Simon de Vos (1603-1676)

Details
Simon de Vos (1603-1676)

An Allegory of the Five Senses: A Merry Company in a Palatial Interior
signed and dated 'S.D.Vos. In et Px t'

on panel laid down on panel

18 7/8 x 24¾in. (48 x 62.8cm.)

Lot Essay

A version with minor differences, on canvas and signed and dated 1646, is in the Schottenstift, Vienna (exhibited Augsburg, Rathaus, and Cleveland Museum of Art, Johann Liss, 1975-6, p.174, no.E83, and fig.158). A variant on copper, signed and dated 1640, was sold in these Rooms, 13 December 1985, lot 38; in that picture there are
extensive differences in the figures and they are set in a plain and windowless interior. A signed panel showing the spaniel which appears in all three pictures was sold in these Rooms, 7 June 1974, lot 154.

Klessmann in the Liss exhibition catalogue (cited above), under no.A15, suggests that Liss's Banquet of Soldiers and Courtesans at Cassel may have here influenced de Vos. The lady playing the virginals in the centre may derive from Rubens's Saint Cecilia (Berlin), while the pose of the youth on the left may also have its antecedents in the work of Rubens (see the pose of Paris in the Vienna, Akademie, Judgement of Paris) or may have been inspired by the youth in Caravaggio's Calling of Saint Matthew in S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome

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