Justus van Egmont

Robert Child (d. 1782), 36 Berkeley Square, London and Osterley Park House, Middlesex;
Thence by descent to the present owners.

Whitehall, The Arts Council of Great Britain, Old Masters from Jersey Collections, 1952, no. 93 (as by Rubens)

E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum, Subjects from History, 1997, part XIII, vol. 2, cat. no. 28a, p. 148-9 and vol. 1, illus. fig. 109 (as 'After Rubens, actually Justus van Egmont?')

The picture is lighter in tone and less acidic in colour than the catalogue illustration would suggest. The canvas has been lined and the paint surface has been flattened as a result and the darker pigments are thin in places. There is no damage or loss of paint visible to the naked eye except for old retouchings to restored frame abrasion around the edges. Otherwise the canvas is in good structurally sound condition. Examination under ultraviolet reveals old scattered minor cosmetic retouching throughout the sky as we as some infilling to an old now stabilised craquelure. There is also some old minor strengthening to the robes of the figures as well as some minor retouching to the fleshtones. A mottled varnish impedes inspection. Offered in a gilt wood and plaster frame in good condition.
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Born in Leiden, Justus van Egmont initially trained under Caspar van den Hoecke (d. 1648). Following a sojourn in Italy he is recorded as working in Rubens’s studio in the 1620’s. He is one of the few artists whose collaboration with Rubens is well documented following his involvement, at least in the later stages, in the execution of the Medici cycle which was commissioned in 1622 by Marie de’ Medici. In 1628 he became a Master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke before leaving for Paris where he established a considerable reputation not only as a painter but also as a print publisher and tapestry designer. In 1648 he was one of the founders of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture but soon after returned to Brussels before settling in Antwerp.

This painting is a preparatory oil sketch for a tapestry design depicting the reconciliation between the armies of Romulus and Titus Tatius. Although its authorship has long been in dispute it has been recently been confirmed as being a work by Justus van Egmont. In the past Dr. Ludwig Burchard thought the design could be attributed to Rubens on the basis that it was compositionally similar to a picture of the same subject by Rubens and his studio in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (Inv. No. 350).¹ On this basis he thought that the present picture was a copy after a composition by Rubens for the tapestry design. In 1997 Professor Elizabeth McGrath revised this theory drawing attention to the stylistic similarities between this picture and the Romulus Cycle,² given by Arnout Balis to van Egmont.³ Here she convincingly argues that the proportions, facial features and the characteristic use of stooping soldiers as compositional devices to enclose the action, all point to the same hand, likely that of van Egmont. We are grateful to Professor Elizabeth McGrath of the Warburg Institute and Prisca Valkeneers’s of the Rubenianum for subsequently confirming this attribution to van Egmont following first hand inspection (March 2013). This work is to be included in Prisca Valkeneers’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist to be published in 2018.

1. E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum, Subjects from History, 1997, part XIII, vol. 2, p. 125.
2. Ibid., p. 149.
3. Ibid., p. 148.