ELIAS VAN NIJMEGEN | AN ALLEGORY OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

Chapman;

By whom sold, London, Robinson & Fisher, 6 December 1928, lot 125;

With Kunstzaal Oudt Holland, A.J. Boer, The Hague, 1942;

Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie’s, 10 November 1997, lot 154, when acquired.

H.-J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des. 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. 4, Historien und Allegorien, Münster/Hamburg/London 2010, pp. 310–16, cat. no. 51, reproduced in colour.

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Elias van Nijmegen was born in Nijmegen, and in 1689 he settled in Rotterdam, where he ran a successful studio for painted wall and ceiling decorations. The present work is a complex allegory of Christianity, derived from Ripa's Iconologia of 1599, translated into Dutch by Dirk Pietersz. Pers in 1644. A coloured drawing in pen and ink, part of the Estate of the Van Nijmegen family in the Rijksmuseum, shows the artist's first depiction of the subject.[1]

1 Inv. no. RP-T-1968-132; https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-T-1968-114