Circle of David Vinckboons

The theme of the Christian Soldier advocates the power of religious faith over worldly temptations. The current painting is strongly related to a print by Pieter Serwouters after David Vinckboons (Warburg Library mount, source unknown), but the theme is more clearly explained in an annotated print of the same subject by Hieronymus Wierix after Maarten de Vos (see New Holstein LXVI, no. 1795). Our soldier stands strong amidst the temptations of The World and its vanities, represented by the lady with an orb on her head to the left who is surrounded by riches, and holding an oft-used symbol of vanity, a feather fan. He also denies the attractions of The Flesh, or the sinful Eve who lies provocatively at his feet. The Devil stands ignored on the extreme right, and the scribe to his right represents The Heretic, who tries in vain to lure the Soldier from the path of faith by filling his mind with false doctrine.

In the Serwouters print, the books on which The Heretic stands bear the inscriptions 'ARRIUS' and 'SO...'. Arius was one of the most famous early Christian heretics and the 'SO...' presumably refers to another heretic, Faustus Socinus, whose sect was very much alive in the Seventeenth Century.

The soldier is adorned with a shield depicting the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac, which in the Biblia Pauperum is taken to be a 'type' or forerunner of the crucifixion. The multifaceted stone on which he stands seems to relate to 1 Peter 2:6: "Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious. And he that shall believe in him, shall not be confounded". In Latin, corner stone reads "lapidem angularem", which might explain the multifaceted, angular mistranslation of the stone in our work.)

We are grateful to Dr. Paul Taylor from the Warburg Institute for his help with cataloguing this lot.