Maerten de Vos

Believed to have been bought by the grandfather of the present owner.

This hitherto unknown painting by De Vos relates closely to another depiction of this subject by the artist, also unsigned, formerly in a private collection in Brussels (see fig. 1; on panel, 155 by 250 cm.; see A. Zweite, Marten de Vos als Maler, Berlin 1980, pp. 302-3, no. 82, reproduced plate 102).  The compositions are not the same, but they incorporate many of the same figures, differently arranged.  Since neither is signed or dated, it would be difficult to argue which of the two came first, but Armin Zweite's dating of the Brussels picture to the 1590s on the basis of similarities with other pictures from that decade would also hold good for the present panel.

The depictions of the Liberal Arts: Grammatica; Dialectica; Rhetorica; Arithmetica; Musica; Geometrica; Astrologia; are undoubtedly influenced by those of De Vos' teacher Frans Floris, painted for Nicolaes Jonghelinck's house in Antwerp, and popularized by Cornelis Cort's engravings.  De Vos' innovation was to combine them in one painting; doing so proved to be influential, since the subject was taken up by subsequent Antwerp painters, and was particularly popular in panels for Antwerp cabinets (in particular the one inside the lid), such as those painted by Frans Francken the Younger.  De Vos ignored the classical division of the Seven Liberal Arts into the Trivium and Quadrivium, choosing to mix them up to suit his compositions.