.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Adriaen van Stalbemt was active in Antwerp and Middelburg, and also spent ten months in 1633-4 in England, where, among other pictures, he painted two views of Greenwich. His style was ecclectic, revealing the influences of Jan Breughel I, Hendrick van Balen, Paul Bril, and Adam Elsheimer, to whom a group of Stalbemt's pictures had previously been given (see K. Andrews, 'A Pseudo-Elsheimer Group: Adriaen van Stalbemt as Figure painter', in The Burlington Magazine, CXV, 1973, pp. 301-6). This beautifully preserved panel exhibits Stalbemt's characteristically meticulous brush technique, from the miniature detailing of the shells in the forground, and the crisply delineated foliage, to the classical town that appears through the vaporous mist along the coastline beyond.
We are grateful to Dr. Elizabeth McGrath of the Warburg Institute for identifying the uncommon subject of this painting, which depicts Hecuba, the wife of King Priam of Troy, discovering the body of her last son, Polydorus (Metamorphoses, XIII, 482-575). The scene was included in illustrated editions of the Metamorphoses, in particular the popular collection of illustrations by Tempesta, but never with the pair of symbolic black birds. Hecuba had come to the sea with her handmaidens to wash the body of her sacrificed daughter, Polyxena. Instead she found the corpse of her son being washed up onto the shore, having been murdered by Polymnestor, to whom he had been sent for safekeeping during the Trojan war. Dante described this episode thus: 'And when fortune overturned the pride of the Trojans, who dared everything, so that both the king and his kingdom were destroyed, Poor wretched captured Hecuba, after she saw her Pollydorus on the beach, was driven mad by sorrow and began barking like a dog...' (Inferno XXX: 13-20).
We are grateful to Dr. Elizabeth McGrath of the Warburg Institute for identifying the uncommon subject of this painting, which depicts Hecuba, the wife of King Priam of Troy, discovering the body of her last son, Polydorus (Metamorphoses, XIII, 482-575). The scene was included in illustrated editions of the Metamorphoses, in particular the popular collection of illustrations by Tempesta, but never with the pair of symbolic black birds. Hecuba had come to the sea with her handmaidens to wash the body of her sacrificed daughter, Polyxena. Instead she found the corpse of her son being washed up onto the shore, having been murdered by Polymnestor, to whom he had been sent for safekeeping during the Trojan war. Dante described this episode thus: 'And when fortune overturned the pride of the Trojans, who dared everything, so that both the king and his kingdom were destroyed, Poor wretched captured Hecuba, after she saw her Pollydorus on the beach, was driven mad by sorrow and began barking like a dog...' (Inferno XXX: 13-20).