The Marriage at Cana

Following his training with Maerten de Vos (1532-1593) in Antwerp, de Clerck embarked on a long career as official painter at the Brussels courts first of Archduke Ernst, in 1594, and then, in 1606, of the Joint Regents of the Spanish Netherlands, Albrecht and Isabella. Much of his religious painting of this and the following decades was for churches in the Brussels area. The present work can be dated to the 1620s by comparison with the signed and dated Descent from the Cross of 1628, painted for the collegiate foundation at Anderlecht, and now in the Muses royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Inv. no. 3414.