Adriaen Van STALBEMPT (1580 - 1662) - Lot 116

Adriaen Van STALBEMPT (1580 - 1662) Archduke Albert of Austria and Archduchess Isabella visiting a collector's cabinet Oak panel, two boards, not parqueted Height: 59 cm Width: 78.5 cm Antwerp guild marks on back Antique label on reverse An attribution to Hieronymus Francken II has also been suggested. The work will be exhibited until March 10 at Cabinet Turquin, 69 Rue Sainte Anne 75002 PARIS. NO LIVE AUCTION ON THIS LOT. TELEPHONE OR LIVE AUCTION ONLY. To register, please call 0320683928 or send an e-mail to lille@artefact-encheres.com. In the southern Netherlands of the 17th century, and particularly in Antwerp, Flemish painters developed a pictorial genre dedicated to collectors' cabinets. Archduke Leopold-Guillaume of Habsburg in his gallery in Brussels (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) by David Teniers the Younger illustrates this practice. Well these are not always the interiors of well-known collectors, Leopold-Guillaume's cabinet Leopold-Guillaume's cabinet. These views of private galleries, where paintings paintings, sculptures and exotic objects, celebrate collecting as a manifestation of knowledge and refinement. In our painting, a few visitors animate a vast gallery: some contemplate the works covering the walls, while others others examine the objects laid out on the tables. Statues, scientific instruments and and shells testify to the interest in exotic riches brought back from distant lands. At the center of the composition, Archduke Albert of Austria and Archduchess Isabella lend the whole a political significance. political significance. Their gaze focuses on a canvas leaning against a chair, representing an allegory of iconoclasm, in which anthropomorphic figures destroy works of art. This cabinet of of curiosities thus becomes a space for dialogue between art, knowledge and power, constituting a visual manifesto celebrating princely patronage. A similar painting by the same artist is in the Prado Museum. Works by Hieronymus Francken II and Jan Brueghel the Elder, in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, are also comparable. Although not all the works presented in the gallery have been formally identified, some of them are close of the following paintings: Frans Pourbus II, Le Portrait de Henri IV, 1600-1625, Paris, Musée du Louvre; Peter Paul Rubens, Moses and the Bronze Serpent, 1638, London, National Gallery; Paul Bril, View of the Roman Forum, 1600, Dresden, Gemaldegalerie der Alte Meister; Daniel Seghers, Garland with Virgin and Child, 1st half 17th century, Madrid, Prado Museum; Joos de Momper, Mountain landscape, 1620-1630, Paris, Musée du Louvre; Joos II de Momper, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Village under a full moon, 1st half 17th century, National Gallery, Prague Related bibliography: TENIERS, David and BRUEGHEL, Jan Brueghel y los gabinetes de pintura. Exhibition catalog. Madrid: Muséo del Prado, 1991. WRIGHT, Christopher. Cabinet Pictures: Dutch and Flemish Masters of the Seventeenth Century. London: R. Green, 1999