Sante Creara

Sante Creara (Verona c.1570-after 1630) Diana with her attendants signed 'S. CREARIVS. F' (on the quiver, lower right) oil on black marble, unframed 17 x 13¾ in. (43.2 x 35 cm.) Provenance Anonymous sale; Dorotheum, Vienna, 7 April 2006, lot 54 (32,000Euro). Lot Notes Sante Creara is closely associated with Felice Brusasorci, withwhom he produced numerous collaborative works, mainly altarpieces,in Verona. Independent works by Creara include the fresco in theSala del Consiglio, Verona and an altarpiece dated 1603 in thechurch of Santa Giulia, Brescia. Creara favored slate and marble asthe support for his small-scale works; the smooth surface helpedemphasize his mannerist style.

Sante Creara (Verona 1571-1630)
The Flagellation
Add. Notes: oil on slate 11 5/8 x 9½ in. (29.5 x 24.2 cm.)
Notes: This is the only known surviving painting to record the composition and structure of Jan van Eyck's lost triptych painted for Nicholas van Maelbeke, provost of St. Martin's cathedral, Ypres. The present version was commissioned in the 1620s for Petrus Wyts, canon and cantor of St. Martin's, in which Van Eyck's work stood, and formed Wyts' posthumous bequest along with funds for annual requiem masses to be said for his soul at the cathedral as well as at St. Peter's in the city. The Van Maelbeke triptych and the present picture were both lost in the French occupation of the Netherlands in the Revolutionary Wars at the end of the eighteenth century; the location of the former has since been unknown (quite possibly it was destroyed) and, understandably, from that point it was confused in all studies on Van Eyck with Wyts' triptych until the two were finally disassociated by Lieve Verheyden-van Overstraeten (loc. cit.; the abbreviated literature references here cited make no attempt to separate the two pictures, which were treated as one and the same by almost all early authorities after the French occupation). That this picture was for so long believed to be Van Eyck's lost work, and seen as such by scholars as eminent as Van Puyvelde and Friedländer, is entirely understandable. The original, which dated from 1441, was described by the humanists Lucas de Heere and Marcus van Vaernewyck, in 1559 and 1565, as incomplete (onvulmaecte and onvuldaen); this has been taken by most scholars to mean that it remained unfinished at the time of Van Eyck's death in 1441: a hypothesis apparently supported by an early drawing of its central panel, seeming to show the donor in an unfinished state (Vienna, Graphische Sammlung Albertina). As such, the unfinished state of the present picture has been taken as either proving it to be the original, or as reproducing its incomplete state. Its existence as a separate work, and the details of its commission are recorded by Petrus Martinus Ramaut (loc. cit.): 'Anno 1629 op den 11 8bre is binnen ijpre overleden, d'eere petrus wijts, canonink van St maertens, die begraven licht voor den autaer van onse lieve vrouwe, hebbende voor sepultur, de afbeeldinge ofte de naegebotste copie van het overtreffelick tafereel die in de choor Staet, ende alhoewel dese copie constig geschildert is, tis nogtans maer een schaduwe bij het licht, ten opsichte van het origineel.' The assumptions that it revealed the original's unfinished state or that it was itself the original were recently re-examined in considerable depth by Susan Francis Jones (loc. cit.), who concurred in refuting the second and also challenged the first, referring to the dating of the painting, its installation in the cathedral and the time of Van Eyck's death. She also noted the description of the original's detail by an anonymous English traveller, tentatively identified as John Ratcliff (1700-1775) of Pembroke College, Oxford (who also recorded the inscription of date and signature on the triptych), and observed also the number of works supplied complete by Van Eyck's workshop after the artist's death (citing as an example the Detroit Saint Jerome dated 1442). Pace Dr. Jones, that view remains however hypothetical, and fails satisfactorily to explain the unfinished nature of Wyts' triptych. The contemporary accounts of the original's unfinished state might by themselves be questionable, but their apparent corroboration by the work of a seventeenth-century copyist - otherwise inexplicably as deliberate in some areas in his reproduction of detail as in others of unfinished foundation - surely supports those accounts, reconfirming this painting's status as the key document in the understanding of Van Eyck's lost, last work.
Pre-lot Text: THE PROPERTY OF A EUROPEAN COLLECTOR

oil on slate this lot contains 1 item(s). for the attribution compare the signed painting by creara sold in these rooms, 3-4 december 1997, lot 212. we are grateful to mr. terence mullaly for proposing the attribution upon first hand inspection of the painting.