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拍品專文
This intriguing panel by Cornelis Ketel includes a lengthy inscription, openly inviting the viewer to consider the meaning underlying its enigmatic imagery. In the allegorical scene, a seated child holds aloft the world in all its immense weight. Ketel depicts the youth’s nude body buckling under this heavy load, alternating the position of the figure’s hands to realistically suggest the task of balancing the massive orb. Draped in a cloak with bells fastened to its corners, the sphere is marred by a crack in its center from which a monkey – a symbol commonly associated with sin – emerges. In contrast to the lush, green landscape in the distance, the ground on which the child sits is barren, possibly reflecting a well-known biblical passage on the transience of human life: ‘the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever’ (Isaiah 40.8). The world is a sinful place, we are meant to infer, which lays its burdens upon the pure and helpless, eventually weighing us down impossibly with its spiritually superficial and short-lived rewards.
Dr. Anne Lowenthal, to whom we are grateful, has confirmed the attribution to Cornelis Ketel (written communication, 9 March 2017). Ketel was one of the most important painters of the Dutch Mannerist school in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He was active in France and England, where he served primarily as a portrait painter. The present roundel relates thematically to the artist’s earliest known work, the Portrait of Adam Wachendorff with a Putto Blowing Bubbles on the verso (figs. 1, 2; Rijskmuseum, Amsterdam), which he painted in London in 1574. Ketel’s Portrait of Adam Wachendorff is clearly inspired by contemporary medals, which featured a portrait on one side and an allegorical figure accompanied by a learned motto on the other. Given its similarities in format and compositional type to the Rijksmuseum painting, it is likely that Ketel’s Allegory of the Foolishness of the World would have originally served as the reverse of a similar portrait.
Dr. Lowenthal has suggested that the present composition may relate to an emblem devised by Jacques de Gheyn II (c. 1565-1629) in honor of the 1596 meeting in Leiden of the Dutch ‘Rederijkers’, members of dramatic societies who organized local performances and were involved in civic leadership.
Dr. Anne Lowenthal, to whom we are grateful, has confirmed the attribution to Cornelis Ketel (written communication, 9 March 2017). Ketel was one of the most important painters of the Dutch Mannerist school in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He was active in France and England, where he served primarily as a portrait painter. The present roundel relates thematically to the artist’s earliest known work, the Portrait of Adam Wachendorff with a Putto Blowing Bubbles on the verso (figs. 1, 2; Rijskmuseum, Amsterdam), which he painted in London in 1574. Ketel’s Portrait of Adam Wachendorff is clearly inspired by contemporary medals, which featured a portrait on one side and an allegorical figure accompanied by a learned motto on the other. Given its similarities in format and compositional type to the Rijksmuseum painting, it is likely that Ketel’s Allegory of the Foolishness of the World would have originally served as the reverse of a similar portrait.
Dr. Lowenthal has suggested that the present composition may relate to an emblem devised by Jacques de Gheyn II (c. 1565-1629) in honor of the 1596 meeting in Leiden of the Dutch ‘Rederijkers’, members of dramatic societies who organized local performances and were involved in civic leadership.