The artwork

Workshop of the Master of the Prodigal Son 1530/1580 - The passage of the Red Sea - Flemish School around 1580

This remarkable composition is part of a typically Flemish pictorial context, with a host of characters and details.

The passage of the Red Sea is a biblical and Koranic narrative according to which the sea that blocks the passage of the Israelites fleeing the Egyptian army opens miraculously to let the Israelites pass and closes on their pursuers.
The Hebrews are facing the Red Sea or Sea of ​​the Reeds when the Egyptian troops are pursuing them. Moses stretches out his hands toward the Sea whose waters split to leave a passage. The people enter the corridor. In their turn the Egyptians introduce themselves but Moses makes the sea return to its place engulfing the troops of Pharaoh.
This narrative is considered one of the founding events of Judaism, grounding its faith in miraculous redemption by a personal God. It is traditionally read on the seventh day of Pesach.
The exodus of the Red Sea is the ancient mythical account of a divine war (conflict between the creative God and the primitive ocean, such as the Canaanite myth of Baal against Yam), taken up by a priestly author who historicizes the myth by Replacing the biblical context of the deliverance of the Hebrew people of the Egyptians.

Signed: anonymous
Period: Flemish school of XVI °
Theme: Religious
Technique: Oil on 4 panels of reinforced oak - old restorations - good condition
Format: with frame 128 x 97 cm - without frame 100 x 76 cm
Setting: recent carved wood - good condition

The Artist : Atelier du Maître du Fils Prodigue 1530/1580

This painting can be attributed to the Master of the Son of the Prodigal, Antwerp artist. Artists whose identity is unknown are often referred to as a group of works grouped around a painting in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna entitled The Prodigal Son of Courtesans (successively attributed to Mandijn, van Palermo and then Kroes ).
His style is manifested by an influence of Roman painting and some borrowings from Mannerism International.
His feminine figures, dignified or even dressed, bring him closer to the work of Frans Floris (1520-1570) and his realism to that of Peter Aertsen (1508-1575).
In this painting we find the same atmosphere as in the paintings of the Master of the Prodigal Son, characters with ample and exaggerated movements accentuated by an improbable length of the limbs. The palette of colors is also characteristic of the works of the Antwerp painter.
The Master of the Prodigal Son essentially illustrated religious themes of the Old and New Testaments. Some of his creations were produced in series, suggesting that he was at the head of a large workshop in the city of Antwerp.
Around this artist without face and his assistants, the specialists gather about forty paintings that are discovered in several museums as well as in churches, in Europe as well as in the United States (a Virgin with the child is visible in the Cleveland Museum). Art historians attribute it to Christ and the Pilgrims of Emmaus in the Warsaw Museum, Satan sowing the darnel of the Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts, a Tobit's Return from the Ghent Museum, a Court of Miracles at The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, the Suzanne painting and the elders of the Porto Museum. Similarly, when one consults the base Joconde, the portal of the collections of the museums of France, one finds under the name of the Master of the prodigal son oil paintings on wood like La Vertu which rewards the Work and chastises the Laziness of the Museum of Chambery, The Wedding of Cana of the Museum of Rouen, The Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist of the Museum of Pau, The Works of Mercy of the Museum of Valenciennes, The Old Man in love with the museum of Douai