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Lot Essay
In the early 1660s, David Teniers the Younger published his Theatrum Pictorium (The Theatre of Painting) for his patron Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria. Consisting of 243 engravings of the best Italian paintings owned by the Archduke, the book comprised one of the first catalogues ever compiled in Europe of a major collection of paintings. Teniers, for each of the paintings selected for inclusion, produced a small copy, or pasticcio, for the engravers. This Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist, taken from a model by Titian, is one such picture, made for the famous Antwerp engraver Lucas Vorsterman the Younger.
By 1651, Teniers had been appointed court painter to the Archduke. Alongside his practice as an artist, he was also responsible for the management and care of the Archducal collections which had been rapidly expanding during the late 1640s and early 1650s, with purchases made in 1649 from the Hamilton collection in England and again at the sale of Charles I’s collections in 1651. Following his arrival in Brussels, Teniers had produced several ‘gallery’ pictures for his new patron, including those now in Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. no. P001813) and at Petworth House (Egremont Collection, The National Trust). These may have inspired the commission of the Theatrum Pictorium which was probably awarded between 1653 and 1655, when Teniers was made ayuda da camara (valet de chambre, or groom).
Teniers’s Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist was modelled after Titian. The prototype is probably identifiable with a painting now in a private collection (fig. 1) and may have been one of the Archduke's purchases from the Hamilton collection (see P. Humfrey et al., The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh, 2004, p. 436, note 2). In both, Salome is dressed in a red-pink dress, with a standing collar, and leans back slightly against the weight of the silver charger in her hands, on which the head of John the Baptist rests. She is flanked by a veiled female servant and an African page boy. Dr. Margret Klinge has suggested that Teniers’s copy was in fact not produced as a single small work by the artist but originally formed part of his larger gallery paintings, from which it was cut in order to be supplied to Vorsterman. This is attested to by the painted frame surrounding Teniers’s copy, a compositional element uncommon in his other pasticci, as well as the canvas support.
One hundred and twenty of Teniers's pasticci were acquired by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough in the early 1720s, and described at Blenheim Palace in 1728 by Pierre Jacques Fougeroux as ‘excellent pieces, in which the touch perfectly imitates the original’ (J. Methuen- Campbell, ‘Early Collections of Teniers’s Copies for the Theatrum Pictorium’, David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting, exhibition catalogue, London, 2006, p. 61). The pictures remained in the Marlborough collection until their sale in 1886.
We are grateful to Dr. Margret Klinge for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs.
By 1651, Teniers had been appointed court painter to the Archduke. Alongside his practice as an artist, he was also responsible for the management and care of the Archducal collections which had been rapidly expanding during the late 1640s and early 1650s, with purchases made in 1649 from the Hamilton collection in England and again at the sale of Charles I’s collections in 1651. Following his arrival in Brussels, Teniers had produced several ‘gallery’ pictures for his new patron, including those now in Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. no. P001813) and at Petworth House (Egremont Collection, The National Trust). These may have inspired the commission of the Theatrum Pictorium which was probably awarded between 1653 and 1655, when Teniers was made ayuda da camara (valet de chambre, or groom).
Teniers’s Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist was modelled after Titian. The prototype is probably identifiable with a painting now in a private collection (fig. 1) and may have been one of the Archduke's purchases from the Hamilton collection (see P. Humfrey et al., The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh, 2004, p. 436, note 2). In both, Salome is dressed in a red-pink dress, with a standing collar, and leans back slightly against the weight of the silver charger in her hands, on which the head of John the Baptist rests. She is flanked by a veiled female servant and an African page boy. Dr. Margret Klinge has suggested that Teniers’s copy was in fact not produced as a single small work by the artist but originally formed part of his larger gallery paintings, from which it was cut in order to be supplied to Vorsterman. This is attested to by the painted frame surrounding Teniers’s copy, a compositional element uncommon in his other pasticci, as well as the canvas support.
One hundred and twenty of Teniers's pasticci were acquired by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough in the early 1720s, and described at Blenheim Palace in 1728 by Pierre Jacques Fougeroux as ‘excellent pieces, in which the touch perfectly imitates the original’ (J. Methuen- Campbell, ‘Early Collections of Teniers’s Copies for the Theatrum Pictorium’, David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting, exhibition catalogue, London, 2006, p. 61). The pictures remained in the Marlborough collection until their sale in 1886.
We are grateful to Dr. Margret Klinge for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs.