Lucas van Valckenborch I (Leuven after 1535-1597 Frankfurt am Main)
PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR
Lucas van Valckenborch I (Leuven after 1535-1597 Frankfurt am Main)

The Tower of Babel

Details
Lucas van Valckenborch I (Leuven after 1535-1597 Frankfurt am Main)
The Tower of Babel
oil on panel
19 1/8 x 25 ¼ in. (48.5 x 64 cm.)
Provenance
Private collection, Italy.
Anonymous sale; Lempertz, Cologne, 14 May 2011, lot 1024, where acquired by the present owner.
Sale room notice
This Lot is Withdrawn.

Lot Essay

The Tower of Babel is arguably the most iconic subject painted by Flemish artists active in the 16th and early 17th centuries. The theme was first treated by Pieter Bruegel I in three works, the first of which was a now-lost miniature on ivory documented in 1577 in the collection of Giulio Clovio, in whose workshop Bruegel had spent time. Bruegel followed this with a large panel painting in 1563, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (fig. 1), and another dating to a few years later in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. The subject is an origin myth found in Genesis 11:1-9, which recounts how mankind decided to build a tower ‘that reaches to the heavens’. As punishment for their hubris, God is said to have confused their language so that they could no longer understand one another, thereby explaining why so many languages are spoken today.

Bruegel’s early depictions of this subject had a decisive impact on those by his contemporaries, including Valckenborch. Just as Bruegel had in the painting in Vienna, Valckenborch depicts the Assyrian king Nimrod—here wearing a long ermine cloak—with the builders atop a plateau in the left foreground. In both paintings this rocky outcropping quickly gives way to a flat, panoramic landscape with a port at lower right. The tower’s characteristic conical shape, unfinished state and façade composed of multiple stories of superimposed arcades ultimately derives from the Colosseum in Rome, which Valckenborch, who seems not to have travelled to Italy, must have known through a series of engraved views published by Hieronymus Cock in 1551.

Valckenborch painted at least seven versions of this composition, four of which are today in public collections: Alte Pinakothek, Munich (fig. 2); Landesmuseum, Mainz (fig. 3); Mittelrhein-Museum, Koblenz (fig. 4); and Musée du Louvre, Paris (fig. 5). The present painting is most similar to the slightly smaller version in the Louvre, the principal difference being the arrangement and dress of the foreground figures. The Louvre version is signed and dated 1594, which has led Dr. Alexander Wied to date this painting to shortly thereafter.

Along with his elder brother, Marten, Lucas van Valckenborch was the first generation of an artistic family that would come to number at least fourteen painters. Born in Leuven, Lucas joined the Mechelen painters guild in 1560, moved to Liège in 1566, and subsequently followed his brother to Aachen. By 1575, he was residing in Antwerp, where, in 1579, he was named court painter to the Habsburg Archduke Matthias (1557-1619), governor of the Spanish Netherlands. In or after 1582, he accompanied the Archduke to Linz, ultimately reuniting with his family in Frankfurt around 1592/3, where he appears to have headed up a large workshop.

Dr. Alexander Wied endorsed the attribution to Valckenborch following firsthand inspection of the painting at the time of the 2011 sale. A copy of his letter will be provided with the painting.

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