Jacob de Backer

Bears three wax heraldic seals on the back of the panel, two illegible, the third that of the Russian Counts Lanskoy (title conferred 1861);
Private collection, Munich

J. Müller-Hofstede, ‘Jacques de Backer. Ein vertreter der Florentinisch-Römischen Maniera in Antwerpen,’ Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 35, 1973, pp. 231, fig. 6, and 239;
E. Leuschner, 'A Grisaille Oil Sketch from the "De Backer Group" and Workshop Practices in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp,' Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 43, 2008, p. 102

Vertical crack in centre of panel. Smaller cracking in surface towards top right. Some other minor losses and abrasions, but surface generally not in bad condition. Panel is cradled. Sold in an attractive modern painted wood frame.
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This spectacular, powerfully drawn modello was recognised by Justus Müller-Hofstede (loc. cit.) as the study for the famous painting of The Last Judgement, which forms the main central panel of the triptych (fig. 1) executed in 1591 as a memorial to the great Antwerp publisher Christoph Plantin (c. 1520-1589).  Though the composition of the present modello generally corresponds very closely to that of the finished painting, there are many small differences of detail, which make it clear that this is indeed a working study for the final work.  The three panels of the Plantin-Epitaph were removed from their original setting when looted by the French during the Napoleonic wars, but were eventually returned to Antwerp and can be seen today in their original location in city’s Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe Cathedral.   Although no record survives of the commission, and consequently no documentary evidence of who painted the unsigned panels, the Plantin Epitaph has been attributed since at least the 18^th century to the Antwerp artist Jacob de Backer¹, and is indeed held up as a cornerstone of this somewhat enigmatic artist’s oeuvre.  

In this remarkable altarpiece, the dramatic central scene of the Last Judgement is flanked by two panels depicting donors;  these side panels were almost certainly painted by a different artist from the central Last Judgement.  The latter, though clearly the product of a north European aesthetic, also demonstrates a significant awareness of Italian art and painting techniques, and in particular the influence of late Florentine and Roman mannerism, as seen in the works of Bronzino, Vasari and Salviati.  This aesthetic was also very much in tune with the prevailing taste at the Prague court of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, and indeed the inventory of the Emperor’s estate, drawn up following his death in 1612, lists four works by de Backer. 

The near-contemporary biographer Carel van Mander, whose account of the lives of the artists was published in 1604, refers to a number of paintings by de Backer, but none of these can be traced today, and some uncertainty also surrounds the autograph nature and dating of another apparently documentary painting by the artist, also representing The Last Judgement, now in the Koninklijke Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, which bears the inscription ‘Jacob de Backer fecit’ and a date that has generally been read as 1571.²  Indeed, although a very distinctive artistic personality clearly existed behind a group of compositions, many depicting The Last Judgement, all of which are executed in the very personal, Italianate/northern mannerist style of the present sketch, the connection with the name of Jacob de Backer is, in the end, essentially traditional rather than proven, which has led Eckhard Leuschner, the scholar who has most recently published on de Backer, to describe the works he publishes very cautiously, as part of “the de Backer group” rather than as definitely by the artist; in an e-mail to the present owner, Dr. Leuschner did, though, comment that the present modello is of high quality, and that it could relate to the Plantin-Epitaph.  Given the long-standing attribution to de Backer of the painting in question and the others like it by the same hand, it seems most reasonable to describe this extremely accomplished study too as being ‘by’ de Backer.      

It is also perhaps worth noting that this is a rather early example of a type of grisaille oil sketch that was to gain much currency a couple of decades later, when Rubens was seeking to instruct (and control) the printmakers whom he had charged to reproduce his works.  De Backer seems, therefore, to have played a rather important part in establishing this technical practice, which Rubens himself was later to use to such good effect.

1.  First mentioned as a work by de Backer in G.P. Mensaert, Le peintre amateur et curieux.., Brussels 1763, p.235; cited E. Leuschner, ‘Defining de Backer. New Evidence on the last phase of Antwerp Mannerism before Rubens,’ Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 137, no. 1587 (2001), pp. 167, 189 n.10
2.  Leuschner, op. cit., p. 168