Pieter Stevens

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 10 December 1980, lot 94 (as Anton Mirou).

A. Zwollo, review of T. DaCosta Kaufmann, ‘The School of Prague’, London 1988, in Oud Holland, 106, 1992, pp. 40–41, reproduced fig. 8.

This picture was previously thought to be by Anton Mirou, but at the time of the 1980 sale an alternative attribution to Pieter Stevens was recorded in a saleroom notice. It was firmly identified as from his hand by An Zwollo in 1992, and dated to the first years of the 17th century.

Pieter Stevens was a Flemish Mannerist landscape painter and draughtsman who, like other of his countrymen was fructified in the artistic circle of the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, where he was appointed Court Painter. Drawings dated 1590 and 1591 suggest that he had previously visited Italy, staying in Rome and Naples, and he may have passed through the Flemish exile colony in Frankenthal, since his paintings are close in style to its doyens Anton Mirou (see lot 20) and Pieter Schoubroeck. By 1594 he was in Prague, where he was appointed Kammermaler on 15 April with a monthly stipend from the Court of eight gulden. He was listed as a Hofmaler in 1600, and he must have remained in Prague until after Rudolf II's death, as he was still in Imperial service in 1612, and recorded in Prague in 1614. Like his fellow Fleming Roelandt Savery, who influenced him, the forested hills and mountains of Bohemia struck a chord with Stevens, and – as in the Schuybroek landscape with its shafts of sunlight illuminating parts of the scene – he strove to replicate their drama and enchantment. Only around twenty-five paintings by him are known, but his drawings are rather more numerous.