Footnotes

• Provenance
  Marquise du Plessis-Belliere
  Sale, Paris, 10 May 1897, lot 63 (as Frans Floris)
  With Durand Ruel, Paris, by whom sold in 1903 to
  J.H.Wade, Cleveland, US, gifted in 1916 to
  Cleveland Museum of Art, US
  With Sloan and Roman, Madison Ave, NY by 1967
  Paul F Webster, Beverly Hills, USA, by 1969, and thence by descent to the present owner
  
  Exhibited
  Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition, 1936, no. 200 (as The Master of the Prodigal Son)
  
  
  Literature
  Cleveland Museum of Art Bulletin, January 1917, vol. IV, p. 4, 6, ill. (as Frans Floris)
  Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook 1925, p. 27 (as Frans Floris)
  F.W. Freund, in International Studio, December, 1928, vol. 91, p. 63-4, ill
  Catalogue of the twentieth anniversary exhibition of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the official art exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition, Cleveland, 1936, p. 83, cat. no. 200 (as The Master of the Prodigal Son)
  
  
  This anonymous master was most likely working in Antwerp in the first half of the 16th century. The present composition comes closest, with minor differences in the background and still life elements, to a work sold at Christie's, London, 9 December 2005, lot 124 (RKD 59073, oil on panel, 88 x 68.3 cm.). Two similar versions by the Master of the Parrot include those sold Wannenes, Genoa, 29 November 2011, lot 139 (on panel, 86 x 72 cm.); and offered at Sotheby's, 5 December 2007, lot 50 (on panel, 86 x 72 cm.). A further version of the composition was with Robert Finck Galleries, Brussels in 1964, (see: Tableaux de maitres flamands du XV au XVII siecle, exh. cat., no. 10).
  
  The central figures in the present work are based on a group of paintings of the Holy Family by Pieter Coeck van Aelst (see: G. Marlier, La Renaissance flamande, Pierre Coeck d'Alost, 1966, pp. 219-49) the prototype for which was formerly in the Joly Collection, Bruges, (ibid., fig. no. 179).