PROBABLY ANTWERP, SECOND HALF 17TH CENTURYTHE STAND ENGLISH, SECOND QUARTER 19TH CENTURY

In the seventeenth century, Antwerp was the leading European centre for painted cabinets, a production encouraged by Philip II of Spain's 1603 ban on the import of Nuremberg cabinets. Contemporary painted interiors show that they were display pieces, with the ebony doors often open to display small oil paintings. These cabinets were used to house collections of jewellery, silver, minerals, shells and other specimens, a link with the princely tradition of the kunstkammer.

Here, the painted panels depict a series of scenes taken from Ovid's epic poem Metamorphoses, an immensely popular source of subject matter for the arts in all media. Series of engravings and etchings depicting dozens of moments from the narrative were widely circulated across northern Europe, their often rectangular formats providing ample inspiration for the small paintings created to adorn these cabinets.

Upper left to lower left: Minerva and the Muses; Mercury, Herse and Aglauros; Venus discovering the body of Adonis; Venus and Adonis
Centre: Atalanta and Meleager (after Rubens' painting of the same subject, circa 1635, at the Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
Lower centre: Narcissus
Upper right to lower right: Neptune and Amphitrite; The Abduction of Europa; Perseus and Andromeda; The Abduction of Proserpina
On the drawer, left to right: Thisbe runs from the lion; The Deaths of Pyramus and Thisbe