.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
We are grateful to Dr. Luuk Pijl for proposing the attribition to Louis de Caullery on the basis of photographs. He considers the handling to be typical for the artist and closely comparable with a pair of views sold at Piasa, Paris, 27 March 2000, lot 39.
Possibly born in the village of Caulery near Cambrai, it seems that Louis de Caullery arrived in Antwerp in 1594, where he trained with Josse de Momper and became Master in 1602. He specialised in genre painting, showing a vast repertoire that included winter scenes with skaters, biblical scenes, fireworks, allegories and interiors. It is generally assumed that he travelled to Italy at some stage, possibly living in Venice, Florence and Rome; this would explain his use of colour, which was somewhat innovative in Antwerp.
The subject, taken from Genesis (11:1-9) recounts how the people decided to 'build ourselves a city and a tower, with its top in the heavens' and appointed Nimrod - 'the mighty warrior before the Lord' - to oversee its construction. This account provided a rich source of subject matter for several late 16th and early 17th century Flemish painters (including de Momper, for example the picture in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, inv. no. 8032) whose representations of it were inspired ultimately by the two iconic eponymous works of 1563 by Pieter Breughel the Elder (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; and Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen). It was ideally suited to De Caullery's favoured compositional device of scenes animated by elegant figures conversing or simply standing in the foreground.
Possibly born in the village of Caulery near Cambrai, it seems that Louis de Caullery arrived in Antwerp in 1594, where he trained with Josse de Momper and became Master in 1602. He specialised in genre painting, showing a vast repertoire that included winter scenes with skaters, biblical scenes, fireworks, allegories and interiors. It is generally assumed that he travelled to Italy at some stage, possibly living in Venice, Florence and Rome; this would explain his use of colour, which was somewhat innovative in Antwerp.
The subject, taken from Genesis (11:1-9) recounts how the people decided to 'build ourselves a city and a tower, with its top in the heavens' and appointed Nimrod - 'the mighty warrior before the Lord' - to oversee its construction. This account provided a rich source of subject matter for several late 16th and early 17th century Flemish painters (including de Momper, for example the picture in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, inv. no. 8032) whose representations of it were inspired ultimately by the two iconic eponymous works of 1563 by Pieter Breughel the Elder (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; and Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen). It was ideally suited to De Caullery's favoured compositional device of scenes animated by elegant figures conversing or simply standing in the foreground.