Attributed to Antoine Caron

Max Janlet, Brussels (according to a label on the reverse);
Anonymous sale, Munich, Hampel, 19 June 2012, lot 211;
Reinhold Hofstätter;
His sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 10 May 2017, lot 61;
There acquired by the present collector. 

R. Huyghe, Art and the Spirit of the Man, London 1962, p. 490 (as Antoine Caron).

The style and handling of this intriguing scene comes close to the hand of the French artist Antoine Caron.  Although very little is known of his life, he was a court painter to King Henri II of France and Marie de’ Medici, and he also worked between 1540 and 1550 at the Fontainebleau Palace alongside Primaticcio and Nicolo dell’Abbate.  His works are characterized by their theatricality and vivid coloration, elements that are certainly present in the present work.  In addition to paintings, the small body of work known of Antoine Caron consists also of designs for glass windows and tapestries.  Many of his paintings focused primarily on subjects of a historical or allegorical nature, and the present example teems with allegorical content.  It shows a dialogue between a prince and death, and it is an allegorical representation of the horrors of war. 

Standing front and center, before a table and a field tent, is an armored prince, attired in fashionable green pants, red trousers, brocaded sleeves, and a sash decorated with French lilies.  He engages in conversation with a skeleton, an allegorical figure of death, who holds a scythe while straddling the dead bodies of a soldier and a child.  A court dwarf appears between these two figures, wearing a fancy costume and holding an elaborate gun, while to the far left appears a young child seemingly in the guise of Athena, the goddess of the arts of War.  Armor lies strewn on the ground around these figures, and in the background, soldiers are huddled together in formation, behind which rise a sea of lances—an indication of the strength of the army that follows them.  A delicate landscape appears towards the distant right and includes a lake and snow-topped mountains rising beneath a cloudy sky. 

The scene depicted is also further described in the Latin inscription found on the upper and lower bars of the walnut frame.  It reads, “Anco gli Achilli la gran falce ancide / e nostra speme svl fiorir recide, which can be roughly translated to, Also the successors of Achilles raise the big scythe and cut through our budding hope.