The Odyssey of a Diptych. Issues of Authorship and Provenience of the Virgen Dolorosa and the Cristo Coronado de Espinas from the Former Collection in Gołuchów

This paper aims to gather all information about the diptych of Mater Dolorosa and Christ Crowned with Thorns , which until 2023 stayed in the Provincial Museum of Pontevedra (Museo Provincial de Pontevedra) in Spain. The research addresses two aspects of the diptych: the controversy of its attribution to a circle of Albrecht Bouts or his follower and the diptych’s arrival at the Provincial Museum of Pontevedra. This study explains that this diptych’s former attributions cannot be supported due to his style and the new research about Bout’s workshop practices. Finally, it gathers all the documentary sources about its arrival at the Pontevedra Museum.

RECENTLY, the provenance of the diptych of the Virgen Dolorosa (Mater Dolorosa) and the Cristo coronado de espinas (Christ Crowned with Thorns) held at the Provincial Museum of Pontevedra (inv. no. 008675 and no. 008674; Fig. 1), has been brought into the national and international spotlight.1 The reason for the renewed interest in this discreet work is that from the middle of the 19th century, it was part of the Collection of Izabela Działyńska née Czartoryska at Gołuchów Castle (Poland) and afterward, in the 1970s, it belonged to the Collection Fernández-López. However, the press interest in the diptych was not due to its authorship or provenance but to the possibility that the Nazis may have plundered the paintings after they invaded Poland in 1939.
This paper gathers all the information known about the diptych, not only related to its new technical inspection (DStretch scans),2 the iconographical analysis and the history of its arrival at the Provincial Museum of Pontevedra, but also the reasons to attribute it to a Flemish follower or circle of Albrecht Bouts, a painter close to his workshop and working in the middle of the 16th century. However, this research confirms that the artwork in Pontevedra formed part of 1. This text was submitted to the journal in 2022 when the Diptych still was in Pontevedra. In first months of 2023, the artwork passed to the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and from March 2023 is displayed as a deposit in the National Museum in Poznań in the Palace of Gołuchów. 2. DStretch is a software tool that allows the identification of very poorly preserved pigments and an easier distinction of overlap.
3. This set of paintings was purchased with another three hundred. It was done jointly by the Deputation of Pontevedra, Xunta de Galicia and the Provincial Museum of Pontevedra. The authors would like to thank José Manuel Rey García and Mª Ángeles Tilve Jar for providing all the data related to the diptych from the archive of the museum, and for the images on the back of the two panels because, having used the DStretch scan, it proved possible to clarify the inscriptions as they were very faded and difficult to read with the naked eye. Information was provided in private correspondence with the authors on 14 and 23 December 2020. See Xosé Carlos Valle Pérez, "Entre a Baixa romaninade e o Renacemento. A escultura e a pintura medieva," in 75 obras para 75 anos. Exposición conmemorativa da fundación do Museo de Pontevedra, ed. Xosé Carlos Valle Pérez, María Ángeles Tilve Jar (Pontevedra: Museo de Pontevedra, 2003), 68.
the Collection Czartoryski-Działyński in Gołuchów, left the deposit of the National Museum in Warsaw during the Second World War, and later was sold on the Spanish art market.
In the 1990s, the Provincial Museum of Pontevedra officially acquired the diptych of the Mater Dolorosa and the Christ Crowned with Thorns, as it was included in a batch of paintings from the Collection Fernández-López.3 The museum was familiar with this artwork since the diptych had already been stored in its deposit since 1981. Moreover, the quality of the piece and its importance in completing the museum's collections of foreign paintings, especially the Flemish school, whose representation was tiny, were sufficient reasons to justify its acquisition.

THE DIPTYCH OF MATER DOLOROSA AND CHRIST CROWNED WITH THORNS, ITS INSCRIPTIONS AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
Two separated panels show the Mater Dolorosa and the Christ Crowned with Thorns in the bust; the representation is linked directly to the Passion episodes that since the 15th century have been depicted to seek a stronger interrelationship with the Devotio Moderna The Odyssey of a Diptych. Issues of Authorship and Provenience 49 movement.4 The main characters stand out on a golden background which highlights their outlines and connects them to traditional Byzantine icons.5 According to the Neoplatonist theory of the Universum and divine light, this formal solution was also applied to pictures during the Late Middle Ages. The golden background creates the abstract image and reinforces the iconographical message, sculptural effect and solemnity of the representation.6 The diptych is made on oak panels (42×32 cm each) cut from a single board that confirms its Flemish provenience.7 It still has frames from the 16th century, probably ones prepared especially for it by its author, which are a part of the composition since they complete the central iconography through the inscriptions that surround the two figures. The inscription around the image of the Virgin reads: "quis posset non / contristari piam matrem / contemplari / dolentem cum filio?"; while the one around Christ, "quis est homo qui non / fleret, iesum cristum / sivideret / in tanto suplicio?". In translation, the inscription around the Virgin is: "Who would not be saddened with the mother contemplating her mournful son in so much pain?", 8. This inscription was most likely introduced at the beginning of the 20th century by some curator of the Czartoryski-Działyński Collection or of the exhibition in Dresden in 1915. The other possibility is that the number was marked during the Second World War by Werner Kudlich and the abbreviation "2 St." means "2 Stück" -two pieces. 9. Hans W. Singer, "Ausstellung von Werken aus der Sammlung Czartoryski in Dresden," Cicerone 7 (1915): 131-140; Georg Minde-Pouet, "Die Kunstsammlung Czartoryski in Goluchow," Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 26 (1915): 197-212. while the one around Christ, "What man would not weep when he sees Christ in such tribulations?".
Those are not the only inscriptions on the diptych. Thanks to the DStretch scans, it has been possible to read notes on the reverse of the Virgin panel that seem to have been erased on purpose (Fig. 2). The following text was written in yellow letters during the 20th century: Q2299 2 St./ C. laauf (the meaning of the latter is unclear) Schule v. d. Weyden 15 Ja.; (in red, inside a circle) 17; 1902 and part of a white label F. NANDEZ.
On the reverse of the Christ, in yellow and on the frame, we can read (Fig. 2 These inscriptions provide some data about the history of the diptych, and link it with one from the Gołuchów Collection that was on display in 1915 in Dresden.9 The panels had been referenced as works following the models of Rogier van der Weyden, both mentioned in the first guide of the Gołuchów Collection in 191310 and in the Dresden exhibition catalogue in 191511 that was dedicated to a part of the Czartoryski Collection. Additionally, panels were also listed in the revised guidebook of the collection before the Second World War.12 This attribution was added, in writing, on the reverse of the works, possibly during the same year in which the collection was displayed in Germany since also visible is a considerably faded inscription that indicates that the diptych comes from the school of Van der Weyden ( Fig. 3 and 4).13 It was Max Friedländer who in 1925 first identified them as copies of a prototype by Dieric Bouts,14 but of later date and not precisely linked with his workshop. Schöne held this attribution in his monograph on Dieric Bouts published in 1938. 15 Davies mentioned the diptych in analyzing other copies that follow the model of the painting with same subject in the National Gallery in London (inv. no. NG711 and no. 712); 16 Eisler mentioned them regarding the bust of Christ held at the Clark Museum in Williamstown (inv. no. 1955.936).17 Moreover, this attribution was repeated in the inventories of the National Museum in Warsaw deposits during the war.18 Bermejo-Martínez reviewed the paintings on the Madrid market and considered them of evident quality, linking the diptych with the workshop of Dieric Bouts. 19 In 2011, Henderiks included the diptych within the workshop production of Dieric's son, Albrecht Bouts, and suggested that it could be a work of Hispanic origin.20 This hypothesis was the most convenient but cannot be sustained, since illuminates them from the upper left side. The gilded back has two different patterns: the illuminated zone is covered with dots, while shadows are modelled by diagonal crossed black lines creating squares. This formal practice was common in artworks coming from the Bouts workshops and the followers of those workshops.23 The Virgin, in a three-quarter view with her hands in a gesture of prayer, directs her sad gaze towards the panel where her son is crowned with thorns. Only the transparent tears falling down her cheeks betray the mother's pain at her son's tribulations. Her face is framed by the white headdress, tight on her forehead and with the edges falling her shoulders. Her purple tunic is almost hidden by a dark blue veil covering the top of her head. The veil is wrapped swirling around her forearms, as revealed by the beautiful golden filigree on the edge of the mantle that reappears around the wrist. This decorative element is missing in the rest of the copies and versions of the Mater Dolorosa.
The figure of Christ is presented in frontal view, with his hands held together in the foreground. He wears a red robe, and blood from the wounds inflicted by the crown of thorns on his head falls in fine drops that drip down his forehead. This sense of immediacy and a moment captured in time that the painter achieves with this approach is reinforced by the transparent tears that rise in Christ's swollen and red eyes. The viewer is forced to face the pain inflicted on the decorative details is the one from the Art Institute in Chicago. The typology reproduces, in bust-length, the model used for the Virgin from the Lamentation over the Dead Christ at the Louvre Museum (inv. Nº RF1) (Fig. 7), dated c. 1460.30 The diptych is closer to the Louvre variant because of the profile of the Virgin, the distribution of the mantle's folds and the figure of Christ. However, precisely in the representation of Christ, some noticeable features are different from the examples mentioned, such as the face being more elongated, the beard is more accentuated at its edges under the chin and the cheekbones, and the orbital cavity and wrinkles of the forehead showing a more rigid treatment that gives the image a thinner appearance compared to the examples in London and Paris or the bust of the Virgin from Chicago. In this sense, there are more similarities with the version in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (inv. no. 17.156-157; Fig. 8) from Albrecht Bouts' workshop,31 where the shadow on the golden background is even more evident, as in the analyzed work.
Therefore, the diptych must be related to a copyist who could stay at Albrecht Bouts' workshop and develop his style in the circle of a master. It can be seen in the details: for example, the impasto brushwork that defines the texture and the folds of the headdress of the Virgin and the complexions of both figures distance this work from the more transparent and smooth technique used in the Paris, London, Chicago and New York versions. Also, despite the darkening of the paint 31. Henderiks,Albrecht Bouts,[220][221]376 (no. 62). 32. Ibid., 224-225; Ead., "L'atelier d'Albrecht Bouts et la production en série d'oeuvres de dévotion privée," Revue belge d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'art 78 (2009): 15-28. layer caused by time, the accentuated shadows indicate the work of an artist who knew the Dieric Bouts version but was not an author of any of the above four versions.
Reflectographic analysis of several known versions of the diptych shows the use of mechanical methods, such as pounced drawing, to simplify the copying process within the workshop. Moreover, Henderiks used the analysis of underlying drawings of several of these diptychs, the comparison between them, and the technique of execution to demonstrate that the underdrawings were made following the model from Albrecht Bouts workshop. At the same time, different artists finished or copied the paintings within the same workshop of the master.32 The author of the diptych shows a taste for the decorative style, as is apparent in the detail of both The Odyssey of a Diptych. Issues of Authorship and Provenience 57 panels. The trimming on the edge of the already mentioned mantle of the Virgin and the ornamentation of the frame that complements the iconography of both panels differ from the versions attributed to the Dieric and Albrecht workshops. This more ornamental rendering of the models compared to the other copies and versions indicates a more evolved style that fits with a later date, establishing the period of its execution as the middle of the 16th century.33 In addition, the section of the white headdress that covers the forehead of the Virgin in the panel stands out for its transparency, absent in other versions of this subject,34 which could be an invention of its author, an artist close to Albrecht, but not to Dieric. This type of transparent headdress is common in paintings by artists of the 16th century; for example, it can be found in the attires painted by Lucas Cranach the Younger, Bernard van Orley, Jan Gossaert or Jan Mostaert, painters active in the first half of the 16th century and later, whose works were popular as models of details for copying. The frame type of both panels is cassetta italiana, with the recessed area decorated with rectangular cartouches edged with ornamental scrollwork supported by small angels kneeling at the top and bottom of the frames and standing on the sides. Some verses of the Stabat Mater from the 16th-century Gregorian Psalms appear inside the cartouches. Primitivos Flamencos en España, mentioning its presence in Madrid from 1973.40 Valentine Henderiks, in her monograph on Albrecht Bouts, brought together the works from the Czartoryski-Działyński Collection in Gołuchów (Poland) and followed them to the Spanish market of the early 1970s,41 without relating them to the diptych formerly in Pontevedra. There is an explanation why two of the most relevant historians of the last quarter of the 20th century and the early 21st century did not link the diptych in the Provincial Museum of Pontevedra with the earlier known origin of the panels in Spain: the main reason is that the diptych had not been reproduced with frames until the beginning of the 21st century, while the frames are one of its most unique aspects. Without them, the diptych seemed to be another of the multiple copies of this prototype.42 Moreover, in 2014 the Polish Ministry of Culture created a website with open access to the repertoires of art plundered during the Second World War43 which confirms that the diptych in Pontevedra and that from the Czartoryski Collection are the same. All preserved photographs of the artistic objects from that collection are included within this database, and the complete image of the diptych is reproduced (no. 38234).44 Pontevedra's diptych was mentioned in research on the despoliation in Poland and in another study of panels of Flemish origin bearing portraits of Anne of Brittany and Charles VIII (currently titled Portrait of a Young Courtier), attributed to Jan Mostaert.45 However, the history of the paintings within the Czartoryski-Działyński Collection is more complex and extends back to the times of Izabela Działyńska née Czartoryska (1830-1899), founder of the collection in Gołuchów. The collection of paintings and antiquities was arranged there after the castle had been 44. http://lootedart.gov.pl/en/producto-war-losses/object?obid=38234, accessed December 16, 2020. restructured in the French Neo-Renaissance style. Artworks were acquired mainly during the Działyńska's stay in Paris, where she resided at the Hotel Lambert until her wedding in 1857.46 Most likely, it is there that she acquired the diptych, at the time attributed to a follower of Rogier van der Weyden. In 1893, due to political tensions between the nobility of Polish origin and the German government, Działyńska issued the ordinance (Fideikomiss) on her properties to protect the integrality of her collection, which could be inherited only by the males of her lineage and would continue to bear her surname. After Działyńska's death, her collection was managed by her nephew Prince Witold Czartoryski.47 In the first guide of Gołuchów Castle, edited in 1913 by Nikodem Pajzderski, the two panels were mentioned as Mater Dolorosa and Ecce Homo, displayed in an antechamber of the dining room on the first floor and described as works of Rogier van der Weyden, with an annotation that they were replicas.48 The diptych was still in the same location and with the same description in 1929, as confirmed by the reissued guide.49 The placement of the works in Gołuchów was made most likely at the initiative of the founder and her heirs did not intervene in any remarkable way in the arrangement of the collection. Unfortunately, the artworks in question are not visible in the few photos taken in Gołuchów before 1939, except the one taken by Antoni Pawlicki in 1913 (currently in the photographic collection of the Jagiellonian University Museum, inv. no. MUJ 3219/F).50 Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Maria Ludwika Czartoryska née Krasińska (1883Krasińska ( -1958  were selected by the curator, who marked them with stickers whose remains can still be seen today on the back of the panels.51 Only eight paintings of small size were taken out of the residence; most likely among those was also the diptych analyzed in this study. The chests with the antiques were buried under the floor of Czartoryska's house at 12 Kredytowa Street in Warsaw, while the eight paintings decorated her apartment.52 Some of the chests commissioned by Czartoryska stayed in Gołuchów, probably so that the occupants would not perceive that a large part of the collection had been relocated away from the building. However, in the 1940s, Maria Ludwika Czartoryska received a written request to deliver her collection to the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region. Over the next few months, she responded to the requests by avoiding giving up her possessions. Two years before, her eldest son Augustyn had married María de los Dolores of Bourbon-Two Sicilies and Orléans. Apparently, during the war, the family link with the Spanish nobility protected the assets of the Czartoryski family only to some extent, since, in the autumn of 1941, Alfred Schellenberg, director of the museums of the Warsaw district, threatened Czartoryska, forcing her to hand over her works of art to the General Governorate.53 After consultations with Stanisław Lorentz, director of the National Museum in Warsaw, Czartoryska decided to deposit her collection in the institution, received in person by Schellenberg on 2 December 1941.54 The chests from her house and the eight paintings, including the diptych, were stored on the first floor of the National Museum.55 In March 1942, the director of the Museum in Troppau, Werner Kudlich, selected 82 objects from the entire Gołuchów collection to be transferred to Kraków and from there to the Third Reich. There were four panels among them: the Mater Dolorosa and Ecce Homo, and the above-mentioned portraits of Anne of Brittany and Charles VIII. The paintings were classified as objects of the first category.56 Until the end of the following year, they were not moved due to the delay in their cataloguing, which provoked a conflict between Hermann Voss (who was to become the future director of the never-completed Führer Museum) and Siegfried Rühle, the director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Poznań, protector of the integrality of the Gołuchów collection.57 Until 1944, the Czartoryski-Działyński Collection remained in Warsaw but, due to the Warsaw Uprising and the intensified military activity in the General Governorate, and following the devastation of the National Museum  1939-1945, 2, ed. Stanisław Lorentz (Warszawa: PIW, 1970 throughout August,58 in the first days of October 1944 the most valuable objects were ordered to be sent to Fischhorn Castle in Austria. On 9 October, the director of the National Museum in Warsaw noted the transfer of 17 wooden chests of Gołuchów objects. Among those, inside the chest number 13, there were eight paintings and liturgical vessels but with annotations that did not come from Gołuchów.59 Still, it was not specified whether the diptych from Pontevedra was among them. On 16 August 1945, the delegate of the National Museum in Warsaw, Bohdan Urbanowicz, was in Fischhorn, then under American occupation, to effect the return of the missing works to the National Museum in Warsaw.60 While classifying the objects, he prepared a diary in which he mentioned some pieces from Gołuchów Castle, such as vessels, enamels and other antiques.61 In April of the following year, the first trains carrying the works of art left for Warsaw. However, none of the eight paintings is mentioned in the documentation of the returned objects. Therefore, they had disappeared before Urbanowicz's arrival or never even reached Fischhorn.
The portrait of Charles VIII was sold in New York in 1948 and deposited by the new owner at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1952. Its pendant, the portrait of Anne of Brittany, belonged to the Arch-Bishop of Salzburg after the Second World War, and in 1959 was also sold in New York.62 The diptych of Mater Dolorosa and Christ Crowned with Thorns under analysis here arrived in Madrid in unknown circumstances.
The diptych seems to be a relevant artwork to consider as a part of the Bouts family legacy, even if it is not directly linked with their hand. This artwork documents the popularity of the iconographical model created by Dieric Bouts in the second half of the 15th century, which lasted for at least the next hundred years. His son Albrecht, who inherited the workshop, continued spreading pictures created by his father and his apprentices, copying them for the needs of the Flemish market. At the same time, this version of the Mater Dolorosa and Christ Crowned with Thorns shows that their close collaborators from his circle and followers copied templates from the Bouts workshop. The formal analysis and comparison with other versions of iconography of this type linked with Bouts' milieu show that the diptych, formerly in Pontevedra, was made by a different hand than the versions 62. Kuhnke, "Dworzanin i dama Jana Mostaerta,[201][202] attributed to Dieric and Albrecht Bouts. The author employed a smoother style and strong chiaroscuro for effigies. He paid more attention to decorative details of the composition than the Bouts workshop, and followed the 16th-century fashion in the Virgin's headdress. For the bust of Christ, he followed Albrecht's expressive style, not Dieric's models. Even if the diptych has few common features with the Parisian, London and Chicago versions, it is similar to the panels in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York and other lower-quality copies around the world. However, the 16th-century frame and its ornaments, typical of the middle of the Cinquecento, further confirm the later execution date of the diptych. The author of the composition might have been a follower of Albrecht Bouts or came from his circle, as indicated by the difference between the styles of Bouts and the author of the diptych. Dzieła o podobnej tematyce, wywodzące się z kręgu niderlandzkich mistrzów działających na przestrzeni XV i XVI w., obrazowały epizody pasyjne i stanowiły ważny element devotio moderna. Istotnym elementem dyptyku są jego XVI-wieczne ramy. Znajdujące się na nich inskrypcje potwierdzają związki wizerunków z ruchami dewocyjnymi. Kompozycja Mater Dolorosa otoczona jest inskrypcją: "Kto się smutkiem nie poruszy, gdy rozważy boleść duszy Matki wraz z jej Dziecięciem?", a przedstawienie Chrystusa cierniem ukoronowanego wersem: "Gdzież jest człowiek, co łzę wstrzyma, gdy mu stanie przed oczyma w mękach Matka ta bez skaz?". Ikonografia dzieła stanowiła przedmiot badań Erwina Panofsky'ego, który wskazał genezę ujęcia Mater Dolorosa w dziele Dierica Boutsa Opłakiwanie Chrystusa (ok. 1455-1468; Luwr, Paryż). To właśnie fragment z tej kompozycji posłużył jako model dla ujęcia Marii, kilkakrotnie kopiowanego przez artystę. Oryginał powstały w warsztacie Dierica nie zachował się, przetrwały za to liczne wersje autorstwa jego naśladowców i kopistów, m.in. w kolekcjach National Gallery w Londynie, Luwru, Institute of Art w Chicago czy Metropolitan Museum of Art w Nowym Jorku.