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Description: | A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by the Master of Flemalle. The drawing shows a full-length portrait of an old woman holding a piece of cloth with the head of a man on it. The woman is wearing a wide headdress that is held on by fabric tied together under her chin. She is wearing a thick cloak, which covers her whole body, and only her right foot is visible beneath the fabric. The head of the man on the cloth has a beard and long wavy hair.
Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society:
"No. 21
THE MASTER OF FLÉMALLE
(About 1430)
ST. VERONICA
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Kerrich Collection). Pen and ink, with Indian ink wash in the shadow, on vellum. 36.8 x 15.4 cm. (14 1/2 x 6 1/8 in.)
One of the finest and most important Flemish pen-and-ink drawings of the fifteenth century. It corresponds very closely with the picture of the same subject in the Städel Institut at Frankfort, - one of the panels of a large altar-piece formerly in the church of the Cistercian abbey at Flémalle. The question arises, as in many similar instances in early Flemish art, whether the drawing is a preliminary study for the picture or a fine and careful contemporary copy from it. Dr. Hugo von Tschudi, discussing the question in the Berlin Jahrbuch for 1898, declares emphatically for its being a copy. A close knowledge of the drawing for many years inclines me to take the opposite view. There is so much power as well as so much refinement in the workmanship, such a strength of expression in the face, and such a subtlety of understanding in the details, that I think we have here an exception to the general rule which warns us that a drawing thus highly finished in the details, and varying relatively so little in any of them from the corresponding picture, is not likely to be original. The variations are in fact considerably more than Dr. von Tschudi admits, and all point, in my judgment, towards the originality of the drawing. The slight sag of the fine silk fabric between Veronica's hands, and the manner in which it is held by her thumb, so subtly and precisely indicated in the drawing, are scamped altogether in the picture; again, the folds of the same fabric, indicated slightly and delicately in the drawing, are marked in the picture in crude squares like panes of glass. The folds of the right sleeve, and more particularly those of the lower part of the gown, are broader and less fretted in the drawing than in the picture. The broad jewelled boarder which appears so careful in other details, could well have omitted. Unless all these points in the picture are due to later repaints, they make in favour of the priority of the drawing. Other qualities in the picture, which prevent it ranking with the master's finest work, may also be due to repainting; if not, the inference, it seems to me, is that the picture is one painted by pupils, for whose guidance the master made the present careful preliminary design.
S. C."
Technique: REPRODUCTION
Technique: collotype (print)
Reproduction by the Vasari Society of Master of Flemalle, Saint Veronica, (1932.70-21) | Source: | Manchester City Galleries | Identifier: | mcag.emu.ecatalogue.105041 | Go to resource |
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