Massachusetts museum reunites 16th c. Dutch triptych

The Worcester Art Museum (WAM) in Massachusetts has acquired The Entombment, the central panel of a triptych by 16th century Dutch painter Maarten van Heemskerck, reuniting it with its two side panels for the first time in 250 years. The two wings are on long-term loan to the WAM by its private owners, the Selldorff family.

The oil-on-panel central painting is three feet high and dates to around 1540. Only recently rediscovered and attributed to van Heemskerck, the work was offered for sale this March by Turin gallery Caretto & Occhinegro at the Tefaf Maastricht international art fair for €500,000 ($567,000). The gallery owners were committed to arranging the sale to a museum, and the WAM in particular once it was identified as the central panel of the dismembered triptych.

Marten van Heemskerck (1498-1574) was the leading painter of Haarlem from the middle of the 16th century until his death. He spent four years in Italy from 1532 to 1536, making a study of its ancient art and architecture. He was strongly influenced by the great masters of 16th century Italy, including Michelangelo, Giovanni Bellini and Andrea Mantegna. Upon his return to the Netherlands, he was the first to introduce Italianate Renaissance style.

The combination of Italian Renaissance and traditional Flemish styles so well illustrated in The Entombment was Marten van Heemskerck’s specialty. The central panel depicts Christ’s body lowered into a marble sarcophagus surrounded by figures including the Virgin Mary, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and Mary Magdalene. Visible in the misty the distance past the rounded cavern entrance of the tomb is the hill of Calvary with Jesus’ empty cross in the middle and the two thieves still on their crosses on each side.

The two wing panels, originally part of the triptych, feature portraits of the family that commissioned the work. Their rocky grotto backgrounds and landscape elements align with the central panel, confirming their original connection. The central painting was likely displayed in the artist’s studio, where prospective buyers could purchase it and commission custom wings that would then be attached to the central panel. Now on long-term loan at WAM, the Selldorff family’s panels were once part of the collection of Tom Selldorff’s grandfather, Richard Neumann, an Austrian Jewish collector whose artworks were looted by the Nazis. The panels were not returned to Neumann’s heirs until 2011.

The triptych will be reunited and put on display in the museum’s European gallery this summer.

* This article was originally published here