.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Datable to the early 1560s, this is from early in the artist's career, painted whilst working in either Mechelen or Antwerp. It is one of a small group of works by Valckenborch depicting apparently actual topographical scenes, the present picture being extremely unusual in that the particular location is known: Heverlee, near Leuven, the artist's birthplace. Characteristic of Marten's work of this period is the miniaturist technique - visible in pictures such as the Landscape with the Travellers on the Road to Emmaus in the Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede, and confirmed by the landscape signed and dated 1566 formerly in the Friedenstein Castle Museum, Gotha - and the level, open foreground, leading gently into a panoramic landscape without the use of such melodramatic effects as, for example, the cliffs common in the compositions of his brother, Lucas.
The identification of the view was first reaffirmed by d'Udekem de Guertechin (loc. cit.), who noted not only the dominant Heverlee Castle (now Arenberg Castle), but also other features corresponding to the view in the 17th Century, including the Romanesque church on the hill on the left (recorded in more detail in an anonymous drawing of 1520 (see Wied, op. cit., p. 236), the gothic Celestine monastery in the background (demolished in 1815) and the water mills driven by the Dyle river that at the time flowed past the front of the palace. During Valckenborch's time, the palatial castle was owned by the Dukes of Aerschot: Guillaume de Croy and Charles II de Croy, 4th Duke of Aerschot (1560-1612), by whom this picture was presumably commissioned; the castle subsequently passed into the ownership of the Dukes of Arenberg, by whose name it is known today. It is interesting to note that it was the Duke of Aerschot who was responsible for the appointment of the young Archduke Matthias as Governor of the Spanish Netherlands (1577-1581). As noted by Wied, it is tempting to hypothesize that Aerschot's patronage of the young Marten van Valckenborch (with whom he may have been familiar due to his local origins) may have been the first step towards Lucas' appointment as court painter to Archduke Matthias.
The identification of the view was first reaffirmed by d'Udekem de Guertechin (loc. cit.), who noted not only the dominant Heverlee Castle (now Arenberg Castle), but also other features corresponding to the view in the 17th Century, including the Romanesque church on the hill on the left (recorded in more detail in an anonymous drawing of 1520 (see Wied, op. cit., p. 236), the gothic Celestine monastery in the background (demolished in 1815) and the water mills driven by the Dyle river that at the time flowed past the front of the palace. During Valckenborch's time, the palatial castle was owned by the Dukes of Aerschot: Guillaume de Croy and Charles II de Croy, 4th Duke of Aerschot (1560-1612), by whom this picture was presumably commissioned; the castle subsequently passed into the ownership of the Dukes of Arenberg, by whose name it is known today. It is interesting to note that it was the Duke of Aerschot who was responsible for the appointment of the young Archduke Matthias as Governor of the Spanish Netherlands (1577-1581). As noted by Wied, it is tempting to hypothesize that Aerschot's patronage of the young Marten van Valckenborch (with whom he may have been familiar due to his local origins) may have been the first step towards Lucas' appointment as court painter to Archduke Matthias.