Lot Essay
On the left an elderly man of science explains a theory to three younger men by a table on which are scientific instruments, shells, a globe, books and sheets of paper. In the centre a youth removes a cloth covering statues for three art lovers. To the right two art lovers study paintings.
The walls are hung with pictures. It is by no means possible to be certain about the authorship of the majority of the prototypes of the pictures displayed; the identifications that follow are for the most part suggestions only.
To the left of the window is a Pan and Syrinx in the style of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen; beneath is a Delivery of Saint Peter: a similar picture attributed to David Teniers I was illustrated in Arte Illustrata (no date given on Witt Library mount) as in the collection of Lord Bruce, Broomhall.
To the left of the door is a Personification of Abundance in the style of Abraham Janssens; beneath is a Portrait of a Man in the style of Anthonis Mor; beside it is a Judith and Holofernes perhaps by a follower of Elsheimer as the composition connects with the picture at Apsley House (see K. Andrews, Adam Elsheimer, New York, 1977, no. 12); on its right is a Portrait of a Man similar to the previous one; in the second row from the bottom are Two Women in a Kitchen(?) perhaps also by a follower of Elsheimer, a Still Life of Flowers in a Vase in the style of Jan Brueghel I, and a View of a Town ablaze by Night, in the style of Tobias Verhaecht; on the bottom row is a Seascape and a Landscape.
Above the door is a Joseph and Potiphar's Wife by an artist connected with Pieter van Lint, as a very comparable picture, 22¾ x 31½in. (53 x 80cm.), signed with initials was on the Brussels market, 20 June 1928 lot 57 (see below). Beneath it to the right is a Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine in the style of Otto van Veen(?), followed by an Alpine(?) Landscape in the style of Joos de Momper, an octagonal Nymphs at a Pool in the style of Adriaen van Stalbemt, A Village by a River perhaps in the style of Jan Brueghel I, beside it is a Wooded Landscape in the style of Abraham Govaerts, beneath is A Building set among Trees in the style of Jan Wildens.
Above the cupboard is an Adam and Eve close to the picture by Frans Floris in the Musée Municipal, Cognac, signed with initials, on panel, 73¼ x 59 7/8 (186 x 152cm.), see C. van de Velde, Frans Floris Leven en Werken, Brussels, 1975, I, p. 273, no. 130 and II fig. 65 (rather than the similar picture in the Pitti, his no. 129). Beside it is a Fishwife's Stall reminiscent more of the style of Floris van Schooten than of a Flemish artist, below it is a Horse and Cart on a wooded Track in the style of Abraham Govaerts, followed by Men of War at Sea in the style of Andries van Eertveld, beside it is a Still Life with a Parrot in the style of Frans Snyders; beneath are two circular Portraits of a Man and Woman, head and shoulders; on the second row from the bottom is a Saint Jerome similar to the Saint Jerome by Marinus van Reymerswael of 1521 in the Prado, of which Friedländer listed eight other versions (see M. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Paintings, XII, ed. H. Pauwels and G. Lemmens, Leyden and Brussels, 1975, p. 106 no. 62), beside it is a King Midas at Table(?), a version of the picture by Frans Francken II in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick (see U. Härting, Frans Francken II, Freren, 1989, no. 320, where dated circa 1615); on the bottom row is an Ecce Homo perhaps in the style of Martin van Heemskerk, beside it a Roman Sacrificial Procession reminiscent of Adriaen van Stalbemt's Il Contento at Basle (see K. Andrews, A Pseudo-Elsheimer Group: Adriaen van Stalbemt as Figure Painter, The Burlington Magazine, 115, 1, 1973, fig. 45).
The next column of pictures is headed by a Lot and his Daughters, similar to the picture by the Master of the Prodigal Son, offered in these Rooms, 6 April 1984, lot 19, another version of which is in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, (see its Jaarboeck, 1961, p. 97); beneath is a Solon and Croesus(?) by a follower of Elsheimer, followed by a Last Supper and an Italianate Landscape, perhaps a Capriccio View of the Forum at Rome in the style of Willem van Nieulandt; beside it is a Landscape with figures on a Path reminiscent of Denis van Alsloot.
At the top of the right-hand wall is an Alpine Landscape in the style of Joos de Momper; beneath is Personification of Plenty: Nymphs and Satyrs, beneath a draped Tree in the style of Abraham Janssens. Beneath is a Still Life of Flowers in the style of Jan Brueghel I; beside it is a Venus mourning the Death of Adonis in a wooded Landscape, reminiscent of the collaborative works of Frans Francken I and Abraham Govaerts; beneath is a Soldiers in a Village in the style of Sebastian Vrancx, beside it is a Christ in the House of Martha and Mary; on the bottom row is a Landscape with Buildings and a Wooded Landscape.
In the foreground, centre, on the chair is a Defeat of Sennacherib, comparable with that which is depicted in Jan Brueghel I and Peter Paul Rubens's Sense of Touch in the Prado; that picture is after Christophe Schwarz's copy after Hans von Aachen (see M. Díaz Padrón and Mercedes Roya-Villanova, in the catalogue of the exhibition, David Teniers, Jan Brueghel y Los Gabinetes de Pintura, Museo del Prado, 1992, p. 132); beneath on the floor is a Madonna and Child in a Garland of Flowers in the style of a collaborative work by Hendrick van Balen and Jan Brueghel I; beside it is a Still Life in a style reminiscent of Clara Peeters, behind it leaning against the table, is an Interior with Elegant Figures - Personifications of the Senses(?) in the style of David Vinckboons.
On the chair to the right is an Allegory of the Arts, a version(?) of Frans Francken II's Occasio in a private collection (see Härting, op. cit., no. 366, where dated circa 1618-20); beneath it is a Church Interior painted in the style of the Neeffs family.
The picture in the centre against the table, painted in a style of Vinckboons, itself depicts pictures on the walls of the room. These are barely decipherable but a Judgement of Paris is prominent in the centre of the far wall, to the right is a Nativity.
The present lot is very similar to a picture in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels (for which see most recently the Catalogue Inventaire de la Peinture Ancienne, Brussels, 1984, p. 113, no. 2628, 94 x 124.7cm. (37 x 48 7/8in.)). It is practically the same size and must be considered a version of it. There are some differences: the artist(?) second to the right, who holds a miniature, in the Brussels picture has been replaced by an art lover looking upwards. Some pictures represented also differ: The Sacrifice on the floor leaning against the chair to the right in the Brussels picture has been replaced by a Church Interior; the King Midas at Table(?) and the Capriccio View of the Forum, Rome(?) have been interchanged, while the Last Supper and the Roman Sacrificial Procession in the present lot have been replaced by a Landscape and a Church Interior in the Brussels picture. There are some differences in the rendering of other pictures depicted.
Discussion of Speth-Holterhoff's identification of the artist(?) holding a miniature - leading to an identification of the collection and ambience - (most recently in the catalogue of the exhibition, Le Siècle de Rubens, Musées des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 1965, no. 90, as Jan Snellinck and rebutted by M. Monballieu, Aantekeningen bÿ de Schilderÿeninventaris van het Sterfhuis van Jan Snellinck, Jaarboek van het Koninklyk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 1976, p. 261) may be omitted here as irrelevant, for the artist(?) has been replaced by another participant.
On the basis of two sets of initials on the Brussels picture, Speth-Holterhoff finally concluded (in the Siècle de Rubens exhibition catalogue) that the Brussels picture was the work of Hieronymus Francken II; this attribution was rejected by G. Martin, National Gallery Catalogues, The Flemish School, 1970, p. 71 under no. 1287, but has been followed by subsequent authorities, notably the authors of the Catalogue Inventaire of the Brussels Museum of 1984, see above, Härting, op. cit., p. 178, and Díaz Padrón and Royo-Villanova, op. cit., p. 200, under no. 25 (=Museo del Prado no. 1.405).
The Brussels picture and the present lot have elements in common with the Prado picture as Speth-Holterhoff has noted; but there is not general agreement as to whether Stalbemt was its author as Padrón and Roya-Villanova reiterated. Granted the uncertainty concerning this picture, a degree of uncertainty over the attribution of the Brussels picture and the present lot has also to be admitted. But taking into account the views recently expressed, it is perhaps best to attribute the present lot with reservation to Hieronymus Francken II.
Hieronymus Francken II died in 1623. The Brussels picture is also inscribed with the date 1621 which has been taken as the date of the execution of the picture. In view of the close similarity between the Brussels picture and the present lot, it seems safe to assume that they were painted about the same time. The costumes are of around 1620 or slightly earlier. It is not possible to state categorically that all the pictures depicted were executed before 1621, as by no means all of them have been identified, and as some artists, who seem to be represented, were active after 1621. One painting, for which an identification is suggested the Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, could not have been painted by this date if correctly associated with the work of Pieter van Lint, as he did not become a master in the Antwerp Guild until 1632/3. Maybe this picture, whose ultimate prototype was - in reverse - Raphael's (engraved) composition in the Vatican Loggia, had a more recently executed, intermediary source, which is that depicted here.
As in the Prado and the National Gallery pictures, the present lot and the picture at Brussels depict elegantly dressed men either admiring pictures or debating at a table on which are shells and scientific instruments, and open books; an elderly bearded man is elucidating a point by a terrestrial globe in all three paintings. His features differ in the National Gallery picture, but his dress and appearance are similar in the other three pictures; Díaz Padrón and Royo-Villanova suggest that he is Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer who died at Prague in 1601. Another similarity with the Prado picture lies in the servant entering with a wine glass on a tray. As in other pictures in this genre, whose early phase had its consummate expression in Willem van Haecht's Studio of Apelles in the Mauritshuis and the Picture Cabinet of Cornelis van der Geest in the Rubenshuis (Rubens and Jan Brueghel I et al. transformed the genre into depictions of the Senses (Museo del Prado, see Díaz Padrón and Royo-Villanova, op. cit., nos. 9 and 17)), sculpture is also displayed. Unusually in the present lot and in the Brussels picture a servant is shown removing a cloth covering the statues, set out on the table in the centre foreground.
Padrón and Royo-Villanova in discussing their no. 25, described it as an allegorical composition alluding to the liberal arts and sciences, expressing the taste of Antwerp society that depended on the kunstkammer of collectors of the previous generation ('los collecionistas europeos del manierismo'). On display in the Prado picture are the four categories required by Samuel von Quicchelberg in 1565 for his ideal museum: Naturalia, shells etc.; Artificialia, man-made products such as globes and scientific instruments etc.; Antiquitas and Historiae; and Artes (paintings and sculpture). Absent in the present lot are any references to the third category.
A study of the inventories, published by Denucé and Duverger, show that rooms in town houses in Antwerp did indeed contain pictures in such quantity as are displayed in the present lot: for instance, sixty pictures were listed in the Neercamer of Antoinette Wiael's house in Antwerp in July 1627, (see J. Denucé, Inventaire von Kunstsammlungen zu Antwerpen, 1932, pp. 40-1); while some thirty pictures, plus drawings, statues and prints etc., were listed in the Bovenvoorcamer in Frans Francken I's house, the Gulden Kop in the Augustijnerstraat, after his death in February 1617, (see E. Duverger, Kunstinventarissen, Brussels, 1984, pp. 342-3).
The walls are hung with pictures. It is by no means possible to be certain about the authorship of the majority of the prototypes of the pictures displayed; the identifications that follow are for the most part suggestions only.
To the left of the window is a Pan and Syrinx in the style of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen; beneath is a Delivery of Saint Peter: a similar picture attributed to David Teniers I was illustrated in Arte Illustrata (no date given on Witt Library mount) as in the collection of Lord Bruce, Broomhall.
To the left of the door is a Personification of Abundance in the style of Abraham Janssens; beneath is a Portrait of a Man in the style of Anthonis Mor; beside it is a Judith and Holofernes perhaps by a follower of Elsheimer as the composition connects with the picture at Apsley House (see K. Andrews, Adam Elsheimer, New York, 1977, no. 12); on its right is a Portrait of a Man similar to the previous one; in the second row from the bottom are Two Women in a Kitchen(?) perhaps also by a follower of Elsheimer, a Still Life of Flowers in a Vase in the style of Jan Brueghel I, and a View of a Town ablaze by Night, in the style of Tobias Verhaecht; on the bottom row is a Seascape and a Landscape.
Above the door is a Joseph and Potiphar's Wife by an artist connected with Pieter van Lint, as a very comparable picture, 22¾ x 31½in. (53 x 80cm.), signed with initials was on the Brussels market, 20 June 1928 lot 57 (see below). Beneath it to the right is a Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine in the style of Otto van Veen(?), followed by an Alpine(?) Landscape in the style of Joos de Momper, an octagonal Nymphs at a Pool in the style of Adriaen van Stalbemt, A Village by a River perhaps in the style of Jan Brueghel I, beside it is a Wooded Landscape in the style of Abraham Govaerts, beneath is A Building set among Trees in the style of Jan Wildens.
Above the cupboard is an Adam and Eve close to the picture by Frans Floris in the Musée Municipal, Cognac, signed with initials, on panel, 73¼ x 59 7/8 (186 x 152cm.), see C. van de Velde, Frans Floris Leven en Werken, Brussels, 1975, I, p. 273, no. 130 and II fig. 65 (rather than the similar picture in the Pitti, his no. 129). Beside it is a Fishwife's Stall reminiscent more of the style of Floris van Schooten than of a Flemish artist, below it is a Horse and Cart on a wooded Track in the style of Abraham Govaerts, followed by Men of War at Sea in the style of Andries van Eertveld, beside it is a Still Life with a Parrot in the style of Frans Snyders; beneath are two circular Portraits of a Man and Woman, head and shoulders; on the second row from the bottom is a Saint Jerome similar to the Saint Jerome by Marinus van Reymerswael of 1521 in the Prado, of which Friedländer listed eight other versions (see M. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Paintings, XII, ed. H. Pauwels and G. Lemmens, Leyden and Brussels, 1975, p. 106 no. 62), beside it is a King Midas at Table(?), a version of the picture by Frans Francken II in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick (see U. Härting, Frans Francken II, Freren, 1989, no. 320, where dated circa 1615); on the bottom row is an Ecce Homo perhaps in the style of Martin van Heemskerk, beside it a Roman Sacrificial Procession reminiscent of Adriaen van Stalbemt's Il Contento at Basle (see K. Andrews, A Pseudo-Elsheimer Group: Adriaen van Stalbemt as Figure Painter, The Burlington Magazine, 115, 1, 1973, fig. 45).
The next column of pictures is headed by a Lot and his Daughters, similar to the picture by the Master of the Prodigal Son, offered in these Rooms, 6 April 1984, lot 19, another version of which is in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, (see its Jaarboeck, 1961, p. 97); beneath is a Solon and Croesus(?) by a follower of Elsheimer, followed by a Last Supper and an Italianate Landscape, perhaps a Capriccio View of the Forum at Rome in the style of Willem van Nieulandt; beside it is a Landscape with figures on a Path reminiscent of Denis van Alsloot.
At the top of the right-hand wall is an Alpine Landscape in the style of Joos de Momper; beneath is Personification of Plenty: Nymphs and Satyrs, beneath a draped Tree in the style of Abraham Janssens. Beneath is a Still Life of Flowers in the style of Jan Brueghel I; beside it is a Venus mourning the Death of Adonis in a wooded Landscape, reminiscent of the collaborative works of Frans Francken I and Abraham Govaerts; beneath is a Soldiers in a Village in the style of Sebastian Vrancx, beside it is a Christ in the House of Martha and Mary; on the bottom row is a Landscape with Buildings and a Wooded Landscape.
In the foreground, centre, on the chair is a Defeat of Sennacherib, comparable with that which is depicted in Jan Brueghel I and Peter Paul Rubens's Sense of Touch in the Prado; that picture is after Christophe Schwarz's copy after Hans von Aachen (see M. Díaz Padrón and Mercedes Roya-Villanova, in the catalogue of the exhibition, David Teniers, Jan Brueghel y Los Gabinetes de Pintura, Museo del Prado, 1992, p. 132); beneath on the floor is a Madonna and Child in a Garland of Flowers in the style of a collaborative work by Hendrick van Balen and Jan Brueghel I; beside it is a Still Life in a style reminiscent of Clara Peeters, behind it leaning against the table, is an Interior with Elegant Figures - Personifications of the Senses(?) in the style of David Vinckboons.
On the chair to the right is an Allegory of the Arts, a version(?) of Frans Francken II's Occasio in a private collection (see Härting, op. cit., no. 366, where dated circa 1618-20); beneath it is a Church Interior painted in the style of the Neeffs family.
The picture in the centre against the table, painted in a style of Vinckboons, itself depicts pictures on the walls of the room. These are barely decipherable but a Judgement of Paris is prominent in the centre of the far wall, to the right is a Nativity.
The present lot is very similar to a picture in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels (for which see most recently the Catalogue Inventaire de la Peinture Ancienne, Brussels, 1984, p. 113, no. 2628, 94 x 124.7cm. (37 x 48 7/8in.)). It is practically the same size and must be considered a version of it. There are some differences: the artist(?) second to the right, who holds a miniature, in the Brussels picture has been replaced by an art lover looking upwards. Some pictures represented also differ: The Sacrifice on the floor leaning against the chair to the right in the Brussels picture has been replaced by a Church Interior; the King Midas at Table(?) and the Capriccio View of the Forum, Rome(?) have been interchanged, while the Last Supper and the Roman Sacrificial Procession in the present lot have been replaced by a Landscape and a Church Interior in the Brussels picture. There are some differences in the rendering of other pictures depicted.
Discussion of Speth-Holterhoff's identification of the artist(?) holding a miniature - leading to an identification of the collection and ambience - (most recently in the catalogue of the exhibition, Le Siècle de Rubens, Musées des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 1965, no. 90, as Jan Snellinck and rebutted by M. Monballieu, Aantekeningen bÿ de Schilderÿeninventaris van het Sterfhuis van Jan Snellinck, Jaarboek van het Koninklyk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 1976, p. 261) may be omitted here as irrelevant, for the artist(?) has been replaced by another participant.
On the basis of two sets of initials on the Brussels picture, Speth-Holterhoff finally concluded (in the Siècle de Rubens exhibition catalogue) that the Brussels picture was the work of Hieronymus Francken II; this attribution was rejected by G. Martin, National Gallery Catalogues, The Flemish School, 1970, p. 71 under no. 1287, but has been followed by subsequent authorities, notably the authors of the Catalogue Inventaire of the Brussels Museum of 1984, see above, Härting, op. cit., p. 178, and Díaz Padrón and Royo-Villanova, op. cit., p. 200, under no. 25 (=Museo del Prado no. 1.405).
The Brussels picture and the present lot have elements in common with the Prado picture as Speth-Holterhoff has noted; but there is not general agreement as to whether Stalbemt was its author as Padrón and Roya-Villanova reiterated. Granted the uncertainty concerning this picture, a degree of uncertainty over the attribution of the Brussels picture and the present lot has also to be admitted. But taking into account the views recently expressed, it is perhaps best to attribute the present lot with reservation to Hieronymus Francken II.
Hieronymus Francken II died in 1623. The Brussels picture is also inscribed with the date 1621 which has been taken as the date of the execution of the picture. In view of the close similarity between the Brussels picture and the present lot, it seems safe to assume that they were painted about the same time. The costumes are of around 1620 or slightly earlier. It is not possible to state categorically that all the pictures depicted were executed before 1621, as by no means all of them have been identified, and as some artists, who seem to be represented, were active after 1621. One painting, for which an identification is suggested the Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, could not have been painted by this date if correctly associated with the work of Pieter van Lint, as he did not become a master in the Antwerp Guild until 1632/3. Maybe this picture, whose ultimate prototype was - in reverse - Raphael's (engraved) composition in the Vatican Loggia, had a more recently executed, intermediary source, which is that depicted here.
As in the Prado and the National Gallery pictures, the present lot and the picture at Brussels depict elegantly dressed men either admiring pictures or debating at a table on which are shells and scientific instruments, and open books; an elderly bearded man is elucidating a point by a terrestrial globe in all three paintings. His features differ in the National Gallery picture, but his dress and appearance are similar in the other three pictures; Díaz Padrón and Royo-Villanova suggest that he is Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer who died at Prague in 1601. Another similarity with the Prado picture lies in the servant entering with a wine glass on a tray. As in other pictures in this genre, whose early phase had its consummate expression in Willem van Haecht's Studio of Apelles in the Mauritshuis and the Picture Cabinet of Cornelis van der Geest in the Rubenshuis (Rubens and Jan Brueghel I et al. transformed the genre into depictions of the Senses (Museo del Prado, see Díaz Padrón and Royo-Villanova, op. cit., nos. 9 and 17)), sculpture is also displayed. Unusually in the present lot and in the Brussels picture a servant is shown removing a cloth covering the statues, set out on the table in the centre foreground.
Padrón and Royo-Villanova in discussing their no. 25, described it as an allegorical composition alluding to the liberal arts and sciences, expressing the taste of Antwerp society that depended on the kunstkammer of collectors of the previous generation ('los collecionistas europeos del manierismo'). On display in the Prado picture are the four categories required by Samuel von Quicchelberg in 1565 for his ideal museum: Naturalia, shells etc.; Artificialia, man-made products such as globes and scientific instruments etc.; Antiquitas and Historiae; and Artes (paintings and sculpture). Absent in the present lot are any references to the third category.
A study of the inventories, published by Denucé and Duverger, show that rooms in town houses in Antwerp did indeed contain pictures in such quantity as are displayed in the present lot: for instance, sixty pictures were listed in the Neercamer of Antoinette Wiael's house in Antwerp in July 1627, (see J. Denucé, Inventaire von Kunstsammlungen zu Antwerpen, 1932, pp. 40-1); while some thirty pictures, plus drawings, statues and prints etc., were listed in the Bovenvoorcamer in Frans Francken I's house, the Gulden Kop in the Augustijnerstraat, after his death in February 1617, (see E. Duverger, Kunstinventarissen, Brussels, 1984, pp. 342-3).