2-995-888 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Beaucousin Collection at the National Gallery - "The Death of the Virgin", by Martin Schoen, 1860. Engraving of a painting. 'The most recent accession to our National Gallery, at least of those which have been exposed to public scrutiny, is the collection of thirty-one pictures purchased last year from M. Edmond Beaucousin, at Paris, for some £5000 or £6000, we do not recollect the exact amount. Martin Schoen, a German artist of the latter part of the fifteenth century, obtained his knowledge of painting, and particularly in the use of colours, from the elder Roger van de Weyden, called Roger of Bruges. The little picture of "The Death of the Virgin" is a curious example of the peculiar character of German painting at this period. The scene is a chamber with a window looking out upon a square; the Virgin is represented having received the last offices of the Church, lying in a bed surrounded by the twelve Apostles, whose countenances are full of sorrow, various in degree and mode of expression. Above the head of the bed is the Deity, surrounded by angels, about to receive her soul'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.