Lot 14

Petr Brandl (1668 - 1735) PENITENT MARY MAGDALENE

The painting of the Penitent Mary Magdalene in the chateau collections of Nové Město nad Metují is traditionally attributed to Petr Brandl. The authorship of the painting was debated at first, and the catalogue of works for the bicentenary exhibition of Petr Brandl's birth at the National Gallery in Prague in 1968 lists the painting under catalogue number 23 only as the author's circle, although the painting is admitted visible analogies to other Brandl's artistic solutions - the type of a woman and her representation or, for example, an open book or drapery. The comprehensive two-volume publication by Jaromír Neumann and Andrea Steckerová from 2016 not only clearly attributes authorship to the work due to the influence of display and the possibility of direct comparison with other works by Brandl, but also dates it quite precisely to the first half of the 1790s, probably around 1695. This exceptional work of gallery quality, which is unique on the auction market, reveals Brandl's knowledge of the works of Carl Loth from the Czernin Picture Gallery. Like Jan Kupecký, he came with the same artistic solutions and we can observe their development in parallel. The composition of the chiaroscuro treatise finds analogues in a painting from 1693, and there are also early drawing analogues of the female face based on a plaster model. The personality and work of Peter Brandl gained fame during his lifetime and he collected considerable sums for his paintings. His studies were shaped by his knowledge of the great European artists of the Renaissance and Baroque, which he studied and copied in the Imperial Castle Picture Gallery. He thus received an early and the best possible training. He attracted attention for his turbulent life, his artistic sovereignty and his close association of life and art. His courage to transcend conventions, his sensitivity, his tinged emotions and his overall drama stepped out of the framework of Baroque art towards autonomy and was the intellectual culmination of the natural genesis of the artistic flow of the age in which he lived.

Published:
Neumann, J.: Petr Brandl 1668 - 1735. National Gallery, Prague, 1968. cat. no. 23
Neumann, J., Steckerová, A.: Petr Brandl. National Gallery in Prague, 2016. pp. 142, 147, 148, 585.