.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
This rediscovered panel is a vigorously worked and psychologically penetrating study of the head of a bearded man viewed from three vantage points, providing an insight into the reproduction and diffusion of figure types by the most significant Flemish painter of the seventeenth century: Sir Peter Paul Rubens.
When the painting was offered in 2011, the head studies were only faintly perceptible beneath dark, obscuring layers of historic dirt and discoloured varnish, which left it largely overlooked at the sale, after which it was acquired by the present owner. Subsequent conservation was transformative, revealing the original paint surface beneath.
Rubens’s prolific use of head studies for his larger multi-figural compositions is well documented. Spontaneous, rapidly painted studies from a model in the studio provided Rubens with an essential cast of real-life characters to draw from. Recorded often from a variety of angles, they were never intended as finished paintings for display, but kept as working tools to add variety and a sense of human veracity to his history paintings, communicating the master’s ideas to his assistants. Along with his compositional modelli, these head studies were amongst his most important possessions, which he relied on as part of his working practice for his whole life. Indeed, a work of this type was referenced in the so-called Specificatie – an inventory of works compiled for auction following Rubens’s death in 1640 – testifying to their importance for the artist: 'Une quantit des visages au vif, sur toile, & fonds de bois, tant de Rubens, que de Mons. Van Dyck' ('A parcel of faces made after the life, vppon bord and Cloth as well by Sir Peter Paul Rubens as van Dyck'; see J. Müller, Rubens: The Artist as Collector, Princeton, 1989, p. 145).
The present heads were evidently painted by at least one talented hand, and perhaps multiple, working in Rubens’s orbit at the end of the 1610s, which included the young Anthony van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens. They leave a fascinating record of study heads that may have been based on now-lost individual prototypes by Rubens. The majority of Rubens’s large projects were executed with the assistance of pupils and collaborators working under the master’s supervision. The present head studies can be associated, with slight divergences, to figures found in works by the artist from around 1617, during one of the busiest phases of his career: the upturned head at left, the first of the three to have been rendered on the panel, bears semblance to the shepherd raising his hat in Rubens’s Adoration of the Shepherds of circa 1617 (Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts); the head in the centre, painted second, closely resembles that of Saint Peter in Rubens’s Saint Peter Finding the Tribute Money of circa 1617 (Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; fig. 1), which Rubens sold to Sir Dudley Carlton in 1618 as part of an exchange of goods agreed between the two; and the last, painted in the lower right, can be associated with the figure holding the shroud in the upper right of Rubens’s Descent from the Cross, again of circa 1617 (Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts). Dendrochronological analysis of the present panel supports a similar time of execution, providing a felling date to after circa 1594 and usage before circa 1630 (dendrochronological report by Ian Tyers, June 2024, available upon request).
When the painting was offered in 2011, the head studies were only faintly perceptible beneath dark, obscuring layers of historic dirt and discoloured varnish, which left it largely overlooked at the sale, after which it was acquired by the present owner. Subsequent conservation was transformative, revealing the original paint surface beneath.
Rubens’s prolific use of head studies for his larger multi-figural compositions is well documented. Spontaneous, rapidly painted studies from a model in the studio provided Rubens with an essential cast of real-life characters to draw from. Recorded often from a variety of angles, they were never intended as finished paintings for display, but kept as working tools to add variety and a sense of human veracity to his history paintings, communicating the master’s ideas to his assistants. Along with his compositional modelli, these head studies were amongst his most important possessions, which he relied on as part of his working practice for his whole life. Indeed, a work of this type was referenced in the so-called Specificatie – an inventory of works compiled for auction following Rubens’s death in 1640 – testifying to their importance for the artist: 'Une quantit des visages au vif, sur toile, & fonds de bois, tant de Rubens, que de Mons. Van Dyck' ('A parcel of faces made after the life, vppon bord and Cloth as well by Sir Peter Paul Rubens as van Dyck'; see J. Müller, Rubens: The Artist as Collector, Princeton, 1989, p. 145).
The present heads were evidently painted by at least one talented hand, and perhaps multiple, working in Rubens’s orbit at the end of the 1610s, which included the young Anthony van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens. They leave a fascinating record of study heads that may have been based on now-lost individual prototypes by Rubens. The majority of Rubens’s large projects were executed with the assistance of pupils and collaborators working under the master’s supervision. The present head studies can be associated, with slight divergences, to figures found in works by the artist from around 1617, during one of the busiest phases of his career: the upturned head at left, the first of the three to have been rendered on the panel, bears semblance to the shepherd raising his hat in Rubens’s Adoration of the Shepherds of circa 1617 (Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts); the head in the centre, painted second, closely resembles that of Saint Peter in Rubens’s Saint Peter Finding the Tribute Money of circa 1617 (Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; fig. 1), which Rubens sold to Sir Dudley Carlton in 1618 as part of an exchange of goods agreed between the two; and the last, painted in the lower right, can be associated with the figure holding the shroud in the upper right of Rubens’s Descent from the Cross, again of circa 1617 (Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts). Dendrochronological analysis of the present panel supports a similar time of execution, providing a felling date to after circa 1594 and usage before circa 1630 (dendrochronological report by Ian Tyers, June 2024, available upon request).