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Lot Essay
Benson's Concert genres, with their flute and lute players, frolicking couples and wealth of still-life details, were clearly popular: Marlier records no less than ten different Concerts aprés le repas (see Ambrosius Benson et la peinture à Bruges au temps de Charles-Quint, Damme, 1957, pp. 313-15, nos. 114-123, pls. LX.-LXIV.). This composition, which was published by Marlier in 1966, includes many of these characteristic elements and relates most closely in its arrangement of figures to Benson's Concert in the Kunstmuseum, Basel (Marlier, op. cit., 1957, p. 313, no. 114, pl. LXI), the main difference being the amorous couple in the right foreground of this painting, who replace a moorish servant holding a flute.
Benson was the first to introduce the subject of an elegantly dress company making music to Bruges, and his motif was to influence the leading Bruges artist of the next generation, Pieter Pourbus, whose complex Allegory of True Love (fig. 1; London, Wallace Collection) is clearly compositionally derived from Benson's Concerts. The present picture may represent an important transitional step between the earlier Benson versions and the Pourbus, in that it seems to distinguish between different types of lovers and different types of love - the chief interest of the Wallace picture. The harmonious duet played by the man and woman at the table in the present painting can be understood to represent the ideal of true love, in contrast with the more sensual couple at the lower right, who evoke less virtuous connotations.
Large scale secular pictures were a relatively new innovation in Netherlandish painting in the first half of the sixteenth century. Such subjects likely found their origins in manuscript illumination and precedents can be found, for instance, in scenes depicting the Garden of Pleasure from the popular Roman de la rose (see for example London, British Library, ms. Harley 4425, fol. 12v.), or in Calendar miniatures at the opening of Books of Hours, like Simon Bening’s June miniature in the Hennessy Hours (1530; Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, ms. II 158, fol. 5v). Benson’s Company paintings were evidently popular in Bruges and may have held particular appeal among members of the city's three Chambers of Rhetoric. Functioning much like guilds, with members comprised primarily of wealthy citizens interested in poetry, literature, music and drama, these Chambers were charged with organising, writing and performing plays at civic celebrations and processions.
Benson was the first to introduce the subject of an elegantly dress company making music to Bruges, and his motif was to influence the leading Bruges artist of the next generation, Pieter Pourbus, whose complex Allegory of True Love (fig. 1; London, Wallace Collection) is clearly compositionally derived from Benson's Concerts. The present picture may represent an important transitional step between the earlier Benson versions and the Pourbus, in that it seems to distinguish between different types of lovers and different types of love - the chief interest of the Wallace picture. The harmonious duet played by the man and woman at the table in the present painting can be understood to represent the ideal of true love, in contrast with the more sensual couple at the lower right, who evoke less virtuous connotations.
Large scale secular pictures were a relatively new innovation in Netherlandish painting in the first half of the sixteenth century. Such subjects likely found their origins in manuscript illumination and precedents can be found, for instance, in scenes depicting the Garden of Pleasure from the popular Roman de la rose (see for example London, British Library, ms. Harley 4425, fol. 12v.), or in Calendar miniatures at the opening of Books of Hours, like Simon Bening’s June miniature in the Hennessy Hours (1530; Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, ms. II 158, fol. 5v). Benson’s Company paintings were evidently popular in Bruges and may have held particular appeal among members of the city's three Chambers of Rhetoric. Functioning much like guilds, with members comprised primarily of wealthy citizens interested in poetry, literature, music and drama, these Chambers were charged with organising, writing and performing plays at civic celebrations and processions.