Metsys’s masterpiece 'The Madonna of the Cherries'

Quentin Metsys, known as the founder of the Antwerp school of painting, was one of the greatest artists in Netherlandish art.

His masterwork, ‘The Madonna of the Cherries’, became one of his most celebrated singular masterpieces, inspiring such fervent adoration that artists would commemorate it for generations.

Disappearing from public view in 1668, it was unrecognised when it resurfaced in Paris at a sale in 1920 due to an overpainted green curtain. With this and a thick layer of discoloured varnish, it was sold at Christie’s London in 2015 as a studio variant deriving from Metsys’s original. Subsequent conservation was transformative, revealing the exceptional condition of the original paint surface and enabling scholars to recognise it as the prime of Metsys’s Madonna of the Cherries.

Quentin Metsys (1465/6-1530), ‘The Madonna of the Cherries’. Estimate: £8,000,000-£12,000,000.

📅Old Masters Part I | London, 2 July 2024