Justus van Egmont (Leiden 1601-1674 Antwerp)

A personification of Taste: A young woman with a basket of fruit and thieving monkeys

Details

Justus van Egmont (Leiden 1601-1674 Antwerp)
A personification of Taste: A young woman with a basket of fruit and thieving monkeys
oil on panel
47 ¼ x 19 ¾ in. (120 x 50 cm.)

Provenance

(Probably) Jean-Baptiste Dubarry, Comte du Barry-Cérès.
Jacob Lyversberg (1761-1834), Cologne.
Lyversberg Collection sale; Heberle-Lempertz, Cologne, 16 August 1837, lot 89, as J. Jordaens ‘Ein kind mit früchten und zwei affen’, on canvas.
Virnich Collection, Bonn.
Anonymous sale; Lempertz, Cologne, 26 May 1971, lot 41, as ‘Flemish School’.
Anonymous sale; Leo Spik, Berlin, 4 April 1973, lot 286, as ‘Jacob Jordaens’.

Literature

B. Schepers, Monkey Madness in Seventeenth- Century Antwerp, Genesis and success of a unique pictorial genre, doctoral dissertation, KU Leuven University, September 2016, pp. 97-98, fig. 111.8.

Lot Essay

This panel has been identified on stylistic grounds by Bert Schepers as the work of Justus van Egmont and perhaps as part of a series of the Five Senses or as depicting Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruitful abundance. Probably painted early in Van Egmont’s career in Paris in the 1630s, and designed to be seen from below. A seal on the reverse has been thought to be that of Jean-Baptiste Dubarry, Comte du Barry-Cérès (but the picture was not in his sale, which was held in Paris on 21 November 1774).

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