.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
These five paintings depicting allegories of the Five Senses are near contemporary versions of a celebrated series by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). The works are counted among the chefs d’oeuvres of Jan Brueghel the Younger and represent a rarely encountered intact set of these desirable subjects. According to Klaus Ertz, they were painted "shortly after 1626" (loc. cit.), when Jan had returned from several years in Italy where he enjoyed the patronage of leading figures like Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564-1631). Like the prototypes, this set may well be the product of a collaboration by Jan the Younger and another, as yet unidentified, artist who painted the personifications and accompanying putti.
Ertz’s dating of these panels is well-supported by the historical record. Two of the Prado set are dated 1617 (Sight) and 1618 (Taste), while the appearance of Mariemont in Hearing reflects the completion of building work that took place in the years 1617-1618 and may therefore have been executed slightly later. The reverse of the panel depicting Touch in the present series bears the panel maker’s mark of Guilliam Aertssen, who was admitted to the Antwerp guild as a master frame-maker and tableau-maker in 1612 and appears to have been active at least until 1638. While the panel maker’s mark does not preclude the set from being contemporary with Jan the Elder’s prototypes, on stylistic grounds they would seem to date to nearly a decade later.
The Prado series by Jan the Elder and Rubens were already listed in the inventory of the Alcázar in 1636, which provides a terminus ante quem for the present series, which was painted in Antwerp. The inventory noted that the set was given by the Duke of Neuberg, in all probability the Count Palatine and Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm von der Pfalz-Neuberg, to the Cardinal Infant Ferdinand, who in turn gifted them to the Duke of Medina de las Torres. The Duke had converted to Roman Catholicism and became an important ally to the Spanish crown as the ruler of the Duchy of Cleves, which was united with the Duchy of Jülich and was a central point of debate between the Habsburgs and the Dutch during the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-21). While it is not known when the Duke himself acquired the Prado series, the evident references to the Archducal couple, Albert and Isabella, in the paintings suggest the set may well have been executed for them and that they gifted the paintings to the Duke for raisons d’état. The Duke died in 1628 and the paintings must have arrived in Spain before 10 April 1633, the day in which the Cardinal Infant left Spain for the Netherlands via Genoa, to provide time for him to gift them on.
Much like the Prado set, this series was in all probability an important commission, though the identify of its patron is unknown. The paintings first appear in 1720 in the possession of the Emperor Charles VI in Vienna. The original patron may well have been a cleric, owing to a notable difference in this series, most evident in the depiction of Smell: while in the Prado painting the personifications tend to be nude or semi-nude, in this series they are draped. Dictates of decency required that personifications be depicted in such fashion. It has further been suggested that this individual may have owned Rubens’ Virgin and Child in Berlin, which Jan the Younger substituted for a similar but not identical painting seen in the right foreground of his father’s depiction of Sight.
Series of the Seasons, Months of the Year and Four Elements proved exceedingly popular in both painting and print in the Lowlands in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, Brueghel and Rubens updated the earlier Mannerist traditions by adapting them to the then-fashionable depictions of collector’s cabinets and market scenes of the type popularized by Joachim Beuckelaer. It is in works like the Prado and present series that this revolution found its fullest expression.
Ertz’s dating of these panels is well-supported by the historical record. Two of the Prado set are dated 1617 (Sight) and 1618 (Taste), while the appearance of Mariemont in Hearing reflects the completion of building work that took place in the years 1617-1618 and may therefore have been executed slightly later. The reverse of the panel depicting Touch in the present series bears the panel maker’s mark of Guilliam Aertssen, who was admitted to the Antwerp guild as a master frame-maker and tableau-maker in 1612 and appears to have been active at least until 1638. While the panel maker’s mark does not preclude the set from being contemporary with Jan the Elder’s prototypes, on stylistic grounds they would seem to date to nearly a decade later.
The Prado series by Jan the Elder and Rubens were already listed in the inventory of the Alcázar in 1636, which provides a terminus ante quem for the present series, which was painted in Antwerp. The inventory noted that the set was given by the Duke of Neuberg, in all probability the Count Palatine and Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm von der Pfalz-Neuberg, to the Cardinal Infant Ferdinand, who in turn gifted them to the Duke of Medina de las Torres. The Duke had converted to Roman Catholicism and became an important ally to the Spanish crown as the ruler of the Duchy of Cleves, which was united with the Duchy of Jülich and was a central point of debate between the Habsburgs and the Dutch during the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-21). While it is not known when the Duke himself acquired the Prado series, the evident references to the Archducal couple, Albert and Isabella, in the paintings suggest the set may well have been executed for them and that they gifted the paintings to the Duke for raisons d’état. The Duke died in 1628 and the paintings must have arrived in Spain before 10 April 1633, the day in which the Cardinal Infant left Spain for the Netherlands via Genoa, to provide time for him to gift them on.
Much like the Prado set, this series was in all probability an important commission, though the identify of its patron is unknown. The paintings first appear in 1720 in the possession of the Emperor Charles VI in Vienna. The original patron may well have been a cleric, owing to a notable difference in this series, most evident in the depiction of Smell: while in the Prado painting the personifications tend to be nude or semi-nude, in this series they are draped. Dictates of decency required that personifications be depicted in such fashion. It has further been suggested that this individual may have owned Rubens’ Virgin and Child in Berlin, which Jan the Younger substituted for a similar but not identical painting seen in the right foreground of his father’s depiction of Sight.
Series of the Seasons, Months of the Year and Four Elements proved exceedingly popular in both painting and print in the Lowlands in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, Brueghel and Rubens updated the earlier Mannerist traditions by adapting them to the then-fashionable depictions of collector’s cabinets and market scenes of the type popularized by Joachim Beuckelaer. It is in works like the Prado and present series that this revolution found its fullest expression.