the style of Quinten Massys and follow many of his technical procedures (such as using very thin scumbles of paint to modify colours and suggest textures, and blotting with fingers to soften tonal transitions). They may well have been produced by two or more assistants in his workshop or by painters who trained there and continued to work together after leaving.