Abraham Brueghel Guillaume Courtois, called Guglielmo Cortese Antwerp 1631 - 1690 Naples St Hippolyte, Franche-Comté 1628 - 1679 Rome

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 large work is not well restored, and a more focused effort would be beneficial. The canvas has been lined with wax as an adhesive. The paint layer within the still life and lower third of the right side and throughout much of the upper left is very healthy. However, the chest of the figure and the white blouse show broad and sloppy restorations. The sky is almost completely repainted, and this broad retouching extends into the leaves against the sky. This kind of restoration is usually easily removable and can be replaced considerably more accurately. Although there are presumably losses in these areas, the restoration at present probably gives the wrong impression, and the condition is quite respectable in many areas.
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This painting is one of a number of collaborations between Abraham Brueghel and Guillaume Courtois, both foreign painters working Rome in the second half of the 17th century.  The still life was painted by Brueghel and the figure by Courtois.  The painting is a variant of the Grapes and pomegranate with a vase of flowers and a female figure, now in a private collection, conceived in a vertical format with the figure at the center of the composition, which is dated by Gianluca and Ulisse Bocchi to the end of the 1660s.¹  Courtois' charming female figure is reprized again in the artist's beautiful Fruit Picker in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.²

We are grateful to Nicola Spinosa and Fred G. Meijer for independently endorsing the attribution and suggesting the figure to be by Courtois on the basis of photographs.

1. G. and U. Bocchi, Pittori di natura morta a Roma, Artisti Stranieri 1630-1750, Viadana 2009, p. 122 and 124, reproduced fig. AB5.
2.  Ibid., p. 122.