Lot Essay
We are grateful to Mr. Fred Meijer of the RKD for the attribution on the basis of photographs. On comparison with the signed picture by Jan van der Baren in the Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels (inv. no. 4197), which is dated 1641, Mr. Meijer suggests that the present picture should probably be dated to the 1640s. Since the statue of the Madonna and Child in the stone niche appears to be by the Antwerp-based Erasmus Quellinus II, he suggests a terminus post quem of 1656, the year of van der Baren's departure to Vienna in the retinue of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm.