A bull in a porcelain shop

Subastas Retiro, from Spain, sells on 26 April 2017 a "17th century Spanish school" Interior with still life estimated at 1,650 Euro. The description explains that this is a large work (106 by 160 cm) made from 17th century canvas fragments.

It looks as if this was one painting which was very, very badly damaged, and then restored as if it was a jigsaw puzzle. This gives a strange effect, but it seems to me to be more honest than to over-restore this to turn it into a single painting again.

The subject is one I hadn't seen before, a 17th century depiction of a porcelain shop (it could be the interior of a rich kitchen as well, but to me it looks like a shop). Porcelain at the time was frighteningly expensive, and most paintings proudly showed one or two pieces, not a whole range. The closest I could find was a kitchen scene by Floris van Schooten.

All in all: a painting with a rare subject, a mediocre style, and in a terrible condition (which somehow makes it interesting again). No idea whether it truly is Spanish, or what the value might be. Not a lot, probably.

Roelant Savery: central figure comes from Michelangelo...

Sala Retiro, from Spain, sells on 22 February 2017 an "Attributed to Roelant Savery" Rape of Ganymede, estimated at 26,000 Euro.

They already tried to sell it about a year ago, then with an estimate of 35,000 Euro.

It is a remarkable painting, I can't find another work by Savery which resembles it. What I did find though was the origin of the figure of Ganymede. I first noticed it in a remarkable painting by Battista Franco (1510-1561) from the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. It depicts the Battle of Montemurlo with the Rape of Ganymede. The Battle of Montemurlo is a 1537 battle where the troops of Cosimo I de Medici defeated the opponents of the Medici family rule in the city and effectively made the Medici the rulers of the city for a long period.

Close-ups of the two Ganymedes clearly show that the Savery is nearly identical the earlier Franco The setting is completely different though, instead of a majestic battle and a heavenly meal, you get a lonely shepherd dog looking up at the scene. I don't really know which of the two is the weirdest, but the Savery is certainly the closest to the original story.

But the trail of breadcrumbs doesn't end with Franco; he was heavily influenced by Michelangelo, and this figure is also originally an invention of Michelangelo. Although the original is lost, we have copies of his drawing in the collections of a few museums, including the Fogg Art Museums in Harvard, and the Royal Collection in Windsor Castle (shown above).

An engraving of this work, with the dog at the bottom, was made soon afterwards by Marcantonio Raimondi, one of the most important engravers of the Italian masters of the first half of the 16th century; it seems likely that this engraving was the actual inspiration for Savery (or whoever painted this Flemish-looking version). The dog as well is rather similar, but the distance between dog and master is vastly increased, and the background is completely changed.

25,000 Euro still seems rather expensive, but it is an unusual and well executed painting from the circle of Savery, so it certainly has a considerable value.

UPDATE: again not sold, and for sale a third time on  12 December 2017 with an again lowered estimate of 19,000 Euro.

"Antwerp School": Goswin van der Weyden?

Sala Retiro, from Spain, sells on 30 November 2016 an "Antwerp School, ca. 1530" circumcision, a large panel (130 by 100 cm) estimated at 19,000 Euro.

The auction catalogue says nothing about the provenance of the work. But thanks to the RKD, we can connect this sale with some much older catalogue entries and an interesting name.

In 1923, the work was in the Rothschild collection in London, and seen there by Max J. Friedländer who attributed it to Goswin Van der Weyden. The work was then sold in 1968 by Sotheby's for £5,000, and bought by a certain Marsworth. It is now listed in th RKD database as Attributed to Goswin van der Weyden. And now it suddenly reappears in Spain, with quite a lot of damage to the painting and the frame to boot, and no mention of Van der Weyden at all.

Goswin van der Weyden (1465-1538) is an interesting figure. In 19th and early 20th century art history, he was considered to be the son of Rogier Van der Weyden, and many paintings who were derivative of Rogier were attributed to him (like the relation between Pieter Brueghel the Elder and the Younger). Later research revealed though that he was the grandson, not the son (an otherwise unknown painter Peter van der Weyden was the link), and that he worked in Antwerp between about 1500 and his death. Only a few works are with some certainty attributed to him.

This work, while good and very interesting in its own right, seems not to be of the same high standards as these few certain works, so is better described as Circle of Van der Weyden, but it would warrant a good scientific study to see if the attribution to Goswin still has any merit. But I would guess that it would sell easier with the provenance and attribution than without... I would also like to know whether the damage is old, and has been revealed by cleaning it, or whether it really has happened between 1968 and now, which would be a real shame.

"Flemish School" Tower of Babel: a huge Hendrik van Cleve III?

Retiro Subastas, from Madrid, Spain, sells on 15 June 2016 a huge (154 by 232cm!) "Flemish School, 17th century" Construction of the Tower of Babel estimated at 20,000 Euro.

The auction house points to the many other versions of this story painted in Flanders in the late 16th and early 17th century by artists like Pieter Bruegel, Tobias Verhaecht, Frans Francken and Lucas van Valckenborch.

This specific type though, with a square foot of the tower pointing at the viewer, and a round tower where the first floor seems  to bulge upwards (highly exaggerated perspective with the vanishing point between the square floors and the round floors), can be traced back to one painter, Hendrick van Cleve III (Antwerp, 1525-1595), the most famous of the four Hendrick Van Cleves. He was the brother of Marten van Cleve, who will appear by coincidence on this blog next week. This version, from the Kroller-Muller museum in the Netherlands, measures 41 by 47 cm.

The example in the previous paragraph is clearly superior to the one for sale, but other variants attributed to Cleve are rather comparable to the one we have here. The above black-and-white photo is a version sold at Tajan, Paris in 2001 (found on RKD). The second, rather ornagey example also shows many of the same characteristics and similar figures in the foreground.

Most of these examples are significantly smaller than the one for sale though, and one would expect a version this large to be more detailed. Still, a work of this considerable quality, huge size, popular topic, and with a possible artist (or by a close follower) should easily fetch the estimate. All other versions which were sold over the last few years and which were associated with Cleve (from by him to followers) fetched about 20,000 Euro or a lot more, and none of those I checked even comes close to the size of this one.

Note also the one for sale at Sotheby's on 16 June 2016, again a somewhat better but much smaller one with many identical features, especially the strange perspective in the Tower, but also the bridge on the right, or the position of the King or main figure in the foreground.

UPDATE: this work is now for sale at Hampel, 5 July 2017, with the attribution "Dutch Painter, 17th century" and an estimate of 15,000 to 25,000 Euro. I don't know whether it sold last time and the seller won't get the expected profit, or whether it didn't sell and this is a well-deserved second try in a perhaps better auciton house for this kind of thing. They didn't recognise or accept my Hendrick van Cleve III attribution though ;-)