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拍品专文
Following its sale in these Rooms in 1942, this dramatic depiction of the Battle of the Amazons was accepted as an autograph work by the great Flemish painter Sir Peter Paul Rubens, by the then leading authority on the artist, Dr. Ludwig Burchard. He believed the work to be a preliminary version of Rubens’ great Battle of the Amazons, painted in circa 1618 (fig. 1; Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, Alte Pinakothek), writing in a letter dated 29 May 1943 (during the picture’s time with Agnews) that it was ‘an outstanding performance, entirely done by Rubens’ own hand and very well preserved’ (Schepers, op. cit., p. 204). Burchard also established the work’s earlier provenance in the collection of the great Parisian cabinet and furniture maker Charles Cressent, who had himself valued the work very highly. Burchard never formally published his opinion and it is unclear if he was able to view the work for a second time when it was exhibited in the summer of 1960, only a few months before his death. During this exhibition, the painting was seen by another leading scholar on Rubens, Roger d’Hulst, who likewise believed the work to be autograph, and tentatively dated it early in the painter’s career, to around 1600, shortly before he left Antwerp for Italy. It was not until the picture re-emerged in 2007 that a reappraisal of these opinions was made possible. It was at this moment that the work was established as a later adaption of the Munich Battle, rather than a preliminary work for it, and its author recognised as a painter working in Rubens’ circle.
The scene depicts a fantastical battle between Greek and Amazonian warriors. The Amazons were a mythic tribe of fearless and ruthless women who devoted their lives to war and battle. Claimed by writers like Herodotus to dwell along the banks of the Thermodon River (now known as the Terme river, in northern Turkey), the Amazons became a popular visual trope in Ancient Greece, representing the antithesis to the ordered civility of Greek life. Typically, depictions of the Amazons fighting Greek soldiers were represented as a generalised battle rather than one featuring a specific narrative, though on occasions such scenes were intended to illustrate Hercules’ ninth labour of retrieving the girdle of the Amazonian Queen Hippolyta, or Achilles’ victory against the Amazons, led by Queen Penthesilea, during the Trojan War. The subject was one which clearly fascinated Rubens from an early stage in his career and at least two paintings, dated to circa 1597-8 (in collaboration with Jan Breughel the Elder; Potsdam, Stiftung Preussische Schlösser und Garten Berlin – Brandenburg, Bildergalerie Schloss Sanssouci) and circa 1603 (Private collection), and two drawings, dated to circa 1600-3 (London, British Museum; and Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland), are known to have been produced by him before and during his time in Italy (Schepers, op. cit., pp. 102-73, nos 5-8; although in his opinion the Edinburgh sheet is likely a contemporary copy of a now lost autograph drawing).
Rubens’ most refined treatment of the subject, however, was made after he had returned to the Netherlands and established himself as the leading painter of the Flemish Baroque. Painted in circa 1618, his Munich Battle of the Amazons took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s Battle of Anghiari (circa 1505, now destroyed). The painting is assumed to have been acquired by Cornelis van der Geest (1575-1638), an Antwerp spice merchant and a prolific collector and patron of the arts. Rubens’ Battle of the Amazons, in fact, is depicted in two well-known paintings by Willem van Haecht II (1593-1637), who was living with Van der Geest from 1626: The Picture Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest, dated 1628 (Antwerp, Rubenshuis), and Alexander the Great visiting the Studio of Apelles, circa 1630 (The Hague, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis), and, given the prominence of Van der Geest’s collection, its composition was likely to have been relatively well known in Antwerp. Though Burchard deduced that the present picture was a preparatory work for this masterpiece, more recent opinion has placed the picture at a later date (see for example Renger, op. cit.; and Schepers, op. cit.), recognising it as the work of a painter who was inspired by Rubens’ panel and more specifically by the monumental and highly detailed engraving after it, published in 1623, by the Antwerp engraver Lucas Vorsterman I (1595-1675) who frequently collaborated with Rubens (fig. 2).
Rather than simply copying Vorsterman’s engraving, however, the artist selected motifs from across the work, rearranging and modifying them as well as introducing new elements. The basis of the composition, the central bridge spanning the thin river (possibly intended as the Thermodon), remains the same, though the painter has pushed it further back into the composition to allow more figures to fill the foreground. The two slain Amazonian warriors at the right foreground are placed in much the same position, as is the mounted Greek soldier, wearing a plumed helmet, depicted on the bridge, his arm raised to throw his lance. The artist, however, also manipulated the engraving’s composition, moving, for example, the dramatic central figural group of a Greek horseman and foot soldier dragging an Amazon from her rearing steed from the bridge to the left foreground of the painting. Further elements are composed by combining different figures from Vorsterman’s engraving to create new ones. The Amazon falling from her dying horse at the left of the engraving, for instance, has been moved in the painting, where she is shown tumbling from the charging steed at the right. Some elements show an awareness of other works by Rubens, including the soldier beneath the feet of the rearing white horse in the left foreground, who props himself up on his elbow, an adaptation of the similarly posed figure in Rubens’ Crocodile and Hippopotamus Hunt, painted in circa 1615-16 for Maximillian, Duke of Bavaria (Munich, Alte Pinakothek). The composition of this work was likely known in Antwerp through copies, probably from Rubens’ studio, appearing, for example, in a painting by Hieronymus Francken II of a collector’s cabinet (Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique).
As discussed by Schepers (op. cit., p. 205), the artist included in the sky a subsidiary scene which served to heighten the significance of the violent turmoil below. Here, some herons are shown flying through the sky over the battlefield, one of which is under attack from a falcon or eagle. This can be read as a visual metaphor for the fighting Greeks and Amazons. Indeed, emblem books of the sixteenth century frequently employed such imagery of a heron and falcon fighting, associating it with the motto ‘Exitus in dubio est’ or ‘The outcome is uncertain’, due to the herons tendency to vigorously defend itself under attack. In the third volume of the popular Symbola et Emblemata, published by Joachim Camerarius in 1595, the trope of the fighting heron and falcon was specifically related to the fickleness of war and the rapid changeability of fortunes during a battle. Rubens himself employed this emblem in his Moses in Prayer between Aaron and Hur, painted for the ceiling of Antwerp’s Jesuit church in 1620 and destroyed in the fire that ravaged the church in 1718.
The oak support, made of four members joined horizontally, is stamped on the reverse with the mark (recently uncovered during treatment) of Lambrecht Steens, a registered master at the Antwerp Guild of panel makers from 1608 until his death in 1638. He is known to have produced several panels for Rubens and his workshop, as well as other leading Antwerp painters like Frans Francken II. His son and namesake, Lambrecht Steens II (active from 1640/41 until his death in 1651/52) seems to have made use of the same mark.
Several impressions of wax seals applied by unidentified former owners/noble families are present on the reverse. One, much effaced, was believed by the 2007 cataloguer to read ‘Château de Berlin’. This led to the assumption that the painting may have been owned at one time by Frederick the Great (1712-1786), and was possibly removed from Berlin in 1806 to avoid being plundered by the Napoleonic Army (the only Battle of the Amazons by Rubens recorded in Berlin before that date seems to have been that, painted in collaboration with Jan Breughel the Elder, at Potsdam, which was taken temporarily to Paris by the French). Recent examination has however shown that the Berlin seal clearly says ‘Bureau de Berlin’ and that it may be nothing more than a customs seal.
The early Louis XV carved and giltwood frame dates from the lifetime of its first known owner, Charles Cressent, and is likely the one described in the 1749 catalogue of this collection: ‘il [le tableau] est dans une bordure d’un plus grand goût, des mieux sculptée et dorée.’ ('The painting is in a frame of the finest taste, most perfectly sculpted and gilded.')
We are grateful to Dr. Bert Schepers for endorsing the attribution and for his help with cataloguing the present lot. He inspected the painting at first hand in September 2017 and provided several new observations post-publication in the Corpus Rubenianum (Schepers, op. cit.). In his opinion an anonymous Crucifixion on panel (50.8 x 67.9 cm), formerly in the collection of the New-York Historical Society (1882.66), de-accessioned and sold by Sotheby’s, New York, 12 January 1995, lot 166, as ‘Studio of Frans Francken II’ (fig. 3), is likely by the same hand as this Battle of the Amazons.
The scene depicts a fantastical battle between Greek and Amazonian warriors. The Amazons were a mythic tribe of fearless and ruthless women who devoted their lives to war and battle. Claimed by writers like Herodotus to dwell along the banks of the Thermodon River (now known as the Terme river, in northern Turkey), the Amazons became a popular visual trope in Ancient Greece, representing the antithesis to the ordered civility of Greek life. Typically, depictions of the Amazons fighting Greek soldiers were represented as a generalised battle rather than one featuring a specific narrative, though on occasions such scenes were intended to illustrate Hercules’ ninth labour of retrieving the girdle of the Amazonian Queen Hippolyta, or Achilles’ victory against the Amazons, led by Queen Penthesilea, during the Trojan War. The subject was one which clearly fascinated Rubens from an early stage in his career and at least two paintings, dated to circa 1597-8 (in collaboration with Jan Breughel the Elder; Potsdam, Stiftung Preussische Schlösser und Garten Berlin – Brandenburg, Bildergalerie Schloss Sanssouci) and circa 1603 (Private collection), and two drawings, dated to circa 1600-3 (London, British Museum; and Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland), are known to have been produced by him before and during his time in Italy (Schepers, op. cit., pp. 102-73, nos 5-8; although in his opinion the Edinburgh sheet is likely a contemporary copy of a now lost autograph drawing).
Rubens’ most refined treatment of the subject, however, was made after he had returned to the Netherlands and established himself as the leading painter of the Flemish Baroque. Painted in circa 1618, his Munich Battle of the Amazons took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s Battle of Anghiari (circa 1505, now destroyed). The painting is assumed to have been acquired by Cornelis van der Geest (1575-1638), an Antwerp spice merchant and a prolific collector and patron of the arts. Rubens’ Battle of the Amazons, in fact, is depicted in two well-known paintings by Willem van Haecht II (1593-1637), who was living with Van der Geest from 1626: The Picture Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest, dated 1628 (Antwerp, Rubenshuis), and Alexander the Great visiting the Studio of Apelles, circa 1630 (The Hague, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis), and, given the prominence of Van der Geest’s collection, its composition was likely to have been relatively well known in Antwerp. Though Burchard deduced that the present picture was a preparatory work for this masterpiece, more recent opinion has placed the picture at a later date (see for example Renger, op. cit.; and Schepers, op. cit.), recognising it as the work of a painter who was inspired by Rubens’ panel and more specifically by the monumental and highly detailed engraving after it, published in 1623, by the Antwerp engraver Lucas Vorsterman I (1595-1675) who frequently collaborated with Rubens (fig. 2).
Rather than simply copying Vorsterman’s engraving, however, the artist selected motifs from across the work, rearranging and modifying them as well as introducing new elements. The basis of the composition, the central bridge spanning the thin river (possibly intended as the Thermodon), remains the same, though the painter has pushed it further back into the composition to allow more figures to fill the foreground. The two slain Amazonian warriors at the right foreground are placed in much the same position, as is the mounted Greek soldier, wearing a plumed helmet, depicted on the bridge, his arm raised to throw his lance. The artist, however, also manipulated the engraving’s composition, moving, for example, the dramatic central figural group of a Greek horseman and foot soldier dragging an Amazon from her rearing steed from the bridge to the left foreground of the painting. Further elements are composed by combining different figures from Vorsterman’s engraving to create new ones. The Amazon falling from her dying horse at the left of the engraving, for instance, has been moved in the painting, where she is shown tumbling from the charging steed at the right. Some elements show an awareness of other works by Rubens, including the soldier beneath the feet of the rearing white horse in the left foreground, who props himself up on his elbow, an adaptation of the similarly posed figure in Rubens’ Crocodile and Hippopotamus Hunt, painted in circa 1615-16 for Maximillian, Duke of Bavaria (Munich, Alte Pinakothek). The composition of this work was likely known in Antwerp through copies, probably from Rubens’ studio, appearing, for example, in a painting by Hieronymus Francken II of a collector’s cabinet (Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique).
As discussed by Schepers (op. cit., p. 205), the artist included in the sky a subsidiary scene which served to heighten the significance of the violent turmoil below. Here, some herons are shown flying through the sky over the battlefield, one of which is under attack from a falcon or eagle. This can be read as a visual metaphor for the fighting Greeks and Amazons. Indeed, emblem books of the sixteenth century frequently employed such imagery of a heron and falcon fighting, associating it with the motto ‘Exitus in dubio est’ or ‘The outcome is uncertain’, due to the herons tendency to vigorously defend itself under attack. In the third volume of the popular Symbola et Emblemata, published by Joachim Camerarius in 1595, the trope of the fighting heron and falcon was specifically related to the fickleness of war and the rapid changeability of fortunes during a battle. Rubens himself employed this emblem in his Moses in Prayer between Aaron and Hur, painted for the ceiling of Antwerp’s Jesuit church in 1620 and destroyed in the fire that ravaged the church in 1718.
The oak support, made of four members joined horizontally, is stamped on the reverse with the mark (recently uncovered during treatment) of Lambrecht Steens, a registered master at the Antwerp Guild of panel makers from 1608 until his death in 1638. He is known to have produced several panels for Rubens and his workshop, as well as other leading Antwerp painters like Frans Francken II. His son and namesake, Lambrecht Steens II (active from 1640/41 until his death in 1651/52) seems to have made use of the same mark.
Several impressions of wax seals applied by unidentified former owners/noble families are present on the reverse. One, much effaced, was believed by the 2007 cataloguer to read ‘Château de Berlin’. This led to the assumption that the painting may have been owned at one time by Frederick the Great (1712-1786), and was possibly removed from Berlin in 1806 to avoid being plundered by the Napoleonic Army (the only Battle of the Amazons by Rubens recorded in Berlin before that date seems to have been that, painted in collaboration with Jan Breughel the Elder, at Potsdam, which was taken temporarily to Paris by the French). Recent examination has however shown that the Berlin seal clearly says ‘Bureau de Berlin’ and that it may be nothing more than a customs seal.
The early Louis XV carved and giltwood frame dates from the lifetime of its first known owner, Charles Cressent, and is likely the one described in the 1749 catalogue of this collection: ‘il [le tableau] est dans une bordure d’un plus grand goût, des mieux sculptée et dorée.’ ('The painting is in a frame of the finest taste, most perfectly sculpted and gilded.')
We are grateful to Dr. Bert Schepers for endorsing the attribution and for his help with cataloguing the present lot. He inspected the painting at first hand in September 2017 and provided several new observations post-publication in the Corpus Rubenianum (Schepers, op. cit.). In his opinion an anonymous Crucifixion on panel (50.8 x 67.9 cm), formerly in the collection of the New-York Historical Society (1882.66), de-accessioned and sold by Sotheby’s, New York, 12 January 1995, lot 166, as ‘Studio of Frans Francken II’ (fig. 3), is likely by the same hand as this Battle of the Amazons.