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Lot Essay
This painting would seem to be an example of the very rare work of the Utrecht-based, catholic artist, Dirck van Voorst. The artist was a pupil of Abraham Bloemaert - an influence clearly visible in Van Voorst's Lamentation (see below) - and is recorded as having been a member of the Utrecht Guild of Painters in 1656. The following year, Bloemaert's sons, Frederick and Adriaen, both witnessed van Voorst's will drawn up at his death in 1657. Presumably short-lived, his output is known to consist of just two other pictures: a Lamentation in the church of Saints Willebord and Boniface, Amersfoort, and a Portrait of Henricus van Eck on his deathbed, datable to 1651, in the Rijksmuseum Het Catharijnconvent, Utrecht (RKD files; printed as Portrait of an unknown priest in B.J. Kaplan, 'Confessionalism and Its Limits: Religion in Utrecht, 1600-6150', in the catalogue of the exhibition, Masters of Light, San Francisco, Baltimore and London, 1997-8, pp. 66-7, fig. 4).
Although the present work does not relate particularly closely to either of the above, the classical subject and treatment would not be unusual for an artist from mid-seventeenth-century Utrecht. Stylistically, the picture reveals a lingering influence of Bloemaert - compare, for example, the profile of the satyr on the right of the present picture with that of the similarly placed shepherd in Abraham Bloemaert's Adoration of 1623 (St. Jacobus, The Hague) - as well as some debt to the broader Mannerist movement (for example in the reclining figure of Bacchus, which derives from the work of Rudolfine artists: see, for example, the reclining figure of Venus in Goltzius' engraving of 1588, after a design by Spranger, of Mars and Venus). Stylistically, however, the painting seems closer to the influence of Rome than Prague, and to Poussin in particular. Bearing this in mind and given the propensity for Utrecht painters to travel South, this picture suggests that the artist may at some point in his career have worked in Italy.
Although the present work does not relate particularly closely to either of the above, the classical subject and treatment would not be unusual for an artist from mid-seventeenth-century Utrecht. Stylistically, the picture reveals a lingering influence of Bloemaert - compare, for example, the profile of the satyr on the right of the present picture with that of the similarly placed shepherd in Abraham Bloemaert's Adoration of 1623 (St. Jacobus, The Hague) - as well as some debt to the broader Mannerist movement (for example in the reclining figure of Bacchus, which derives from the work of Rudolfine artists: see, for example, the reclining figure of Venus in Goltzius' engraving of 1588, after a design by Spranger, of Mars and Venus). Stylistically, however, the painting seems closer to the influence of Rome than Prague, and to Poussin in particular. Bearing this in mind and given the propensity for Utrecht painters to travel South, this picture suggests that the artist may at some point in his career have worked in Italy.