Frans Francken the Younger

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 29 June 1923, lot 121;
Schuller collection, Antwerp;
With Galerie De Jonckheere, Paris;
From whom purchased by the present collector. 

S. Speth-Holterhoff, Les peintres flamands de cabinets d'amateurs au XVII siècle, Elsevier 1957, p. 73;
J. Girard, Dictionnaire critique et raisonné des termes d'art et d'archéologie, Paris 1997, reproduced in color on the cover. 

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work has probably been restored in the last 25 years. While some of the joins and cracks in the panels have become active, much of the restoration is still adequate. The cradle on the reverse of the panel may need to be re-examined, given the fact that the panel still seems to be showing some instability. There is an original join in the panel that runs through the purple tablecloth which is showing slight instability. There are restorations in the upper portion of the picture, running horizontally and corresponding to a series of cracks throughout the larger painting on the panel wall. Under ultraviolet light, one can see restoration across all of the cracks in the panel, particularly in the floor in the lower center. Given the fact that the condition is actually very presentable, this may be a picture that would respond to cleaning, a reexamination of the structural support, and accurate retouching.
"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."

The present picture is an imagined recreation of a collector's cabinet in Flanders in first few decades of the 17th century. Such depictions of galleries, both real and fictional, were quite popular in the first half of the seventeenth century, in large part due to their promotion by Francken and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Though they did not illustrate actual paintings exclusivley, they provide amazing socio-economic, as well as art historical insights into the collecting habits of the day.

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.