Lot Essay
This painting is believed to be the prime version of a composition known in at least ten other versions. While it has been sold at auction in the past as by Joos van Craesbeeck, it has always been published as a work by Adriaen Brouwer. In her recent monograph on van Craesbeeck, Karolien de Clippel writes “The loose brushwork, the transparent painting style, the subtle effects of light and the coloring point, I believe, much more in the direction of Adriaen Brouwer than of Joos van Craesbeeck” (loc. cit.). De Clippel has suggested our painting may have been part of a series of the Seven Deadly Sins by Brouwer, of which the only other surviving original, representing Lust and having identical dimensions to our painting, is in the Mauritshuis. The other five Sins are known through copies.