‘annunciation’ : Getty buys an ‘art puzzle’

A rare 15th-Century Flemish painting that is part of both a lost masterwork and an international art puzzle has just been purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum. It is a depiction of the biblical “Annunciation” by Dieric Bouts (d. 1475).

The artist is a somewhat shadowy figure whose modestly poetic and austere art skyrocketed to worldly prominence here in 1980 when the Norton Simon Museum paid a record $4.2 million at auction for another Bouts, his “Ressurrection.” A great part of the interest of the Getty’s purchase is that both paintings are part of the same altarpiece. Both are painted in tempera on linen and are approximately the same size, about 36 by 30 inches.

“To get an excellent, well-preserved picture by a great Flemish master is what you dream about,” Getty painting curator Myron Laskin said. “All the better that it is a companion piece to the Norton Simon ‘Resurrection’ and that we might be able to reunite them. We’ll be looking into ways we might be able to exhibit them together.”

The Getty purchase was made privately. A spokesperson would not reveal the price but it is a reasonable assumption that it is somewhere in the same range as the Simon section.

Until now, the Getty “Annunciation” has been unknown and unpublished in modern times, but scholars are convinced that the Simon and the new Getty section are part of the same lost Bouts masterwork known as “The Altarpiece of the Sacrament,” a five-part painting executed around 1464-68 for St. Peter in Louvain. (Bouts, born in Haarlem, worked in Louvain.) Some scholars believe that he was influenced by the better-known master Rogier van der Weyden. Bouts’ style combines the decorative contours of the Middle Ages with the dawning use of realistic depiction that led to the Renaissance.

Traditionally, the present altarpiece was regarded as Bouts’ chef d’oeuvre . The work disappeared for generations until parts of it were rediscovered in a private Milanese collection in 1858 by Sir Charles Eastlake, director of London’s National Gallery. He purchased a section depicting Christ’s entombment for the National Gallery, where it hangs today. (The gallery was the underbidder in auction competition for the Simon section.)

A “Crucifixion” now assumed to be the central panel appeared in Brussels in 1957 and was purchased for the Royal Museum. A fifth part remains out of sight in a private collection.

The Getty expects to put its new treasure on public view in mid-February.