Attribué à Cornelis Van Cleve (Anvers, 1520 - après 1567) Vierge à l'Enfant aux cerises. photo Artcurial - Briest-Poulain-F.Tajan

Panneau de chêne, une planche, non parqueté, réduit sur les bords. (Restaurations anciennes). Sans cadre, 27,50 x 21,20 cm (10,73 x 8,27 in.) - Estimation : 20 000 / 30 000 €

Artcurial - Briest-Poulain-F.Tajan - Paris. Vente du Lundi 21 juin 2010. Hôtel Dassault - 7 Rond Point des Champs-Elysées - 75008 - Paris. Pour toute information complémentaire, veuillez contacter Sophie Peyrache au +33 1 42 99 20 41

Cornelis van Cleve, Cornelis van Cleef dit Sotte Cleef est né à Anvers en 1520 et décédé en 1567 est un peintre flamand de sujets religieux et mythologiques, ainsi que de portraits.

Fils de Joos van Cleve le Jeune, alias Jost van der Beke, ce peintre acquit probablement en 1541 la franchise à la gilde de Saint-Luc des peintres à Anvers immédiatement après le décès de son père en 1540.

Carel van Mander en 1604, lui donne à tort le prénom de son père, Joos van Cleef geheeten den Sotten Cleef, nous informe que le peintre se rendit en Angleterre, probablement en 1555, où il escomptait obtenir des commandes de la cour royale. Ayant été évincé au profit de grands peintres italiens, il aurait sombré dans la folie. (wikipedia)

Cornelis van Cleve. Flemish painter, son of Joos van Cleve. He was a pupil of his father, with whom he collaborated in his father's last years. The apparent influence of Italian artists, particularly Andrea del Sarto, on Cornelis's style suggests that he visited Italy in his youth, but there is no documentary evidence for this. It is likely that Cornelis became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke following the death of his father in the winter of 1540-41, in order to continue the studio; in 1545 he joined the Guild's mutual aid association (Arbenbus). In the same year he bought a house in the city, and on 28 December 1546 he married Anna Aerts, the daughter of a parchment maker.

Cornelis van Cleve seems not to have been very successful: he had difficulties making his house payments in 1546 and 1547, which may explain why he sold it in 1555 and emigrated to England. (Another reason may have been his Protestant sympathies, to judge from the name of his daughter, Abigael.) Once in England, according to van Mander, Cornelis tried to establish himself as a portrait painter, and his failure to do so drove him insane (hence his nickname, ‘sotte Cleef'). Nothing of his work in England has survived, except, possibly, the Portrait of Two Boys (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam). Cornelis van Cleve was brought back to Antwerp and put into the custody of his son-in-law but apparently never recovered.  (wikipedia)