Jacob de Backer and Studio Antwerp circa 1555 - circa 1585

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 6 July 1988, lot 14, for £19,500 (as Orazio Samacchini), where acquired by the present owner.

This painting may be attributed to Jacob de Backer (and his studio) based on a comparison with another painted version in the Bamberg Museum and a drawing (possibly a copy) of the same subject in the Louvre, which has an old(?) inscription to De Backer in its lower left corner (see J. Müller Hofstede, "Jacques de Backer, ein Vertreter der Florentinisch-Römischen Maniera in Antwerpen", in The Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, vol. 35, 1973, pp. 250-251, reproduced). When the painting was offered at auction in 1988 an attribution to Orazio Samacchini was proposed, based on a similarity with the facial types in Samacchini's painting of Susannah and the Elders in the Uffizi (reproduced in Gli Uffizi. Catalogo Generale, Florence 1979, p. 470, no. P1414) and on his numerous drawings of putti, but the painting seems to fall more within the Antwerp mannerist tradition of De Backer and his circle.