- 23
Frans Francken the Younger
Description
- Frans Francken the Younger
- The Interior of a Picture Gallery with Connoisseurs Admiring Paintings
- oil on panel
- 27 1/2 x 40 1/2 inches
Provenance
Schuller collection, Antwerp;
With Galerie De Jonckheere, Paris;
From whom purchased by the present collector.
Literature
J. Girard, Dictionnaire critique et raisonné des termes d'art et d'archéologie, Paris 1997, reproduced in color on the cover.
Condition
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."
Catalogue Note
The present room is filled with a plethora of objects that illustrate the collector’s eclectic and worldly taste. Various objets d'art, jewelry, shells, flowers, and a variety of paintings, both identifiable and in the general style of contemporary Flemish artists fill the room. On the table to the right next to the bouquet of flowers is a small Venus After the Bath, after Giambologna, above which are two small roundels , a Winter Townscape in the style of Jacob Grimmer and a Burning Town in the style of Gilis Mostaert. In the center of the wall is an Adoration of the Magi, likely by Francken, above which is an Extensive Wooded Landscape in the style Jan Brueghel the Elder. On the ground is a Floral Garland Surrounding a Virgin Mary in the manner of Jan Brueghel the Elder, next to which is a Rocky Landscape with Waterfall, in the style of Paul Bril or Martin Ryckaert.
The third painting on the ground, a Saint Cecilia glancing upward while seated at the virginals, follows a composition of a presumably lost original of the early 1620s by Rubens. The composition generally follows a sixteenth century Flemish prototype that Rubens would have likely known from a painting by Michiel Coxie, a version of which is in the Museo del Prado. In fact, Rubens' posthumous inventory lists as no. 204 "Une S. Cecile, de Michiel Coxy".1 The picture is known in multiple versions, including high quality examples in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Bob Jones University (where given to Jan Boeckhorst), as well as a version formerly in the collections of the Elector of Saxony. The version depicted in the present work may actually depict Rubens' original, an opinion first put forth by Hans Vlieghe.2
1. W. Liedtke, Flemish Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1984, vol. I, p. 223.
2. H. Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum, Saints, Brussels 1972, part VIII, vol. 1, under cat. 81, p. 127.