Maarten de Vos

Anonymous sale, Lucerne, Galerie Fischer, 23-27 November 1971, lot 2325;

Private collection, Norway;

With Richard Feigen, New York (no. 15417 C);

Anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, 30 September 2005, lot 7;

There acquired by the present collector.

A. Zweite, Marten de Vos als Maler, Berlin 1980, pp. 269-270, cat. no. 17, reproduced fig. 16.  

The Flemish artist Marten de Vos was born in Antwerp, where he may have trained under his father, Pieter de Vos, as well as Frans Floris. A trip to Italy in 1552 with his artist friend Pieter Bruegel the Elder took him to Rome and Venice, where he worked in Tintoretto’s studio painting landscapes. Returning to Antwerp in 1556, he joined the city’s Guild of Saint Luke by 1558, and in the years to follow, he was in high demand in his native city, producing paintings for private collectors as well as religious institutions, who tasked him with replacing the paintings destroyed by the iconoclastic uprisings in 1558 and 1566.

This vibrant and expressive panel illustrating The Creation of Eve was, according to Zweite, painted by De Vos around 1570. He compares it stylistically with other panels by de Vos from this period, including his Fall of Man,¹ The Marriage of Adam and Eve,² and The Expulsion from Paradise.³  The painting can also be compared to an engraving of the same subject by Sadeler.  

1. Zweite 1980, p. 276, cat. no. 33, reproduced fig. 39.  

2.  Zweite 1980, p. 276, cat. no. 34, reproduced fig. 43.

3. Zweite 1980, p. 276-277, cat. no. 35, reproduced fig. 44.    

4. Zweite 1980, reproduced fig. 203.