Master of the Liechtenstein Adoration

With Nicolaas Teeuwisse, Berlin, 2019

The drawings of the distinctive and talented mid-sixteenth century draughtsman now generally referred to as the Master of the Liechtenstein Adoration were first brought to public notice by Friedrich Winkler in 1963.¹ The artist’s moniker is based on the fact that around half of the twenty or so known drawings from his hand belonged, until they were sold in 1948, to the collection of the Princes of Liechtenstein in Vaduz (and before that in Vienna). This previously unrecorded sheet is a significant addition to the artist’s small surviving oeuvre.

The figure types seen in these drawings are highly distinctive, with dramatic, expressive poses and gestures, and bold, sculptural modelling and lighting, reflecting a sensibility that is at once both classicising and mannerist. In this regard the artist seems to show the influence of Brussels-based artists such as Pieter Coecke van Aelst, but at the same time the richly coloured, often purple-hued grounds on which many of his surviving drawings are executed also suggests a knowledge of the South German Danube School. 

Perhaps surprisingly, given how few drawings by the artist survive, several of his drawn compositions, including the present one, exist in multiple variants. The Adoration of the Magi, from which he derives his name, provided the subject for three drawings, in Paris, Vienna and Amsterdam, which are essentially variations on a theme, with very similar settings and figure types but entirely different poses and groupings.² The same is true for this newly discovered representation of the rarely depicted subject of Soldiers Discovering the Body of Holofernes, which again exists in three variants. One of them, drawn on the lilac-coloured ground that is so typical of the master, is in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago (inv. no. 1999.683), while the other, on a brownish preparation very similar to that seen in the present drawing, is now in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden (inv. no. C1966–60).³

Why exactly the Master made these multiple variants of his drawings remains as unclear as his identity, but what is clear is that he was an exceptional and original artist, to whose small but distinguished oeuvre this is an important addition.

^1.F. Winkler, ‘The Anonymous Liechtenstein Master,’ Master Drawings, vol. 1, no. 2 (Summer 1963), pp. 34-38

^2.Paris, Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection, inv. T 6007; Vienna, Albertina, inv. 7790; Amsterdam, P. & N. de Boer Foundation, inv. B 305; Winckler, op. cit., pp. 34-35, pls. 24-26 

^3.The Chicago and Dresden drawings are discussed by Otto Benesch: ‘Once Again the Anonymous Liechtenstein Master,’ Master Drawings, vol. 3, no. 1 (Spring 1965), pp. 47-48, pls. 38-39