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Lot Essay
Following his probable training with Maerten de Vos (1532-c.1593) in Antwerp, Hendrick de Clerck spent most of his career in Brussels where he was appointed court painter to the Archduke Ernest in 1594. In 1596, after the Archduke's death, his brother Emperor Rudolf II arranged for de Clerck to stay on as court painter in the service of the new Archduke, Albert and his wife, Isabella. Much of his religious production of this and the following decades was for churches in the Brussels area where a number of his paintings still remain.
It is extremely difficult to date de Clerck's paintings as his style evolved little. However, in the 1590s he produced elaborate, large-scale compositions of devotional subjects, such as the altarpiece for the church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle, The Family of the Virgin (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), with which the present canvas may be compared.
De Clerck's surviving oeuvre includes both large-scale religious and history paintings as well as small easel or cabinet paintings in a highly decorative Mannerist style, sometimes in collaboration with other painters, notably Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) and Denis van Alsloot (1599-c. 1628). In his late religious work, for example The Descent from the Cross of 1628, painted for the collegiate foundation at Anderlecht, he remained true to the forms of his youth in spite of the swift developments which had taken place around him.
It is extremely difficult to date de Clerck's paintings as his style evolved little. However, in the 1590s he produced elaborate, large-scale compositions of devotional subjects, such as the altarpiece for the church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle, The Family of the Virgin (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), with which the present canvas may be compared.
De Clerck's surviving oeuvre includes both large-scale religious and history paintings as well as small easel or cabinet paintings in a highly decorative Mannerist style, sometimes in collaboration with other painters, notably Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) and Denis van Alsloot (1599-c. 1628). In his late religious work, for example The Descent from the Cross of 1628, painted for the collegiate foundation at Anderlecht, he remained true to the forms of his youth in spite of the swift developments which had taken place around him.