Circle of Geertgen tot Sint Jans

Circle of is the loosest of the attribution labels. It says a picture was made close to a master, in his town and in his manner, by someone who need not have trained with him. The Rijksmuseum uses it for this Tree of Jesse, painted in Haarlem around 1500.

Jesse, the ancestor of the kings of Israel, lies asleep, and a tree grows out of him with kings in its branches, King David among them with his harp. At the top the Virgin sits enthroned with the Child. The panel may have come from a Haarlem convent, the Wittevrouwenklooster.

For much of the 20th century it carried another name. Around 1916 the German scholar Max Friedländer gave it to Jan Mostaert, a younger Haarlem painter, and many specialists followed him. The museum now finds it closer to Geertgen's own panels than to Mostaert's early work, and so places it in Geertgen's circle. It bought the painting in 1956 with help from the Vereniging Rembrandt, a Dutch society that funds museum purchases.