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拍品專文
Signed with monogram and dated 1606, this early painting by Vinckboons is a poignant example of the ongoing artistic dialogue between Vinckboons and the Bruegel dynasty. Vinckboons studied with his father, Philip. As a young child, he moved with his family from their native Mechelen to Antwerp in 1579, relocating to Middelburg in 1586 following the siege of Antwerp and ultimately settling in Amsterdam in 1591. It was there that he probably came into close contact with Gillis van Coninxloo, who was to be a dominant influence on Vinckboons’s artistic production. Like Coninxloo, Vinckboons is regarded as a bridge between Flemish art of the sixteenth century and Dutch painting of the seventeenth century, linking the Flemish peasant genre paintings of Pieter Bruegel I with those of later Dutch artists like Isaac van Ostade.
A second, unsigned example of this composition previously thought to be by Vinckboons, but in recent years recognised by Klaus Ertz as the work of Pieter Brueghel II, is in a Brescian private collection (see K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere 1564-1637/38: Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Lingen, 2000, p. 761, no. 1024, fig. 586). Korneel Goossens, who was unaware of the present work and published the Brescian painting as by Vinckboons, suggested that it dated to circa 1608 or slightly earlier on stylistic grounds (see K. Goossens, David Vinckboons, Antwerp and The Hague, 1954, p. 106, fig. 57). Ertz similarly proposed a date of circa 1607 for Brueghel’s painting. While it is unclear how Brueghel, who is not known to have travelled to Amsterdam, gained access to Vinckboon’s painting, it is all but assured that the present painting is the prototype on which Brueghel based his image of a year or so later.
Images of the indigent strolling through villages and towns playing instruments, typically bagpipes or hurdy-gurdies, were extremely popular in the seventeenth century. Such works would almost certainly have been understood in moralising terms by their contemporary audience. Municipal governments throughout the Netherlands sought to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor, lending a hand to the former and shutting the door on the latter. One’s claim to aid hinged on whether they were deemed to be physically or mentally incapacitated or simply seen as lazy, drunk or a drifter (see R. Baer, ‘The Indigent’, in Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, exhibition catalogue, Boston, 2015, p. 234). It seems clear that in this painting Vinckboons is drawing a contrast between the bagpipe player and the begging woman with a child in her arms at right; however, he offers few clues as to which of the two – the ‘industrious’ musician or the ‘downtrodden’ mother – is worthy of financial assistance, instead leaving it to the viewer to decide.
A second, unsigned example of this composition previously thought to be by Vinckboons, but in recent years recognised by Klaus Ertz as the work of Pieter Brueghel II, is in a Brescian private collection (see K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere 1564-1637/38: Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Lingen, 2000, p. 761, no. 1024, fig. 586). Korneel Goossens, who was unaware of the present work and published the Brescian painting as by Vinckboons, suggested that it dated to circa 1608 or slightly earlier on stylistic grounds (see K. Goossens, David Vinckboons, Antwerp and The Hague, 1954, p. 106, fig. 57). Ertz similarly proposed a date of circa 1607 for Brueghel’s painting. While it is unclear how Brueghel, who is not known to have travelled to Amsterdam, gained access to Vinckboon’s painting, it is all but assured that the present painting is the prototype on which Brueghel based his image of a year or so later.
Images of the indigent strolling through villages and towns playing instruments, typically bagpipes or hurdy-gurdies, were extremely popular in the seventeenth century. Such works would almost certainly have been understood in moralising terms by their contemporary audience. Municipal governments throughout the Netherlands sought to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor, lending a hand to the former and shutting the door on the latter. One’s claim to aid hinged on whether they were deemed to be physically or mentally incapacitated or simply seen as lazy, drunk or a drifter (see R. Baer, ‘The Indigent’, in Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, exhibition catalogue, Boston, 2015, p. 234). It seems clear that in this painting Vinckboons is drawing a contrast between the bagpipe player and the begging woman with a child in her arms at right; however, he offers few clues as to which of the two – the ‘industrious’ musician or the ‘downtrodden’ mother – is worthy of financial assistance, instead leaving it to the viewer to decide.