The Triumph of Bacchus

Previously unknown to scholars and newly discovered from a private collection, this monumental canvas is an important addition to the oeuvre of Cornelis Schut I, which may have remained in Italy since its creation. Schut went to Italy early on in his career, which had a lasting impact on his style even after his return to Antwerp. In 1618⁄19 he became a member of the city’s Guild of St Luke, but quickly left Flanders to travel, ending up in Rome where he was a founding member of the Bentvueghels (or Schildersbent), a notoriously raucous brotherhood of mostly Dutch and Flemish travelling artists.

Schut clearly found commercial success in this period. He worked under the patronage of Pietro Pescatore (a merchant of Flemish descent, also called Pieter de Vischere or Visscher), painting large mythological frescoes at his villa in Frascati, the so-called 'Casino Pescatore' before 1626. Four of his paintings are listed in the inventory of aristocratic banker Vincenzo Giustianini, whose exceptional collection hung in his Roman palace (for a detailed account of the artist’s Italian years, see G. Wilmers, Cornelis Schut (1597-1655): A Flemish Painter of the High Baroque, Turnhout, 1996, pp. 24-31).

Highly influenced by the Baroque painters active in Rome at the time, including Pietro da Cortona, Domenichino, Guercino and Guido Reni, some of Schut’s work from the period is almost devoid of northern precedents, but the present painting testifies to his Flemish roots. It is generally accepted that he studied or worked with Rubens before his departure for Italy and possibly with Abraham Janssens too, and as Wilmers proposes (ibid.), the artist very likely travelled to Italy with a collection of prints and drawings by his Flemish elders, such as Frans Floris and Maarten van Heemskerck, and those of his contemporaries, Rubens and Jacob Jordaens.

Bert Schepers, to whom we are grateful, confirmed the attribution to Schut on the basis of photographs, and proposed a likely dating to his Italian period; he additionally pointed out that the head of Bacchus may derive from that of Vitellius from the series of Roman Emperors by Rubens and his workshop (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, inv. no. 2241).