CORNELIS VAN CLEVE, workshop (1520 Antwerp 1567) Mary with child, St John the Baptist and angels. Oil on wood. 63.7 × 51.2 cm. Provenance: Swiss private property. This atmospheric composition with Mary and the Christ Child, St John the Baptist and angels can be identified as a very high-quality work from the workshop of Cornelis van Cleve. Individual motifs such as the Mother of God, the boy Jesus and the draped curtain are particularly expressive and convey the artistic proximity to the master. The composition takes up an idea by Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531), which was very popular in the 16th century and to which numerous contemporary copies bear witness (John Shearman: Andrea del Sarto, Oxford 1965, no. 32, pp. 217-219). Cornelis van Cleve devoted himself to this depiction several times, for example in a version in the Chrysler Museum of Art (inv. no. 2014.3.4), in which the composition is supplemented by a rounded staircase in the foreground, which is also taken up in the painting offered here. Cornelis van Cleve's oeuvre has been little explored to date due to the lack of documented works. Stylistically influenced by his father Joos van Cleve (1485-1540), with whom Cornelis was apprenticed, a number of high-quality panels can be attributed to Cornelis' hand, to which the work presented here can also be related. We would like to thank Dr John Hand for his help in cataloguing this work on the basis of a photograph.