CORNELIS VAN POELENBURCH | Recto: Saint Peter standing in an italianate landscape; Verso: a rocky cave landscape

John Henderson Esq., England, by 1882;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 18 February 1892, lot 371, for 10 Guineas to Wagner;

Henry Wagner, London;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 16 January 1925, lot 91, for £2-2s. to De Boer;

Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 14 November 2007, lot 96, where acquired.

W. Pijbes, M. Aarts, M. J. Bok et al, At Home in the Golden Age, exhib. cat., Zwolle 2008, p. 103, cat. no. 102, reproduced in colour;

H.-J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des. 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. 4, Historien und Allegorien, Münster/Hamburg/London 2010, pp. 328-33, cat. no. 54, reproduced in colour;

N.C. Sluijter-Seijffert, Cornelis van Poelenburch 1594/5-1667: The paintings, Amsterdam 2016, pp. 122 and 319, cat. no. 91, reproduced in colour.

Cornelis van Poelenburch was one of the first Dutch artists to travel to Rome in the early 17th century and to incorporate the influence of Italian painting into his work. Indeed, he was one of the founder members of the Bentveughels - the society of Dutch and Flemish artists working in the city.

While in Rome, Poelenburch was also greatly influenced by the work of Adam Elsheimer, a German artist residing there until his untimely death in 1610. This little double-sided painting on copper is particularly reminiscent of Elsheimer's series of saints, also on a small scale and painted on copper, now mostly at Petworth House, Sussex, which Poelenburch himself reproduced in copies, today in the Pitti Palace, Florence. This figure of Saint Peter resembles the figures of both Saint Peter and Paul in Elsheimer's series,¹ although he looks to the right, and is set in a wider landscape. The work most certainly post-dates Elsheimer's series, and probably hails from Elsheimer's return to Holland in the mid-1620s.

The painting, executed with the refinement of a miniature, is also typical of Poelenburch's own conceptions of single religious figures, which he tended to depict in meditation or lamentation, rather than as part of a narrative. The landscape on the reverse of this painting is considered by Nicolette Sluijter-Seijffert, author of the most recent catalogue raisonné, to be most probably by Poelenburch himself (indeed it also bears his monogram), though its thinner execution prevents a more definitive attribution.

1 http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/486232