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Lot Essay
Although he was one of the foremost history painters in Antwerp during the final decades of the 16th century, little is known about Jacob de Backer’s life and career. According to Karel van Mander, he died young at the age of 30, yet seems to have been prodigiously industrious and prolific. In his essay on De Backer’s legacy, Eckhard Leuschner of Julius-Maximilians-Universität in Würzburg – who has published extensively on De Backer – points out that 'only three known pictures can be traced back by means of provenance to the days of De Backer' and serve as the basis for the attribution of 'other, undocumented paintings' (“Defining De Backer: New Evidence on the Last Phase of Antwerp Mannerism Before Rubens”, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, CXXXVII, no. 1587, 2001, p. 168). Two of these works are depictions of the Last Judgment – one painted for the funerary monument of a fellow Antwerp painter, Pieter Goetkind I (d. 1583), remembered chiefly for his role as an early teacher of Jan Brueghel I; the other for the funerary monument of Christopher Plantin (d. 1589), the pioneering, world-renowned printer and publisher. The “Plantin Epitaph” is still in Antwerp’s Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe Cathedral. The other painting recently sold in These Rooms on 28 January 2015, lot 107 ($269,000).
Of nearly every composition by or attributed to De Backer two or more versions exist and large-scale depictions of the Last Judgment were one of the artist’s signature products. The present work is a version of the aforementioned Goetkind epitaph which presents the lower half of the composition in a horizontal format. Only the lowermost, central angel of judgment is retained to signal the cataclysmic event. Another version, similarly modified to fill a horizontal format, is in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (inv. 653), and was for some time believed to be the artist’s earliest dated work, but both the date and its authenticity have been questioned by Leuschner. In his articles, Leuschner observes there is a varying quality and a “plurality of substyles” within the works attributed to the artist and he prefers to speak of the “De Backer group” instead of attempting to make a strict division between fully autograph works and those produced by members of the studio. The present version of the composition, which originally was painted on panel, is of distinguished quality.
Of nearly every composition by or attributed to De Backer two or more versions exist and large-scale depictions of the Last Judgment were one of the artist’s signature products. The present work is a version of the aforementioned Goetkind epitaph which presents the lower half of the composition in a horizontal format. Only the lowermost, central angel of judgment is retained to signal the cataclysmic event. Another version, similarly modified to fill a horizontal format, is in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (inv. 653), and was for some time believed to be the artist’s earliest dated work, but both the date and its authenticity have been questioned by Leuschner. In his articles, Leuschner observes there is a varying quality and a “plurality of substyles” within the works attributed to the artist and he prefers to speak of the “De Backer group” instead of attempting to make a strict division between fully autograph works and those produced by members of the studio. The present version of the composition, which originally was painted on panel, is of distinguished quality.