Paintings from the Sutherland Collection

Acquisition of 4 paintings from the Sutherland collection. Gerrit Dou 'An Interior with a Young Violinist; Jan Steen 'A School for Boys and Girls'; Lorenzo Lotto, The Virgin and Child with Four Saints; Jacopo Tintoretto, Christ Carried to the TombThis finely-detailed painting shows an interior with a violinist seated in a chair. Signed and dated on the bottom step of the staircase, this is the earliest dated picture by Dou to have survived. It must have been particularly prized as it was bought by the Swedish Minister to The Hague, Pieter Spiering, who in turn presented it to Queen Christina of Sweden. Jan Steen: the largest of several schoolroom scenes by Steen, this was painted c 1760. This painting is not merely a light-hearted view of a chaotic schoolroom, but demonstrates the evils of inattentiveness in a school without discipline This picture, the largest and most elaborate of Steen's school scenes, was loosely based on Raphael's famous mural in the Vatican, the School of Athens. In doing so Steen made an erudite joke, basing this chaotic classroom on the dignified grouping of the greatest scholars of antiquity. Lotto: an early painting of about 1505 by the Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto (c 1480-1556/7) representing the Virgin and Child with Saints Peter and Francis and probably S Jerome and and unidentified femal saint (formerly identified as St Claire). Tintoretto: an altarpiece by Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto (1519-1594) showing the body of Christ being carried by disciples from the site of the Crucifixion on Mount Golgotha to the cave of the sepulchre. The picture was painted around 1565 for the altar of the Dal Basso family chapel in the church of San Francesco della Vigna in Venice.