Lot no. 32
Attributed to HANS CLEMER ex Master of Elva (known in Piedmont and Provence in the late 15th and early 16th centuries)
SAINT ANNE TRINITAIRE
Walnut panel
Without frame
Painted surface: 54.5 x 42.5 cm
Inscribed at the top 'Sa Anna
Missing
Rectangular altarpiece panel, braced top, unframed
Oil painting on walnut panel
H. 63.5cm; W.43cm panel
H.55cm ; W.42,8cm painting surface
Expert Cabinet Turquin
CONDITION:
On the reverse, around the roughly fluted panel, an area 4cm wide has been cleared and smoothed out.
the place of the frame which has now disappeared. A few traces of insect
insects
Pictorial surface: visible wear, accidents and missing parts, some restorations.
INSCRIPTIONS:
At the top in classical letters painted in red: Sa ANNA
On the black background of the panel, Saint Anne seated is seen three-quarters of the way up, holding the Virgin and Child on her lap.
knees. She is wearing a blue dress over a white shirt covered by a large mantle that also covers her head.
also covering her head. In her right hand, she holds up the holy book, which is being leafed through by the completely naked Child, seated in the Virgin's lap.
in the Virgin's lap. The Virgin wears a vermilion dress and a brown-blue mantle with changing reflections
over which falls her long, wavy hair. A gold halo, circled in relief, adorns the heads of these three figures.
figures.
Because of its size, the embracing shape of its upper section and the arrangement of the figures, this completely original panel must have been the first of its kind in the world,
this completely new panel was originally intended to be placed at the top of a large altarpiece of the Piedmontese type
type altarpiece, such as Hans Clemer's triptych of the collegiate church of Revello, painted in 1503 (fig.1). The comparison
between this altarpiece and our panel is unequivocal, both in terms of the massive body shape of the figures
the detail of the large hands with turned-up thumbs, that of the book with its open leaves
or the design of the golden halos with their double concentric circle. The composition
recalls that of the Holy Family, while the broad-faced Saint Anne evokes that of Saint Constant in the upper
the upper register of the altarpiece (fig.2).As for the motif of the child, naked and chubby, with a well rounded head and short, curly hair, it is almost a recurring theme.
It recurs almost identically in most of Clemer's works (fig. 3).
Hans Clemer, long known by the name of the Master of Elva, based on the frescoes in the parish church of
Elva parish church, painted between 1496 and 1503, has regained his definitive identity following research
by several historians. This painter, undoubtedly from the north of Italy, was active in Piedmont in the
marquisate of Saluces in the very late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, before pursuing his career in Provence
Provence, where he is recorded in 1508 in Aix-en-Provence working for the Franciscans and completing an unfinished altarpiece
for the Dominicans, left unfinished by the death of his cousin Joos Lieferinxe. In 1509 he returned to Saluces and
disappeared before 1512, when his wife declared herself a widow.
