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Lot Essay
This newly attributed work depicts the miraculous Communion of the Blessed Frederick of Regensberg, an Augustinian monk and carpenter, born in the late thirteenth century. Based on the legends popularised in the sixteenth century, the famous miracle of the monk’s life came when the wood supplies of his monastery had become scarce, and Frederick, while chopping wood for the fires, missed participating in the Conventual Mass. Miraculously, however, the monk received the Eucharist from an angel who came to him while he was occupied in his workshop. Van den Hoecke shows Blessed Frederick dressed in the habit of an Augustinian, kneeling in devotion in his wood shed. An angel raises the glowing Host from the paten before him, while another holds the Eucharistic chalice, depicted as an ornately modelled façon de Venise wine glass. Dr. Bert Schepers, to whom we are grateful for proposing the attribution to van den Hoecke on the basis of photographs, has demonstrated the similarities between the present picture and other works by the artist, notably the Abraham and the Three Angels in the Schönborn collection, Pommersfelden and his Tobias and the Angel (whereabouts unknown). In all, the colouring, sculptural figures and flowing drapery show the painter’s clear debt to the years he spent in Rubens’ workshop.
In 1644, Jan van den Hoecke moved from his native city of Antwerp to the Imperial court at Vienna, where he worked for the Emperor Ferdinand III (1608-1657) and his brother the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (1614–1662), with whom he later returned to Antwerp following the latter’s appointment as Governor of the Southern Netherlands in 1647. During the years he spent in Austria, van den Hoecke may have worked for a patron familiar with the legends of the Blessed Frederick of Regensburg, who commissioned the artist to paint this Holy Communion. Indeed, the angel holding the Host recalls an illustration in Matthäus Rader’s Bavaria sancta, published in 1615, which accompanied his account of the monk’s life, suggesting that van den Hoecke may have been familiar with the visual traditions of the miracle’s depiction.
In 1644, Jan van den Hoecke moved from his native city of Antwerp to the Imperial court at Vienna, where he worked for the Emperor Ferdinand III (1608-1657) and his brother the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (1614–1662), with whom he later returned to Antwerp following the latter’s appointment as Governor of the Southern Netherlands in 1647. During the years he spent in Austria, van den Hoecke may have worked for a patron familiar with the legends of the Blessed Frederick of Regensburg, who commissioned the artist to paint this Holy Communion. Indeed, the angel holding the Host recalls an illustration in Matthäus Rader’s Bavaria sancta, published in 1615, which accompanied his account of the monk’s life, suggesting that van den Hoecke may have been familiar with the visual traditions of the miracle’s depiction.