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Lot Essay
Three of the pictures depicted within the present painting can be identified. Over the fireplace is Theodoor Rombouts' Christ driving the Moneychangers from the Temple, now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, ed. L. Vertova, Turin, 1990, I, p. 164, III, pl. 1009). On the chair in front of it is Jan Davidsz. de Heem's Still life in the Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio. On the back wall is Cornelis Saftleven's Market scene of 1659 last recorded in a sale at Galerie Stuker, Berne, 10-16 November 1960, lot 1028, pl. 17 (W. Schulz, Cornelis Saftleven, Berlin and New York, 1978, p. 221, no. 622). The Virgin and Child on the right is close to that in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, in which the background is a view of Bruges rather than a landscape seen through a window (M.J. Friedlnder, Early Netherlandish Painting, VI, ed. N. Verone-Verhaegen, Leyden and Brussels, 1971, I, no. 149, pl. 155).
The present picture is datable from the incomplete date inscribed on it and the costumes of the sitters to the early 1660s; the depiction in it of the painting by Saftleven dated 1659 is thus of particular interest.
The present picture is datable from the incomplete date inscribed on it and the costumes of the sitters to the early 1660s; the depiction in it of the painting by Saftleven dated 1659 is thus of particular interest.