PETRUS VAN HATTICH | A grotto with an antique bust, relief fragments, and other objects, with an Italianate landscape beyond

Hertel collection, Berlin, 1883;

Anonymous sale, Berlin, Rudolph Lepke, 24 February 1914, lot 15;

Anonymous sale, Berlin, Hecht, 1 December 1925, lot 725;

Anonymous sale, Stockholm, Bukowsky, 25 April 1979, lot 426;

Dr. Rainer Wilhelm, Stuttgart, Germany, from whom acquired, circa 1992.

W. Bode, Studien zur Geschichte der holländischen Malerei, Brunswick 1883, p. 332;

A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, Leipzig 1906, vol. I, p. 651;

A. Bredius, Künstlerinventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, The Hague 1916, vol. II, p. 476, under note 1;

U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, vol. XVI, Leipzig 1923, p. 118;

W. Pijbes, M. Aarts, M.J. Bok et al, At Home in the Golden Age, exh. cat., Zwolle 2008, p. 91, cat. no. 83, 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. 174-77, cat. no. 26, reproduced in colour.

Petrus van Hattich was active in the Netherlands during the middle of the 17th century, primarily as a painter of landscapes and highly detailed scenes of caves and grottoes. He was active in Utrecht during part of his career, and he is often associated with other artists of the Utrecht School including Abraham van Cuylenborch, Carel de Hooch and Rombout van Troyen.

Within the present composition, which has been rendered with fine detail, a number of beautifully illuminated and softly modeled antique objects are arranged within a darkened yet soaring grotto that opens upon a wooded landscape with figures set beneath a crisp blue sky. A bust of a man in the guise of a Roman general rests on a rocky ledge, in front of which leans a fragment of a stone relief with two cattle following a man. Towards the left edge of the scene appears the figure of a young winged woman in a pose reminiscent of a Sphinx.