This arresting Flemish Caravaggesque painting of Diogenes looking for an Honest Man is an unrivalled masterpiece from the brush of Pieter van Mol, a relatively unknown artist from the orbit of Rubens in Antwerp. Perhaps the reason for Van Mol’s obscurity is the fact that he spent most of his career working in Paris and not in his native Antwerp. Born nearly eight months after Van Dyck in Antwerp in 1599, Van Mol likely apprenticed with Artus Wolffert.⁶ and probably accompanied Rubens to Paris in 1625, when the master travelled there for the commission of the Medici Cycle in the Luxembourg Palace. Van Mol found success in Paris,⁷ as he received many commissions in the French capital and became court painter to the King (1637) and Queen (1642) of France; in 1648 the painter was among the founding members of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts.

While Van Mol’s oeuvre is replete with paintings of excellent quality, this picture is surely the artist’s strongest work. It was a celebrated treasure in several prominent French collections, beginning with Paul-Henri-Thiry, baron d’Holbach, a French-German author and Enlightenment philosopher. The painting was twice purchased at auction by famous collector and dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, the husband of celebrated portraitist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. It also belonged to François-Pascal Haudry, called Président Haudry, the president of the finance bureau in Orléans and owner of one of the best art collections outside of Paris. Around 1804 the present lot entered the collection of Lucien Bonaparte, who brought it from Paris to Rome during his self-imposed exile in The Eternal City. In a list of Bonaparte’s collection compiled in 1804, the painting is described as hanging in the most important room, the “Prima Sallone.” In the first catalogue of this collection from 1808, there appears an engraving after the painting by Giovanni Folo (fig. 1). Lucien then escaped to Britain in 1809 but returned to Rome after his brother’s abdication in 1814. He retained his collection as long as he could, but financial pressures forced him to apply for an export permit for this painting in 1825. At that time the picture was almost certainly shipped back to Paris, where it was purchased by Baron de Rothschild and remained in the Rothschild family for over 170 years, until its sale at Sotheby’s New York in 1997, when it was purchased by the present owner.

Although this is Van Mol’s masterpiece it fits into his oeuvre quite comfortably. A large painting by Van Mol in Orléans (fig. 2) depicts the same subject and includes a similar grizzly and grey-bearded old man as the figure of Diogenes, again holding the lantern. In fact, the waves in the hair and beard in both portrayals are nearly identical, suggesting that Van Mol might have been working from a sketch after life that he prepared beforehand. A candidate for this sketch is the study in the museum in Rouen (fig. 3). The artist worked out this revision of the subject very carefully, as demonstrated by a preparatory drawing in Frankfurt, also at knee-length (fig. 4).

As inspiration for the present painting, Van Mol could have recalled several sketches by Rubens. The bearded man on the far left could refer back to the first head on the left in Rubens’ Head Studies of Bearded Man in Libourne,⁸ while the old woman in the center could have its roots in Rubens’ Study of an Old Woman, which sold at Sotheby’s London in 2017 (fig. 5).⁹ Finally, the bearded old man who served as the model of Diogenes harks back to several sketches by Rubens, such as the figure on the right in the double head study in Dayton (fig. 6).¹⁰ In all of these borrowings Van Mol is not slavishly imitating Rubens. Instead, he is emulating the great master and seamlessly integrating these influences into a work that is entirely his own.

Diogenes of Sinope was an ancient Greek philosopher from the 4^th century B.C. and founder of the Cynic school of philosophy; he despised wealth and would walk around Athens begging in public, openly criticizing those whom he encountered, and so it is said “paying homage to no one,” not even Alexander the Great, whom he boldly asked to step aside, out of the path of his sunlight. His life was documented by his namesake, Diogenes Laërtius, in the Lives of the Philosophers, which appeared in an Italian edition in Venice in 1611 (Dell vite de’ filosofi di Dioigenes Laertio). In this text it is explained that Diogenes “walked around with a lantern by day and said, ''I am looking for an [honest] man.”¹¹ The narrative was only occasionally depicted in Flemish Baroque art,¹² although as we know Van Mol painted the story at least twice.

Although largely preserved in private collections for most of its history, this painting was copied on canvas, probably when the original was still in France in the 17^th century, assuming that the artist brought it with him when he moved from Antwerp to Paris, or indeed if he executed the outstanding original during his French period.¹³

1. "Diogène tenant sa lanterne & cherchant un homme dans un groupe de divers personnages, de proportion naturelle & vu en buste : ce superbe Tableau d'un mérite rare & distingué a été attribué au Feti, & à d'autres maîtres, tant il est difficile d'en rencontrer de pareils de van Moll"

2. “Diogène tenant sa lanterne, et cherchant un homme dans Athénes. On le voit environné de huit personnages de différens âges, de grandeur naturelle et vus en buste. Ce tableau, l'un des chef-d'oeuvres de la peinture, vient de la vente de M. d'Olback, no. 8 de notre catalogue, où nous l'avons acheté 4761 liv. On l'a magnifiquement rebordé"

3. "Diogène tenant sa lanterne, & cherchant un homme dans Athènes : on le voit environné de huit personnages de différens âges, de grandeur naturelle, & vus en buste : par Van-Mool"

4. "Adrien van Mool. Diogène tenant sa lanterne et cherchant avec elle, en plein jour, un homme dans Athènes. On le voit environné de plusieurs personnages de différens âges et différens caractères, tous de grandeur naturelle et vus en bustes. Il est des productions que l'on ne peut louer, les expressions étant insuffisantes pour en détailler les beautés. Le Tableau que nous décrivons ici est de ce nombre, et Le Brun, dans son ouvrage intéressant sur la peinture, comme dans le Catalogue de sa vente, N.o 86, a consacré cette vérité, en présentant ce Tableau comme un modèle de grâce et de perfection qui doivent le mettre au rang des chefs-d'oeuvres de la peinture"

5. Archivio di Stato di Roma 1804, Camerale II, Antichità e Belle Arti, busta 7, fasc. 204, in the Prima Sallone: “25. Diogene cercando uno uomo, tavola di piú figure, à mezzo corpo di Van-Mole”

6. See M-L. Hairs, Dans le sillage de Rubens. Les peintres d’histoire Anversois au XVIIe siècle, 1977, p. 227.

7. According to H. Vlieghe, Flemish Art and Architecture 1585-1700, Cambridge 1998, p. 44, the artist did not move to Paris until 1631. As Vlieghe indicates (p. 285, note 47) the celebrated series of paintings in the Church of St. Joseph of the Carmines in Paris, thought to be Van Mol’s most important commission in the city, is actually by Abraham van Diepenbeeck.

8. T. van Hout, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XX, Study Heads and Anatomical Studies, London and Turnhout 2020, pp. 104-105, fig. 60.

9. Sale, London, Sotheby’s, 5 July 2017, lot 54. One can also compare the old woman in the Old Woman and a Boy in Candlelight in the Mauritshuis (see N. Büttner, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XII, Allegories and Subjects from Literature, London and Turnhout 2018, pp. 368-380, fig. 235).

10. Van Hout 2020, no. 12a, fig. 45. One can also compare the Head Study of a Bearded Old Man that recently sold at Christie’s London, 8 July 2021, lot 3 (Van Hout, pp. 192-193, no. 72, fig. 248).

11. S. & R. Bernen, A Guide to Myth & Religion in European Painting, 1270-1700, New York 1973, p. 94; J. Hall, Dictionary of Subjects & Symbols in Art, New York 1974, p. 104.

12. See A. Pigler, Barock-Themen, Budapest 1974, pp. 389-390. See also E. McGrath, Rubens’s Subjects from History, in Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, London 1997, pp.65-68, and A. Blankert, in Dutch Classicism in seventeenth-century painting, exhibition catalogue, Rotterdam 1999-2000, pp. 180-183.

13. Sale, Drouot-Richelieu, 12 December 2001, lot 16.