The Madonna of the Cherries is one of the most celebrated paintings by Quentin Metsys, the father of the Antwerp school, to whom the National Gallery in London devoted a focused exhibition last year.
The picture will be a highlight of the Old Masters Part I sale at Christie’s headquarters in London on 2 July, during Classic Week (estimate: £8,000,000-12,000,000). Painted in Metsys’s maturity in the 1520s, The Madonna of the Cherries is a work that had a wide-reaching and long-lasting influence, inspiring generations of artists and giving rise to numerous copies and variants. The painting is on view at Christie’s New York until 22 May, before returning to London for the pre-sale exhibition from 28 June to 2 July.
Henry Pettifer, Christie’s International Deputy Chairman, Old Master Paintingscommented: “We are delighted to be offering this work by Quentin Metsys that has only recently been recognised as the prime version of his celebrated late masterpiece – The Madonna of the Cherries – which helped cement his reputation as the founder of the Antwerp School of painting.”
In August 1615, the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands, Archduke Albert VII of Austria and Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia paid a visit to the wealthy Antwerp spice merchant Cornelis van der Geest (1577–1638), one of the foremost art collectors and connoisseurs of his age. From the treasures of his cabinet, the regents offered to acquire his most prized possession: Quentin Metsys’s Madonna of the Cherries. Their visit was commemorated thirteen years later by Willem van Haecht in his painting The Cabinet of
Cornelis van der Geest of 1628 (Antwerp, Rubenshuis), in which van der Geest is surroundedby a semi-fictional bevy of Antwerp’s artistic and social elite, including Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, as well as van der Geest’s nephew Cornelis de Licht and the Antwerp collector Peter Stevens, both of whom would successively own The Madonna of the Cherries. Van der Geest’s Kunstkammer stood both as a homage to Antwerp’s role in the arts and Flemish painting, at the centre of which The Madonna of the Cherries was the zenith.
Main Image :Quentin Metsys (Leuven 1465/6-1530 Antwerp) The Madonna of the Cherries oil on panel 29.5/8 x 24.3/4 in. (75.3 x 62.9 cm.) Estimate: £8,000,000-12,000,000
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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