MASTER OF THE VON GROOTESCHEN ADORATION, workshop (active around 1510 Antwerp) The Adoration of the Magi. Oil on wood. 83.7 × 71.2 cm. Provenance: - Sotheby's auction, London, 15.5.1946, lot 129 (as G. van Coninxloo). - Kunsthandel Wengraf, Arcade Gallery, London. - Auction Fischer, Lucerne, unknown date, probably late 1970s/early 1980s, lot 1987 (labelled on verso). - Swiss private collection. Several variants of this composition by the Antwerp Master of the Adoration of Groote and his workshop are known, whereby it was often used as the central panel of a triptych. The painting offered here is particularly similar to the version in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (inv. no. 1413 a, b, c). The Master of the Adoration of Groote was one of the most important painters of the so-called Antwerp Mannerists, who were active in the first half of the 16th century. Friedländer was the first to describe these painters as a group in 1915, as their works had previously been wrongly attributed to Herri met de Bles (1548-1606) or his workshop. The oeuvre of the Master of the Von Groote Adoration is essentially based on the altarpiece that originally belonged to Baron Von Groote in Kitzburg and depicts the Adoration of the Magi. Further variants of this altarpiece can be found in the John G. Johnson Collection in Philadelphia (inv. no. 383) and in the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe (inv. no. 145, see Max J. Friedländer: Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. XI, Leiden/Brussels 1974, p. 70, cat. no. 29a, b, c, plate 39).