ESAIAS VAN DE VELDE | A landscape with Saint Philip baptising the eunuch of Queen Candace of Ethiopia

Anonymous sale, Cologne, Heberle, 21-22 December 1893, lot 402;

Anonymous sale, Cologne, Heberle, 19 December 1894, lot 369;

H.I.A. Raedt van Oldenbarnevelt, The Hague;

His sale, Amsterdam, Frederik Muller & Cie, 15-16 April 1902, lot 84 (as Pieter Lastman);

A.B.J. Stöcker, Amsterdam, by 1942;

Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 14 November 1991, lot 107;

With Galerie Scheidwimmer, Munich, 1998, from whom acquired.

K. Freise, Pieter Lastman, Leipzig 1911, p. 177 (as not by Lastman);

A. Pigler, Barockthemen. Eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur Ikonographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Budapest 1974, vol. I, p. 390 (as erroneously attributed to Lastman);

G. Keyes, Esaias van den Velde, Groningen 1984, p. 121, cat. no. 9;

H.-J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des. 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. 4, Historien und Allegorien, Münster/Hamburg/London 2010, pp. 432-35, cat. no. 74, reproduced in colour.

Esaias van de Velde was the son of Hans van de Velde and trained in Amsterdam, likely in his father's studio, before probably becoming the pupil of Gillis van Coninxloo. In 1609 the Van de Velde family established itself in Haarlem. Esaias became a member of the artist's guild in 1612, of the literary club in Wyngaardranken in 1617, and the guild at The Hague in 1618. He was painter to the court of Princes Maurice and Frederick Henry, and had as his pupils Pieter de Neyn and Jan van Goyen.

Esaias left an extensive painted œuvre of over 180 pictures, 117 of which are landscapes. His religious scenes were usually set within a landscape, which often dwarfed the religious content; the predominance of the scene in the present painting, which is recounted in the Acts of the Apostles 8:27-39, is more uncommon.