Lot Essay
The present work was executed after Janssens returned to Antwerp from Italy circa 1606. Prior to this date he had been little influenced by Caravaggio, but his work in the following years clearly reflected the Neapolitan artist's influence.
A comparison with the Dead Christ mourned by Angels in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Inv. no. 1971.101, of circa 1609-10 suggests a similar date for the present work, and this is further supported on examination alongside the Allegory of the Scheldt (Scaldis and Antwerpia), dated 1609, in the Musée royaux des Beaux-Arts, Antwerp (see W. Liedke, Flemish Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984, I, pp. 108-11; II, p. 63, pl. 49). The strong morphology of these works, their emphatically sculptural forms seen in frozen poses modelled in light and shade, and their slightly glazed expressions led Müller Hofstede to place them at the culmination of this stylistic phase that had begun circa 1606. (see J. Müller Hofstede, Abraham Janssens, zur Problematik des flämischen Caravaggismus, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, XIII, 1971, p. 250, no. 135).
A comparison with the Dead Christ mourned by Angels in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Inv. no. 1971.101, of circa 1609-10 suggests a similar date for the present work, and this is further supported on examination alongside the Allegory of the Scheldt (Scaldis and Antwerpia), dated 1609, in the Musée royaux des Beaux-Arts, Antwerp (see W. Liedke, Flemish Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984, I, pp. 108-11; II, p. 63, pl. 49). The strong morphology of these works, their emphatically sculptural forms seen in frozen poses modelled in light and shade, and their slightly glazed expressions led Müller Hofstede to place them at the culmination of this stylistic phase that had begun circa 1606. (see J. Müller Hofstede, Abraham Janssens, zur Problematik des flämischen Caravaggismus, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, XIII, 1971, p. 250, no. 135).