The Beautiful and Mysterious Women in the Corner

Shortly after I began work at the Frick, this lovely triptych was cleaned. It was an astounding transformation—and a wonderful opportunity for me to fall under the spell of this artist’s charming, miniaturist detail. The cleaning brightened the enamel-like colors and revealed fine details that had been obscured over 500 years as the natural resin varnish darkened. The flowers in the foreground, the brilliant stitching at the edge of the gowns, the gilt-work on Saint Catherine’s sword, and the small figures in the landscape are now clearly visible. My particular favorites are the minute shepherd and his flock just over Saint Catherine’s right shoulder.


Master of the Half Lengths (possibly Hans Vereycke) Flemish, active in Antwerp, early 16th century.
Madonna and Child with Angel; Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara, 1510-1520. Triptych; oil on panel. 1970.42 

When offered for sale to Miss Frick in 1970, this triptych was attributed to the Master of Hoogstraeten. However, shortly before the sale of the painting, art historian Julius Held viewed the painting at the dealer’s gallery. Held was impressed, declared the work “delightful” and suggested a reattribution to the Master of the Female Half-Lengths, referring to an article his peer, Otto Benesch (Rembrandt scholar and Director of the Albertina from 1947-61) had written identifying the Master of the Half-Lengths as a little-documented artist named Hans Vereycke. 





The success of Netherlandish panel painting hinged upon the development of oil painting techniques in the first third of the 15th century (an innovation attributed to the great Jan van Eyck). The elasticity and slow drying of oil paint allowed northern artists to develop the keen observation and documentation of detail for which they are famous. These richly-detailed panels have an astounding jewel-like brightness due to the careful application of complex layers of oil glazes. 



In the 1500s, tensions between the sacred and secular world were forming. Due to the Renaissance interest in the natural world and developing humanist philosophies, secular elements began to feature prominently in religious paintings—landscape, still-life, and aspects of daily life now enfold the biblical narratives, setting the stage for the flourishing of genre subjects in the Netherlands during the 1600s. In Benesch’s article on Vereycke, he argues that the landscape sketches traceable to him are likely the earliest examples of sketching from nature in Netherlandish art.  


In the Frick’s triptych, Mary sits on a cushion, like the other Madonnas of Humility in the earlier Italian panel paintings hanging in the same gallery. The heavenly realm is represented by the Angel who plays the lute nearby, and God the Father who looks down from the sky. The Master of the Half-Lengths was known for portraying female figures—usually beautifully dressed and depicted with faces partially turned, hair visibly parted, and features reflecting a generalized, serene beauty. Saint Catherine occupies the left wing, and Saint Barbara the right—represented as is customary, standing before the tower where her father imprisoned her. The artist’s prodigious technical skills have created what was a very popular composition in the early 16th-century—a synthesis of the ideal and the real, an invented world, a bountiful, harmonious, Eden-like setting for his Madonna and saints. These small-scale devotional panels would have been purchased by private collectors in the increasingly urban, merchant based society that was Flanders in the 1500s. The rich materials and costumes of the figures reflect an increasingly materialistic, worldly society’s need to accommodate the heavenly into life on earth.

Visit The Frick Art Museum to view this work of art, which is part of our permanent collection.