STUDIO OF FRANS FRANCKEN THE YOUNGERANTWERP 1581 - 1642 | The various possibilities of access to immortality

Various well-known figures are depicted here, from Antiquity for example Mucius Scaevola, and Tomyris, queen of the Scyths, from later times also other famous generals, clerics and scientists from the more distant past; even the painter has depicted himself in the composition, seated in the middle looking with a direct gaze to the onlooker. We see all the ways mankind can obtain access to heaven and its immortality, either via the religious way, the scientific route or the war road. This is a variant of a composition known in another version in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux (oil on panel, 73 x 104 cm; inv. no. Bx E 158 as "Ecole de Frans Francken II"). A third version was presented in a Berlin sale of 1912 (see U. Harting, Frans Francken der Jüngere (1581-1642) : die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Freren 1989, p. 353, nos. 381-382, reproduced).